Skoda Rally Blog

I’ve just realised that my earlier post was rather factual, and that I’d forgotten a number of things that happened during the day – probably ‘cos I was miserable at that point!  I’ve cleaned the car up today, so now feel a bit better.  Anyway, here are a few random things that happened.

On SS2 (Wareham Main) there were some spectators crossing a 2R, a fair way off.  We beeped and they’d seen us, and most of them moved, sharpish.  However, there was one bloke who thought otherwise.  He wasn’t young – he looked about 50, and was wearing a sort of cowboy hat.  He was quite fat, and despite the others clearly signalling him to get out the way, he decided to do the opposite, and stand on the apex of the corner, sort of staring us out.  I didn’t back off.  I hope he has learned his lesson.

I have managed to lose the fuel filler cap for the ridiculously expensive ATL fuel filler.  I say “ridiculously expensive” as I’ve just looked on the ‘net today and the whole assembly is about £150. Oh good.  I went back to where I thought I’d left it this morning, but to no avail.  Dammit.

On the way back to service 3, we were pretty relaxed, and had plenty of time.  Being local and the route being the same, Paul didn’t have much to do.  So… he put the TV on.  He has a Sky mobile deal, so on the way back it was quite surreal having Jeff Stelling talking about the day’s football matches.  I know it’s not new technology, it was just weird and not something that I do when I’m out and about.

When being towed out of SS11, we went past a number of groups of spectators.  Nearly all of them gave us a round of applause, and that really lifted my spirits.  It’s nice to see that people appreciate you putting on a show, even if it is on the end of a tow rope.

Today dawned much warmer than usual, and although a bit damp, it looked like being a nice day.  How do I know this?  Because I woke up at 4:30am for no good reason other than having had a very weird dream about knowing I’d done the event, but not being able to remember it!

I loaded the car up with some spares and various service items, the jack and a few wheels, and got ready.  Paul came over about 8, we loaded the tool box into the car, and then headed off to service.  When we got there it was neatly organised and not very busy – our end had the National crews in there and most were similarly equipped to us with just a van and a tarp out, rather than the mega setups often seen further up the order.  We got ‘set up’ which consisted of getting the tarpaulin and 4 wheels out (which for once weren’t actually needed to stop it blowing away as it was still and pleasant), and checked over a last few things, setting up the power supply for Paul’s phone and camera mountings.

Service set up.

We were ready with plenty of time spare, and when the time came (after triple-checking everything, as ever!), we headed out to the first stage, Gore Heath.  On the way we filled the car up as we had no idea of consumption and the erratic fuel gauge needed more time to be trusted, and got to the stage with enough time to get set up and set the tyre pressures.  The start looked hard to get away from as it was so rutted and it certainly was.  Once into the stage I was instantly reminded of the first few times I rode a motocross bike – lots of power, but lots of wheelspin and just a general feeling of ‘skimming’ over the surface rather than driving on it – the car is pretty powerful but being FWD you break traction quite easily so as soon as it hit the power we were wheelspinning in first and second.  I had no idea what gear to take given corners in, and this would take a few stages to come.  Although it felt quicker than the Skoda, it certainly wasn’t quick – I was all over the place, frankly.  As it was only 2 miles long, it was over quickly enough, and off to SS2, Wareham Main.  This was much the same – the terrain here is mostly pretty soft, so it cuts up really badly in places, and there was still a lack of grip, confidence and probably ability too.  When we got to the faster sections with straights, the car was all over the place – it seemed to grip and grab quite a lot, and I’m not sure if it was the ATB diff fitted, but it seemed way more skittery than the Skoda, which didn’t help on the longer straights which the stage has.  We passed an Escort pulled over to the side of the road (with the crew out, waving us past) – later I’d find out they had a fire inside the car with the fuel tank having been punctured, so that must have been pretty hairy for them!

We got to the end OK, but it was clear that I had my work cut out – the car was a fair old handful compared to the mild-mannered Skoda, but Paul agreed it was best to build up speed and get used to it rather than bin it early on (or indeed at all).  The road timing to get to SS3 was really tight, but we got there with seconds to spare – the irony is than once you’ve got to the arrival control with lots of panic you usually have a couple of minutes waiting on the start line (we did with no-one else about as the escort on the stage before was the car in front of us), but into SS3 and it was much the same, although some of the soft sections were hideous – Paul said “it’s like a beach” at one point as it was just soft sand with foot-deep ruts.  The car was bouncing all over the place and it felt like we’d never make it through a couple of them, but we did.  Good – Wareham was out of the way, even if the oil and water temperatures were really high by the end.

Back to service, and the only issue so far was the right indicator not working.  It was only a 15 minute service so we didn’t have much time other than to check the obvious stuff and make sure levels were OK, then off out again for SS4, Ringwood West; this is a shortened version of the “Ararat/Plumley Wood” stage of old, which would be running later on as SS8 and SS12.

Ready for Ringwood.

The road section was pleasant, and the stage generally went a lot better; the terrain here is much firmer gravel for the most part, so on the longer straights the car wasn’t anywhere near as unstable, and despite a few missed gearchanges it went pretty well, getting more of an idea of what gear to take corners in (which is critical as the engine is quite peaky and the gearbox not close ratio enough for it to always be right in the power), but getting up the steep hill (about the only one on the event really) was so much quicker than the Skoda – indeed quick enough that I think Paul needed to adjust his pacenote speed a fair bit as stuff was coming up quicker.  We got passed by a very quick escort in this stage; I tried to keep up and found that on top speed we were similar, and indeed into the 2 corners I saw him for we weren’t too bad either, but getting out of them he just had so much traction compared to us – he just shot forward.  I can really see why people love Escorts.  Again overall, I think we’d improved on this stage, and it felt more like it, but still the braking was a fair bit off, and I was shy of going flat out at high speed as the car was still scary at speed.

SS5 was Somerley, another new layout this year.  The notes at the beginning of the stage were…. well, we both thought we were in the wrong place until a 90 left about a mile into the stage – they just didn’t seem to make sense, which didn’t help with my confidence, but once we got onto a more familiar bit and the notes worked OK it went pretty well; there were high speed 2 and 3 corners which were taken a bit slower than they should have been because again I was concerned that the car was all over the place and here there were logs laid down by the road; hit one and it would be over.  Very over.  Again, though, it was much quicker than the Skoda would have been, and as ever there were sections at Somerley that were just hideous – cut to death usually on 90 degree corners where you’re almost a passenger as the ruts control the car completely.  The tarmac section by the house looked to have been clattered by a few as there was straw everywhere, and then back into the forest with a really high speed section, which I took as quickly as I dared and was getting a bit more confident with the car again.  The end section is a tight and rutted bit, never a favourite but it went OK.  We got to the end of the stage with a hot car and a reasonably satisfied crew, and off to SS6, Uddens.

Although Uddens is only short, it’s one of my favourite stages as it has a good section at the beginning with some great corners – 6s and squares, and for the most part is good surface.  Clearly someone skimped on the repairs after last year as one of the corners had some massive potholes in it – not something it has ever had before, so it’s not great to see that the £500+ per mile that’s paid to the FC doesn’t look to be well spent.  The corners are the only place real damage occurs to the roads, and it can’t cost that much to repair this sort of thing properly.  Anyway, aside from that it went pretty well, although the car wasn’t entirely happy flat in fourth for about half a mile at the end – it got hot and seemed to lose power so I backed off a bit, unfortunately.  6 down, and back to service.

This time we had a fair time in the holding control (15 minutes), having had 10 minutes or so waiting to go into it, during which time I’d fixed the indicator issue and spoken to James from Motorsports News, and we took the time to phone people while we were in there (and Paul was advising his sister on a new laptop purchase!), and into service.  Again, nothing too serious to do – everything was OK and the indicator had been the only issue on the car so far, which was a good thing.

Look at the shadows! It's SUNNY.

Half way through, so out to SS7, Ringwood South.  This was the stage in 2009 where the Skoda LSD exploded, so I still have bad memories of one corner, so was pleased it went well for the most part; the ground here is soft, black and loamy, much like Wareham, so there was a fair bit of bouncing around, but it went pretty well, and off to the main course of the event; SS8 Ringwood North.  This is where Tammie and the kids had gone (complete with camping stove and chairs, for a nice day out in the sun!), so I was really looking forward to them all seeing me in the car (as were most of them, even!).

It wasn’t to be.  There had been an accident and tree fire in the International event, so the stage was cancelled.  I was devastated – both for the reason above, and also because it’s the main stage of the event, which I love.  Looking it from a purely financial point of view, that’s about £100 of the entry fee that is cancelled, which is unavoidable and part of the sport, but still a bitter pill to swallow.  We turned round and took an alternative route to SS9, Somerley 2.  As we got to the arrival control, I felt the steering get heavy – the assistance had gone.  Handily there was a 20 minute or so delay while everything got in sync due to the cancellation, which gave me time to find the fault – a union had come loose, and leaked all the fluid.  I managed to tighten it up with tools in the car, but we didn’t have any fluid.  I’d have to do the stage without power steering; if you’ve ever tried turning the steering on a PAS car with the engine turned off, then you’ll know how heavy that is. It’s made harder by the fact that the steering is only 2 turns from lock to lock in the Seat, although easier due to being on gravel.

Waiting for my arms to fall off.

After a long wait, we went into the stage.  The notes at the beginning still didn’t seem to work well, but a more immediate problem was the amount of effort needed for the steering – it was really heavy, and every time we hit a bump, the feedback through the wheel was immense.  The stage went as well as could be expected given this and the moon-like condition of parts of the stage; it was like driving through an open quarry in places, more suitable for massive diggers than a little car, but it made it.  By the end we had lost loads of time, and I’d lost the ability to feel my right hand – it had gone totally numb – and the left hurt like hell.  I lost count of how many times I swore in the stage.  Back to service, and refilling the reservoir and system got the steering working OK, but the noise from the pump confirmed that it was another casualty of rallying.  Hopefully the rack will be OK, as it was mega expensive by all accounts, as it was custom made.  The steering felt a bit erratic, but I’m hoping that’s down to the pump’s performance rather than anything else.  We headed off for SS10, Uddens which was a slightly different layout this time out, but still had the nice opening section.

Waiting for Uddens.

This went pretty well, and the steering seemed OK for the most part.  I took some of the tighter corners better, making more use of the handbrake, but still suffering the power drop-off at the end, and a very hot engine when we got there.  All done, though, and a road section off to SS11.

By now it was getting towards twilight, and when we got there said a quick hello to Gary (rallydelta), and then into the stage.  Whenever it starts to get dark, my thoughts turn towards finishing; it seems that you’ve worked hard for the day and now you want things to go OK so you can finish the day well, and go home without issue.  As we went through the stage it was going well; the corners were being taken better still, and it was coming together nicely.  The stage had cut up really badly in places, and the car was suffering in those bits.  There’s a long straight with a hairpin left on it, which went OK but after it a rutted soft section, and as we headed into it, the revs just went up.  I knew it straight away – a shaft had broken, or similar.  I changed gear a few times as we rolled along to see if it was that, but it was no good. We were going nowhere.  Dammit.

We pulled over to the side of the road, got the OK board out, and I took a look.  I could see the one driveshaft looked at a dodgy angle, and a quick grab confirmed it – the outside end had snapped, inside the CV boot so it thankfully wasn’t flailing all over and causing damage, but that was that.

Of course, this has happened before, and I’m a grown man, but I was still angry.  I found out two things at this point.  Firstly that there is a LOT of reverberation in a forest – if you say something loud and abrupt, you hear it echo.  Secondly, that I’ve at least learned to take things better.  Paul was as ever immensely positive – he was clearly disappointed by it, but as he said, it’s “much easier to fix that than a blown engine or having hit a tree”.  On the upside, a plan we’d had for later came into action; he’d put some food in the car, so he set to, making a Pot Noodle for each of us after all the other cars went by and we waved them past.

Paul Burley. The Man, The Legend.

I phoned Tammie to tell her not to bother going to the Pier finish, and ask her if she could come and pick us up.  The recovery guys appeared quickly, and towed us out of the stage, and we parked up on the outlet (out of the way), locked up and went to get a lift back.

We got back to service, packed up the gear, and headed back out to the car to change the driveshaft – I thought it would only take about 15 minutes, but it took a fair bit longer than that, alas.  Massive thanks to Gary Hayter and Ricky Aitken for stopping to give us a hand on their way back from the start, hugely appreciated, and good that they got the little Peugeot to the end.  Eventually we got it all done, and drove back – the car, of course, went brilliantly and didn’t miss a beat on the way back.  On the upside, Tammie had stayed at mine and cooked a beautiful Moroccan Lamb dish (a favourite of mine from my travels on the Plymouth-Banjul rally), so that was a big upside to anotherwise bad end to the day.

So, as I write this, it’s early the next morning as I didn’t sleep too well, and I guess I need to remind myself of the positives from the event; we missed out on some of the mileage but got most of it done; if the car had died early on it would have been a disaster, and although I’m not naturally positive about these sort of things, it wasn’t a failure that could be foreseen; unless you replace the shafts with brand new ones every X miles I guess things like this will happen.  I will look into the source of the failure and see what can be done; if stronger shafts are available then that’s clearly the way to go as I don’t want another problem like this.  What’s hard is that I know that it’s another year before I can put that into action on my local event, but there you go; on Friday night I thought that even if we do go out, at least we’ve done something that many have dreamed of but few have done, and hopefully there’s no shame in that.

Tonight was the Ceremonial start for Rallye Sunseeker.  This isn’t part of the rally as such as there is no competitive element, but you do have to turn up to it – you need to be at the three time controls at the right time.  With that in mind, Paul came over about 5:30 and we headed off as we were due at 6:07, but typically there was no traffic at all, and we got there in about 15 minutes, so we parked up with some of the big boys,  and adjusted the harnesses as Paul hadn’t been in the car in his race suit before.

Only time I'll be in front of a 6R4!

One thing I’ve discovered recently is that when you’re trying to adjust them, it’s much better to undo the loops and start from scratch rather than try to feed half an inch through at a time – it was done in a few minutes, compared to the ages of flailing about we did with the Skoda.  Had a quick chat with Gary Hayter who is now in a 1600 205 and is next behind us on the road tomorrow, having sold his Impreza.  He’d had some issues with needing to change seats because of them needing FIA homologation, even if it is expired!  Handy he had a spare set in his other car and they fitted in OK, really!

Off to the first time control, and it now starts to feel like being in a rally – there was a car park full of assorted rally machinery, and lining up for a time control really made me feel like it – this isn’t just a car show, it’s a rally.  We parked up on Poole Quay in the rather large crowds and then took a wonder about (via Tesco for some food!), and looked at all the cars that are taking part – the front running event is the International BRC, which has lots of cars in it, despite the doubts of some, and they all look the part, although some are really quiet!  From what I’ve seen of the people driving them though, they’ll look spectacular enough, and the field looked strong.  We were interviewed by someone – I have no idea what for, but they asked so we obliged!   The historic cars were next up, with something like this lovely little thing:

Lovely red mini!

We wondered past all the other cars, and an uber-bling Sunseeker 34m long ship, a snip at £11M, apparently.  And then we were off – right on time, we drove through the crowds which really were massive – there were loads of people down there, and hopefully lots of them will be out and about tomorrow as the weather is going to be nice for a change.  Rick Smith (the rally organiser) opened the door and said a quick hello, reminding me of my upgrade and that I have cars behind me.  I hope I can keep them there…

Over the ramp and that was that – another quick wave to Rob Pike (the Clerk of the Course) and back home.  Car parked up, everything ready, just need to load up in the morning and then off to Canford Arena.  We are due out at 9:12, and then I’ll finally get to see if the Ibiza is too much for me!

Today has been rather odd; normally when the Sunseeker is on, it happens during half term, so I have the day off and usually scrutineer early, and then loaf around all day, playing Dirt on the Xbox, etc.  But this year it’s not, and I went to work this morning, so I spent the morning teaching, and then came home, had a quick snack and then headed off to the service park to get noise tested.  The Seat started up without any issues, and noise was passed easily – a good 6dB under the limit – as the Ibiza is a quiet car.  Splendid, so just a drive to the BIC to meet with Paul and get through scrutineering.

Scrutineering is never my favourite part of an event, as it’s always the last thing that could stop you taking part, but generally on the Sunseeker it’s been a bit of an event with it mostly held at the Littledown centre, and this year at the BIC in the centre of Bournemouth.  On the way in there were a few photographers on the roundabout, and once booked in I met up with Paul, and we had a new experience – the marshals were applying the stickers.  This would save Paul from his least favourite job, and I left them to do it as they’d obviously had hours of practice already (scrutineering started at 10am and our time was 2:30) and it would be a pro job.  Paul and I always like to have a laugh, and unfortunately for those applying the stickers it was at them – there were more creases in them than in Shirley off Eastenders’ face.

A sticker which doubles as a contour map.

Spoke briefly to Rob Pike, the Clerk of the Course, and then saw Robin Bradford who commentates on the event who said he’d sent me an email and I’d not replied!  I didn’t get it, or a chance to speak to him as we were in to be scrutineered and he’d vanished by the time we got all done.

Our scrutineer was really nice – checked the car over and was chirpy while he did so, and we had a good time doing it which is a really nice change; usually it’s like standing outside the Headmaster’s office; this was much more like it.

Pleasant experience of scrutineering!

Once we’d done the scary Fire system test (which was the first time I’d done this, and he made me press the button!), it was all downhill from there, and we parked up and got all our paperwork in order.

All done!

Everything’s ready to go, we have to be at the ceremonial start at 18:07, and will apparently go over the start ramp at 19:23 but if it’s anything like last year we’ll be there a fair bit longer than that.  The weather is still quite warm at the moment, so hopefully it’ll stay that way and dry and everyone will have a good time down there tonight; if it’s anything like last year it will be ram packed!

No rally car looks complete without stickers.  And having removed all the blue ones from before, it was time to get some nice ones back on there.  I don’t have much in the way of sponsorship, so it was time to do some self-promotion, as well as promote Xtreme Outdoor, who sell kayaks, skate and scooter gear and whose owner Mark has lent me his van on a number of occasions!  In addition the car was looking quite drab and dull as the paint has faded a fair bit, so I spent most of the day polishing it and then applying the stickers which Andy has as ever provided in next to no time.  Removing old sticker goo takes ages – even more so when it’s on a plastic window that you don’t want to scratch.  But I think the end results are worth it:

From the front.

I’m hoping the TOW sticker isn’t too inconspicuous.

New domain name.... still the same blog!

Titon harnesses – both an advert and a gravel rash cover.

And from the side.

Eagle-eyed readers will note that the tyres are not the right ones – these are road-going winter tyres, which I’ve been shedding about while I get everything sorted out on the car.  These have now been swapped for some more suitable gravel rubber which will do the trick.  While I was playing about with the car I decided to clean the interior – it looks nice and clean in there now, as clean as it can be without a paintjob, and I’ve also reprogrammed the dash and cleared its memory; it’s an Aim MyChron 3 Plus, which is about £500-worth.  At present it’s being used as a rev counter and speedo only, so it’s a bit under-employed.  The speedo bit works fine when on the go, but when at a standstill it comes up with spurious figures, so I’ll need to check this out at some point.  However, I have calibrated it correctly so it reads the right speed when on the go – previously it was miles out.  I’ve turned off the gear display as while I like the geekiness of it, having a red digit flashing on and off on the dashboard is not conducive to a relaxed drive – I spent half an hour or so repogramming the dash to try to get it to work, but ultimately it clearly needs a better speedo signal than the one it’s getting at the moment, and if I need to look at the dash to know what gear I’m in when driving a car with an H-pattern box then I have more serious issues than that anyway!

So that really is it.  The car is ready to rally as it stands right now.  I’m going to have an entire weekend off from doing it or anything to do with it.  Well, I say that, I bet something pops up that I think I need to fix.

This morning I was visited by a couple of students from Southampton Uni who wanted to interview me; they brought a camera over and interviewed me in the drive while in front of the car; when I get the footage I will post it here (providing I didn’t babble too much).  I’m hoping to get a new tracking device fitted to the car in time for the event as a friend runs a company doing these systems, but I’ll have to get hold of him. And then spend the weekend working on the car!

Last time out I had a small list of things to complete, and I’d bought everything to do it.  The original plan was to complete this on Saturday, but unfortunately real life got in the way of that, so I had to spend the weekend looking after Tammie who’d hurt her back for the first time ever.  Fortunately she’s OK now and even more fortunately I have this week off, so I’ve spent today finishing off all the little things on my list in the garage.

The first thing was to sort out the breather arrangement – it had been bodged together previously and looked very dodgy, so a quick trip to Thread and Pipe up the road saw the correct fitting added to the inlet hose, and then the setup all finished off – now any breathed gas will be fed back into the inlet, as it should be.  The engine doesn’t breathe at all heavily, however, so that’s all good.

Breathing properly is important.

Next up, an oil change, and for this I needed to drive the car for a bit, and for that I needed to put some fuel in, so a handy time to calibrate the fuel gauge.  What wasn’t so handy was that putting 10 litres in made no difference to the fuel gauge reading.  20 litres registered an extra 1/8 on the gauge, so clearly it’s not up to scratch, and I’ll need to work on it in the future.  For now, though, I’ll have to run a large reserve of fuel and try not to run out on the Sunseeker.  Hmm.  While out and about, I made use of a local half-mile marker to calibrate the Terratrip which now works flawlessly.  I’ve said this before, and then had them die on the day, so we’ll see if the 404 is any better than previous ones!

On the upside, the car drives like a pussycat – granted the clutch is heavy and binary in operation, and it’s not a quiet shopping car, but it’s very pleasant in traffic and will be a nice relaxing drive in between stages.  Once the oil was up to temperature, back to take the sumpguard off and do an oilchange which was routine, but a chance to do a spanner check on everything underneath, which was all as it should be.  The thing that is really odd about the Seat is that most of it is really well built and seems professional – lockwired fasteners, well-made rigid pipes, etc., and now and again I come across something which just seems out of place; the sumpguard has a shield on one side which is a bit of mudflap material, and it was held to the sumpguard with nuts and bolts, which would be  really hard to get to in practice – meaning you’d have to remove it from the chassis rail instead when you remove the sumpguard, which is a pain too.  I replaced the nuts and bolts with rivnuts, and now it’ll be a piece of cake to take off, and still keep the mud and stones out of the engine bay.

See the rivnut, deep in the engine bay?

The rest was just bits and pieces – the towing eyes were not a “contrasting colour”, and it’s difficult to contrast with Council Yellow, but I’ve done it with Hammerite Red – helped at the front by painting the surround in matt black; the bumper on the car had been repainted from the original red and in this area it was a right mess; painting this not only highlights the towing eye, but also stops the front of the car looking like a piece of scrap:

Neat.

It looks better at 30 paces, honestly.

The harnesses are now fitted into the car, and you can see how neatly the bit of velcro keeps the intercom cable in place.  As I said on Friday, I’m really pleased with these, I hope Prima have a lot of orders now that FIA harnesses are the norm for rally cars.

Nice new harnesses

And where I sit is ready to go – everything is back in place, and looks great; all the controls work as they should.

The office.

And that is just about it.  Everything is crossed off of the “To Do” list – the car is ready to rally as it stands in the drive, right now.  There are a couple of cosmetic things to attend to – it needs stickers which have been sent today, and it needs a polish as it’s rather dull-looking, but that can wait for Wednesday or Thursday.  I actually feel a bit weird as the car is ready so early!  Anyway, as it stands, here it is:

Ready for the forests.

Just need to change the tyres and job’s a good ‘un.

Rallying is expensive.  There is no way around it.  But it’s made more expensive by some of the rules, which are under some dispute at the moment; while I got caught replacing the Ibiza’s seats shortly before the rule to make currently-FIA homologated seats (which means under 5 years old, at a cost of around £550 for a pair in my case, sometimes a lot more) compulsory was suspended, one thing that hasn’t changed is the requirement for in-date FIA harnesses.  The ones in the Ibiza ran out at the end of 2011, which means that despite being completely serviceable and in good condition, they have to be replaced, adding to the considerable cost of rallying.  They’re not cheap, and previously I have used Sabelt ones in the Skoda and they came in the Seat as well, but there is a local company called Prima Motorsport who make FIA-homologated harnesses, so I thought I’d do the decent thing and give them a try; I ordered them a couple of weeks ago but couldn’t pick them up until today.  They came in a nice neat little box:

A box of harnesses.

Opening them up revealed what I’d ordered – a harness with ends suitable to be wrap-mounted over the harness bars on the roll cage, which is a nice neat option and offers better angle of the strap over the shoulders.

All nice and neat inside

On inspection, they were every bit as good as any of the higher-priced alternatives that I’ve used before, and indeed come with a really nice little touch – often it’s a pain to get your intercom cable to stay in the right place, but with a neatly-done bit of velcro (already added so with no scrutiny issues), it’ll be a piece of cake:

It's the little things that make life easier.

They came with a very clear instruction sheet, which shows the right way to install the wrap-over harnesses.  When I removed the old ones I found that they hadn’t actually been fitted very cleverly, and the way the new ones are in will work much better.  Setting them to the right length was a piece of cake (and easier than with other types I’ve done before), so overall, I have to say I’m really impressed with Prima’s harnesses – aside from the price and service (both of which were excellent), the product is great too.  Obviously I’d rather not have to spend over £200 on a pair of harnesses that may only get used for 10 days in their lifetime, but with the obligation to do so it’s nice to know that my money has gone to a small and decent local business.  Sermon over!

… has a silver lining.  And today’s cloud was being off work!  One of the schools I work at is a boarding school, and they had a dose of a vomiting virus, so they have closed the school.  Which means I get a day off (yay!), but means I don’t get paid (boo!).  However, there is no peace for the wicked, so I thought I’d make some use of today and get some more ticks done on the Ibiza’s “to do list”.  Top of the list was the bias adjuster – I’d made the new plate up for the dashboard and painted it, but it needed fitting, and to do that I also needed to drill a small hole in the bulkhead for the adjuster cable to pass through.  There’s not a lot of room in there to do it, or much access with the roll cage in the way, but thankfully due to a small air drill and clearance under the bonnet drilling the hole was easy enough, as was fitting a grommet and getting the cable through.  With it all screwed in place and connected up, the brakes are now adjustable from the cockpit, should that be necessary.

Bias adjuster in place

That’s the blue knob, which is turned to adjust the bias front and rear.

Under the bonnet

The red cable is the adjuster, which connects to the bias pedalbox which is seen on the left.  Straightforward really (now it works!)

Next up, the terratrip.  While I’d managed to fix the keypad on it, the battery inside it looked fit to explode, so I’d ordered a replacement Ni-Cad one, and fitted it without one in the meantime.  The problem with this was twofold – firstly, whoever fitted the thing in the first place connected it to a switched live, so when you turn the ignition off, the trip meter goes off.  Not a great idea, and secondly without the battery when you turn the engine over it has a tendency to wipe the terratrip memory out.  Taking it all out of the car and apart again was a bit long-winded, and having “lost” the batteries I ordered made the job even longer; I’d actually put them in the “bits to fit” area of the garage and forgotten about it.  Still, easily fixed, and soon enough a permanent live feed (although still cut off by the kill switch for obvious reasons) was wired in, fused and everything.  With it all back together and the battery charged up for a while, it all worked as it should do, keeping time whether the car was on or off.

After the tank exploration last time out, I still had to re-fit the cover for the filler pipe.  This, too, turned out to be remarkably easy, just taking a bit of care to do it had it fitted in a few minutes.  Another thing taken off the list!

Nice tidy tank!

Next up was the guard for the alternator and power steering belt – I have no idea how it was supposed to fit with the sumpguard as it just didn’t fit – whichever you fitted first, the plastic guard just didn’t work properly, and looked more of a danger than a help, so I took it off and cut it down.  Refitting it to the car showed I’d taken a bit too much off, but this was cured by heating it up with a hot air gun and bending it to suit the sumpguard.

While not a watertight seal, it is intended to keep stones out of a critical area, and looks to be doing just that.  I may find a way to fix it to the sumpguard with a couple of screws/rivnuts to ensure it’s easy enough to remove but will stay perfectly in place; the other side has some mudflap material which needs the same treatment as previously it was held on with nuts and bolts (which must have been a real nightmare if you needed to do something quickly!), so when I come to do the oil change at the weekend, it will get all that done to it.

And that is about it!  Doesn’t seem like there’s 5 hours work there, but with all the messing about that’s needed and going to buy parts (three trips to the shops, each time for tiny things), it all adds up.  Still, the list now looks like this:

Which is a bit odd – I’ve done 8 things today, but added 9 to it.  That’s progress for you!  Seriously though, most of those things are straightforward.  I reckon a few hours will see everything ready for the car’s first trip out on Rallye Sunseeker, entry for which was confirmed today by the organisers.  There look to be a few entries in our class, so we will no doubt be slower than everyone else… or will we?

Having the joy of a day off…. I decided to spend it working on the Seat!  I have a small list of things that are needed before the Sunseeker, and although none of them are drastic, they’re all the sort of thing that can make the difference between a smooth fun day out and spending the day with bits all over the place and each service patching the car back together.

With that in mind, I thought i’d tackle the most difficult bit first, the fuel tank.  While the fuel gauge seemed to work, I wanted to check it out fully, and while I was at it I wanted to check what condition the tank was in – it’s in an aluminium box in the back of the car (as per regs), and I had no idea what it was like inside there.  It was a bit of a mystery how to get into it, as it’s quite well sealed up, with an aluminium tube between the filler and the box as well, and it took a fair bit of working out before it was all apart, but it was a pleasant surprise to find this:

Proper job!

One ATL tank – I had expected something with a composite outer and a bag inside, so I was pleased to see something less exotic which is less likely to give any trouble.  Splendid.  Next up was the sender – the silver disc at the bottom left of the blue access panel above – which I removed to check what the fuel gauge would read when the tank was empty.  And it turned out it was worth all this effort – it actually shows about 1/8 on the gauge, which wasn’t what I was expecting.  It would have been easy enough to run the car dry on the day, so now I know.  I also know that when full it will show full, and that all the gubbins inside the case is in good nick.  Putting it all back together was simple enough, thankfully.

While having a nose around underneath and replacing the sumpguard bolts, I noticed that one of the anti-roll bar ends was cracked; this was fine when the car was MOTed, but it was now in need of a fix.  Once removed and cleaned up, it looked like this:

Crackzilla

Easily fixed, but still would have been a problem if missed.  10 minutes’ welding saw it all fixed and once cooled back in the car.

Next up, the bias adjuster mounting plate.  The original dash panels were a bit rubbish and bodged, so I made a new one piece one up out of aluminium and then painted it.  The mountings in the dash still need to be sorted out, but it’ll be a lot better than what was there, and plus the brakes will actually be adjustable which is part of the point of having a bias box in the first place.

I’ve put an entry in for the Sunseeker, which is only a few weeks away,  and the list is getting shorter, thankfully.

With the Sunseeker coming up in just 5 weeks time, some progress was needed on the Seat.  While most of it was OK, the brakes were definitely not the way I wanted them; they have been converted from the original servo-assisted setup to a non-servo bias-adjustable setup with individual cylinders for the front and rear, plus of course the massive AP Racing front brake setup.  While this sounds impressive, it wasn’t in practice – an immense amount of pedal pressure was needed, which meant there wasn’t a lot of control.  They were powerful, but to get the power you needed to put the kind of effort usually only seen in a final of World’s Strongest Man.  Not a good combination, really, and even on a short stage it was tiring.  Doing an 11-mile forest stage would definitely be ‘interesting’.

So, it was time to improve matters.  First up was to remove any chance of a routine ‘service’ based issue giving these problems – while it was unlikely, it was worth checking anyway; so, it was time to change the brake fluid and bleed the entire system.  The car had been laid up for a couple of years so the fluid needed changing anyway.  With the old stuff syringed out of the master cylinders, a problem struck.  The front brake calipers’ nipples were looking very worse for wear (a combo of having been mis-spannered and also beaten up with stones), and a couple didn’t want to come out.

Bad Nipple

Given that the calipers are £800 a side new, I didn’t want to mess things up, so bought an expensive wall-drive socket to give the best chance of removing them.  And the £12 paid off, as they all came out OK.  £4 then saw them all replaced!  I’ve never understood saving money on things like this – it always comes back to bite you.

Good Nipple

There’s a link pipe between the inner and outer parts of the caliper, and this was stone-damaged too, so that was replaced – another time I was glad I had a bunch of tools as making the brake pipe up took minutes to do.  Then, bleed all the brakes, refit everything and go for a test drive.

Still terrible.  However, in the meantime I’d done some reading about brakes, and found some very interesting info on the Stoptech website – in a very informative help sheet about such brake setups, it mentioned that the ‘pedal ratio’ of most standard setups was wrong when converting the system over as mine had been.  The ‘ideal’ ratio is 6.2:1, so it was time to see if my setup was the same.  I made some measurements, and found that mine wasn’t anywhere near – it was 4.3:1.  This would mean that a LOT more effort would be needed to get the same pressure on the brakes, which made sense given the way the brakes felt.

In short, out came the pedal, and it was then re-drilled to give a ratio of 6.2:1 by making the distance between the pivot and the brake pushrod 40mm instead of the previous 58mm.

The new hole is B, the old hole is A, and the pivot is C in the picture.

I put it on the car (without reinforcing it yet) to see how it went.  Fortunately unlike other pedalboxes I’ve worked on before it’s fairly easy to do, and within 5 minutes I was out in the car, and it was transformed.  Still needed a bit of a push when cold, but instantly felt much better; the payoff is more movement in the pedal, but it feels fine now – before it was horrible, and now I have some real control – it was easy to take the brakes to the edge of locking up.

To finish off, it needed to come off, and then have some strengthening done – there was a hole right next to the new one, originally, which needed welding up, plus the inside of the pedal was also only single-skinned so this was beefed up, painted and then refitted.

The errant starter motor was next, a quick grease of the appropriate bits freed it up – it’s not perfect (although it looks like new on the outside, it was clearly badly reconditioned!), but it works OK and doesn’t stick now.

The car is pretty much all set now, I just need to fit the bias adjuster, making up a new plate to mount it in, but that can be done tomorrow. One thing I did notice on the test drive is that it really does go well!  The Sunseeker should be magic.