Skoda Rally Blog

Yesterday Rally Guide 1 was published for Wales Rally GB 2012, so the schedule is available, and sees a return to servicing in Cardiff (as per 2010), meaning a more central location (i.e. being able to stay in Cardiff all week).  It takes place on 14-16 September, a couple of months earlier than previously, so should hopefully see better weather than other years.

However, I have a problem.  I don’t have a navigator – Paul is unfortunately unable to do the event as Baby Burley II is in the oven, and due out about a month after the event.  Last year didn’t work out too well in terms of finding someone who could do the event who was on the same page as I am, so I’m posting this to see if anyone has any decent suggestions.  I’ll outline what I’m after:

• Someone who has a Rally International Licence – this means you will need to have finished enough rallies to go from having your MSA Stage Rally Driver licence (6 national B finishes will do it), then done the medical and got your upgrade.  This is easy enough, but obviously costs  a few quid (depending on your doctor – mine charged me £12 for my last one, Paul’s was more like £180!).  They will also need the full FIA-compliant set of safety gear (underwear, boots, suit, helmet, HANS device)
• Someone who is willing to put up half the cost of the entry; this is the only way I can afford to take part.  In 2010 I think the total was around £4000, give or take.  Paying the entry fee of £1745 and your own costs would be pretty much what is needed – the other costs I can take care of; it might seem like there’s nothing else to spend, but believe me once you’ve paid for accomodation, fuel, tyres and a bunch of other stuff, another £2000 is spent pretty quickly.
• Someone who has the same attitude as me (and indeed Paul) to doing the event.  We have done it previously with Paul producing a single-page schedule for the week, and this has worked perfectly well – I’ve spoken to a couple of drivers who say they have had navigators who have produced “War and Peace movement schedules” – this isn’t something that’s needed, IMO, and I don’t think I would see eye-to-eye with anyone who would do that.  As we would be spending the week together for 12 hours+ per day, this is essential.  I take rallying seriously, but within the bounds of knowing my own talent/ability, and having a laugh.  I am under no illusions that I’m going to be doing this for anything other than the (fantastic) experience – indeed having done it 4 times before I know what I’m looking to do.  Obviously I’m not going to drive round like an OAP, but it’s a balance between having a great week and frightening myself silly!  A sense of humour is vital, I think, but I guess everyone thinks they have one!
• Having a car that could be used for recce would be a big advantage – I sold my recce car in 2010, and would need to prepare another one which wouldn’t be the end of the world, but would be more time and money…

That just about covers it.  The car is nearly ready to go (which is unusual) – it needs a few more touches done to the mapping, and a small list of “niggles” addressed, but it’s in the best shape it’s ever been, and more powerful than ever before.  This is absolutely the last time I will be able to afford to do something like this, and I would like to do it, but I can’t do it without finding the right person to do it with;  I’ve been immensely fortunate to have done it four times with Paul, and despite all the struggles on a couple of the events, they have been among the most memorable things I’ve ever done.  I WANT TO DO THIS, so if anyone has any suggestions, I am all ears – use the contact form!

… is NOT what I’ve been doing.  Although I’ve had the last couple of weeks off, I’ve been really busy, but mostly not with rally car-based stuff.  However, I have not been completely lacking in progress.  First thing, the Felicia passed the MOT last week, which was really my target to get done by the end of my time off, so that was good.  For the most part, driving it was OK (aside from the freak hailstorm that happened on the way home, which was interesting on the tyres I was on – would have preferred either forest tyres or a Kayak!), but the mapping still needed work – there were a few flat spots here and there when driving in traffic or pulling away, and it was a bit erratic tickover-wise – sometimes it would be OK, other times it would just stall.  Fortunately it played ball on the day, which was nice.

So, that left me with a bit of breathing space, and the rest of the time was taken up sorting out other issues (such as selling my Mum’s car for her, having MOT-ed it, so alas we only have one Felicia now), but today I’ve been able to get on with sorting out the mapping.  Previously I’ve done this by using a datalogging device, and then analysing the data and then working from there. But the problem with that is that it needs a LOT of data, and there are some parts of the map which don’t get used a lot, so the analysis software doesn’t have enough data to work with.  These areas are combinations of engine speed and load (i.e. throttle position), and in the case of these rare ones, they were clearly areas which get used when pulling away in traffic or from junctions, etc. – they were passed through briefly hence the old system not helping.  So I decided to find them and then do the adjustments manually, which took a bit of juggling as I needed to left foot brake to keep the engine revs at a desired speed, and then adjust the throttle to find the flat spot.  All of them were from too little fuel – in some places the mix was nearly half what it should have been – and once found were easy enough to sort out.  As the day progressed, the map started looking better – it started out looking like the alps, and while it’s not super-smooth now, it’s much better, and the car is much better to drive.  It’s still not got much guts under 3000rpm, but that’s because of the cam, I think – the fuelling is OK, so it’s either a lack of ignition advance (the other key parameter the ECU controls), or it’s just plain gutless.  But the car won’t be being used like that, it’ll be given beans and always be “on the cam”, as they say.

Ignition timing is the other area that needs adjusting, and it’s trickier than the fuelling; with the fuelling I have got a device which measures the mixture and gives a readout of it, making mapping easy (or even possible!).  But for the ignition timing it’s much trickier, as if the spark happens too early (too much advance) then the engine can get damaged very quickly, with pistons needing to be replaced at best.  As a result, this isn’t something I’m going to mess with too much, but having looked at the map, I noticed that on full throttle around 4000-4800rpm the advance was much less than the surrounding areas, and that was the place where on full throttle there was a flat spot – the mixture is spot on, but there’s not enough power being made.  So I took the brave/foolish decision to increase it to a more suitable (but still conservative) value, and gave it a go.  Much better!  It’s still a little flat there, but I’d rather err on the side of caution, and look into a way of measuring “knock” (i.e. too advanced a spark) before it’s too late, and leave it for another day to tune.

There has been another improvement; I’ve done some reading up, and taken people’s advice (particularly Dave Walker), and added in more advance below the desired idle speed.  This has the effect of kicking the engine back up to speed if it goes to stall when ticking over, and I also discovered that idle mixture is important; previously I’d been told it didn’t make any difference, but doing this and getting the mixture right led to a car that finally ticks over on its own!  This is great as not only does it tick over when left, but it also means that there’s no need for fancy footwork or use of the handbrake at junctions to leave a toe free to keep the engine going. The end result of this is that the car is much more pleasant to drive, particularly in traffic.

Here is the mapping setup (handily the Toughbook came with the Ibiza), and if you look carefully you can see the engine is still running, ticking over nicely.  Splendid.

Tickover at last.

It’s still not finished, but it’s much better than it was, and fires up easily.  The Ibiza uses the same ECU as the Skoda, and looking at its map shows the difference between the cars – the Ibiza map is smooth, looking like a nice hill from Teletubby land, whereas the Skoda one still has that “Craggy Island” look to it.  But it’s never gone better, so it’s going in the right direction.

It’s been a while since the Felicia has been used – in fact, I think aside from moving out of the way of the Seat when it was in the ‘Number One’ position in the drive, I don’t think it’s been used since October – once the engine was all sorted out and I’d done some mapping on it, it was put to bed.  However, I have the next couple of weeks off, and one of the things I want to get sorted out is the Skoda – get it MOT-ed and sort out the list of issues it has; in essence get it ready for its next event.

First, there was a problem – not with the Felicia – in that the Ibiza wouldn’t start.  Or do anything.  It had done this before, and the battery was weak when I got it, and hasn’t improved since.  Time for a trip to the MDC and to get a new one, and off it went.  Then, time to get the Skoda out, up on ramps and take a look at a few issues that I knew about.

Getting some long overdue attention

Once I got the bonnet up, I noticed there was a bit of a smell of petrol, and a quick look showed why – there was loads of it leaking out of the fuel pipes, pooling nicely on the inlet manifold:

Oh dear.

Oh dear.  Still, nothing too difficult to fix, so off to the shop up the road to get some more braided steel fuel hose, and all the bits under the bonnet were replaced.  No more leaks there.  A look underneath showed some gearbox oil leaking because the reverse light switch was loose, so that was easily fixed.  Everything else looked OK underneath, so it was run up and left for a few minutes, and nothing else undesirable fell out or off, so that was good.  Everything for the MOT was checked over and seemed OK, all the lights work as they should do, and nothing seemed too bad.  Splendid.

Ages ago I’d made up a list of things to do, and some couldn’t be done as I need parts, but one could be; a while ago I replaced the hoses between the fuel tank and the rigid pipes in the car, and I didn’t think too much about the routing of the pipes, leading them to be in the way of the inspection cover in the car’s floor.  The access to them is really difficult, and to do it properly meant replacing one of the pipes, meaning the tank needed to be dropped down, so the back of the car was up on ramps and then tankguard needed to come off, then the tank dropped down, hoses replaced and all back in place (minus about 4 kilos of stones which were on top of the tankguard).  Sounds simple enough (and it was), but still took over an hour.

The MOT is booked for tomorrow afternoon, so it should be straightforward, aside from one thing – the car has next to no fuel in it, so I’m hoping that after the UK’s panic buying of fuel last week there will be a petrol station nearby that has petrol so that I can actually get to the MOT!

Last time out, the damage list was driveshaft (already replaced with a standard one), power steering pump (and possibly the rack) and the missing fuel cap of woe.

This week I’ve been at work and had a fair bit on this weekend as well, but I’ve managed to make some progress.  The first bit of which was nice and easy to fit.  Before:

Lovely on-event bodge.

My lovely bodge with gaffa tape.  However, thanks to a very helpful Matt from Think Automotive I now have a nice new cap:

Shiny, and no ATL badging!

The big upside of this is that it cost far less than I thought – £65 in total.  Not cheap for a fuel cap, but a lot less than I originally thought!  Next up, the power steering.  I ordered a new pump, which needed a bit of modification as the inlet was at a different angle.  It took a bit of doing to get the inlet out of the new pump, but the old one was easy enough.  With a bit of work, it looked like this:

Won't look like this for long...

I filled it up with the right fluid, and thankfully it seems that the rack hasn’t been damaged – it seems fine from lock to lock, and now the car is back as it was.  However, I want to avoid another broken shaft so I’m now looking into getting some stronger shafts made, so hopefully by next weekend I should have some definite news on this.  Work will be starting on the Skoda soon though, as it is next up, in September, with any luck.

Since last week, I’ve had a bit of time to spend on the car, cleaning it up and assessing what’s needed.  Here’s what I found:

Firstly, cleanup – this didn’t take as long as last year – the roads were much dryer than before, so it ‘only’ took about 2 hours to jetwash the car off – there’s still a great deal of mud stuck to the car, even when it doesn’t look too dirty.  Obviously I don’t want to leave all that there as the car won’t be seeing much use in the foreseeable future, so it needs to be as clean as possible.  Last year it took me ages to clean all the mud off the road, so I decided to do it on a tarpaulin this year to make it easier:

Clean up!

And once it was all done, and de-stickered, looked much better:

That's better.

Next up, assessing the damage.  The first thing was looking at the driveshaft, which had sheared off where it goes into the outer CV joint.  Once I’d removed the boot, the CV just fell off, revealing this:

Shake it up baby...

A cleanly sheared off shaft, just twisted off at the end.  Once I’d taken the outer CV apart, I got the end bit out, which was a little more revealing:

...Twist and shout.

As you can see, the splines are twisted, and the shaft has just said “enough” and broken off.  I’ve done some asking around and had some helpful advice and info from people on britishrally.co.uk and the general consensus is to fit new shafts and life them, stripping and examining after each event.  However, one guy has a Golf which uses the same shafts, and he had a similar failure on a brand new shaft with only 300 miles on it.  I am still unsure what to do, but there’s no immediate rush; I will look into the possibility of getting some stronger shafts made up as I don’t want to suffer a DNF on the car’s next outing (which may well be Sunseeker 2013, alas!).

Other than that, it was time to see what happened to the power steering pump; while moving the car about, I realised the power steering had failed again, and saw there was no fluid left in the reservoir.  I was surprised to see that the loose union wasn’t the cause of this second failure, it was another problem – the low pressure feed into the pump had a cut in it, so that’s something else to look at.  The pump, however, is dead – it was whining like hell after refilling as I had expected, so I am hoping the damage is just down to that and not the rack as well.  Time to order a new pump, which shouldn’t be too expensive.  Or rather won’t, once I’ve found out what it is, as the pump isn’t one from an Ibiza 16v, according to the books I have seen, as the inlet is at a different angle…. a bit of experimentation is in order.

And aside from a few bits an pieces, that’s it really.  At ‘normal’ prices, the damage from the Sunseeker is as follows:

Power steering pump:  £80
Driveshaft: £70
Lost fuel cap £150.

So, with a stupid error, I’ve pretty much doubled the cost of getting the car back up and running.  D’oh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Service set up.

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

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

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

Ready for Ringwood.

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

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

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

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

Look at the shadows! It's SUNNY.

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

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

Waiting for my arms to fall off.

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

Waiting for Uddens.

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

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

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

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

Paul Burley. The Man, The Legend.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lovely red mini!

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

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

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

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

A sticker which doubles as a contour map.

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

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

Pleasant experience of scrutineering!

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

All done!

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

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

From the front.

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

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

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

And from the side.

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

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

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