The Car
In December 2001 we finally made the first major commitment to go rallying - we got ourselves a car.
Well, we thought it would help!? B135 SUA came into Little Dan's possession, a slightly weathered car
(having being sitting outside unused for 18 months) but sound where it counted. A little bit of TLC
wouldn't go amiss, but the little bounder showed promise. Being a Group A car it had some nice bits on
it, including a Grp A 1905cc lump, Alcon 4-pots at the front, Bilsteins all round, etc.
It also came with tonnes of spares, including 12 rims with forest tyres, 8 additional slicks (not
much use), a spare Skip Brown blueprinted 1.9 engine and various other odds'n'sods.
It was duly trailored back to Birmingham (the trailer included in the bargain) to it's new home, where
the coming months would see some fettling and prepping ready for it's 2002 season...
Thanks to Big Dan for the use of his poor old Freelander, into which we had to cram several rims
and buckets of greasy spares!
After a certain degree of testing and stripping apart, it turned out that the car was... errm... how shall I put it.... a bit of a duffer? Slowly but surely a long list of problems started to raise their ugly heads but thankfully, such was the good deal I got on the car, there was enough money in my "budget" to fix it. This amounted to :-
- Missing left hand bush in rear beam, resulting in severe free play in suspension!
- Completely mis-adjusted gear linkage
- Knackered clutch (replaced with new)
- Missing bearing sleeves in front uprights - these had wound the top mounts oval and twisted
one of the Bilstein strut inserts. On top of this, the uprights had never been serviced and were completely knackered. I ended up replacing the whole front end, which was expensive but
didn't half make a difference.
- Front wheel bearings - hub nuts were finger tight and so the bearings had worn themselves through
- Handbrake binding - hydraulic handbrake was mal-adjusted. This resulted in binding rear brakes that
eventually sheared the rear discs off the hubs.... oops!
- Mismatched ECU - fuck me sideways if this alleged "Group A ECU" didn't turn out to be a Vauxhall
Astra ECU, complete with poxy fucking 5500rpm rev limiter. Yep, it's pin compatible with the Pug and *will* run the engine, but well? Forget it. Replaced with standard ECU.
- Knackered dizzy - just plain shagged, all the springs had broken in it giving no advance curve whatsoever
- Straight Cut Gearbox my fucking arse too! The gearbox in it was a standard BE1 helical, and the spare BE3 box proved to be standard too. So we skipped those two little beauties, thanks very much
- ...and while we're at it with gearboxes, the so-called "Limited Slip Diff" turned out to be another fantasy component...
- Leaking power steering rack - needed a new seal no longer made by Peugeot, hence a custom repair
job. Missed first event no thanks to THAT little gem.
On top of this, I had to spend some money of a few typical things like new tyres, seats, trip meter
and harnesses. We swapped the Group A engine out for the Group N Skip Brown motor - it may have been
down on power slightly BUT it was a "known" spec engine - I knew it's history and knew it was going to
be reliable, so this was more important in our first year. While we swapped it in, I changed the
cam belt, plugs, filter, oil and so on. We also took the chance to fit the new clutch, a 1600 gearbox
(shorter gear ratios) and a Tran-X plate-type LSD.
I also treated the car to a new set of Compomotive MO wheels, new brake pads and a shift indicator!
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