We were looking forward to the exciting new scholarship opportunity and I was confident that what I had learnt in Sweden and the more specialised machine with more power and up-rated parts were going to show on the forest stages.

The rally got off to worst start possible when the un-thinkable happened on the night before the rally on a run to bed the car’s new brakes in. The clutch started to slip and a smell of engine oil was drifting into the car. On inspection the engine was leaking oil but it was difficult and near impossible to see where from. We resorted to frantically taking out the gearbox to see where the oil was coming from but there were no obvious signs of leakage. We changed a main oil seal in the engine hoping that this was the cause and re-fitted the gearbox. This unfortunately was not the problem and a test run proved the bad news that the engine still had the leak. We had two options, either give up on the rally and call it off or give it our best and try to make the most of what we could from this disaster. As I find it near impossible to give in and while we had any drive at all in the car we chose the latter.

With a slipping clutch the journey to even get from the rally start ramp in Cockermouth to the stage 1 start line was no easy task, with any blip of power causing the clutch to slip instantly. The stage was also really slippy which added to the fun. With a front wheel drive rally car the power is a major factor in controlling the car and without the power pulling the car around the corners it makes the task very difficult indeed. It was so frustrating for us when we could not even power the car above 70mph on sections where it would normally be taken at about 110mph and as you can imagine we lost loads of time. I was really looking forward to this rally and we were optimistic of a good result, so to have it all pulled away before we had even set rubber in the woods was gutting.

SS2 wasn’t much fun either, with a succession of hills I could not get the car to go over 30mph without the clutch giving up drive completely and SS3 wasn’t any better. We managed to get the car back to main service and tried frantically in the 20 minutes allowed to find the leak. We tried re-routing all the oil breather hoses that were above the gearbox but to no avail.

On the road section from service to SS4 the car’s oil pressure starting getting lower and lower an indication of low oil level. A rush pit-stop in a garage on route for 5 litres of oil and 3 litres of Coke was necessary. Craig topped up the oil level whilst I attempted to use the good old rally trick of cleaning the clutch plate with Coke to degrease the oil away and to get some grip back in the clutch plate.

All in vein! We got 8 miles down the road and were forced to pull over again with no oil pressure. We found the oil was being pumped out faster than it was being poured in and the car was travelling no further that day.

After three weeks of preparation and organisation and the 8-hour motorway journey to get to the rally, this sort of thing really cuts deep.

However we were looking forward to the relaxed local non-championship event the Rally of Kent on March 14^th.

My recent bad luck seemed to be sticking when on stage 1 another oil leak struck whilst also losing the alternator / power steering belt. Without the power steering the car was a real handful and trying to manually push hydraulic fluid around the steering rack, left me feeling like I had been wrestling with an angry bear. We went on to stage 2 but due to an electrical fault, we mis-fired our way through the stage and the front end of the car was feeling a little strange. Straight out of the stage our service vehicle was waiting but without a spare belt, so a top up of oil and few prayers were all we could manage. We did stages 3 and 4 and though frustrated from the lack of power we pushed the car to and nearly beyond the limit. We were forced to do a little bit of cannibalism to the service chase car, swapping the charged battery of the chase car into the rally car to get through the stages.

Stages 5 & 6 were 2 short stages in Bedgebury forest. We matched the pace of 2 more modern day machines, Peugeot 206 Cup cars, setting a time of 1:08. The next run was again a double run stage through Bedgebury but near zero oil pressure on Stage 8 forced us to massively back off. At the end of the stage a top up of three litres of oil managed to get us back to main service. A new power steering and alternator belt was fitted and inspection of the front suspension found 10mm of play on the lower arm that would account for the wandering around the road. The arm was changed but the spare seemed to be not much better.

Stages 9 & 10 were two runs through Kingswood, but the car was suffering from massive misfires through the first run and on looking through the rear windscreen it looked liked the engine was about to blow. A quick stop and a wiggle of all the electrical connections seemed to do the trick. The power was nearly back to what it was previously and we were on a massive charge over the yumps, hopefully giving the spectators a thrill.

In the end we got a great result considering all the problems and as well as being 17^th fastest through one of the stages with all the faults we also finished 19^th Overall and took 4^th in Class. Who knows what might have been in a perfect car.

Hopefully we will have sorted the gremlins in time for the next round of the 1.9 Scholarship, the North Humberside Rally on 27^th March, a forest rally based around Pickering in North Yorkshire.