QUB Summer Lanes Rally 2012

Saturday the 21st July was the Queens University of Belfast Motor Clubs Summer Lanes Rally. QUBMC is our club so we were involved with the organisation in the build up to the event, so by the day of the rally it's a big relief that it's the end of the stress and the work. This year we had 3 student members (Conor Auld, James Scott and Philip Campbell) in charge and as none of them have competed on any motorsport event they had a bit of a mountain to climb. Luckily Conors father Clifford Auld was able to step in and be an experienced voice to guide them through. Together they managed to secure some new lanes for this years and they did a great job. The event ran great and everyone seemed to really enjoy the rally. It's probably the best that the rally has ever run. The same team have more ideas they want to try out and are keen to take on the organising of the event again next year which is brilliant news.

As I compete in the event my involvement in the organisation has to be limited to non-test stuff and so this year I made up some new code boards. We have used the same code boards every year, they are simply car number plates with a 3 letters followed by 3 numbers format. I felt that they are too short and didn't slow the cars down enough so the new code boards are 4 letters and 4 numbers. To allow the boards to be use for many years to come I build them with 96 individual, quick change code plates with 2 digits on each. This will allow us a huge number of code combinations and it will make it easy to change the code between cars if we want to.

We had a good clean run through all the tests with only a single penalty (for grazing a pylon) so we were really happy. I think the few autotests I have done in the car have produced a great improved in my speed on the technical sections. I am much more confident maneuvering the car on the handbrake than I was before and I can place the car much better. My new ecowing Kumho tyres proved to be dead on too, I didn't notice any reduction in grip over the quatrac's that I had on before. We finished up 17th overall which I am happy with. I know there are a few things that I could change on the car to gain a few seconds and I still haven't got much confidence on the loose. On the whole everyone ahead of us is much more experienced than we are and they have cars build for this kind of event, but hopefully we will be able to catch up with them someday.

1st Overall, Pete Moore and Will Corry Jnr, with CoC Philip Campbell.  

Results:
RallyScore

Photos:
Peespeed Photography

MOT & Insurance Time Again

I haven't been getting up to much motorsporting of late so things have been a bit quiet round here. After 6 months of looking Rachel and I have finally been able to find a house that we like and has space for our lives. Unfortunately it needs a fair amount of renovation so it has been sucking up all my time for the last few months and it will continue to do so for at least a few months more.

But no matter how much other work I have on I still like the keep the Nova road legal. So first job up was to renew the road insurance. My policy was with REIS and, although I've never had to put a claim in against it, they have always been easy to deal with so I saw no reason to change. The renewal quote was £302 but as I plan on doing a good few events during the year I got them to add on on event road section cover which bumped it up to £365. I have previously been buying insurance at each event, which is £18.50 a time, so if I compete in 4 events this year I will have made an overall saving on last year, and every event after that is a bonus.

So with the easy job done the next one is to get a new MOT. I know the Nova is generally solid so the MOT doesn't hold much fear foe me, and if there is play in the suspension parts I would rather change them anyway rather than have something fail during an event. I am lucky enough that Mark next door is a Vauxhall mechanic, he took a look over her and said all was well except my front tyres are done and the sump gasket is weeping, easy peasey.

I picked up a sump gasket, 5L of 5W40, and an oil filter in Fyfes and delivered them to Mark to fit. I could do the work myself but as I said the house is taking up all my time and Mark isn't too hard to pay. Unfortunatly the 1600 Nova engine needs two sump gaskets, one above and one below the baffle plate, so only half the job was done the first night. I rang Fyfes the next day to get another gasket and the first thing the fella on the phone asks is did I know that engine requires two gaskets! Why hadn't I been talking to him the day before and I could have got the work done in one go rather than having to push the car between garages with no sump attached and dripping oil everywhere!

So with that sorted I just had some new tyres to buy. I had been running a pair of Vredestein Quatrac 3's and I had been pleased with them but I had done a few autotests with them and pretty much destroyed them. I only managed to get 974 miles out of them which is pretty shocking but I suppose that is to be expected when I turned so much of the tread depth into smoke. I had heard good things about the Yokohama A021-R's and all the southern autotesters are using them but when I priced them they were €130 each which is just too much to spend on tyres when I have new house stuff to buy. As I don't seem to get much mileage out of my tyres anyway I just took the easiest option and bought the cheapest Kumho's that Modern Tyres had, which turned out to be ecowing KH19's. An eco tyre on a rally car is a strange thing but sure we will see how it goes, no more autotesting though.

Insurance: £365
Gaskets: £7.96 each, £15.92 total
Oil filter: £3.40
5W40: £25.60
Labour: £65
Kumho ecowing KH19: £45 each, £90 total
MOT fee: £30.50
REIS Motorsport Insurance Specialists
Fyfes Motor Factor
Modern Tyres
Kumho Tyre ecowing KH19

Killarney, Rally of the Lakes 2012

Last weekend Rachel and I went down to spectate at the Killarney international rally. Killarney is one of my favourite rally weekends of the year as unlike the Circuit and the Ulster rallies we don't have jobs to do, and unlike Donegal the socialising is centred around eating rather than drinking.

We were joined this year by the usual crew of Richard and Karen Swanston, Phil and Ali Ford-Hutchinson, and for his first time at this rally James Scott. Luckily there was only the 7 of us because that allowed us all to fit into Richard's Disco and we would only need to take one car out to the stages. Using the Disco has the added advantage that Richard likes to try and make getting to the stages as much of an adventure as he can so if there is a white road on the map then that is the road we will be taking. With that in mind on Saturday we found ourselves heading towards a junction on stage 5 that only met the Ballaghbeama stage with a dotted line! As expected we soon ran out of road and had to walk the last 500m but it was a spectacular spot to watch the rally.

On Sunday we took what was supposed to be the safe option and went to a more usual spectator junction. However it didn't go as expected and we got the big Disco stuck just off the road. All her trick diff's and off road tyres couldn't pull her out so we had the shame of being pulled out by an Isuzu Trooper.

When we came back to the car after the stage we had been blocked in by 5 late comers so we were stuck there for an hour, which messed up out plans to get to some of the other stages. We then had loads of time to get down to see the Cods Head stage so we look the white road over the mountain past the old copper mine. It is a pretty spectacular road, which I have no photos off.

All in all it was a great weekends craic with the gang. My favourite car had to be Roy Whites Ford engined MG S2000. It sounds amazing and with the wide arches looks like a proper rally car. I didn't get a photo of it though so I'm a bit rubbish really. Roy was very quick but it looked to me like the car wasn't handling very well. On Ardgroom he had loads of understeer and then an the straight on Cods Head the car seemed to be bucking about all over the place, a complete animal. When he gets her sorted it will be an amazingly quick rally car.

http://www.rallyofthelakes.com/


On Friday we left Magheralin at 3:30pm and arrived in Kenmare at about 11pm having gone via Cork and stopped in Portlaoise for dinner. Driving time was 5h 45 and was 300miles. On the way home on Monday we left Kenmare at 11am and went across to Mitchelstown and then up the motorway, driving time was about 5 hours. Less traffic was what allowed the quicker time.

Festival of Speed, Maze Long Kesh, 2012

Rachel and I went down to the Festival of Speed NI at the Maze on Saturday (28 Apr 2012) to try and promote Night Navigation rallying. It was a last minute thing so we went that well prepared but we had some flyers and Clifford Auld made up a curiosity board with lots of navigation equipment. It seemed to do the trick as it brought a good number of people over to talk to us and they were polite enough to listen to our sales pitch.



I didn't get much of a look around but this Chevette was parked near to us and I think it looks brilliant.



http://www.festivalofspeedni.com/

Wee Con's Corolla Rally Car

My cousin Con Carey has bought himself a 20v Toyota Corolla AE86 rally car. It hasn't been log booked yet so still needs some work to finish it off but the work that has been done looks good and the shell seems straight and solid so it should be a real good wee car when they are finished working on it. It came with a blown engine but a replacement has already been sourced so it shouldn't be too long before its out on the stages.



Hovercrafting!

The day after the Springfling I found myself changing from 4 wheels to no wheels! My sister had bought my brother, my brother-in-law and myself a session on the hovercrafts down at ODD.ie in Co. Cavan for Christmas. Driving a hovercraft is a pretty weird experience, you aren't really in control of it at all. You just hold the throttle full open and use your body weight, more than the steering, to "guide" you in the right direction. For me the best bit was the transition from land to water, it was totally seamless, I couldn't feel any difference at all, it was very impressive. At the end of our timed runs I came out the fastest over the lap but it was very close between everyone, it was definitely good luck rather than good judgement that had me the quickest.

I really enjoyed the hovercrafting experience but I don't think I would like to have paid the full €85 that our session would usually have cost, luckily we had some discount vouchers.

http://www.odd.ie/



Springfling Rally 2012

Rachel and I took part in the Springfling Rally on the 21st April and it was bloody brilliant, I think it was probably the best Lanes Rally yet. It was well organised, the test were great and there was very little queuing, I couldn't ask for anything more.

We finished up 18th out of the 36 starters so I was happy enough with that. We got a 30 second penalty for not stopping astride the line on Test 4, I was only a couple of inches over but over the line is over the line. That was the only mistake we made all day so I can't complain. Most of the crews that beat us are out more often or have more developed cars so I think our finishing position was about right. I don't have the experience yet to be able to push on the loose tests but I hope that will come.

As usual the Nova ran perfectly all day and never gave me any bother. Our friends Neil Anderson and Kerry Moreland was out in Andy Hughes 306 GTI and they had lots of trouble with a holed radiator and didn't make it back out again for the tests after lunch. I drive the Nova to all the events so being able to drive it home again is the most important thing to me. I've been thinking about buying a Clio 182 but the Novas reliability is more crucial than the extra horsepower, I never find myself short on power anyway, it is always a lack of traction that holds me back. Better to stick with what I know and trust, for the time being anyway.

I have videos from most of the tests so I will get them uploaded sometime in the future.

Results

Costs:
£60 Entry fee
£18 Insurance
£10 each for club membership
£30 Petrol
Total £128.