First rule of rally car ownership - never piss off the car. I jinxed us for Caerwent the minute I parked up a new 205 shell in the garage and started stripping it next to the old one. I'd done lots of softly-spoken reassuring words like the books tell you, telling it that "it wasn't going away" but just having a bit of work done - like a major organ transplant of every component into another body. Poor thing probably pictured me as some sort of Dr. Frankenstein, bless it.
The clocks click forward on Sunday 28th March 2010, and with the alarm blaring out a 5:30 "Get up, lazy arse" my body can't help but refute, passionately, that it is in fact 4:30 and that said alarm clock should be slung up the wall to shatter into a thousand pieces. Nonetheless Mike and myself do our best zombie impressions and stumble to the venue to grab a pitch.
The morning seems to go on forever while we wait for our 9:21 start time, but it gives us chance to swap tyres for what looked to be a dry day ahead. Off the line for stage 1 and all seemed fine until a couple of miles in. Braking for one of the millions of 90 right's within the venue, the back stepped out of line - not normally unusual in a 205, but when it does it on a straight piece of road it's rather odd. We just about caught it but the nose had run wide and clouted the end post of a run of fencing, smashing the front bumper and headlight. I can then only assume there was something else in the undergrowth, because the car was punted up in the air and onto two wheels and all indication was we were going on our roof. Dave provided some verbal threatening to the car, something along the lines of "Get back down, you bitch!". Clearly this forceful, masterful approach works well with the ladies when coming from Dave and the car duly obliged and landed back down on all four, and off we went.
In that first stage we passed lots of retired crews, so it seemed that Caerwent was living up to its usual reputation. Mechanical carnage was evident - CV joints cluttering the road, and even halfshafts being spat at us out of the back of Escort Cosworths (really; how rude!). I think it's fair to say we were both struggling with nausea; maybe Dave a little more due to the nature of having to read a map while getting jossled left and right round tight 90 degree corners. We weren't really "in the flow". We catch up an Impreza, and Dave heads for the horn - only to find that their location, behind the left-hand corner of the front bumper, means they are now shattered to pieces and laying in front of a fence end-post somewhere.That'll be no horn then.
Stage 2 came and went without too much in the way of antics. We were catching and passing about 3 cars per stage, but thankfully each time was in a location where there was plenty of passing room so it never really held us up. But we just weren't competitive. 90% of the stage was tight 90 degree lefts and rights. Coupled with a 1st gear ratio that was too short, and a 2nd gear ratio that meant the engine was out of it's sweet spot, I was giving the clutch lots of abuse to get us out of them at a decent pace. The new Reiger suspension up front was working absolutely beautifully but there was one big problem - the droplinks were now the wrong length and I could not reconnect the front ARB. This left us running a very soft front-end and there ultimately just wasn't enough grip/turn-in for the tight stuff we were having to cope with.
It was obvious that no amount of pushing would get us anywhere respectable so we just settled back to a comfortable pace. On SS3 I decided to showboat for a cameraman on a hairpin left, but this was when Rule 2 came into effect. I tugged the giggle stick (ooer missus) and sweet FA happened apart from a clunk at the back end, and then a groaning and grating noise from the back right wheel for the rest of the stage. Worried something serious had happened, I slowed down to try and figure what was going on - we crawled through the rest of the stage and limped back to service, where we discovered a seized caliper had sheared the disc of the hub mating face. The car was seriously unhappy with some of the toys in it's pram, and was doing it's level best to eject them all as quickly as it could. Unbelievably, we were only 6 seconds slower than our previous run through, so if it hadn't of sheared we'd have been in for a pretty good stage time.
A very kind crew leant us a spare rear disc, and Mike set about unseizing the caliper. We were back out on SS4 and this time with a fully working set of brakes - and a suspected culprit for the curious sideways-moment that happened on stage 1. The brakes were now a lot better but the soft setup was still hampering us on the twisty bits. Coupled with lots of blocks to stop cutting of corners, it soon became a very boring point-and-squirt between corners. The saving grace was two flat-out sections that were absolutely cracking fun. A long straight with a couple of flat rights saw us nudge the limiter at 125, but the best was a flat-out blast between some ammo dumps with a junction-over-crest. I figured if there was one bit of the whole stage that this suspension was going to be safe over, it was that, so kept the foot planted and just hurled the car over it - and it just soaked it up and flew over. Beautiful; I can't wait to try Epynt on this suspension!
The drama seemed to be leaving us behind, and as we queued for the start of SS5 we had the opportunity to turn the car off and enjoy the gorgeous weather, and have a chat with some surrounding crews while we waited for the stage to clear. The fresh air did us well and when it came time to start moving I was feeling pretty darn good. It might even have been the onset of a 'groove', who knows. I certainly don't, because when I hopped in the car and turned it on, bugger all happened. The lights went all dim. The starter refused to do anything. And then I noticed whisps of smoke from the master switch.
Expletives. A few of them. It was deserved, I thought, because annoyingly this wasn't the first £20-odd master switch I'd been through. This is the second time I've had one go on me. When you retire because you'd been a numpty and stuffed the car into something, or you've done something that broke a part, you can make peace with it because at least you can point to yourself as the culprit and call yourself a twat. But there was no-one nearby from Autolec that I could hurl verbal abuse at. We were out, simple as that, and all down to a poxy (but critical) electrical connector. Bypassing it didn't really sit comfortably with me, given how our luck was going.
Given that there was only 3 more stages to go, we got pulled back to service (thankyou to the kind gentleman in the Land Rover) and just called it a day. To be honest, I think we were all happy for the 'early bath', so to speak, as we were all knackered from the early start anyway and it wasn't turning out to be our best day. In hindsight, I should have just left the Bilstein suspension on, but the temptation to try out the new suspension before it gets built into a new car was too much. It's been a while (Rally of the Midlands in 2008) since we had a no-finish, so I guess we can't complain. The new engine ran faultlessly all day, not that the power was really put to any use apart from the couple of big straights, so that was a positive to take away.
Thanks to all marshals and organisers for a well-run event, but also to the crews, scrutineers and other guys with whom we had some good banter all day long; certainly lifted the spirits! Thanks to Mike for spannering, along with Dave, Kev and the rest of the guys and gals from "Team Avagoo" rallying, who helped look after us over the day - it was very much appreciated guys, thankyou. See you all at MIRA, maybe?
