Skoda Rally Blog

Today was an unusual rally for me – it marked a number of firsts.  The first time I’d drive the Seat in anger, the first time my sister had ever done any navigation, and the first time I’d done the Longmoor Loco stages.  So, how did it go?

Well, it all started yesterday, getting everything loaded up.  When I got the Seat it had a number of spare tarmac tyres, which originally gave me the idea to do the event.  While they were a medium/hard compound (X06), I thought it was worth a try anyway, so had them all put on rims, along with some X16 compound (much softer) tyres which had been cut down the middle, notionally to be used as wets.  Or at least intermediates.  With the van borrowed from Mark, the loading began, with the spare tyres I had (including some winter tyres, just in case of, well, snow I guess), a selection of tools in the toolbox, obligatory tarpaulin to service on, and a jack.  Not a lot really, but then it was just a small event and hopefully the tools would be unnecessary.  Hopefully.

Longmoor is about 75 miles from home, so we set out early as we needed to arrive for around 7:15 or so – this was done easily enough as the roads were pretty deserted, and the drive was painless enough, although I could see my sister was a bit nervous about what was coming up.  The unloading procedure was a bit odd, needing to unload the rally car from the van and drive it to the scrutineering area, while taking the van separately.  Vicky wasn’t confident to drive either rally car or van, so I had to take the rally car over, and then jog back about a mile to get the van.  By which time it was light (and Vicky then said she would have driven!), but we got everything set up OK and then headed off for scrutineering, which took place in a long tunnel-like building with the cars queueing up in it.  This would have been nice if it wasn’t for someone leaving their car running; I’d think in such a building any cars would be a bit headache inducing, but with a selection of badly-mapped cars idling richly on race fuel, it was not something I’d want to stand in, so we stayed clear until it was nearly our turn.  Scrutiny went well, so off we went to get set up.  I say ‘set up’, I really mean ‘get a tarpaulin out and park the car on it’.  I’m no stranger to having less equipment than everyone else, but I’d forgotten how much gear people have – quite a few had full on setups with race transporters as well as full service crews.  And then there was me, my sister and my Mum!  Anyway, we got all the paperwork finished off and then had a fair old wait before our start time, so took the opportunity to walk some of the course.  This reassured me (as I could see the parts of the stage which looked like they might be trouble on the maps), and seemed to disturb Vicky as it was now getting very real.  But I was happy enough; the weather was OK and I even saw the sun at one point.  We got suited up and watched the other cars go round (as the service area was right next to part of the stage), and soon enough it was time to go.  We got strapped in, and off we went – I was a bit nervous due to the car, tyres and lack of practice on tarmac (not a surface I would ever say I was amazing on anyway), but I think that paled into insignificance to Vicky, who seemed pretty nervous now, despite my reassurances that it’d all be fine.  We got booked in and waited to take to the first stage, which happened soon enough.  Once we’d gone from the start, Vicky did well to call the corners as we went, but it hit me.

I’d brought a knife to a gunfight.

Not in terms of the car – it showed straight away that it was quality.  But the tyres, oh the tyres!  They were shocking.  To be fair it was clearly too cold (about 5 degrees C) for them, but even so, they were terrible.  The back of the car was all over the place; when I got to the third corner I was already on opposite lock, thankfully easy to do with the 2-turns lock-to-lock quick rack, but it needed no encouragement to hang the back of the car out at all.  The brakes were also hard work – they needed WAY too much pressure on the pedal to get them to do anything and this combined with the slippery tyres meant I had no confidence that the car would stop;  I can remember years ago doing Caerwent and being able to hit the brakes on the Skoda hard enough to give me bruised shoulders, but there was no chance of that.  On the second lap round we got caught by someone on their third lap, but moved out the way quickly enough, and then it was apparent just how much time we were losing when we followed him round; on the straights it was fine, but into corners I had to brake way too early.  On one of the chicanes I lost the back of the car so it was really close to the limit.  However, stage 1 was completed without any mishaps other than driving around like a newborn deer on an iced-over lake.  Vicky seemed pleased but a bit ill after all the sliding about, so we headed off to service and checked everything over.  I dropped the tyre pressures, and found that the fronts were at least warm – the rears were stone cold, so clearly a lot softer would be the way to go if you had a range of tyres as many others did.  The piles of tyres people turn up with aren’t just for show.  But the problem with this is that each tyre is £150 in the size I am using.  So that’d be £600 just for a set on another compound which would not last that long either!

Stage 2 was a re-run of stage 1 and went well for the most part; Vicky was doing a good job again, and I was getting a bit more confident with the car as although it wasn’t great, it was predictable – although it seemed there was less grip than Stage 1 this could just have been perception rather than fact.  I over-cooked it at one point and locked up heading off the road, thankfully into a ramp rather than a kerb, but took ages getting the car into reverse, and longer getting it back in first again.  In addition I tried using the handbrake on some of the tighter corners.  Or rather the wrong handbrake!  I have got so used to it being the normal one in the Skoda that I didn’t use the hydraulic one.  It didn’t work well!  Braking down for one of the chicanes the back of the car tried to overtake the front (something my Mum commented on later on!) Other than that it went OK; clearly on totally the wrong tyres we were never going to go fast, but I’d already given over to that, and was having fun.    Once we were in service I decided to make a change to the car and put the softer-compound ‘wet’ tyres on the rear, in the hope they would warm up a bit and give some grip – I didn’t want to spin into a wall or similar.

Stage 3 was a new layout, with some sections different, and once we got going and the back end got some heat in the tyres it was a bit more fun to drive.  The correct handbrake was used this time, and it worked a treat; not only for the two tight turns which were clear candidates but also for a couple of others to move the back around – not something I’d have wanted to do earlier on.  There was still not a lot of grip to be had, but the car seemed good other than that.  It has a quaife diff in it which get a lot of grief from many rally drivers because they are gear-based and don’t offer the ultimate grip that a plate-type diff does, but I have to say that I found it very driveable; even with the minimal grip on offer today the car never span all the power away on the inside wheel and it was always predictable and progressive; not something I’ve always found with a plate diff.  At the end, however, it was apparent that Vicky was not doing so well – she’d been feeling quite ropey all morning, and each stage seemed to make things worse; she’d lost her place a couple of times on this stage and that was why.  I advised going for a walk away from all the generator and car fumes which seemed to help a bit, but she was still unwell… The car was running quite hot too, but it would appear that the automatic fan isn’t cutting in, so I left the manual one on for the rest of the day which seemed to help out while queuing.

On the way to Stage 4 I mentioned that I’d known several people who were experienced suffer from sickness in the car, and that people I know have had to quit because of it, so we took the stage and gave it a good go.  Vicky called all the corners as they should be, and even though the rain had just started it seemed to go OK.  We could see we were clearly quicker than some of the cars which we were catching (although again losing lots on braking areas) who were on other laps.  Once Vicky had called the last split (turning right to go to the stage finish) she went quiet.  I nearly made a joke as she hadn’t called the last corner, but it was obvious what it was as we’d used it 3 times before.  However, once we went over the finish I turned to her and realised why she’d been quiet – she was really ill!  She gave the timecard over, and I said to get ready to get out of the car, and once the timecard duties were taken care of she did just that, and went to be sick – thankfully she’d not done it in the car, and I took everything off her in time so she got out without issue.

I drove back to service and she appeared a few minutes later, much worse for wear.  It was clear that there was no way we could continue, and to be honest given that the weather was changing for the worse and I already had no grip it was clearly time to go home, so we packed up, loaded up and went, having handed in time cards, for the third time on an SV event that I’ve done, and only (I think) the sixth retirement while I’ve been rallying.

There are many elements to rallying, and many things that can go wrong – most of the time we talk about bits on the car failing or tyres not being up to scratch or whatever, but the crew is just as important, and can also fail, and that’s what happened this time (through no fault of her own).  I think the combination of and extremely tight and twisty course and navigating duties was just too much; Vicky spent all the rest of the day looking like death warmed up, and apparently the journey home in the van was enough to make her feel like throwing up a couple of times, so clearly we made the right decision.  During the slippery Stage 1 I thought it was possible I’d be going home without a car, so it wasn’t the end of the world, and it goes to show something that I’ve never really given much thought to – not everyone is cut out for doing rallying, for a variety of reasons.  Still, it was fun while it lasted, and once the brakes are sorted on the Seat I’m sure it’ll be a riot on the Sunseeker.  I’m applying the Burley mentality of looking at the bright side of things – the car is fine and goes well, and no-one died! Alas, there are no pictures of the event as it was on MoD land with a strict camera ban in place.  It’s a pity as it would have looked great in places.

So, the three elements?  Well, the Seat is definitely going to be a good car when the brakes are working well and it’s on gravel.  Longmoor Loco?  A great event – tight and twisty, and I can see that if it was icy it would be a massive test of car and driver.  My sister?  Well, she knows how to keep sick in until she leaves the car, and that’s a top skill!

It’s been a few days, but a long few days, so I’ll start at the beginning.  Last time out the Seat had the standard head re-fitted and everything in place for the first time since I bought it, and Monday morning meant enough time had passed to get the battery charged up, so it was time to see if it ran.  Before the strip down the engine was running well, and indeed as soon as it was warm it would tick over like a real car.  But it had been a long time, so I was pleased as punch when it fired up on the first turn of the key, and sounded sweet.  Splendid.  However, there were still some bits to re-fit – I’d not fully filled the coolant, or refitted the drivebelts for the alternator/water pump or the power steering, so these went on in short order and I fired it up and left it running; after a couple of minutes of throttle blipping it ticked over quite happily.  The exhaust sounded quite different to when I bought it without a huge hole in it – it’s quite a quiet car.  Or rather it would be, if there wasn’t a problem.  When I bought the car, it came with a spare front pipe (which includes the cat).  I nearly sold it at one point, and I was glad I’d not done so, as the flexible joint on the one on the car had split, so the car had that horrible sound when there’s an exhaust leak near the engine.  Clearly that needed fixing, and it would have been better if I’d spotted it with the head off.  I went to check on the disks which were being machined back to spec, but they weren’t done, and the weather turned, so that was the end of Monday.  On Tuesday I had to work, but on Wednesday I went to pick up the brake discs (which still weren’t done), as I’d taken the bold step of booking the car in for an MOT on Friday.  If you don’t set a deadline, then projects just go on and on, and it was time to get the Seat finished.  I cleaned the discs up with wet and dry and they came up very well.  I then fitted them to the mounting bells to find out the originals had been fitted wrong according to AP’s site, so that was nice!  Cleaning them up, fitting them to the car and refitting the calipers and pads took up the whole morning, and just when I thought I’d finished, I noticed this:

Oh dear!

A couple of cracks in the inner wing.  They were mostly the result of the metal being brittle where it had been seam welded, although there was one small patch that needed new metal as it had rusted.  Not too bad to do, and half an hour later, it looked much better:

Yellow!

Much better and no problem for either MOT or actually driving the car.  I took a precautionary look around the rest of the car but didn’t find anything else like it, so hopefully it was just a minor issue. After that it was time to fix the exhaust.

This was a complete pig of a job.  Whoever designed the downpipe for the Ibiza (or rather the gap between the steering rack and the body) needs to be dispatched.  What could have been a straightforward job was a complete pain to do as getting it out required a mixture of precision and strength which was incredibly difficult to manage with a car jacked up in my drive.  I’m sure on a 4-poster it would have been downgraded to just “I hate this person, and the should suffer a lot”.  I was eventually rewarded with a removed downpipe, and now I had to make one up.  Eventually I took the path of putting the motorsport cat onto the new front pipe, which took a fair bit of grinding and cutting to get it off, but it was OK.  Careful measurement and photography meant I could get the new part made up to the right dimensions (as there was a fair bit of play between the pipes), so I did a few test TIG welds and had to … refit the bloody thing to check it was OK.  This was done, but again was hard getting it in, and harder getting it out.  I fully welded it, and fitted it, and was relieved to find that it all fitted up without issue.  And when the car started….. as quiet as a mouse, at the front anyway.  This was a good thing, but the entire day was taken up!

Thursday was mostly taken up with collecting my Sister from Heathrow, but in the afternoon I changed the front tyres over to the MOT-legal winter tyres which were fitted to one set of tyres for the car, and then adjusting the handbrake cables and final fitting them, and fitting winter tyres.  Once more play was stopped by bad weather and it being pitch black.  Just time for a quick first test drive.  The first thing that hit me was that the clutch is heavy and bites rather viciously.  The second was nearly a roundabout – the steering is just 2 turns from lock to lock, and as a result I rather over-did it when I went round a roundabout, but fortunately corrected in time!  The third was that the brakes needed a good push to work well, but other than that it was OK.  A couple of runs up and down the road, and then I noticed the water temperature was getting a bit high, so I went back home, and found steam coming from under the bonnet!  Not good, and a bit of a surprise as it hadn’t done it when run up to temperature before, but there you go.  It was quickly traced to a not-fully-tightened jubilee clip, and I hoped that no damage had been done – the car didn’t get too hot, thankfully; the joys of proper instrumentation (the car has oil pressure and temperature as well as water temperature, and I think the Skoda should follow suit at some point).

So, today was MOT day, but in the night (as you do) I’d remembered a couple of things I’d not tightened up – just the lambda sensor and coilpack so easy enough – and also needed to sort the wipers out (which cleaned up OK), fit an interior mirror and fit new sill stand guards.  Once more it was raining, but an hour saw all these done, along with the water topped up.  Another test drive showed that all was well.

I hate MOTs.  They are like scrutineering, but even worse.  And as I’d booked it for 2:30 I had a fair bit of waiting about to do, which didn’t help.  But it all went OK.  There were a few advisories on it, nothing serious, and a PASS!  So the Seat is finally ready to drive.  Driving it back I took a few chances to give it some beans, and it goes OK.  The brakes still need a firm push, but I’m hoping they are just bedding in at the moment (although they are non-servo) – they certainly stop OK, and warm up as well.  The hydraulic handbrake is excellent, and the raised gear lever is really good – no more dipping out of sight to change gear, it looks more like one of the early manual-change Focus WRC cars (although obviously isn’t sequential!).  It didn’t miss a beat on the way there or back, and that’s all I can ask for really.  So it looks like a car change for Longmoor will be in order.  How splendid.  All I need to do is put the sumpguard on, get some tyres changed over and give it an oil change.  But that can wait until next week; I’ve not had a moment to myself this week, so I’m going to enjoy Christmas for a few days instead.  Happy Christmas to you if you’re reading this before the day, and even if you’re not, in retrospect.

After the problems with the head, there was more work to do than before – first up was to check the ‘insurance’ head I bought a while ago on eBay – it hadn’t been very well packed, and cylinder 3 had two valves open on it (as it still had the cams in) and I was worried they may have been damaged, so they needed to come out to be checked, which fortunately showed they were in good condition.  In addition the machining in the ports on this head was a lot better than on the original head the car came with, so clearly VW cleaned up their act on them.  Next, the ported head was taken off, and everything readied for the new one to go on, which went pretty smoothly.  Fortunately the car has ARP head studs fitted, so they don’t need replacing each time you fit the head.  Unfortunately although the head gasket looked mint, I didn’t want to risk it so replaced it anyway.  £25 well spent there then.

Next up, I needed to check the cams’ timing, as they are adjustable with verniers and need to be set spot on.  Long story short, 2 hours led me to make measurements that were accurate enough to know I wasn’t a million miles out, but not accurate enough to know if I was a degree out or not.  But certainly good enough for the time being.

Now came the lengthy process of bolting everything back on.  On the Felicia this is a piece of cake – it’s a very simple engine, and as I’ve done it so many times I know it inside out.  But with the Ibiza it’s a different kettle of fish; I dismantled it ages ago, and it’s the only time I’d ever seen it.  So progress was slow and it was quite a game of Mechanic/Detective.  Most of the electronic things are fortunately easy enough to do, but some of the mechanical bits needed a fair bit of head-scratching.  By Sunday night, however, it was all back in one big piece, albeit minus the exhaust and power steering pump drive belt.  So I thought I’d try to fire it up to cheer me up a bit, but alas the battery was flat, so no dice at all – enough to turn the lights on the dash on and run the fuel pump, but no chance of turning it over.  I put it on charge and put it all to bed for the night.

… that was cursed.  By now, I should have a running Ibiza, and have it ready for the MOT.  And therefore for Longmoor Loco.  But as you may have surmised, I don’t.  I’ve had a long delay with the ported cylinder head – the company doing it said they’d done one and then found a crack on final testing, so another one was needed.  During the long wait, I had bought a standard head on eBay (just in case), and then the guy who was sending it forgot to mention it would be another week before he could send it.  Great.

Anyway, on Monday the ported head arrived – unfortunately I was out at the time (helping a friend of my Mum with a problem with her car that turned out to be a blown head gasket), so didn’t get it until gone 5pm.  I got it all unpacked and ready to fit, and then on Wednesday started looking at fitting it.  I’ve never timed up an engine with two cams on it before, so a bit of research was done before I got started, but it all seemed simple enough, and having a spare head with no valved fitted made it easy to check out what was going on.  Next up, time to get the cambelt off and everything ready to fit, which sounded simple enough, but took an hour or so to get it all done and the timing marks checked properly.  And time to bolt the head on, which was easy enough – the engine has an ARP stud set fitted so it was nice and easy to put on, and it all torqued up easily enough.

Getting there?

Unfortunately I then had to ‘pop out’ for 3 hours or so to check out a replacement car for my Mum’s friend, so that was half the day taken up, and then time to put the exhaust on, which was easy enough too.  And next up, the camshafts.  The studs for all the cam caps had been removed for machining, so it’s a laborious job to put them on, so while I procrastinated for a bit, I decided to check out the camshaft caps.  And found a problem.  A big one.  One of the caps is from another head.  They are all numbered, and when they are made, they are bolted in place and then bored; it’s not possible to get a spare one as they are machined as a set (head and caps are matched).  The ‘replacement’ one was from another engine, and nowhere near right – it’s about half a mm out of line at the parting line.

So far I’ve heard nothing in response from the company that did the porting, via email or phone.  Great.

However, today the ‘standard’ head has arrived.  So it looks like Saturday’s work will be to remove the head, get the standard one fitted and see if I can get the car running.  I’ve also been to the machinists today to chase up the brakes which I’m having reground because they had some water damage (these were brand new AP discs), they should be ready on Monday.  I have most of next week off (well, 3 of the 5 days), so hopefully it’ll be up and running soon enough, but getting it MOTed in time looks like  a real stretch.  We’ll see…

On the upside, I have tarmac tyres fitted to enough Skoda rims to do the event anyway, so plan A is all looking fine anyway.

A quick update.  Firstly, I have a confirmed entry on the Longmoor Loco stages, which is held on the 30th December.  A 2WD-only event, it’s always popular and is apparently great fun.  It’s going to be my sister’s first event as a navigator, so it should be a laugh if nothing else!

Next up, I’ve done a bit of work on the Seat this weekend; as mentioned before both sills had some damage, which was really accumulated stone damage which had then been left to rust a bit; all surface rust really, although the rear half centimetre or so of each sill had a little hole in it, so I made up some nice repair sections and have welded them in, then cleaned up the entire sill and they’ve been painted.  It’s very handy that Cupra yellow is pretty close to Hammerite yellow – later on I will paint them with the correctly-coloured paint but at the moment I’m more worried about protection than aesthetics.  The sills could do with having fibreglass guards made up, so I may take this on as a project at some point, particularly as I have a bunch of matting left in the garage from another project.

I’ve got a flowed cylinder head coming the weekend after next, so with any luck the car will be up and running soon, which will be good; I’m really hoping to get it all done and MOTed before Longmoor, and if possible I may do the event in that, but more than likely it’ll be the Skoda.  But alas another week of work beckons, so little if anything will get done until the weekend, other than the Terratrip 404 which I’ve removed this afternoon to check it over; it seems most of the buttons don’t work well and it beeps constantly so I’m going to see what’s going on with it!

In a decidedly non-chronological manner, I am now going to bring you up to speed with a new project, something which the eagle-eyed may have spotted in the odd photo here and there, and that’s that I’ve bought another rally car.  I am a traitor, however, as it’s not a Skoda!

First up, at the moment I am keeping the Skoda; I’m still on for doing Rally GB 2012, and the Skoda is the car to do that in, as the new car’s homologation would have long expired, and it’s not in a homologated spec anyway as far as I can tell.  I also still harbour the idea of doing an IRC round at some point (although as the Monte is back in the WRC, that pipe dream has fallen by the wayside).  But in the summer I had saved up about £2000, which I was going to put towards a new bottom end in the Skoda; this would have covered a 1.4 conversion, better rods and forged pistons, so the bottom end would be good for 8500rpm or so, and allow the head to fully perform; it would have hopefully gained me about 25-30bhp or so, and made the car a bit of a rocket for what it is.

But while I was thinking about this, something popped up on eBay.  It was a Seat Ibiza rally car, which looked interesting; fitted with a 2.0 16v engine, with a lot of ‘nice’ bits fitted; a custom cages weld-in rollcage, AP front brakes, Bilstein suspension, a close-ratio gearbox, Quaife diff, quick rack and lots of little details that looked good.  It wasn’t too far away (about 70 miles), and worth a trip to take a look – in the advert it looked a bit of a shed, as it had been stood for a while, and had scars from its last outing on the Sunseeker 18 months beforehand, with broken front and rear bumpers.  Long story short, I got it for a bit over two grand, but with a huge amount of spares thrown in – enough to completely (and I mean completely) fill Mark’s van when I went to pick it up.  It had a few issues (all declared) – head gasket leaking oil, a cracked oil cooler, handbrake seized up and a few other bits and pieces, but it ran well.  Here’s what it looked like when I got it home:

Battered but good.

And inside it looked like this

Tidy indoors

Nicely done inside with a proper upright hydraulic handbrake (retaining the mechanical one for the MOT and scrutineering), raised gear lever tower, Terratrip 404, digital dash (which does datalogging and all sorts), plenty of gauges and so on.

On the downside, the seats were out of date so would need replacing, and there were a couple of holes in the floor that had been drilled to let water out (the car lets water in, alas), and the floor was a bit rusty with surface rust.  First thing to take care of was that, so soon after it looked like this:

Nice new seats and shiny floor

Next up, the handbrake needed sorting, which was straighforward – the cables were damaged and had rusted, so £20 saw that fixed – fortunately they were standard items and dead easy to change, particularly as the car has the tank in the boot (an ATL bag tank) so the standard tank isn’t in the way.  The thing I noticed while doing it was that everything seemed to have been done to a high standard – there were no bodges or anything like that, everything looked really well thought out and engineered.

Obviously the bumpers were a real mess, so they needed to be binned, and fortunately I got a pair from a breaker at a good price, and replaced them and the mudflaps, taking the opportunity to change them to black instead of the original blue, and getting them up to current MSA spec.

The oil cooler was cracked, and luckily £50 saw a Mocal one to replace it directly, much better than saving £10 by buying a cheap one and then spending hours making new mountings and worrying about it falling apart.  The front brakes were in a sorry state – one had been replaced by a temporary one of a different size, but spares were included.  Unfortunately they had been stored without protection so they had a bit of surface rust on them, so they have been dispatched to be surface machined, and the pads have been replaced.  The AP calipers on the car are ENORMOUS – the kit with discs, pads, calipers and mounting bells is around as much as I paid for the car! They should stop the car really well, and it has a bias box which will have a remote adjuster fitted (included in the spares, handily).

The exhaust had a break in it as one of the mountings had ripped a section of pipe out, so this was replaced; typically a perfect-looking bit of welding on something that will never be seen, but hey ho.

Finally (at the moment), the head.  The engine has been fitted with ARP studs, but was leaking at the head gasket.  The head had been replaced (originally it was fitted with a ported one, but had some problems) with a standard one, so once I’d removed it I took the decision to get a better/ported head fitted.  Unfortunately time and so on has got in the way, and it’ll be a couple of weeks until I get the head back from being done; although it’s cost a fair bit more money there’s not much point in not getting the most out of the car from the start, I think.  It’s fitted with a set of Kent Cams and was seeing nearly 200bhp, so this should be achievable with that combination, and should make it fun to say the least.

Off with its head!

The last thing at the moment is the sills – they had a lot of stone damage, and surface rust as a result of being left for so long; I have stripped and painted one side and have the other to do, but both need tiny repairs at the very rears which should be a morning’s work and no more.

So, as it stands, there’s a few days’ work to go to get it all back together, once the head returns, and then I want to get it MOTed as soon as possible.  There’s a possibility I may be doing an event before the Sunseeker as a shakedown as I’d hate to have a small issue cause a problem on it, but whether this happens will all depend on if everything goes to plan.  At the weekend I’ll get some decent pictures of the car as it stands, and hopefully get the sills finished off.

First up, sorry for being offline the last few days – typically, my hosting company had a broken server, taking the site offline on the busiest week of the year.  I will be brief; I’m 100% committed to doing Rally GB 2012; the car is ready (I’ve been out in it today, in fact), and feeling good.  I have 10 months to improve little bits and pieces and also to save up to do the event.  I’m not sure who will be navigating with me, but it will happen; 2012 is the last year the Skoda will be WRC-eligible (as the FIA surely won’t extend the homologation again), and as said many times I won’t be able to afford a future WRC-eligible car any time soon.  So, the sponsorship page will remain open until next year, and if you want to see your name on the car, go take a look at it and pick the spot where you’d like to see your message on it in Rally GB 2012.  If you have any questions or comments, please use the contact page to get in touch with me.

Apologies to those on RSS – this is basically a repeat of a previous post which the hosting company hadn’t backed up; lesson learned, I will keep my own backups in future!

So, the car is pretty much where it needs to be to use it – it runs well, and everything else on it is pretty much sorted out – the diff is working properly thanks to Steph’s excellent advice, and the car is quicker than it ever has been before.  I’m sure there’s a bit more power to come with some attention paid to the ignition advance, but that will need a dyno session to sort that out; it’s not bad, however, I just think at around 4-5000rpm there’s a bit of a drop off which could be sorted out.

But that’s an aside.  This morning I’ve made a decision.  Well, one which leads into another.  The end result is that we’re not going to be doing the Tempest.  It’s a great event which I’ve done 3 times (twice driving, once navigating), and I’m sure we’d both enjoy it, but the bottom line is this:  To do it will take 3 days (Friday, as I have to get everything loaded up, and go to scrutineering up in Aldershot, and Sunday to unload and clean up), and more importantly will be well over £600 – even if I use some old tyres.  Which is a significant amount of money for a day out, and more to the point, it’s about 15% of the total budget needed to do Rally GB.  Now, I’ve already spent around £1000 on gettting the car ready for Rally GB 2011, and most of that was on safety gear that needed replacing as it was out of date or needed servicing etc.  So the car will be ready and eligible for 2012, and that’s the last time ever.  The FIA won’t extend its lifetime again (after all, it will be 11 years after production stopped), so 2012 really will be the last time I could do a WRC round – short of a lottery win, I’ll never have another car which will be eligible.

So?

The money is going towards doing Rally GB 2012, which I am 100% committed to doing.  I’m hoping that this site will get some traffic this year if people wonder where we are, so I’m opening sponsorship up on the car now, for 2012.  We will be there; the car is already as well prepared as ever before, and I now have 10 months to do all those little things I’ve always wanted to improve; the kind of things that don’t cost a huge amount but take time and effort to get right.  More to come on this, but at the moment if anyone’s interested, we’re game for 2012.

Now, I’m well aware that last time I posted on here, I said I’d be doing the mapping of the car over the following weekend (i.e. about 10 days ago).  I did intend to stick to that, but given that we weren’t entering Rally GB there was no real time pressure on doing it. Saturday’s weather was great, so instead of spending the day playing with the car, I went to Peppa Pig World with Tammie, Mabel and Eddie, and a great time was had.

However, that didn’t leave me with a car that ran well.  It now had oil pressure, and sounded OK, but was certainly not in running form, engine-wise, as the change of components (bottom end, particularly the camshaft, and exhaust manifold) meant that the old map would be miles off; it ran well enough to test the oil pressure, but not well enough to be driveable.  So the task was to sort that out, and that meant getting all the mapping gear ready.  The old laptop I used to use was replaced by a new one which came with “Project X” (to be revealed, soon enough!), a Panasonic Toughbook, which is really heavy and heavy duty.  I’d been using it for a while (for no reason, really), and it was fine.  But yesterday when I went to start using it, it was as dead as a dodo.  No charge in the battery, despite me putting it on the night before.  So I spent most of yesterday messing about with computers; unfortunately the DTA software for programming the ECU is complete rubbish – it looks like it was written for Windows 3.0, and is really terrible in terms of user-friendliness.  In addition, it’s terribly picky about the serial port it will use to communicate with the ECU, and no USB-Serial adapter I’ve tried with it works (even the one they recommend!), if you’re using a new operating system (i.e. Windows 7, etc).  So I was S.O.L.  I spent some time researching the laptop issue and finally fixed it with a battery drain utility.

So, this morning I thought I’d try getting it done.  First up was to make the car a bit more driveable – it had a couple of flat spots where it just wouldn’t run well at all, and they were dangerous, so first job was to manually patch them up, which involved getting my Mum involved, and she braved the stuttering beast for an hour or so while I got it a bit better behaved (she was noting where the flat spots were, then I pulled over and made changes).  Now it was at least capable of pulling away without getting me crashed into, it was time to do some proper mapping.  Now, I’ve covered this before, so I won’t go into too much detail, but it involves logging the engine speed, throttle opening and air/fuel mixture, then using some maths to look at the current map that was being used and calculating the new fuel requirements based on what has just been logged.  This would be simple if the DTA software was nice and the files it saved were documented, but it’s not, so it takes some jiggery pokery, and this time I finally decided to make a note of what I do so I don’t have to work it out from scratch in the future… (Project X has DTA as well…).  There were a few things to sort out to get this all set up (the power extension cable was broken, and I needed to get a new throttle pot), but after lunch I did a few runs, and improved the mix no end – it was running really rich in some places, really lean in others, and once it was more like the required mix then it ran well (when it was running rich it wasn’t happy at all – it felt pretty gutless).  It needs plenty of revs to make power, but then I guess that’s to be expected with a works cam – they revved to 8000rpm, after all.  And that’s not going to happen with my engine as it has standard rods in there!  However, after 5 mapping runs and revised maps it’s running pretty well; not much going on below 3k, but at 4 it takes off and at 6 it really gets going.  With the gearbox I have that’s no problem as changing from max revs still drops it back into the power.

Tomorrow I have a few things to sort out, mostly knocks and rattles, but it’s all looking spot on.  If only we were doing Rally GB.  However, it’s looking good for the Tempest!

After Sunday’s bad news, I thought it was best to carry on getting the car into a ready-to-rally state; regardless of whether I do WRGB or not, I still need the Skoda up and running.  Having ordered the oil seal to fit the new front cover yesterday on eBay, with typical non-Skoda-dealer efficiency they turned up this morning while I was at work.  Once I got home, I thought I may as well fit it and see if the new pump and pressure relief valve were really doing the trick as Jim had foreseen, or if there was still a problem. As you can see here, 2mm isn’t much difference, but it’s different enough.

2mm, all the difference in the world.

Here’s where the  seal needed to fit – in the shiny cover, around the crankshaft.

The last piece of the puzzle?

Fitting oil seals is generally easy enough, and this one was no exception; I had it in place in a couple of minutes, then refitted the crank pulley and bolt, and put the engine back in place by tightening the engine mount bolts.  Once the alternator belt was back in place and the engine was refilled with oil, it was pretty much ready to go, aside from one thing.  When checking all the bearings it wasn’t possible to oil them on reassembly (as all the oil fell out, believe me, I tried), so I thought it would be best to prime the engine via the oil pump before running it.  This meant making up a tool to drive the pump (a long rod with a slotted end and a guide round it to stop it falling off), and then it was a simple case of removing the oil pump drive from the top of the new oil pump cover and driving it with a drill, which worked for about 10 seconds.

I then had a frustrating hour’s wait to charge the battery drill up, and then tried again.  And it worked a treat – got oil pressure up on the engine in about 10 seconds, so I put the drive back in, and then it was time to fire up.  The engine fired up straight away, so I went for a drive; doing the same drive as I did before when the problem happened, and lo and behold, got home and no oil pressure problems – indeed, even with the car ticking over at 500rpm it was fine, whereas all the engines I’ve had before have flickered on and off at this point.  The car is fixed, just needs mapping, which I will be doing on Saturday.  Dammit.