Following two seasons of Comp. Safari racing in the Association of Northern Car Clubs championship and the Yorkshire Rover Owners Club League, the time had now come to have a go at something closer to stage rallying. Auto Trader agreed to help us out with some of the costs and a service crew was arranged in association with Lanro 4x4.
The motor, a coil sprung V8 Lightweight, was rebuilt for racing two years ago with a spaceframe roll cage. Preparation for the Scottish Hill Rally meant replacing the fuel tank with a larger one and adding a backbody to the truck cab design. In addition the diffs, front and rear, were replaced with pinned units courtesy of Lanro 4x4.
To keep costs to a minimum we were to share service and transport arrangements with Glen McKeith and Gary Docherty.
Glen and Gary are old hands when it comes to Hill Rallies so as novices both myself and Matthew were hoping to pick up a few pointers to help us along the way. Glen was last years ANCC Comp Safari Champion and has won his class in both the Scottish and the Welsh Hill Rallies.
Friday morning was spent going through the usual paperwork, scrutineering etc... and we were given our start time for the event. The first motor, the Simmonite sisters, was due out at 14:30, we were running at number 41 with a start time of 15:11.
The first road section gave us the chance to relax a bit and with the motor running sweetly we were quietly confident of a good event. We got to the start of the first section in plenty of time and waited outside the first time control for our allocated arrival time. A couple of minutes passed and we were at the start of our first Hill Rally stage, the start marshal counted off the seconds and we were away.
The stage was set out over coarse grassland so we set off at a good pace, about quarter of a mile from the start the engine dropped in power with apparent fuel starvation, forcing us to slow down to a crawl. A few seconds later and the engine returned to normal and we were away again with both of us hoping that it was a one-off problem. The same problem re-occurred a couple of miles later, this time with a vengeance, causing us to take three attempts at a small hill climb. Matthew took the decision to change the filter in the fuel pump as we had had similar problems a couple of years earlier on our first Comp. Safari together. On that occasion cleaning the filter had done the trick. We pulled over and pulled out the tool and spares box. Four minutes later and we were back rolling again. With the new filter in place the motor ran without a hitch and we exited the stage under full power and pulled in for our first 15 minute service halt.
This was not an auspicious start to our first Hill Rally but after both filters were checked at the service interval some debris had been found and we were hopeful that this would be nothing more than a minor hickup.
The second stage, Clow, started well but once again after the first mile or so of the 7 mile stage the engine started to die again. We limped on and found that during the downhill sections the engine recovered but any long uphill sections and it would start cutting out again. It is perhaps unfortunate that Clow has, probably the longest, steepest climb of the Hill Rally with a 120 metre climb out of the valley bottom. True to form a quarter of the way up and the engine died again. After several failed attempts Matthew decided to give it a try in reverse - the engine recovered and we successfully climbed our way up to the top.
Having crawled our way out of Clow, covering a good mile or so of it in reverse gear, we were only just ahead of the course closing car and knew we were running close to the wind, being over our due time by 18 minutes. On the road section to stage 3 the engine died again, this time on the flat. With the course closer now with us all I could do was wait and watch the time tick away as our remaining 12 minutes over dissapeared and we eventually had to concede defeat and hand in our time cards.
Half an hour later we were back on the road to Perth again where we stripped the fuel system in the hope we would be able to run with the National B competition that runs in tandem with the main Hill Rally on the Saturday.
Glen and Gary were having a much better day with everything running well. Glen was leading his class from the start, putting in competitive times all day in the TDi 90. The Knockhill stages allowing him to really show what diesel power can do with times in the top ten.
Saturday morning we were ready to do battle again. The fuel tank had been drained and filtered twice and we were confident that all the "foreign bodies" had now been removed. We, along with the other refugees from Friday, were scrutineered and placed into a new class - class Z. Once again we were towards the back of the field, this time following the National B entries.
Saturdays first stage, stage 9 went well. The fuel problems seemed to have disappeared and we pulled into the first service of the day full of confidence. Stage 10 was again going well until near the end of the 7 mile stage when the all too familiar fuel starvation problem struck again. We managed to make it to the end of the stage without losing too much time but Matthew decided to change the filter again on the road section.
We arrived at the start of stage 11, 8 minutes over our due time only to find that the stage had been stopped due to "an incident" on the stage. This meant we would have at least 40 minutes spare to strip the pump, again. The stage was eventually cancelled so we headed back to the next service. Once there, Mick Stephani, having retired due to EFi problems, helped us out with a new fuel filter.
Glen and Gary, meantime, had not been having a good day at all. They had rolled, having hit a gate post, early in the day and now had come in with steering box problems. The service crew were swarming over the vehicle replacing the power steering box as fast as they could. We left the service area slightly ahead of them, and aware of their tight time situation, we did what we could to ensure we weren't holding them up. Just before the start of stage 12 we overshot a road junction by a few yards so we swapped positions allowing Glen to start the stage before us.
We set off into the stage and once again the engine was behaving and we seemed to be going well. About a mile or so into the stage we came round a sharp left bend to find Glen and Gary parked up at the side of the track. We stopped to find out if we could do anything to help (they were still running first in class in the National A competition). A track rod end had snapped at one end of the drag link we had a spare in the motor, they didn't. Matthew got out and unhooked our spare and some tools and we set off again.
At the start of stage 13 we were once again held up as the stage was missing a doctor so couldn't be run. We spent the time relaying messages, via the radio and mobile phone, between Glen and the service crew as Glen struggled to make it to the start of the stage having finally got out of stage 12. Unfortunately the drag link we use on our motor is a later type, about 3 inches longer than the normal one and this was giving Glen some interesting steering characteristics. He could get full left lock but hardly any right lock at all. Sadly, they eventually had to admit defeat and retired from the event.
Stage 13 was one of the longer stages of the day at 14 miles long and it seemed to go on forever. Mostly set across heather clad moorland we had some navigational problems - most of the markers appeared to have been mowed down by earlier competitors. Somehow we managed to keep on the track and found our way to the end, thankful for the 40 minute service interval that followed.
Stage 14 highlited one of the potential hazards of a Hill Rally and left an indellible impression on both of us. We caught up to a Lada with a large dent in the rear end and, having got used to the camerarderie of our fellow competitors, didn't expect this to be a problem. The Lada driver, on the other hand, decided to make it difficult and we were forced to try and overtake on a long downhill stretch. The back end decided to overtake the front as things got a bit out of shape and we had to go through a gateway, halfway down the hill, sideways. Somehow Matthew managed to get the thing back under control and I opened my eyes again only to see the back end of the Lada rapidly approaching. For a moment I thought we were going to add to the dent but we missed. We then had to follow him through a long densely wooded section for the next half mile or so. I can only speculate as to how he got the dent in the back door but I have my suspicions ! Stage 14 also saw the downfall of the Simmonite sisters. Having led the event from the start, they retired with a broken half shaft.
One last service and we were back out for the last two stages, the first was a re-run of the shortest stage of the day at 4 miles. The second was the longest of the day at 17 miles. The fuel problem had been diagnosed at last, we now knew for certain that it was the pump that was dying, not the blocked filter we had earlier thought. We didn't have a spare so all we could do was cross our fingers and hope that it would survive the last few miles.
Stage 15 saw the return of the fuel starvation problems but, somehow, we always seemed to make it to the next downhill section where the engine recovered again as the carbs filled up.
At last we made it to the final stage. Matthew attacked the stage pretty hard, feeling at last that he was starting to get the measure of the terrain. Every now and again the fuel pump would give us a bit of a scare but then it would spring back to life again. After what seemed an eternity we finally saw the marker for the last junction and headed up a narrow, tree lined, lane towards the finish marker. The engine coughed, spluttered and we came to a standstill. Matthew dropped it into low box to try and creep up the hill, knowing that if we could make it to a downhill section we would be OK. Eventually we crawled our way to the top and once again the engine sprang into life as we headed downhill to the finish.
Once through the finish all we had to do was get back to Perth for the finish at the final time control. The fuel pump had other ideas and once again we were parked at the side of the road, stripping the fuel pump. Now well practiced at this, Matthew had the job done in a couple of minutes and we made our way back to Perth having met both our main objectives for the day, to finish and to enjoy ourselves. I'm glad to say we did both.
If all goes according to plan we now have a couple of months to get ourselves and the motor prepared for the next Hill Rally, the Welsh. We are now going to change the fuel system with two new fuel pumps running in parallel - if we fail to finish at the Welsh it won't be a fuel pump problem again...