[rally_prep] Road Rally 205 Gti

[Wallby 39]

Great stuff!

 

Some of those jumps looked a bit scary!

[arwel 43 2 Cars]

Oh yes... if you commit to them 100% then its very scary as you know your going to travel a fair distance in the air. Hell of a place though.

[Mac Crash 78 1 Cars]

specifically which class are you running in? sorry if that sounds a daft question, really interesting thread, and nice work...

Edited March 11, 2014 by Mac Crash

[arwel 43 2 Cars]

specifically which class are you running in? sorry if that sounds a daft question, really interesting thread, and nice work...

 

Here in Wales we have night events or road rallies. These ususally start at midnight on a saturday and take place through the lanes and farm tracks of deepest darkest wales. A route is handed to competitors and must be plotted onto the relevant OS map for the area the rally covers. There are a series of controls along the route to ensure competitors are on the correct route. Any missed controls count as a fail

 

Cars must have the same CC as the model came with and if it was on standard injection it must remain on that injection system, so no throttle bodies aloud. Gearboxes must remain H pattern. Suspension is free, tyres must be e marked and all major interior trim must be retained.

 

When competing on stage events in Wales, the cars must comply with the WAMC road rally rules but still comply with the MSA rules of indate seats and belts etc...

I believe its only in Wales we have a road rally class on stage events aswell as the usual engine capacity classes etc...

[arwel 43 2 Cars]

Here is 15 miles of SS6 from the Tour of Epynt

 

[Mac Crash 78 1 Cars]

Thanks for the info - not sure if the Scottish Championship follows the same format or not (lanes/stage events etc) I think it does... will try to find out... so your class is defined by engine capacity only? 2wd run in the same class as 4wd? if so then you've done extraordinary well, if not, then you still have... running a 1.6 I assume will keep a 205 away from the escorts but you must be right in there amongst them with the Mi16, am I right in thinking your running in the same class as them and beating them? that escort off the line and over the crest at the start of the 2nd last video must have raised the hairs on your neck, heh heh... what was your time against his? out of serious interest...

Edited March 11, 2014 by Mac Crash

[arwel 43 2 Cars]

The road rally class doesn't use engine capacity at all. You can have anything from a 1 litre to a 2.0+. It's a bit of a tough one to explain really as you have to adhere to a set of rules from the Welsh Association of Motor Clubs (WAMC) and also the MSA. No 4WD cars are allowed in the class anymore and currently no forced induction engines either.

The class is usually full of MK2 Escorts with 2.0 pinto engines or the newer duratec motors. We do tend to compete quite well against them in all fairness considering the vast majority have more power than the Pug. The Escort infront of us on the video wasnt in our class, he was in B12 which is the over 2.0 class and we were only 4 seconds slower than him on SS1 so we weren't doing too badly at all.

[dcc 855]

Can you run throttle bodies?

[Tom Fenton 1,525]

Not in a road rally class no. Road rally cars have various regs with the intention of trying to keep them relatively quiet as the events take place on open plublic roads in the early hours of the morning!

[arwel 43 2 Cars]

Tour of Caerwent next weekend, should have a seeded entry list tomorrow. Little bit of work going on. Some rose jointed arms and a full check over and set up going on.

 

[arwel 43 2 Cars]

We are car 63 for the Tour of Caerwent on Sunday. The car is still undergoing some fettling. The new rose jointed arms are on, front legs have been de assembled, cleaned and re fitted with new top mount bearings and new uprated mounts. The top mounts are being strengthened and a few little niggly things are being sorted. Geometry is to be set up aswell and then hopefully some testing tomorrow evening ahead of the weekend.

[arwel 43 2 Cars]

Total disaster today in Caerwent. Blew the inner cv to bits 500 yds into SS1. Lots of investigating to do to find out what exactly caused it as we have a few different theories at the moment. Thats all I have to say for now as I just feel empty after today. When you have a bad day rallying, you have a really bad day.

[Tom Fenton 1,525]

You say you were fitting rose jointed arms, if you have increased the length of the arm for more camber then this will cause the shaft to be not quite long enough hence can come apart.

[Jolly Green Monster 51 1 Cars]

Tom just posted exactly what I was wondering..

 

also are they old shafts, could have just been a build up of abuse over time?

[arwel 43 2 Cars]

There are a few factors from what we gathered.

1) As you say, the length of arm being increased which led to the inner cv running to close to the edge of the cup

2) Possiblity that the subframe is slightly bent or not sitting in the right place ( I say this as we've had some issues in the past with geometry and a few other things could indicate that this is the case)

3) The shaft itself could have been past its best

 

We'll strip it down and have a look in the week

[arwel 43 2 Cars]

So the last week or so has been spent getting to the bottom of the shaft failure. The conclusion we came to was that we basically we made too much adjustment and in turn it had pulled the tripod in the inner cv on the long shaft way past the point of being able to cope. It broke under braking and on a down shift so when we had forces trying to slow the car against the forces going forward it became too much and popped one of the three bearing out of the cup and the other 2 followed. School boy error really but we'll learn from it and move on.

 

Car has now been re set with less camber so we'll do a few more test miles at the weekend ahead of The Bob Shaw Memorial Rally at Talbenny on the 13th of April. The long term plan is to get some 309 shafts or have a set made up so we can make more adjustment at a later date.

 

Little plug here for Tom@ Henderson Engineering who has been fantastic with all my little issues.

[arwel 43 2 Cars]

Seeded entry list came out last night for the Bob Shaw Memorial rally in Talbenny. We've been seeded car 27 which is great. The class victory on the Tour of Epyn has certainly helped so we'll be looking and hopng for a good run down there on Sunday.

 

This week is being spent fine tuning a wet weather set up as if its raining on Sunday then its going to be very slippery down there. Also some cosmetic work is being carried out as when we were recovered after the breakdown in Caerwent, the hoist used to lift the front end of the car broke the front bumper and made everything a bit wonky. Other than that, everything seems ready to go for Sunday.

[arwel 43 2 Cars]

Talbenny is all done and dusted. We finished 22nd overall and 3rd in class. It wasn't my best days driving and wasn't as neat as I would have liked to be but we came away with maximum championship points for our class so we're back on track after the disaster in Caerwent.

Next round is Harlech stages in North Wales so we're using that as one of our dropped rounds and giving it a miss. So we have roughly 6 weeks before Dale Stages at the end of May which gives us plenty of time for a full check over, oil and filter change and tidy up some cosmetic damage after we had a little altercation with a fence and then later a chicane. Lap top is currently broken so hopefully I'll have some in car footage soon enough.

[arwel 43 2 Cars]

Managed to get one stage uploaded from last weekend.

 

[arwel 43 2 Cars]

Haven't updated this since Talbenny. So we did Dale 2 weekends ago. We were seeded car 27 again. Conditions were very slippery but it played into our hands as all the bigger powered rear wheel drive cars struggled for traction until it dried out in the afternoon. We finished 14th O/A which is fantastic and 3rd in class. I think i've fully got to grips with the car now and can really start pushing on as there is more time to be made up still. We did suffer some cosmetic damage when we clipped the front end in a chicane but other than that there was no problem.

I did have issues during testing in the week leading upto the event. The return mechanism on the throttle body failed and the throttle stuck fully open which was "interesting" to say the least. I also spent about 3 days chasing a handling issue which turned out to be knackered polly bushes after only one event. I also went back onto the harder rear shocks which made everything feel much more positive. So we now have just short of 2 months untill the Harry Flatters Rally on the Epynt ranges at the end of July.

 

I did hop in the co drivers seat for a friend of mine last week on the Mini Epynt stages. It was a baptism of fire as he had never done a stage rally before and I had never read notes. It all went pretty well though apart from the odd mistake from both of us but we finished 40th overall and 15th in class.

 

Dale Stages

 

Mini Epynt

 

Some incar from mini epynt

[arwel 43 2 Cars]

Not updated this for a while. Our last event didnt end well.

 

We did the Harry Flatters rally in July which is held on the Epynt military ranges. It all went wrong when the serivce/tow vehicle decided it didnt want to play no more and the oil pump packed up on the Saturday on the way to Scruteneering.

The rally started well and saw us leading the class after the first loop of stages. On the last stage of the second loop the clutch started slipping. We found the reverse light switch had come out of the box and dropped oil all over the clutch. The boys in service cleaned it all and got us on our way again, however the damage had been done. Right near the end of SS7 we lost drive whilst going down the box to slow for a left hander. The main input shaft had sheered off. On inspection it had been subjected to massive heat as it was all blue and purple. The heat had also transferred through to the clutch and turned that a nice shade of purple and blue.

The DNF puts us under pressure to finish the last 4 rounds of the championship to take the class victory, Next even it 24th of August back on Epynt again for the Mewla Rally.

[arwel 43 2 Cars]

Another forgettable day yesterday on the Mewla rally. We were making do with the standard gearbox and were going at a reasonable pace. SS3 and we had got 3/4 of the way through when something electrical popped and the car started missing badly. Managed to limp to service where we changed the usual suspected items such as coil, ignition amp etc... Got out of service and all seemed well but the problem came back towards the end of the road section and the car died and wouldnt re start. We had spares in the car which I changed but still did not want to play.

Due to others not finishing and only 3 events left, Abigail clinched the class 7 welsh tarmac tittle for co-drivers but it looks like I will miss out unless a small miracle happens. Caerwent in September so we shall see what happens.

[luggy 13]

Sad to hear of your bad luck ​ , keep us updated once you've got her running again!

[arwel 43 2 Cars]

Sorry it's been a while people. I have been off on holiday to forget about broken Peugeots haha

 

The cause has been found. Basically a broken connector holding the live to the alternator was the cause. Unfortunately the wire made contact with the alternator and has fried it, hence the pop in the car. So we need a new alternator.

Still waiting for the gearbox to come back but that should be here over the weekend. We are doing the Patriot stages in Caerwent on the 27th of September and now with no real pressure we are just going to go and enjoy ourselves and have some fun.

[jackherer 543]

Mine did that once, it's alarming how easy it would be for a fire to start that way, there is no fuse on that cable at all! http://forum.205gtidrivers.com/index.php?showtopic=80354