Garage news...

Three posts in one night !

Recently i have been working on getting my garage sorted. Its almost there now. Just got about a dozen or so boxes to unload / put in the loft / sort / take to the tip...... But with new lighting, shelfing,  and tool boxes - i should be organised for at least a few days !

Sorting through all my tools, i never knew i had so many sockets - sad but true....

First bit of motorsport will hopefully be at Daytona Karting at Milton Keynes this week as a good way to celebrate getting yet another year older.

Final news for the night is that i'm on the search for a copy of Practical Performance Car, as the Dave Walker (of CCC & Emerald ECU fame) wrote about my rally car when i had it mapped at Emerald last year. Anyone got a copy ?

Longmoor

In between the excesses of food and drink of christmas and new year a small stage rally at Longmoor camp is run, and provides a great day out to a) have a play and b) get away from all the festivities.


We (Suze driving the Micra) were entered and drove down early that morning, making good time to get there for 7.30am. Scrutineering was easy and at noise they wanted us to be louder (we only made 81dB !). Longmoor only gets used once a year, as it is an active MoD base so photo's are hard to come by. But this also means the roads are very slippery, the first two stages were just that very slippery. Suze did well to hold on to many slides and as the stages progressed we were improving in speed. By the 4th stage of the day the course was drying out and Suze was finding her feet with more speed and aggression behind the wheel.


However during lunch the rain came back, and so did the lack of grip. This lead to a moment on the last corner of stage 5 where we ran wide and hit a curb. It pushed the OSF wheel back into wheel arch. We limped across the finish line, but the damage was done. 


Luckily we managed to bend the OSF wishbone back to almost where Nissan intended it to be, due to hard work of many people who helped out from the service park. This was helpful as we had driven the car to the event and needed to drive it back..... So a DNF to finish the year, which was annoying as Suze was really beginning to find her speed. Lets hope 2012 fairs better :)

Thanks to RallyOnline for the picture - see here for more http://www.rallygallery.com/2011_LOCO.aspx?Page=51 

2011 Review

Obviously taking the CMC Gymkhana Championship ranks as the rallying highlight, as does finishing 5th O/A on the Britvic. 
Lows...... dropping from 4th to 9th o/a on the Bustard due to one marshal..... other events have always ended up feeling like a case of what if i.e the 20/20, Bustard, Bullnose come to mind errors on my part on the Bullnose cost us at least two places.... :(


The Rover has done well though, with class wins - although time (and my driving) is taking its toll. After 5 seasons of events - it does look a bit battered now ! But with the new Emerald ECU and a diet it seems to be going better than ever. Just need to re-build the front suspension atm.....


Thanks to my navs for their hard work, patience and telling me where to go.


Best events for me as a driver were Goodwood; a good battle for 4th in class and some very high speed driving, the Gaydon autotest and the last Gymkhana - i think it was the best i drove all year, that and the afternoon tests of the July 7Oaks autosolo when fighting hard for a class win.


As a nav Woodbridge stages sat with Suze on her first stage rally - a great first stage rally and the CSMA 12 car where we finished far higher than i expected!


Not sure what 2012 will hold events wise, a move to doing the local Autosolo championship, more navving for Suze on stages events in the Micra and a few other bits and pieces.

Quiet but busy times......

Its been a bit quiet recently event wise since the 20/20 road rally.


Mostly due to spending time finally getting the garage in our new house sorted, as it was converted to a part study / part store by the house's previous owners. So there has been lots of removing walls, painting etc... and I still have shelves and lights to install before unpacking all of my garage stuff (read mostly horded junk....).


There is still one event left to do this year - where I am navving for Suze in the Micra on Longmoor Loco stages between Christmas and near year. Based at an active army training camp it is a great way to get out during the festive period and have some competitive motorsport fun.


However once the garage has been finished the Rover rally car will be one of the first things to be worked on in there - as the front suspension strut top mounts have collapsed and I suspect the ball joints in the lower wishbones may be worn too. So the front suspension will be stripped down to be re-built.

Update.....

Well its been a busy few weeks, with three rallies and a busy time at work, which is my excuse for not updating the blog as often as I would have liked. So here is a bit of a catch-up.


After taking the Gymkhana championship at MoD Woodbridge, the next event was the Carfax stages being held at a new venue - RAF Benson. Again out in the Rover with my wife Suze on the maps, this time running in the Enduro Stage rally class. 
The day dawned bright and sunny and the weather held all day with it being quite warm for the time of the year. This meant that the soft tyres i bought for the wet conditions soon had to be changed for my used mediums. These worked well and lasted just long enough on the front to get a finish.
We ended up 35th overall and 2nd in class, with Suze having done a great job on the maps - telling me where to go. The stages were very fast and great fun, with some very high speed cornering and some good battles catching cars and overtaking them - which is always good fun. Thanks to Suze's parents (Andrew & Alison) and Stephen for servicing and making our day much easier :)


The following weekend saw the Rover back out in action again this time on a 20/20 Road Rally in Sussex. This was being run by Matt Fowle who is a very experienced driver/navigator/organiser. He put on a very good event - with a good mix of slacker longer sections and very short and tight sections where we had to work very hard to make it into the control just on our minute. We had good fun, but managed to miss one board which gave us one fail, we only dropped 7 mins all night, but the damage was done due to a tough bit of nav which Lizzie (my nav) would have needed strong local knowledge to get right. We ended up 8th overall, but without the fail we would have been 3rd - as always rallying is full of what if's..... !


If you visit the gallery I will be updating it with pictures from all three recent events very shortly.