It was pissing down but still a good day. Get ready for photo spam.

My first go and motorsport, woohoo! After a few of the CT guys said they’d be going I thought I’d pop along. It was only 40odd miles away in Northampton. Sadly none of them turned up but that means I get 11 points for myself.

Short story long – I’m happy with what I did. At the start I was nine second behind the fastest guy and by the end I was two seconds behind. I can’t ask for more than that. The idea is that the organisers set out cones on a flat surface (grass, gravel, tarmac) and you have to drive a set route around those cones. On this event there were eight course – two attempts at each and the fastest times from each get added together to form a total. Fastest time wins. This was on gravel and the surface was a little uneven to say the least. I won’t be doing it again in the Herald after polishing the inside of the wheelarchs with the tyres…

You learn so much at these events. Not just simple things like car control but also the way these events work. The ideas behind how the cars are used and also what cars. For instance, I made a mistake on one course. I was delighted with myself because my version of it meant going through some very tight lines the wrong way and I thought I’d done really well. The second attempt saw me make another mistake and I canceled the go by driving off. It wasn’t until I parked up that I was told all I had to do was reverse and start from where I’d made the mistake and that now I’d get the time of the fastest guy plus thirty seconds. Of well.

Anyhoo here’s a video of the car getting a bit of use… Shame it’s not as fast as I could have gone but I had to do it all in second gear. Ever tried lighting up the rears in second gear even on gravel?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ5ujbhJlvE

It’s been almost a week so I’ve forgotten most of what happened! I’ll get it out of the way quickly. *ahem* 31 fails… SO… erm…

This one was in Northampton and started at 6:30pm. Despite leaving at 4:30pm we were still late. We couldn’t find the pub. Still, the walk by the canal was nice. When we got to the pub car park we found the other entrants. Gotta say, good turn-out from CT.

We decided to enter at the novice level – everyone got the same clues but novice people got a cheat sheet. We went back to the car and started to plot the route. This one was easier than last except I kept expecting to get caught out with crafty clues so struggled. There were no dodgy tricks and when we realised and started to look at things simply it fell into place. We did have a lot of help from Don though. The two and a half hour record was dashed and we set off before daylight. I’m proud we managed to do the plotting in the same time as Ellis and Dale.

There were some very nice roads and one or two puddles. Sadly we got lost. Steve was struggling with getting a mental image of the map as I was driving and couldn’t always say if I needed to turn left or right. Not that I can comment as I turned left out of the car park to go home when I should have turned right. I flashed past Doug as he was coming out of the car park and we had a natter at some traffic lights furth on. In total we probably put an extra 10 or so miles onto what we should have done. We also had to cut out section eight as time was short.

Just after pulling out of the car park Ellis’ car pulled over. I think he was checking if we were following him. We weren’t. One thing though, check your brake lights. I almost went up your arse!

I’m still learning. I’m slowly getting the hang of plotting routes but need to remember that’s the job of the navigater and should leave it to them. How else will they be familiar with the route when I’m driving? And we also need to make sure we clearly mark where sections end. Oh, and that there’s no need to belt along at 50mph if you’re not being timed… Far less chance of a mistake if you take your time. On Monday I marked up my maps after seeing how Doug had done his.

Here are the clues and the cheat sheet to show others what to expect of a rally.

Following on from the breakdown in the Moggy I did a couple of small jobs on it when parts arrived on Friday. The car had been working fine since I gave the points a quick clean although it was rough on tick-over before it got warm. Here are some photos of the points, I think it’s safe to say it these were a problem… I replaced points and condenser in the dizzy, the HT leads, the spark plugs and the points in the fuel pump for double pointed things. All for the sum total of £25 including delivery. It runs like a dream now. More poke and the choke actually works!

And now the “oh fudge”. I’ve had rust coming up on my wing all winter and each time I treat it the rust is back the next day. I found out why this morning.

For this make children, you will need;
1 old flask which has not been used for a few years and which has a curious smell which just won’t shift
1 straight 15mm compression joint
1 crankcase vent filter (£8.99 in Halfords – £3.99 eBay)
some glue
and a bit of pipe

The bits minus the filter

The compression joint attached to the flask. A ole was cut in the side and it was glued in and then the nut done up on the inside to bring it all together and maintain the sealed air space between the walls of the flask

And then the filter had to be glued onto the flask lid, after a hole was cut in it. To keep the number of pictures down here’s one of the whole thing on the car – it’s sitting tucked in the corner of where the near-side engine valance and radiator meet

And in this one you can just about make out what it’s caught in 20 miles when running without the filter (as I was waiting for it to arrive in the post) – almost all of it being water

All in all, it looks a bit like a small flask with a filter stuck on the top, which it is. But it’s a shiny stainless steel one, cost me less than £6 and can easily be removed to be emptied or removed. This is just a fiddle to see what difference it makes and to see what the engine was burning other than petrol and air. For now the mushroom is still on the inlet manifold but with a blanked off pipe preventing it from becoming an air-leak.

 The Moggy just cocnked out on me – the first time I’ve ever broken down when driving a car.

The other day when I was driving along the A505 the car faltered and carried on. As if the fuel supply was interrupted. The engine was just getting warm as I’d driven a couple of fast miles. Afterwards it was fine and I was sitting along at 55mph. The car had gone from Luton to Leighton Buzzard a couple of hours earlier without any issues.

Twice this week mum has started the car and within the space of 10 meters the car has died. I’ve been called out and got it started again. There is no fuel smell so it’s not a case of inexperience with chokes.

Just now I was driving along in a 60mph zone accelerating and doing 50mph. I’d only driven about a mile. The car faltered and I couldn’t get it to pick up so I put it into neutral to see if I could rev the engine to bring it back to life but when I did so the engine died. I pulled over and after a short time managed to get it to start.

Thinking it might be a bit of crap in the pipes and seeing the amount of muck in the float chamber I fitted a fuel filter yesterday. I couldn’t spot a piece of flexible pipe before the fuel pipe (it’s the standard electronic SU pump to my eyes) so fitted it after the pump. That way I would also be able to tell if there was fuel after the pump if the car died again – to try and narrow down what the problem was. When the car died today there was fuel in the filter so the problem is the pump or before the pump.

My logic says it’s unlikely to be crap in the lines because once it’s died and been brought back to life the car runs fine. So it must be electrical but again it’s odd that it’s fine afterwards. Unless the problem has just started and is going to get worse over time.

These fuel pumps have points don’t they? Possible those wearing out or in need of adjustment?

Each time I get the car started again I hear the fuel pump do a lot of clicking. It’s not until it does this that the car starts again and it does start instantly. I’ve assumed this is the pump priming itself or doing something similar which is why I initially though it was a blocked pipe before the fuel pump.

I’ve yet to look for another fuel filter in the car as I’ve not had the chance. Maybe there is one someone else has put on and that’s dirty. I’ll also look for a bit of flexible pipe on the car to fit one before the fuel pump.

The name says it all. I lost count of the amount of bunnies I almost hit.

This was my first rally. I’ve always been curious of them and decided to have a go. The February event was cancelled so my first one was on the 16th March.

We pulled into the lay-by on the A422 at 6:20pm to see a few friendly faces amongst the cars – Tim and Ellis in the GT6 and Dale and co-driver in the Herald. A short time later Steve arrived in his 13/60. I can never remember his friends name and always refer to him as “the guy who sat opposite me at the club dinner in 2007″, sorry. It’s no shock that his name escapes me now… My co-driver was meant to be Sam Shattock but he couldn’t make it so David took the “honours”. First things first, up with the bonnet to sort out why the car was hesitating when accelerating and to try and see what might be causing the very unnerving scratching and scrapping noise coming from the front right area of the car. I’ve yet to discover what that was but it only happens around 70mph and my wheel didn’t fall off…

I was told by Rod who organised this event that it would be nice and simple. Was it, my arse! It was a steep learning curve having never done any map work before. We were briefed on the basic ideas behind the event and then given our first set of clues – spot heights, little numbers showing the height of the land. Easy enough, when you can find them. Being slightly flustered by having to look through two maps in a tiny Herald with no light we didn’t notice the tie-breaker question at the bottom of the clue sheet. Off we went to get more assistance and the next set of clues – grid references. We’d never seen these before and it took a lot of help and the use of Rod’s romer to figure out what each part meant. It’s all really simple, once you know how – figuring out the how’s saw us walking back to Rod and help from Tim and Ellis and some words from Dale. Then it was time to pick up the last instructions which were Tulip diagrams. Again, very easy just not a good thing to do with tired eyes. Or when you’ve getting very impatient – which I was. Once we’d plotted the route it was time to leave and look for the code boards at the side of the road.

I think this is where things started to go wrong! “David, where am I going?” “Erm… We’re going…. Erm… Can you pull over please?” Through luck we managed to get the first three boards (I think) after having to turn around after missing a turning. Then we ended up on some odd route nowhere near where we should have been. I was getting frustrated and I think David was getting flustered from being dropped in at the deep end. I know I’d struggle to navigate! Still, that road with the first big puddle was rather nice. So nice in fact that we drove it three times! The car is now in need of a wash, not that it needed it before, of course.

I have no idea how it happened, but we ended up by junction 14 on the M1. We pulled over, got our bearings headed back onto the route and then I pulled over again to check the map as things didn’t seem right to me. Sure enough, we’d somehow managed to skip the last half of the first section, the whole second section and were starting the last section of the route. Try and figure that one out! A quick choice was made – sod it and head for the pub at the finish line. We got there thanks to the sat nav which I had to turn off earlier because I forgot to charge it and it was very low on battery power, oops. We handed in our sheet and Rod totted up the scores. Is 15 fails a new record? Still, we made everyone laugh, got a story and learnt a hell of a lot. I fully intend to do the next event. As an added bonus the landlord of the pub was the old landlord of the Hitchin pub my area uses. Talk about a small world.

Things learnt;
how to read maps and some of the clues given out on these events
charge your sat-nav
charge your phone
make sure your batteries in your torch aren’t dying
make sure you take pencils and not pens – otherwise your map looks like it’s been attacked by a five year old
take a large board you can rest the maps when you mark them

Things needed for the future;
a romer – I have a compass but never took it…
a ciggy lighter in the car to power the sat-nav – I’ve got to do this for the RBRR anyway but when I do I’m building a centre console for gauges and moving the car battery to the boot so I’ve been putting it off
more light and a way to not distract the driver with it

A two year old photo. She looks slightly different now, not sure whether that’s good or bad. I’ll take some proper photos tomorrow between breaking into buildings and getting covered in chalk. Unless I take up the offer of playing footy for the first time in six years!

I lost my hosting and rather than go to the trouble of getting some more I’ve set up a simple blog. At some point I’ll do a proper site again but right now I can’t be arsed. I’ll only redesign it all and that’ll take ages…

I better make this about Triumphs then - that way I can submit it to the CT blog roll. With the odd bit of other junk thrown in. ;)

Expect one or two entries a year.