Great overall – poor in class

As part of my on-going plan to try and retain the Chelmsford MC Clubmans trophy, I headed off to Brands Hatch on a sunny Thursday evening for one of 7Oaks MC Grass Autotests.

Not having done a grass autotest for a number of years it was interesting to see how 7Oaks run these events at Brands. There were six tests setup and they had a full entry of 45 cars, which was great to see.

The tests were simple, flowing and mostly easy to remember. With the rally car being set-up for Abingdon (tarmac) I opted to use my road car (MGZR) for this event.

Most of the tests went well, apart from one with some reversing, which I messed up on my second run. As happens with these events as the night went on the grass gets removed and the grip levels go up. In hindsight I should have increased my rear tyre pressure to help de-stabilise the rear end easier. It did take a bit of time to get back used to the lack of a ‘diff’, which on the rally car would have helped out a lot. However all the tests were great fun, and it was a great way to spend a sunny Thursday evening.

When the results came out it was a bit of a mixed bag, 10th overall for my first grass autotest for year out of 45 entries is very pleasing. However Class B was very big and full of rally cars and it was all quite tight at the top and I ended up 6th in class, which isn’t that useful for the Chelmsford MC Clubmans championship….

Below is some slightly shakey on-board footage which I filmed on my iPhone to give you a flavour of the event.

Event report – B minus – should try harder / use less revs….

It was a little wet…

Nothing to update you on, apart from the stripping of our latest doner Micra is going well. Thankfully it has the ‘right’ 1.0Ltr gearbox which will get added to the spares dept. 🙂

But here is a cracking shot from M&H Photography at the Woodbridge Stages we did back in March.

Abingdon Stages – Final Prep Work

With Abingdon stages just a couple of weekends away, it was time to get the final prep work done before the event.

I spent an evening using up many spray cans painting the underside of the car, rear suspension, wheel arches and sills. Sadly Micra’s do like to rust so keeping the gravel rash / rust at bay is an important job.

Then it was on to changing the oil and filter, and refitting the sump guard.

The trim had to come out from when it was in for the autosolo.

The last job was to rework the breather system, which following advice from Matt Humphris / Peter Vaughan – Competition Engines. The system I had could cause the lower piston rings to flex at high revs and thus cause oil consumption / loss of power. The lower piston rings need the vaccum to work, so I reinstated the OEM setup. This does clean up the engine bay and give more working space, and of course save some weight.

Todays weight saving was a total of 0.747 kg – well every little helps!

The only thing left to do before Abingdon is some road testing to get used to the rear disc brakes.

Saving weight & slowing down

Last weekend was spent working on a number of small jobs on the rally car. These were mostly centered around the idea of removing weight from the car.

Jobs done were :-

• Removing the side rubbing strips, and then removing the glue holding them on – quite a long job….
• Replacing the door cards, with Black corex, this removed over a 1kg from each door!
• Lots of use of the hole saw, removing metal from the inner door skins, and plastic from the rear bumper.
• Repairing and reducing the size of the NSF wheel arch liner

All this added up to remove over 4.7kgs from the car 🙂

Other jobs done; was to jet wash and clean the whole car, and carry out a full bolt check.

This weekend the rally car is off for a ‘holiday’ to see Matt Humphris, who will be fitting a rear disc conversion kit. This needs doing as the rear drums are the original ones from the factory so have done a LOT of work over the years. Also this should help reduce rotating and unsprung mass, and improve rear braking and maybe even improve the handbrake which has always been rubbish…

Once back from Humphris motorsport, it will be down to the last few jobs before Abingdon Stages at the beginning of June. As always there is a list of final jobs to be done

• Paint the sills, repairing gravel rash damage (again!)
• Paint the wheel arches white
• Change the oil & filter (Blue Print parts)
• Fit the sump guard
• Bed in the new rear dics/pads
• Test the new handbrake
• Remove road rally trim

Then finally some road testing to get back into driving the rally car, and getting used to the new brakes.

Oxford MC – Scatter Rally

A scatter rally is a competitive treasure hunt, where points are awarded for visiting points, which you find by plotting navigation issued at the start.

Since Suze got called to go to the states with work at the last minute, I ended up ‘sitting’ in both seats for the night driving and navigating.

The event started in that fine road rally tradition of a good fry up – via an Olympic Breakfast courtesy of Mr Little Chef.

It was then to the start to get signed-on and then on to the plotting, this went ok. I focused on plotting the high scoring points, and any easy to plot low scoring ones. Once this was done, I plotted what looked to be a manageable circular route, which would mean I could visit both points which were only open during a certain time period.

Then it was out on the road, obviously navving and driving does make things a bit harder… especially with me only ever being able to remember three instructions at a time…. Luckily though the points were mostly located quite close to each other which made this dual role a bit easier.

I managed to visit both manned points in time, and visit nearly all the high scoring points. Most points it was easy to find the answer, although I did loose about 8 mins trying to find one high scoring answer with no luck… Those new road around Bicester don’t quite match my map, which made plotting harder…

Anyway after a couple of hours of ‘spirited’ driving around the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire countryside it was back to the finish. By running into the bar, I managed to get in dead on 10pm and avoided any loss of points by being back late – though it was a close call…

As the results were being read out it came as a real surprise that I had won, its been a while since I have won an event outright and this is my first scatter win so very pleasing.

Tools for a evening in the lanes

Donington Park Historic Festival – Autosolo Demo

Having a rare free weekend, and no major work to do to the rally car, I headed up north early on the Saturday of the May Day Bank holiday weekend to go to the Donington Park Historic Festival to give free Autosolo demo rides to the attending spectators. I choose to use my MGZR road car as a) it shows the public you don’t need a highly modified car to compete and b) it is much nicer to drive the 2hrs north!

After a quick run up to the circuit, I got set up and fitted the tyres I wanted to wear out. Then after a quick briefing and walk of the course it was time for a fry up to set me up for the day.

The plan was to do three 1 hour sessions during the day, the rest of the time was free to watch the racing and explore. The paddock was great to look around and see up close some great cars and see them being worked on. The F2 cars were fab and watching them race was ace.

The demo rides were fun to do, the course was quite short and mostly involved turning right, which lead to some proper tyre wear on the front left…

I took round about 30 people during the day some of who seemed really keen to get more involved and get out on the events. So hopefully the experience of being thrown around in an MGZR means they will soon be out on events.

So two autosolo’s in two weekends!

This week see’s the MGZR out in action once again, this time in a local Scatter Rally run by Oxford MC.