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You faff around on tarmac single venues for oh so long and then, at some point, you have to head into the forests. I say
you 'have to' but ofcourse that's not entirely true. No one's forcing you... just your navigator, your service crew and the
entirety of your local motor club members who've already done it. And if truth be told, there's always that bit of you at
the back of your mind that's telling you Go on, you know you want to.... So damn it, if it wasn't that I couldn't come up with any more excuses, that I put the entry in to the Dukeries Rally based out of Mansfield. Well it'd shut 'em up for a while at least, and I was only delaying the inevitable. Everyone was telling me how once you go into the forests you won't want to come out. So I guess it was about time I found out if I could dodge trees and really 'cut it' with the big boys. A brief trip to good old Andy at AB Motorsport saw the car sporting some new Group A torsion bars, the car now raised up to accomodate the inevitable ruts you encounter when you're running at the tail end of a 150+ field. And some knobblie tyres, ofcourse, who could forget them? |
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It was time to throw the old single-venue plans out of the window because now we were rallying 'for real'. A start in a town
centre. Road sections. Management cars. Route notes. Christ, we could even use pace notes if we wanted to splash out on a
set from Pattersons (not that we did). Scrutineering takes place on Friday night, then it's time to check into a hotel and
try and get some sleep. This is, of course, impossible because your arse won't keep shut for long enough what with all the
worries for the following day. You start asking yourself the inevitable - what happens if you're just plain shit? I mean,
you come to the first bend, and you stack it into a tree. Or a ditch. Because lets face it, driving your car fast around a load
of smooth tarmac is one thing, but over undulating, rough, gravel-strewn rock that twists it's way between ominous looking
trees and ditches... well, that's slightly different, surely? I could hear the laughing marshalls on junction 1 already. One good thing about starting car 112, 7 from the back, is that your start in the morning isn't exactly early. We all had a nice lie-in, the breakfast. We checked out of the hotel and commented what a delightful day it was, then ambled gently into Mansfield where the start was. We relaxed. We went through the start and felt all proper as kids pointed at us as we drove through the town center, the Pug merrily burbling away down the road to the first stage. Hey, this multi-venue forest rallying malarky isn't half bad!
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SS1 was Harlow Wood, a very short stage through a small... errm... wood, unsurprisingly. Now we had been forewarned that the
Dukeries gets very rutted because the soil around there is very soft. And after all the big boys had been through? Yep, it was
a bit rutted - we pogo'd off the start line and the first 100 yds was like the most sadistic, tortorous ride Alton Towers could
ever have dreamt up. I thought the suspension would collapse within the first few seconds. I think I actually whinced
in sympathy. Thankfully it soon became apparent that the noises were normal, cars are surprisingly tough and it sounds worse
than it probably is. I'm glorifying, ofcourse, because this is simply what forest rallying is like. It's noisy, bouncy, rough, grimacing stuff (or at least it is in something this side of a group N uber-wagon). In the short space of time it took to get near the end of the stage, I'd sussed that the corners were easy enough but the straights were the hard part. Trying to keep a Peugeot 205 onto something resembling a straight line, over bumpy undulating gravel, was a bit more testing on the skills, nerves and balls. Andy Burton cleared the stage in 1m 23s. If we'd have started at the same time, we'd have trundled over the line a mere 34s after him. Oh boy, I have a lot to learn!
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The one thing we weren't going to do was push hard. My skills on gravel are an empty book and I needed to get some experience.
Plus going off in a forest tends to do more damage than going off in an airfield (although there are exceptions
of course). One corner from the finish, I braked for a tight right and noticed the brakes weren't doing their usual job.
Surprised at brake fade after this little use, we pegged over the finish line and I relaxed - but the car charged on at full pelt.
I jammed hard on the brakes and as I put the clutch down the stop, the engine raced beyond the redline. I dived for the ignition
key and turned it off, but in the second or so the engine had cleared the redline (whose idea was it to remove that rev limiter?
doh!). We'd made it through the finish so we managed to pull the car to one side and investigate the problem. The throttle return
spring had snapped cleanly in half. We started trying to cobble together a replacement with what we had in the car but with no luck, and time was starting to run out. Big Dan was on the phone to our support for idea. Thankfully, just in time, some nice chap who looks like Chris trundled into the stage on the back of a moped with a bungee cord - tied onto the throttle and taped to the strut brace at the other end, it served as a perfect return spring! What a top chap! We were saved! But time was against us so we had to leave pronto for SS2 - R&K Blidworth. We made it with seconds to spare and in the hurried confusion I almost drove straight over the start and into the stage! With only a temporary return spring I didn't want to risk pulling it off, so we trundled through SS2 at whoosie speed until we could get to service and effect a less temporary repair. Mental note : put a spare return spring in the car. Of course, as soon as I do this, it'll guarantee that something else will snap instead so maybe it's not a good idea! SS2 was absolutely fine but then we didn't go fast enough to get into any worries. The road section afterwards, however, was where the problems started. During SS2 I thought I'd heard a noise, like a heavy whirring, on overrun (when the engine is running off-throttle). You tend to dismiss noises in stage because you get very paranoid and start hearing things. But on the road section, with helmets off, it was easier to hear it. Something definately wasn't 'right' but I didn't know what. |
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Every time we changed gear or coasted, this whirring from the engine would return. On top of this, it was getting worse - rougher
and louder. I said to Big how I didn't like the sound of it but we kept going anyway, we didn't want to have to retire out of our
first forest event after only 2 stages! Coming to a set of traffic lights, however, it was all about to change - the clutch had
now disappeared. Fudging through the gears manually, it was evident that we couldn't carry on - the noise was very evident. My
thoughts were that the big ends were on their way out - and the more we carried on the closer we'd be getting to it fully
letting go and throwing a rod through the block. And that would be expensive. We turned a junction and there it was - a Peugeot dealership! Well, if you're going to stop a knackered 205 anywhere, where you you pull in?! We pulled up, had a quick listen to the engine (which sounded - well - f**ked) and turned it off before calling in the support wagon to take us home. At least it was glorious sunshine rather than pissing rain, so we relaxed, looked at some 206 CCs - a nice Peugeot mechanic came over and offered his help too (very nice of him, but if he could fix this I'd be Andy Burton's bitch boy for the day!).
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So that was it - we returned to the hotel, we loaded up, we went to the pub, we went shopping (for the girls, you understand) and
we went home. Not a great first forest event but, to be honest, even the two stages we did confirmed that (i) I wasn't worried
about doing it and (ii) I wanted to do it some more. So it wasn't a total waste of time. Thanks to the gang - Becky and Chris L for their first outing as management car (both did brilliantly), Nikki, Marijke, Chris D and Trev for servicing (sorry to waste your time guys!) and AB Motorsport for their help and support. |