Skoda Rally Blog

Last time out (proper) was at Caerwent. And as you will know if you read it, it was a bit of a short one – about a mile, and certainly my most annoying and humiliating breakdown (and for the car too!). This weekend, we hope to address that. On Sunday it’s the 2005 Patriot stages, and we’ve got an entry, running at 67 of 92, running in front of quite a few bigger, faster cars. I love Caerwent. I’ve said it till I’m blue in the face, but it really is a great place, like driving round a town rather than the usual SV airfield/cones stuff. Until you’ve driven or navved there I don’t think you can appreciate how cool it is. A-n-y-w-a-y……

We’re all set for Sunday. I’ve driven the car a fair few times on the road, and it’s behaving well; the new MPi engine definitely hasn’t got the top end that the old one did (although it does rev fairly well, to about 6200 rpm), but it’s got a lot more grunt, and it has impeccable manners compared to the old setup – it’ll tickover at 500rpm without complaint, which can’t be bad at all. And it doesn’t mind sitting in long queues either – traffic is not a problem, so that should mean we can just get in and drive. I’ve even changed the slightly worn wheel bearing, so we really should be 100% this weekend. However, I am trailering the car anyway, at immense cost (?75!).

Plans are afoot to build the next Skoda, however. I want to make a new car from a really tidy shell, and fix all the little things about the car that aren’t wrong as such, just things that I’d have done differently. So I’m starting to collect parts. The plan is to use G241JCY until the Tempest, and then keep it until the new car is built; I’d love to get the new car build in time for the Sunseeker, but I know that is quite a tall order, although I’ve got about 3 weeks off at Christmas, so it’s a possibility. But it’s dependent on me getting rid of the Focus I bought the other month, so until that goes I’m stuck. However, I have been looking for parts, and I’ve found some fantastic suspension, New Old Stock, that’s ?600, but it’s all alloy, looks amazing, has roller top bearings and uses Bilstein inserts, and is fully height adjustable, so it could mean a real improvement in the next car’s handling – here’s a pic…

I’m still undecided as to whether to build a Favorit based on a late shell (which if I found a tidy one would be great), or to go for a recent Felicia – I’ve heard differing opinions on which are better, but the merits of using a 5 year old shell are quite persuasive. Either way, I’ll have my work cut out as I’ll need to really strengthen the shell (seam weld it), and also fit things like sill stands and strong jacking points, etc. I plan on the car lasting me 3-4 years of 5 forest events a year, so I want to make sure it’s good and strong.

Anyway, I’m off tomorrow morning as I have scrutineering in Newport at 2:30pm, so that’s basically the whole weekend taken care of. Lovely.

Looking at the calendar for the year’s events (this was way back in January), I noticed that there was a pretty big gap between Somerset Stages and Newton Abbot Audi, meaning I wouldn’t get much of a chance to play on gravel in the months between April and October – basically, 6 months off. So when I found out that the Tempest Rallysprint was on in August, I thought it was ideal to keep things going. However, it’s a cheap event too – ?99 for the day, and it doesn’t involve a navigator, strangely enough. And because I’d sold the Shogun, there was no trailer option either. So it’s a good job I’d got the Skoda up and running reasonably well, and I set off for Bramley camp (north of Basingstoke) on Sunday morning, bright and early. And it was bright – a really nice, clear day.

Got there OK, and set everything up in the service area, which was a massive, flat piece of concrete, with everyone’s spaces marked out in paint – ideal, and probably the best service area I’ve been in! Little or no servicing to do – not much in the way of spares, and I spent 10 minutes just looking under the bonnet and checking everything. All was well. Got scrutineered and signed on, and then it was time for the convoy runs. Because you have no navigator, there were two low-speed convoy runs, so you get an idea of the stage. As I had a spare seat, I took Tony (usually someone else’s Nav) round, as otherwise he’d not have seen the stage, and it turned out to be handy as he called the corners as we went round twice (at low speed), so it made them a bit easier to remember – most handy, that.

Then it was time for the two ‘practice’ runs. These were timed, but the times wouldn’t count for the final results. The 40 cars were split into 2 groups of 20, and each group run in what really amounted to reverse seeding, so naturally I was first in my group, and the only other guy in my class (Andres Claridge) was first in his. I had worried a bit about being caught, but it turned out there was no need – after all, it was only a 2.8 mile stage…..

The stage layout was great – you started off in the woods on some tarmac, and had many dips and turns, and it was quite fun and yet challenging at the same time – there were a few corners that you could easily get wrong enough to slow you down without ripping a wheel off, but having said that there were also bits of concrete and so on lying about that would definitely end the day if you paid them a visit. So I avoided that. About 1/3 of the way through, there was a 90 right which was right by the service area – the RWD boys had been putting on a good show, but I just understeered my way round there, and then down hill (into 4th), and then a tight 90 left, and over another brow that became a jump as the day wore on. Then there was a fun, slippy, muddy section that led over a small hump-backed bridge, and you could definitely get (a) some good air and (b) it totally wrong there – the road leading up to it would take the car off into the bushes, so you had to be careful there. Then it opened up some more, and became gravel, although the gravel was pretty hard-packed, and not the forestry-type open stuff that I was expecting. Still, managed to pull some good handbrake action, and have a good time in the process.

My times got better over the first three runs – 4:17, 4:11 and 4:08. That actually put me ahead of a 2 litre XR2i, a 1.6 205 GTi, a Sunbeam, a couple of Mk.2 Escorts and most importantly Andres! I had spoken to the photographers at lunchtime, and they told me they were at the bridge now, and so on the next run I decided to go for it on the places I’d felt I was slow and was sure I’d made some good time. I also got some good air on the bridge – it really hit the ground hard, although it was probably barely off the ground. I drew up to the finish control, convinced I’d nailed it and I’d be in the 4:05 area……. and I was slower – 4:09! I was convinced I’d gone better, but clearly not! So, I waited to see what Andres would do – he’d pretty much been 4 seconds slower than me all day, and the last run I waited to see his time – 4:21. It turned out he’d overshot the 90 left after the high speed run, so that was it! I’d won my class!

I decided after that I’d take it reasonably easy on the last run – not totally back off, ‘cos that would probably be more likely to make me bin it, but not go 100%. I had a good, smooth run, and even backed off on the jump. And managed a 4:06! That was good enough to get me back in front of a couple of the other cars, and within a second of a couple of much bigger ones. Great stuff. Packed everything into the back of the Skoda, and had to collect my award! Then drove home, hot, thirsty, and grinning like a fool. What a great way to spend a Sunday.

Well, after getting the car ‘running’, I had a few more things to sort out. First up, moving the engine across to a more sensible position and adding a driveshaft spacer has meant that with any luck I won’t be popping any more driveshaft inner CV joints out. There were a few more little things that needed doing, but thankfully most of them were simple, like making the throttle pedal work with the new cable, etc. But amazingly the fast idle works OK, so the car is actually dead easy to start from cold – one ‘false start’ and then it works – no pedal required, just turn the key and away we go.

But there’s something much more exciting! My new wide-band O2 sensor arrived! If you don’t know what this is, it’s a device that goes into the exhaust pipe (near the engine) and allows accurate measurement of the fuel/air mixture that the engine is burning. This is crucial because the engine runs best at around 14.5 kg of air to 1 kg of fuel, and making this measurement by ‘intuitive’ means (i.e. guesswork) like I did with the previous installation is hit-and-miss at best. This allows a totally scientific, accurate tuning of the engine, so we went for a drive for about an hour with Kev in the passenger’s seat, measuring the amount of fuel at given engine speeds and loads, and then re-programming the MegaSquirt as we went. The end result was a reasonably driveable car – it’s not perfect, but it’s driveable, and much better than the old engine in terms of behaving itself, grunt, and fuel consumption. There’s plenty more to do, but it’s a good starting point.

When we got back, we found that the tracking was MILES off, and I mean a very long way. Kwik-Fit wanted ?40 to do the tracking, and I’m not paying that, so we improvised with a couple of lengths of straight metal run on the centre of the wheels to the front of the car, and then measuring between the two – it worked pretty well, and the car drives a lot better now, funnily enough!

RallyDay 2005 – this was the time pressure in getting the car running. I didn’t have any real chance to drive the car apart from the brief test, so I was half expecting the car not to make it to Castle Combe, let alone round the track for 5 laps and then back home again! There was a problem getting it started, but this was traced to the plug on the back of the ECU – plugging it back in made it run like a dream again, and it barely missed a beat on the way there, much to my surprise. There’s a bit of a mis-fire around 3500-4000 rpm, but I think that’s the ignition, as the mixture looks fine there Weird.

And then we hit the traffic – it was really heavy, and at the gate that I was supposed to go in via, we got waved on into more traffic. And the only other entrance wasn’t the right one, but fortunately the guys on the gate weren’t jobsworths, and we got in OK, and parked up, next to Andreas Claridge, who is the only other person in my class in the Tempest Rallysprint next weekend. Had a wonder around and saw a few nice cars – RS200 and Mk.1 RS1600s, and got signed up for the track time.

Had 5 laps on the track, which was good fun – every other car on the track was way quicker, but still had a good time. Tyre pressures were a mile off, so the back was drifting all over the place. Still, I managed to catch up with an RS500 in one of the chicanes (so much so that I needed to brake mid-corner to avoid hitting him!), and keep up with a 6R4 during a long corner – obviously as soon as the throttle came into the equation then he shot off, but for about 10 seconds there was no difference in our distance! Most importantly, got through the time without hitting anything, or blowing up! The car stalled after I came into the pits, but started OK again, which was handy. Parked up, and went for a wander and saw a few people I know, and took some pictures.

And then….. the rain! It was chucking it down, and this really put the mockers on, so after an hour or so (with so sign of a break) I felt it was time to go home, and off I trotted again. The car was (once more) good, and I did some logging to allow a great program called MSTweak3000 to work out a better map for the engine – a really impressive thing this, so I now have a revised map that I can put on the car to see how it goes…..

Well, after some fouled plugs, some hoo-ha with very stale petrol (that had turned the colour of marmalade), and a few other minor issues, it starts! It’s a bit hit-or-miss at the moment because I’ve done very little to it, and there’s no ‘fast idle’ facility yet (I’m not sure it’s going to work as it’s about 1/4 throttle the way I have it set up at the moment). But, it runs, and I’m waiting for my wideband O2 sensor to arrive, ‘cos then I’ll be able to tune the engine precisely, hopefully. However, I did manage to get it idling nicely when it was warm, with what looks and sounds to be a decent mixture. The new firmware for the Megasquirt (Megasquirt & Spark Extra) is a lot more involved than the original MS code I was running before – it has a lot more options, and as a result there’s a lot more to set. However, I think that it will work a lot more smoothly when it’s done this time – partly because it’s an untuned engine, partly because I’m using a single throttle body with a manifold that is a production item, and partly because I’ll have the wideband so I can get the mixture 100% correct.

However, the car is still kinda in bits – I’ve just picked up the other wishbone, so I can get that on…. except I’m going to Newquay for a long weekend, so that’s kinda put paid to 3 days of work. Fortunately I’m quite slack at the moment, so at least I can get on with it next week – I need to as Castle Combe is only 9 days away!

(In the style of David Bowie)

Well, everyone has a right to change their mind, don’t they? The Fabia engine conversion has been put on hold. This was initially because I’d got the sump modified, and everything ready to go, and only had one more thing to do – put the bottom pulley from the Favorit engine onto the Fabia engine so I could use the alternator and water pump (with the uprated mounting). The Favorit crank that I bought from eBay had a multi-ribbed pulley on it, which fitted the Fabia crank, so I assumed that the single-V pulley from my Fav would also fit. And you know what they say about assume meaning ‘make an ass out of you and me’. Because the Fav one is the same OD, but different ID. So it wouldn’t fit. Which then meant getting a new water pump and alternator. And then I found out that the driver circuitry I’d need for the coilpacks on the Fabia engine wouldn’t be in the country for a couple of weeks. And then to cap it all, it turns out that the wasted-spark software for the Megasquirt is buggy, so it wouldn’t be a great idea yet!

So, a solution was needed. And it was found in the shape of a Felicia MPi engine. It solved the problem of getting a new alternator and water pump, and also meant that I’d have an engine I could just put a distributor on; the Felicia MPi engine is normally run with a wasted-spark coil pack (like the Fabia engine), but being based on the Favorit block and so on, it means that it’s possible to put a dizzy on it, which meant ‘all’ I’d have to do was fit it and map the fuel for the Megasquirt. Oh, and make up a new wiring loom. And replace the missing engine mount, which meant drilling and tapping the block.

So, I was just about to fit the new engine and thought I’d clean the engine bay. Good job I did, as I found a huge crack in the front subframe, on the left-hand side! Seems I’ve been a little hard on the poor thing, and it might explain the driveshaft issue – it’s probably 5mm wider than it should have been!

Luckily I had a spare one (which will suit the kevlar/carbon sumpguard I have, so maybe that will be going on the car), and it’s actually really easy to get off if there’s no engine in the way (otherwise getting to the steering rack mountings is a little difficult, but it’s only 10 bolts anyway – half an hour, and it was changed!

Hopefully the engine will be wired up by the end of today, and maybe even running later in the week – I’ve got new wishbones and other bits coming, and I don’t want to try to start it until all that is fitted so things don’t flail around (like driveshafts and stuff – I’m quite old fashioned like that….)

…. after all the crapness of recent.

First up, I’ve got over the defeat, and now have a plan. I’m getting a couple of low-mileage Fabia 1.4 8v engines, so I can put one in the car and run it standard for a bit (using Megasquirt ‘n EDIS to do the ignition), and get everything going. This means I will have more CCs (so more grunt), and a better-flowing head. It also means I’ll have a spare engine which I can rebuild and tune without having to take the car off the road/events. Nice. Hopefully.

Anyway, as you, dear reader, will know, Paul is my new navigator. He’s a good mate, and an all-round good bloke. He’s one of these really annoying people who is lucky, and good at everything. He’s good at Pool (which is how I know him, really), good at Diving (he taught me, which was nice), he’s good at Poker (regularly getting seemingly impossible hands), a hit with the ladies (basically, everywhere we go he’s either worshipped by an ex, or I see women nudging each other and pointing him out), he has a fantastic town-centre Penthouse apartment (flat does not do it justice) – complete with rooftop balcony and hot tub, he does alright money-wise, and so on. Basically, if he does it, he’s good at it. He took to navigating quickly, and will no doubt get better once I get the car able to drive for more than half an event at a time.

However, I have finally (after much searching) found something he’s not good at: Putting stickers on! Whenever he has to do this, it’s a total mess. At Caerwent, we had to put high-visibility numbers in the rear windows for safety reasons. Here’s my side:

And here’s Paul’s best effort (in twice the time, no less!)

Aiiiye thankyou!

There have been several disappointing moments in my life – finding out that I’d never marry Sarah Greene (when I was about 10), realising that I’d never be an astronaut (at 15), realising I’d never play Glastonbury Festival (actually, that was only a couple of years ago, but you get the idea). And not finishing the Somerset stages was one of them. So, I’d done a fair bit of work on the car to prevent another driveshaft breakage this time out. I’d replaced the water pump/engine mount with an uprated one, and also the engine steady bar, and this meant that the engine wouldn’t move a great deal, even under the harshest of acceleration and braking, and therefore not stretch the driveshaft to its limit, and stop the problem happening again. To not finish once because of a problem is one thing, but it happening again is simply unacceptable to me.

This weekend, it was time for a return visit to Caerwent, the army training facility in South Wales which offers (as far as I know) the closest thing to closed-roads rallying in the UK. It’s a great venue, offering some really varied, exciting road layouts, and as it’s tight and twisty with some very large kerbs, you have to be precise, and being in a small car isn’t the massive disadvantage that it is on large airfield-type events. It’s quite a trek, but we thought it was worth the effort as it gave good stage mileage.

First up was scrutineering on Saturday. Now, I know it’s a bit infra-dig to moan about scrutineering, but the one thing I find annoying is inconsistency – there were several (extremely minor) things I was pulled up on by the scrutineer that other people weren’t. One of them led to me spending ?140 on new front tyres, so to find out that a couple of other competitors were running on tyres that were far more worn than the ones I’d been forbidden to use was a little annoying.

However, Sunday came, and we got set up. And the car started reasonably well, but running down to the stage start it ran horribly. I’d tested it the day before, and it’d felt really good – revving strongly, lots of power, and no problems with knocks, bangs, or the engine moving about; in fact it felt better than it ever had done. So this wasn’t good news. I hoped it would clear out, and just be the result of a fouled plug or two from ticking over too long. The stage started, and we were off! Reading from the map was tough for Paul as it wasn’t detailed enough to show some of the corners – local knowledge of Caerwent is an important thing, especially when you come over a blind crest and cross a railway track you had no idea was there. However, crossing this, the left front suspension felt ‘loose’ – there’s no other way to describe it. I hoped it would hold together. As we went round, we passed an RS200 kit-car which had already broken down. And then the engine started to run really roughly – not wanting to rev above 4500rpm, and not pulling at all well. Over some more rough tarmac, and then it felt loose again. Another couple of turns, and then the engine died and came back. And BANG!

The driveshaft had gone. And when I revved up (from the shaft being broken), the engine let out a huge plume of smoke and also blew up. We coasted to a halt, and I, er, vented my anger, shall we say. I just couldn’t believe that the same problem had happened again, and only a couple of miles into the stage, if that. Got out, had a look, yes, same shaft broken – the inner joint had pulled out, and the front suspension wasn’t right any more – there’s some play there.

So, we had to sit around while Stage 2 was run, and got to see everyone else going by – some looking smooth (especially those at the front, or in modern 4wd machinery), some looking a bit lairy (mainly Mk.2 escort drivers!), some looking to be taking it easy (which is never a bad idea at Caerwent), and a couple really going for it. Unfortunately one guy in a Nova (who was really going for it, and had the car well sideways into the bend before the Skoda’s final resting place) was going too much, and side-swiped the kerb, meaning he’d bent the rear beam on the Nova – he got going again, but the wheel was around 10 degrees from vertical, and rubbing on the wheel arch – I don’t think he’d have got far.

So, the now-familiar routine of being towed back to safety, and then loading the car up, and buggering off. I’m really not sure what to do with the car now – it needs a new engine, and the driveshaft issue needs to be sorted, or else it’s curtains for my rallying, really. I felt really bad for Paul as he’d had a short rally because I’d not sorted the problem 100%. So that all sucks. I guess I need to put a nice, reliable engine in there, like a Felicia MPi one, and then find out whatever is causing the problem with the driveshaft, and fix it properly, once and for all. I don’t expect to never have a problem, but I don’t expect to retire from three events in a row. I took this up to enjoy myself, not bankrupt myself to drive single-figure mileages…..

Just had a letter from the Plymouth-Dakar saying we didn’t get in.

Gutted.

Well, it started well enough. We got through scrutineering with no problems, got signed up and were ready for Saturday morning. Even managed to get up early, get a good breakfast from the excellent B&B, and get set up in service with time to spare. The car was being a little difficult to start, but nothing that a bit of patience wouldn’t sort out. And off we went! Paul’s first time didn’t really show – he was having no problems getting us about and using the Terratrip, and seemed quite at home.

However, getting to SS1 meant quite a climb, and we were swamped with fog! And I mean swamped – we could see very little in front of the car, and this made it quite difficult. Stage 1 had been decribed variously as being difficult, horrible and dangerous by others we’d met (there’s a big ‘fresh air’ drop on the outside which would be a rally and probably life-ending error), but we got through it, albeit very slowly – we nearly got caught by the car behind. Paul’s timing needed a bit of work, but given that it was his first attempt, and that the conditions were awful, I think he did well. Getting to SS2 involved a little “emergency service” stop, which was a surprise, but we got to the next stage without problems, and then doing that was good – better visibility, less chance of imminent death, and a good run. Next up was the 10-mile SS3 which was OK, but again rose up into an incredibly foggy area. We saw quite a few cars off in various places, some of them unbelievable – half way up trees and so on. And at the end of SS3 (and I mean within 100 feet of the finish) Steve and Fiona Colville had gone off, which fortunately didn’t look nasty. There was a problem on SS4 which meant we had about 30 minutes to wait while they recovered a car that was precariously off the stage and looked like it was going to drop far further. We finally got going on it, but it was under a mile, so over as soon as we’d started!

Back to Butlin’s for the service, which just involved changing the wheels (ourselves!) and taking on some water and food, and then off to the infamous Porlock Toll road. I decided to go with full wets as it was pretty wet everywhere, and the car was handling really nicely on them – really confidence inspiring. We got to the start of the stage, and then off we went. And it wasn’t as slippery as everyone had told us – a bit slick in places, but not the treacherous experience I was thinking was about to happen. But once more when we got to the top of the road, the fog was there, and it was really hard to get any decent speed up – there were places where the pace notes were a little ambiguous, and it was hard to go fast when you can only see 20 metres in front of the car at best. But we got to the end, only to see Jason and Andres from Bournemouth had crashed right at the end. They were OK, with marshals with the car, but their race was run. We looped round back to the start, and this time were only 30 seconds in front of an Evo, number 22. In other words, someone at the pointy end. Now, personally, I can see that it’s difficult to arrange the order of re-run stages so we don’t mingle with each other, but it’s silly not to avoid it as clearly I’m going to be way slower than someone like that, and it’ll just hold up both of us – me from looking in my mirrors and having to pull over, and the guy behind from me being in the way. Not good, and we got caught by two of them, although the last one was only right at the end, and there was nothing I could do about that.

Back to service, for forest tyres again, and more chocolate. And then off to Stage 7, which was a re-run of SS1. The fog had lifted a fair bit now – not completely gone, but enough to make things more fun as you could at least see what was coming up. Paul had really got the hang of things now, and aside from one dodgy moment in tracks near the fresh air drop it was all going well….. And then going round a hairpin near the end of the stage…. BANG! We lost drive almost completely. And then we did – just really bad knocking when I tried to accelerate. I thought one of the driveshafts had broken, so we just managed to get out of the way up the road (handily, as anywhere else on the stage would have been seriously dodgy/dangerous), and I had a look, and lo and behold, the inner CV joint had broken. So that was that! End of event. Which really gutted me as we were just getting going and the weather was getting better. Called in, and then had to sit for a couple of hours while everyone else came past (disadvantage of running near the front!), and then get towed out of stage, seeing a few cars off after us, including an Astra that was right down a ravine near the end. No problem, it had just slid down there, but it looked tight to get out of!

But now we were stranded in the middle of nowhere (well, 8 miles from Minehead, at least), and no way to get back. Paul was just about to phone a taxi when a guy who had been Marshalling came past and asked if we wanted a tow! He hitched us up, and off we went. Soon we were back at service, and a big big BIG thanks to the guy in the silver Focus estate from Burnham-on-Sea Motor Club. Very very much appreciated, that. We parked the car in the service area, and packed up. And went home. Left the car there, and went to get it this morning with a new driveshaft – 25 minutes later it was running again, and driveable. So, not bad in all – Paul seemed to enjoy himself, although I had some dodgy moments in the fog – I guess it’s having total confidence in the pacenotes and your driving ability in such conditions. I haven’t got any confidence in my car control ‘skills’ in such situations, so it was painful in places. But as Paul said “No-one died”. How true!

…. Saturday is the Somerset Stages, which I’m really looking forwards to. Firstly, it’s a forest rally, so there’s reason enough to look forwards to it! But it’s a BTRDA 1400 round, which means that the 1400s go first, so we’ll get good roads, being 44th on the road rather than 144th. I’d still think the roads will be cut up, ‘cos there are some serious machines in front of us, but hopefully not like the Sunseeker was.

As mentioned earlier, I have a new navigator for the event, my mate Paul, who is much bigger than Kev was, so I had to find a new seat, which proved to be far more of a trial than I would have expected it to. In the end I had to borrow one from a member of B&DCC (Thanks Dean!), so I’ve got a throne big enough to fit him in the car, and everything else on the car sorted out. Including insurance, which is another long, boring story in itself, but let’s just say I was on hold for OVER TWO HOURS before giving up on Competition Car Insurance. Fortunately I’m now insured with someone far nicer, with better service, more mileage and for less money! Not a waste of two hours after all, then!

This will probably be my last event for quite a while. I’ve decided that I’m going to stick to forest events because SV events aren’t the right balance of action to sitting around for me; a forest event is pretty much full-on all day, whereas on an SV you tend to spend most of the day sat around, and then do a 10 minute stage. (or in my case, a 15 minute one). I’ll probably do Caerwent again, as that’s a different kettle of fish, but I’m mostly going to stick to forest stuff. Which is expensive, so that means I’ll be doing less anyway (I’m broke!), and also there’s not really a lot until October, so I can concentrate on getting a great deal of other things done instead……

This, of course, is providing that I don’t throw it off of Porlock Toll Road and into a ravine!