Skoda Rally Blog

I’ve been taking it easy. I’ve never denied that. But that’s easy by rallying standards. Now, I’m certainly not going to say I’m hardcore by anyone’s standards, but a number of people have told me that if I’ve not crashed, then I’m not going fast enough. Personally, I think that’s a lot of crap. I’ve always been one to learn by building up to a level, not by shooting my mouth off and going over my limit and then spectacularly failing. And added to that, if I crash the Skoda I won’t be rallying it for a while as I haven’t got anywhere to re-shell it, or any money to do it. And so on.

Anyway, excuses enough! Here’s some footage at the end of Stage 8 from the Sunseeker, which shows that maybe I am trying, and do have the odd moment or two. ‘kay? It’s another DivX encoded AVI, so you’ll need DivX to play it. But being an Internet movie thief, you no doubt have it already! This isn’t the first time something like this has happened, but it’s the first one I’ve got on video.

Click HERE for the footage!

I don’t know how fast we were going, but it seemed to take an age to be over, and it was fast enough to warrant an apology and some new underwear…..

About a year ago, I saw an article about the Plymouth-Dakar challenge, which involved buying a ?100 (or thereabouts) car, and driving it from Plymouth to Dakar, in 21 days. This was to raise money for charities in the Gambia by handing the cars over at the end and letting them be auctioned off. Sounded like a good idea to me, but I was too late to get an entry for that year (entries close in April, but the cars don’t set off until around Christmas). But I’ve been keeping an eye on it this year (although it’s now changed to the Plymouth-Banjul Challenge), and I’ve put an entry in. Probably even more stupid than entering the Sunseeker, but there you go. I read an article in a bike magazine when I was 17 about a guy doing a similar trip on an XT600, and since then I’ve dreamed of doing something like that. OK, it’s not on a bike, but that would be crazy. This is just silly. There is one problem – Gambia is a Left-Hand drive country, so if I get in (and apparently it’s over-subscribed by 10 to 1, so that’s not guaranteed, especially as it’s not first-come first-served), then I’ll be needing an LHD car, preferably something like a sierra or granada estate – something old-school and reliable, and big enough to make the journey comfortable, with lots of extra provisions with us!

Anyway, enough of this crazyness! Next event is the Somerset Stages, and there will be a change for this – Kev is no longer navigating as he’s too busy to do it. So I’ve managed (somehow) to convince Paul to give it a go. He thinks that I drive too slowly on the stages (as I’ve not crashed yet), so we’ll see about that, won’t we. It’s on the 23rd April, so I guess I’d better fix the front dampers on the car, hadn’t I? Hmmm….

(think of the music from the “Take Hart” gallery while reading this….)

Two brief things. Firstly, I have a picture of the remains of my mirror after the Smeatharpe Chicane Incident. Not exactly big cred or anything, I just wanted a picture of it, so here it is!

Secondly, a tribute. It has been my great fortune and pleasure to make the acquantance of Mr. Steven Colville while I have been attempting to learn to drive a rally car. Steve’s help and advice has been invaluable from the first time we took the Skoda down for him to take a look at, through getting my licence and of course the events that we’ve done. Steve’s really quick, but unlike some people who are good at what they do, he doesn’t have an attitude about it, and is helpful at all times. Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present, Steve Colville.

Today was the B&DCC Rally, which was originally the Three Counties Multi-Venue, but became the Single Venue at Smeatharpe. We entered it as it was still eligible for Championship points for us. There were 10 in our class (class A), and 80 runners in total – we were number 81, being first reserve. It was funny going back to Smeatharpe as it was where my first event was, and it all seemed quite different, as we were obviously a bit more experienced than the first time, and hoping to do better than last time out.

The stage layouts this time took in more of the airfield, as the service area didn’t take up one of the legs of the crossed runways, so we lined up and were ready to go. It was clear, but cold this morning, and it was pretty slippy on the first time out – grip would be there, and then go, and come back again as I braked for the chicanes, which was a little unnerving, as was being eaten alive by a fast RS2000 that was somehow down at number 74, who we met on his second lap, our first. Held on reasonably well in the corners, though, just got eaten on the straights. Second time round I decided to take the fast chicane a little tighter, and BANG! My wing-mirror dissolved in a noisy cloud of bits, and just left the three cables for the adjustment – it looked like a severed limb! The rest of the stage was uneventful, as was SS2, the re-run.

SS3 featured a few tight acute bends, which was hard work, and really meant going down to first to get any kind of speed through there – I was disappointed with the time, but a check of the board showed we were 6th in class, and 63rd of 76 runners, so not all bad. And then SS4 came….

It all started out OK, but on one of the long runs, we just lost power completely – the injection was still firing, but nothing doing. The fuel pump had stopped, and we pulled over and I desperately tried to get it going, but to no avail. We were OTL, and that was that…… Our first retirement. Bugger! We got towed back to the stage start, and had to push the car back to service, which was probably half a mile, which was hard work. Thankfully someone gave us a hand towards the end which was good as we were pooped from that…..

I was worried about getting home more than anything else – I’d driven to the event, and wasn’t expecting this. But I’d brought the old carb, and was ready to rip off the injection and just drive home, when Steve Colville suggested testing the pump… and it worked. Further fault finding found two problems – a relay in the original car fuseboard was dodgy (well, the connector for it was dodgy, so little to be done there to fix that permanently), and one of the relays in the MS relay board was dodgy too – when those two things were fixed, the car started on the button again.

Handily, SS5-8 could be run as a “Trophy Rally”, for those cars that had failed earlier in the day – many people had gone out, but most of them just went home, and I didn’t see the point in that. There were three runners for the Trophy Rally – an Evo 6, a MK.II Escort and us. We would run at the back of the field, and whoever had the fastest times over the 4 stages would win. SS5 was fun again, and SS6 was good too – still with the tight bends, but run the other way, and it was coming together a bit more now – definitely worth it, just for the practice if nothing else! When we were queuing for SS7, we realised that the Evo 6 hadn’t turned up. So there were only 2 of us left in it. But the escort couldn’t stop as well……

We started SS7 still giving it some beans, and got about half way round where there is a long straight, which is about 30 seconds worth, as you always see the other car going the other way. The rest of the lap was uneventful, but on the second time round, we saw that the escort was still only 30 seconds ahead of us, exiting the chicane opposite us as we ran down the long straight. I glanced at it and thought “that’s going slowly”, but you always think that. But when we got round to them, we realised that they had stopped! We were now the only runners in the Trophy Rally, if they went OTL…..

We got back to service, and had some problems with the relays again, but got the car started. And got to the head of the queue, to find that we were the only runners! All we had to do was finish the stage, and we’d get the trophy! But the car had other ideas. About half way round the first lap, it cut out again. But we knew what to do, and Kev held the relay in, for the next lap and a half. And we finished! Which meant that we’ve finally won something! OK, it was ‘only’ the Trophy Rally, but you have to finish it to win, and we were the only ones that did. And it’s a nice trophy too. Looking at our stage times briefly I think we were doing OK anyway, and when I get some results I’ll see where we would have come had we kept going, but it was a good day, despite the problems. Yes, we didn’t finish, but we kinda did! Video to follow, when I get my new converter working properly….

No, Neil, we haven’t got a video. Except we have. I’ve just got a new toy, an Archos AV340, and I’ve just recorded the video of Stage 2 onto it, and I’m posting it here. It’s around 10MB, and you’ll need DivX to play it, ‘cos it’s an MPEG-4 encoded AVI, for you tedious cretins out there….

Video is actually a great tool, ‘cos it shows me just how early I was braking, and backing off – I know what to work on now…. Better luck next year….

Well, that was interesting. Started out early, just to make sure all was well, and the car is a bit of a bitch to start in the mornings, so I felt it was a good idea to take plenty of time to make sure. But it actually started up easily, and we made the last few checks, and then loafed around for an hour or so, before setting off at 9:35 for the first 5 stages of the day. And they were OK – first up was Stapehill (or Uddens to us locals), and that was the first gravel stage. It was a bit rutted in places already, but we had a reasonable pass at it (or so I thought, anyway, until seeing the times), and then onto Ashley Heath, which was a bit more rutted and dodgy – the gravel parts were OK, but when you get onto the black, loamy soil that makes up a lot of this area, then it’s a nightmare, as you’re just sucked into the ruts that the previous 100 cars have left, and there’s little I can do about the direction of the car – it can get a bit skittish at times when you’re doing 70 on that sort of surface. On the gravel, things are fine, though. Some of the corners were already super-rutted, and we were skidding along on the sump-guard already!

Next up was SS5, Mount Ararat, which was 10.6 miles long, and a real test of endurance. It’s not too rough though, just suffering from some rutted corners in places, so it wasn’t too bad. We saw the Nova that was leading the class at the side of the road here. Turns out that he ran out of fuel as his chase car couldn’t find him between SS4 and SS5! Oh dear. And then it was onto Somerley, where there are plenty of spectators – when you come out of the forest and see the house, it’s a bit like one of the stages on Colin McRae 2005 on the UK rally. And I think I had a bit of an Xbox moment as Kev said I started showing off! It was on tarmac there though, so that’s much easier to go mad on.

And then SS7, Hurn. This is just up the road from here, and somewhere I drove on many years ago. But there were some HUGE potholes – about a foot deep, and probably four feet by three, right after a crest, so you hit them without any chance of doing anything about it. It was right before a hairpin, and the car was all over the place, and I thought it had broken something as it wasn’t steering properly, but that was just all the dirt we were ploughing through. After that, it was OK, although again getting super-rutted near any corners or chicanes. But it was time to go back to service, and put some fuel in the car – everything else seemed fine, so we left it as it was.

On to the three Wareham stages next, which were renowned for being rough. And they certainly were that. SS8 wasn’t too bad, but there were the same problems with the black soil and rutting at corners, but I went flat out for the flying finish, and had a really scary moment – there was a bad bump there, and the car took off, and when we landed it ended up drifting off to the right – there was a 15-foot wide strip of grass, and then some trees. We were doing about 70 at this point, and heading for the trees. I steered the other way, but of course the back went out towards the trees, so I just steered into it, and hoped for the best. It seemed to take an age (although watching the video it’s over in a couple of seconds), and I was convinced we were going over, but somehow the car righted itself and I got us back on the track. And apologised a lot! The marshals at the end said it looked ‘interesting’.

SS9 was hideously rough – the tracks were all soft, and we spent most of it on the sumpguard. When you go down a track like this, you see two wheel-tracks, and in the middle a polished section of earth that’s perfectly flat where people’s sumpguards have been running on it – it looks like someone has plastered it! Very slow through here, and the next stage too, which was similar, and quite boggy in places. Back to service for some more fuel, and then off again!

Somerley 2 was next up, and this was similar to 1, except in reverse. Again, a chance to go a bit madder on the tarmac in front of the spectators, although I’m sure it was a bit of an anti-climax after the preceding 80 or so cars left running. There are some long straights here that take lots of bottle. Something that I clearly lack as doing 80 here was more than enough for me.

White Sheet was next up, which was SS3 in reverse, and good fun this time round – no black soil, and lots of ditches to try to take advantage of when cornering. It’s pretty rutted here too, but nowhere near as bad as Wareham.

By this time, we’d seen the results sheets, and knew that there was no point in going mental. We were well beaten, and a finish was the best we could do. And it was Hurn 2 this time. I didn’t think we went that much slower, but in fact we were 20 seconds down on the first run, which I’m gutted about now.

Back to service for a last time, and then off to SS14 – Plumley Wood, which was SS5 in reverse. Unfortunately here because of two others’ errors, we were in front of them. And during the 10 miles of this stage, both of them caught us, and the car starting running badly as well. I was frankly gutted, as seeing the way the guys shot off, and went round corners like men possessed showed me that I’m not cut out for this.

We got to the start of SS15 and I had a couple of minutes, so I took a look under the bonnet, and found that the reason for the poor running was that the air temperature sensor bracket had broken, meaning it was reading as if the air was incredibly cold (due to the bracket providing the earth connection). Into the boot, I cable-tied it in place, and it made the car run OK! Good news, at last. So into Ebblake, and this wasn’t too bad, although it was getting dark now, and that meant it was harder to see the surface changes – it was possible to end up on the nasty black stuff without realising it, which made for some scary moments, although it wasn’t as bad as earlier. Again, we were slower than the first run, though, although I think the massive rutting in a couple of sections may have contributed to that….

Finally, SS16, Somerley 3, which was a rull run of Somerley 1, but in reverse. And that was good fun. Again we had a car behind, but they didn’t catch us this time, and it was SO rough I could hardly believe it – the tracks were really cut up, and there were lots of stutter bumps where people’s braking had caused the gravel to form a washboard. Nasty to drive over, for sure. But we finished it.

Except we hadn’t, yet. We needed to get back to Bournemouth Town Hall Annexe to get a final time, and then into the Square. We got to the Town Hall OK, and got our time, and then sat in a queue down Richmond Hill for 20 minutes or so while each car went over the finish ramp and was interviewed by Robin, who is a star – a total natural on the mic. In this time, we had about 10 boys come up and ask for our autographs! I didn’t have the heart to tell them, I just signed away anyway. I was surprised that there were still people waiting there, and interested in what had gone on, even for us as last but one through. All good stuff, and nice to know that we finished it.

But we finished 67th in the end, from 92 starters. After SS3 we were in last place all day. At the risk of doing a Sinatra, I’m really not sure I’m cut out for driving in the forests. I can at least control the car, and get round a corner OK, but I’m way off the pace. We were being beaten clearly by a totally standard Favorit – not just edged here and there, but utterly trashed. I get to a certain speed on a track, and then I back off, ‘cos frankly I’m crapping myself. When the car goes light at 70 or so, and it gets twitchy, then I’m just thinking “crash”, and that’s clearly not how a real rally driver thinks. And after finishing the rally last night, I felt really depressed. Don’t get me wrong, I was never expecting to come anywhere, but I wasn’t expecting to be so slow and crap myself whenever we got going. We’re not talking Newton Abbot Audi here – that was totally different, utter fear. But this was reaching my natural “that’s fast enough” limit. I brake too early, and generally don’t give it enough to make the grade as far as I’m concerned. I’d be happy if I felt I could drive well enough to get to the finish in a reasonable time, but the only time I really went for it (apart from Friday night) nearly ended in disaster. I guess I’ll have to think about it for a couple of days.

Well, it is upon me. Today was the most intense thing I have done in a long time. If not ever! There was all the usual stuff of getting the car scrutineered, last minute modifications and so on, but on top of that a radio interview (having been on Meridian TV briefly the night before after the shakedown stage, which went well), and much frivolity. But as the day wore on, the reality of the situation, that I was taking part in the Rallye Sunseeker, and starting the cars off too, was meaning that I was more and more excited as the time got nearer. Our out time was 6:31, but at about 6pm the car wouldn’t start. The live feed for the ECU is a bit dodgy on the car, and it’s a nightmare trying to find out why – it only ever seems to happen when starting the car, as once it’s running it’s OK. But it wouldn’t start and there was some considerable panic as I tried to find the problem, but we traced it to a loose connection that I can work on. I saw months of work evaporating for a few minutes, but all was well once we got it running again – we got to MC1 and were away. The drive to Bournemouth seemed to take an age, but we got there early, and had to do an interview for the radio station again, which was broadcast on the ‘net – I know this because my Sister heard it in the USA, as did my brother-in-law who got his mates at work to listen too! It’s all quite a laugh, really. Saw some friends down at the start line, which kinda put me off the ball for a few seconds, and then it was time to start. The car wasn’t happy at being left to tick over for so long, and took a bit of getting going again, but then we were off!

Took everything pretty cautiously, as I didn’t want to wreck the car or look a total tool. It went OK, although the car stalled at the end of the stage and took some time to get started again, and this meant we were in a bit of a rush to get round for SS2, but we got there, and realised that the camera wasn’t working (the safety strap knocked the battery out of place, which sucked, but got that fixed, and also raised the tickover so the car would keep going, as being very hot meant it was getting lumpy). SS2’s start was a debacle – there were timecard issues which were not resolved as it was 30 second starts, and the marshals weren’t quite ready as we were the first people to do SS2. So we had a bit of a dodgy start with no time to prepare, but got going and I was pretty angry so I drove harder than before – we really banged the sumpguard when we came to the pier approach, and I was really giving it some beans on the seafront. We did 1:51, which wasn’t quick compared to everyone else, but I was happy with it. Until we were given 2:21, because the timesheet was wrong, and we needed to go back to Rally HQ afterwards to put in a query. From the looks of the website this has now been resolved, so we’re not last – we’ve got two cars behind us, another Favorit, and a Proton in N1. So that’s not bad at all. Bring on the forests, that’s what I reckon.

Well, after some traumas with the MegaSquirt (mainly from running low on fuel and filling the fuel rail with air as a result, and then ‘breaking down’ because of it), it’s running, and reasonably well. Got a few other minor issues sorted, like getting an accurate sense of the engine load, and getting various sensors more correctly calibrated. And then took a fair bit of time getting the mapping right, which involved going for a drive with a mate, who set the map on the laptop as we went. It’s not perfect, as the O2 sensor reading is a little erratic, so I’ve set it up rich just about everywhere to make sure that it doesn’t blow up – better safe than sorry, and fine-tuning can take place later on. But the problem with running low on fuel was worrying me, so I’m going to fit a small surge tank under the bonnet, that will be fed by the original solid-state pump, and move the high-pressure pump to under the bonnet, so it always feeds from this surge tank and as a result will not feed from air unless we’re actually out of fuel. This has been made up from an airline regulator/filter unit from Machine Mart (?30) which has been adapted to suit by removing the regulator and gauge and getting hose tails to suit the hoses I’m using. Everything else seems OK, and the car drives reasonably well – it’s more driveable than it was with the carb on, and pulls 5th gear, which it didn’t before, so I can only assume that it’s making more power than before. However, my back is playing up again today, so that’s stopped play – we’ll have to get everything back together in one piece on Wednesday, which will be a reasonable amount to do, but it is do-able.

Hopefully.

Well, today has been rather productive. I got up early, and got everything bolted together – this was actually the first time all the manifold had been in one piece, so that was progress in itself. It all fitted reasonably well, so I thought I should crack on with the rest of the installation in the car. First up, the new fuel pump needed to go on, which wasn’t too bad – getting the old one off was a bit tricky, but the new one came with new connectors and even dirt shields, so it was a quick job to fit, albeit temporarily cable-tied to the bracket – a new one will take about an hour to make, so I’ll do that on Monday.

And then off with the carb, and on with the bodies. They bolted up reasonably easily (just minor filing needed to get everything to line up properly), and then connect everything up – fuel feed and return, and all the connections to the injectors, etc. As ever, parts were needed, so I had to dive off to the MDC, so it took a bit longer than I’d have liked, but finally, I turned the fuel pump on, and realised I needed to do the return up tighter – the jubilee clip had jammed, making me think it was tight. A pool of petrol on the floor said otherwise. After that, it was all good, so I ran the pump for 10 minutes just to make sure, and then left it for a bit so the spill could evaporate completely.

And then, it was time to plug everything in, and start it. And amazingly enough, it didn’t start first time….. but only because I’d forgotten to turn the fuel pump on! Moron! Once I’d done that, it fired up pretty much straight away, although running rich as hell. And then it was just a case of tuning it with the laptop. There were a few gotchas (like loose connections and so on), and the throttle bodies worked loose because the clamps won’t be here until Monday (cable ties are sufficing for the moment), but it was amazing just driving the thing at all – drive for a bit, change settings, drive again, and so on. Just like they said in the manual. I’ve got it reasonably driveable already today – it’s quite weird because the throttle doesn’t need to be ‘blipped’ like it did with the carb – it’ll just drive! There’s still plenty of work to be done, as it’s nowhere near done – it’s running rich pretty much everywhere, except a lean patch at light throttle, low revs, which is like it was before. But I think that can all be dialled out. We will see. And if not, the carb can go back on in about 10 minutes flat, which is reassuring!

All the documentation, maps and route details have arrived this morning for the Sunseeker – at 7:30am, ‘cos they were special delivery. Well, it’s really happening, isn’t it? Of course it is. At least I’ll have a bit of time to check out stage entries and exits and so on, and what to look for. I note that there’s a piece from Dorset Police saying they’ll be out with speed guns and so on, so I’d better watch it!

Hopefully the car should run for the first time with the Megasquirt on today – it’s all systems “go” on that front. Well, it could be, anyway. We’ll see if the carb ends up back on there by the end of tomorrow….