Things are never as simple as they should be…
After having the car down at HT the weekend before the event to sort out the fuel leak and give it a once over, there was only a few minor jobs left to be done during the week. These included fitting the new tyres onto the rims when they arrived, fitting the electric emergency pull off which had seized up since the last rally and giving the car a general tidy up. These jobs were quickly dispatched and come Saturday lunchtime we were good to go… or so we thought!
Problem 1…
I need to remember to take the keys with me when I go to collect the trailer! For the second time we pulled up to the compound to find out that I’d left the keys at home. This meant that we were almost an hour late setting off to Barkston Heath and once again I was warm and grubby!
Problem 2…
Make sure you double check the hotel you’ve booked everyone into! I had rested easy during the week, happy in the knowledge that we were booked into a hotel about 8 miles from the venue. If only it was that simple. The Travel Lodge I thought I had booked into must have sold the last rooms whilst I was messing about and I’d not double checked when I refreshed the page and had booked us into Spalding, 30 miles away, instead.
Eventually we made our way to darkest Lincolnshire and pulled into the service area. This has to go down as one of the best organised rally’s we’ve ever competed on (taking my own ineptness out of the equation!). As we pulled in we were met by one of the organisers who explained the layout of the service area to us and showed us the way to the trailer park and scrutineering area. We chose a spot at the far end of the service park and unloaded the car and made our way to sound and scrutineering.
Problem 3…
Make sure your suit complies with the relevant regulations. This was actually one we saw coming. My brand spanking new co-driver with a licence that had arrived two days before the event was Matt Chambers from HT Auto’s and he had acquired a Proban suit for the event from eBay. I was worried as soon as I heard this as I thought that Proban had been banned from the beginning of 2009 but countless investigation had failed to clarify on way or another what the exact situation was. To be on the safe side we made the decision that Clive would also take his overalls and, if the worst happened, his licence. We passed through sound without any issues and made our way to scrutineering where we were immediately told that Matt’s suit would not be allowed. We did a quick swap with Clive’ suit leading to much hilarity regarding the differing size of the two – Matt being lightweight living on a diet of cigarettes and lager, whilst Clive is 6ft+ and on the more… substantial… size. The general consensus was that he would resemble some of the better known hip hop artists whose choice of attire tends to be on the loose side, especially in the crotch area. After a few more final checks we were given the green light… job done!
Problem 4a…
Don’t listen to Matt when he claims that it would only take 10 minutes in the morning to do the final fettling on the car!
We made our way to our hotel and had many wonderful adventures along the way and throughout the evening that some tried to blame upon a magical potion we consumed, before arriving bright and early the following morning back at Barkston Heath on what was promising to be a sunny day.
Problem 4b…
Don’t listen to Matt when he claims that it would only take 10 minutes in the morning to do the final fettling on the car! The first job and the one that we thought to be the only major one of the morning was the ritual pumping up of the suspension. This was swiftly done and Clive and Dave sat back thinking that their job was done until the end of the first stage. The fools! I had mentioned to Clive and Matt that the new tyres we’d fitted sounded like they were catching on the arch when I was on full lock. We had hoped that pumping the suspension up would cure the problem but unfortunately it wasn’t to be. As I pulled the car out to ensure that everything was OK there was a loud grinding sound as the tyre hit the wing. We drove the car back into our bay and jacked it up to find that for some reason the tyres, which were the same size as those I’d competed on at 3 Sisters, were fouling on both the inner and outer wings. Whilst it wasn’t catching much it was enough to make be nervous about having a high speed blowout – this had to be solved before the first stage in a little under an hour. We looked in depth at what could be causing the problem but it didn’t seem to be any one thing so there was only one thing for it – major engineering work! The first issue seemed to be a bolt in the inner wing that was catching. We weren’t sure exactly what the bold was for and surmised that it had probably been used to hold on the mud flaps. The fact that it seemed to be a shed bolt definitely pointed that it wasn’t anything automotive! Removing the bolts, located on both sides of the car, proved to be a bugger of a job leading to excessive swearing by all involved, but eventually the were off and, with a bit of hammering there was no longer anything catching on the inner wing. The outer wing was a different matter however with the tyre catching pretty badly and threatening to split the wing. We didn’t want to increase the height of the suspension anymore as we were concerned with the effect that this would have on the handling of the car so we made the decision to do some on the job body modifications! This is where having fibreglass wings comes in useful as we began to cut away the wing under the wheel arch cover to give us more clearance. Finally, with minutes to go before we were due out on stage, we reversed the car out listening for the tell tale sound of rubber on metal or fibreglass… Silence. We were good to go.
Stage 1
We pulled into the queue waiting to get into the ATC and, looking at the cars ahead of us decided to get out of out helmets as the temperature was already starting to rise. One of the marshals came up to us to check us in and explained that the timing system had failed so there would be a delay starting the rest of the cars. Eventually we pulled up to the start line and got ready to go. 5… 4…. 3… I built up the revs and put my foot on the clutch 2… the car began to roll backwards down the way we came 1… I put on more revs to hold it at its bite mark Go!!! I floored the accelerator and the car pulled away from the line and onto the straight
Problem 5…
Make sure you check your Tacho before the start!
The car screamed like an banshee and I notched it into second gear. The tacho had obviously re-set itself to 9,000rpm again so that would be no use during this stage. We came barrelling up to the first corner … or as barrelling as a Metro can be… and I hit the anchors and swung the car round to the right. The brakes were working then, always a good sign! I hit the accelerator again and the car slid out of the corner into a K left.
I cannot praise Sheffield & Hallamshire MC enough for the layout of their stages. There was something for every car out there and all the feedback on the British Rally Forum has been positive and reflected this. There was a superb mixture of fast straights, fast flowing left/right corner sequences and tight twisty corners. It says something that I had bigger faster cars behind me a couple of times and on the tighter bits they just could not seem to keep up and it wasn’t until we got onto a longer faster section that they were able to get past.
The first stage was going well, although Matt got lost a few times as he came to grips with reading the maps which, unusually for a SV rally, were amazingly clear and printed on A3 rather than A4. My confidence was growing as I got further round the stage and found out where the limits of grip were. We blasted through a series of chicanes on the back of the stage with a resounding bang as first the passengers side rear end and on the next chicane the drivers side hit the tyres… OK, I need to be slower and more composed round them then… I braked and turned into a 90 right and accelerated before crashing my foot down on the brakes again as we slid straight on towards a pile of tyres, there was no way I was going to get round the corner no matter what I did so I just held my breath and said a prayer to St. Colin, patron saint of spectacular rally crashes as we ploughed towards the tyre wall in a cacophony of screaming tyres and burning rubber before stopping inches from calamity… No time to think though, I struggled to get the car in reverse and get back on the stage. That would be the limit found then! I floored the go pedal again and carried on to the end of the stage.
We only had 20 minute between the end of stage 1 and the start of stage 2 so any changes would have to be quick. I pulled into the bay and struggled to escape from the grasp of the harnesses and intercom. Mechanically the car seemed to be OK but, looking around it, there was a telltale stain from the fuel filler cap where petrol had leaked out. Bollocks. I’d bought a new petrol cap that I’d hoped would solve this problem but apparently not. Nuts were checked and the bonnet removed to help cool the engine down but other than that there wasn’t a lot to do so, 15 minutes later we were back in the car and away to stage 2.
Stage 2
I’m not sure what happened on this stage. We cleared it trouble free with none of the dramas from stage 1 but the times just did not reflect it.
Problem 6…
Make sure you’re happy with the petrol in the car before the stage!
I know that some of the time was lost when, halfway through the stage, I looked et the petrol gauge (always a bit of a waste of time in a BL car!) and it was well below the zero mark. Shit. That means that either I was on the brink of running out of fuel or that the sensor wasn’t working right. I informed Matt that I thought we were going to struggle to get to the end of the stage and we let off a bit as we entered the infield section. I looked down again as we came out of the corner and the needle had gone up. We had fuel in the tank. Let’s cane it again! We blasted through the end of the stage and past the flying finish and into service.
Things were looking good but the fuel was still coming out of the tank. With around an hour until stage 3 we filled the car up and decided to continue with the modifications that we had started in the morning – gasket sealant! The engine was, unsurprisingly taking into account the rising temperature, getting quite hot and I was keen on getting as much air into it a possible to let it cool down. Fluids and tyre pressures were checked but thinks were looking good. The suspension was lowered slightly as the heat generated by the warmth of the day and the engine had caused it to go higher than we had pumped it in the morning and we were starting to resemble a 4x4!
Stage 3
Got it! I nailed the start much better than on the previous stages and flew onto the first straight. I had looked at our stage times between 2 and 3 and I was not happy. I simply was not fast enough and, despite Clive’s assurances that I was always going to lose out compared to 16 valve engines, I knew that was only part of the story and that I had to drive the car harder and brake later. This is something we’ve discussed before when we’ve been out in the Escort – both cars have 8 valve engines and we’re losing out to the 16 valve cars, especially when we’re accelerating out of a corner and the only way we can compensate for this is to try and go hotter into the corner so we carry more speed through it and onto the straight. It’s an interesting way of having to drive and depends on a big set of balls, the ability to keep control of the car and knowing where the limit is so we can keep within it – go over it and, as we’ve found out in the past, things can get messy and expensive! I’d got to know the course better and I knew that on certain corner sequences I could get away with not breaking for the first corner and then just using a quick touch of the brakes to bring the back end of the car around as I entered the second corner of the sequence. I’d been caught up by the cars behind me on the first two stages, both of which were much faster than me and ended up towards the top of the class and I was determined not to let the next car behind me catch me – a MGB GT. This could be interesting… The tight backfield section that had suited my car was missing from stages 3 and 4 so it was fast and flowing all the way so in theory it was going to have to be balls of steel all the way! We shot through to the end of the stage without seeing the MG but something didn’t feel right – I seemed to be lacking power when I shifted up to 4th gear on the straights. We pulled into the service area with half an hour until the next stage and followed the by now familiar routine of checking the fluids, tyres and wheel nuts.
Stage 4
Another good start and we were off again! Stage 4 was a re-run of the previous stage so it was another fast and flowing 7 miles. Thinks were looking good as we came onto the back of the stage and a series of twisting corners when the car started to slide a bit wide… not a problem as the road was wide enough to allow for a lot more dramatic slide than this, but suddenly there was a horrific crash as we hit a pothole. Jesus that was hard. We hit the next corner and turned in… everything seemed OK, the car was gripping OK and we didn’t seem to have any problems. We pulled out of the technical section and onto the big sweeping right hander and I threw the car into 3rd gear… nothing.
Problem 7…
The car maintaining speed but there was no grunt. Something was definitely not right. Matt looked across and told me to ease off. We cruised round to the end of the stage, moving aside as the MG came past us. Bugger. We pulled into the service area and took off the bonnet. It wasn’t looking good. If it was anything major or something that couldn’t be sorted with the equipment we had at hand we’d be out. We took the rocker cover off and peered at the head. Nothing obvious stood out that could have caused the noise and the lack of power so we did a bit of tightening up and I pulled out to see if the problem had been resolved. It was a long shot. Too long as it happens. The car was still making a pretty horrific noise and, unless I was willing to blow the engine we were out. I drove down to Rally HQ and handed across my damage declaration.
Game Over.
had caused some scoring on the crankshaft itself. In addition the bolts that held the endplate where the timing gear is seated had worked loose and this was what we believe was causing the noise.
some out to give us more room, fixing the petrol leak, welding some new plates underneath the car where the body is looking a bit dodgy, fitting the fly off handbrake and push button start and replacing the CV boot that was destroyed when we hit the pothole. I’ll also need to replace one of the wheels as it was also damaged by the impact with the pothole.
had caused some scoring on the crankshaft itself. In addition the bolts that held the endplate where the timing gear is seated had worked loose and this was what we believe was causing the noise.
some out to give us more room, fixing the petrol leak, welding some new plates underneath the car where the body is looking a bit dodgy, fitting the fly off handbrake and push button start and replacing the CV boot that was destroyed when we hit the pothole. I’ll also need to replace one of the wheels as it was also damaged by the impact with the pothole.
