Is Ted to blame.... ?

During a visit to my Mum's and sorting through the loft, I came across Ted, my childhood teddy bear. Being a sometimes sentimental sort, it seemed harsh to put him back up in the cold loft. So he came home with us, and I thought he would make an ideal rallying mascot, and he fits fine into a drink bottle holder keeping him secure.


However, since bringing Ted along for the ride, luck has seemed to elude me on events, so for the next event (Chelmsford MC - Debden Gymkhana) I think Ted will being staying at home to test whether or not Ted really is to blame.....


In other event news, this month I will be taking part in a 2 hour endurance race, at MK Daytona Circuit, and then the following day I have been asked to run as course opening car on Chelmsford MC's East Anglian Classic. This is an event on which I have been Clerk of the Course before, so it will be good to get back out on this event and catch up with people.

Silverstone Autosolo

Sorry for the delay in posting about the Silverstone Autosolo, last week was very manic at work and with having to write a 3,300 word essay for my OU MA Course. So back to cars....

After driving the rally car to work on the previous Friday, I used the drive to/from work to adjust and set-up the handbrake, and managed to get it working perfectly, so that it had a little bit of movement and yet it worked very effectively.

However the downside of this became clear on the day, it has been ages since I have had a working and effective handbrake.... So on the first tests I was enjoying using the handbrake a bit too much and although it felt good, the times were slow. After a bit of effort to tidy things up a bit by lunch, I was lying 7th in class and behind father-in-law Andrew.

However just after lunch, saw my best man Dave Leadbetter roll his car, and although he was a little shaken and sore he escaped any real injuries luckily. However running over to see how he was and then helping clear away the damaged car seemed to play on my mind. As when I lined up to drive the third set of tests my mnd went blank even though i had read the map and walked the course.... This led to a wrong test, reversing to get the right route and a cone on that set of tests. This ruined any chance of a decent result. So on to the final set of tests, I went out with the intention of having fun and being as sideways as you can get a FWD Rover 200! This didn't help with the overall result, but was great fun. In the end I finished 34th overall & 10th in class.

Resullts : http://www.oxfordmotorclub.co.uk/autosolo/

Here is a video of one the more sideways tests...

Silverstone

Sunday it is the Oxford MC Autosolo at Silverstone, the last time we were there in 2009 there was heavy rain all day, given the recent weather I'm hoping the weather will be kinder this time !


The entry is full with 60+ entries :- 
http://www.oxfordmotorclub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Web-entry-list-May-12.pdf

Service Kit

Over the past few years the service kit which is carried to events in a variety of old boxes, has slowly grown in size and accumulated a lot of old rubbish.


So I had a good sort out, and organised the kit into a more logical system, and a full log of where everything is.


After a recent visit the Gratnells factory to discuss some work projects, I got talking to Murray the boss who is a fellow Motorsport fan and he very kindly donated the new boxes to us, so since they are all matching they can stack up and they are much stronger than previous boxes which even had holes in them, and held together with tape....

A bit of TLC

It was time to give the old girl a bit of TLC and get the handbrake sorted for the upcoming autotest/solo, as the handbrake wasn't working well at all....


So a recent trip to the Rover Centre of St. Albans for Owen Turner to replace the handbrake cables and set-up the rear brakes, not too hard a job, but I have never been able to work on drum brakes so i leave those jobs to others...


However it turned into a bigger job.....


Due to the rear drums being very worn, and the fact that the rear beam was already bent, it made sense to replace the rear beam with a 2nd hand one, with good brake parts, decent cables (saved the cost of new h/brake cables) and a new wheel bearing.


Whilst the car was on the ramp a few other little jobs were done as well, so the grand sum of work done was...


- 2nd hand rear beam fitted, complete with decent cables
- Rear brakes set-up
- Fix fuel tank mounts, after the dent from the Exmoor Rally
- Replace the bottom bush in the NSR shock
- Fit a 2nd hand diesel exhaust mid-section, which has no centre silencer.
- Bled all brakes, with new fluid 


All in all although more expensive than I bargained for, it is good to get some of the 'to-do' list.


As you can see in the picture the exhaust needed replacing, due to it being almost half its diameter this is from to damage from recent rough events.