Monday, October 20, 2008

20th October 2008

Thursday we decided to take Cesar – our driver/mechanic – out to show him some of the strategic locations for the Desert Challenge, based on previous years’ routes. Having never visited Liwa, it’s important that he can find the bivouac and service points each day! We covered 840km in 10 hours, and logged some useful tracks on my GPS, which he will have in the service truck. Traffic delays on the way down there have made us consider spending the Sunday night in a hotel in Abu Dhabi – it’s either that or a very early start from Dubai.

The race car is back. Carwise have found the problem with the air compressor – the tube which connects to the pressure gauge in the cockpit keeps breaking, so we’ll manage without the gauge. The seat frame has been lowered, to give me a bit more headroom clearance from the rollcage, and a footrest has been fitted. The castor correction on the front axle has also been reduced. Originally there was no compensation for the lifted suspension, and keeping is straight required constant steering corrections, which was very tiring. After we fitted the castor correction bushes, it was fine on the road but it needed too much steering effort off-road. So now we’ve compromised somewhere in between. The HANS (head and neck restraint) devices have arrived, so we also need to try these for the first time.

Friday afternoon was spend shopping for various odd and sods which we need, like a strobe torch (which I know we’ll never use, but must have) and zip-ties and gaffer tape – the two most important things any rally team needs. At the end of the rally, you can always tell the pro teams from the amateurs – the amateurs have their cars held together with grey gaffer tape, whereas the works cars are held together with colour-coordinated gaffer tape. Maybe I should re-spray the car grey…

Another off-road test on Saturday morning allowed us to get stuck (again) and self-recover using our new MaxTrax – 16 minutes this time instead of 34 minutes, so that’s over 50% improvement! Maybe I should try not getting stuck at all… The steering was fine, but the seat position wasn’t, so Saturday afternoon was spent repositioning the seat – not easy, as there is so little clearance to adjust it relative to the rollcage and the bulkhead. Finally, after drilling some new holes in the seat frame, I’m happy with it. HANS is designed to prevent whiplash injuries by preventing your head from being jerked forward in the event of an accident. Great idea, but they are hugely inconvenient, expensive, and don’t seem to provide sufficient restraint to make them effective. But it’s an FIA requirement, so I might as well stop whingeing.

Team T-shirts are arriving today, I’m awaiting the quote for the stickers, and yesterday night I borrowed Gip’s FJ (with tow hitch) and drove over to Sharjah to pick up a trailer which Sanjay (another ME4x4 mate) has kindly lent us for the duration. Gip will take that down on Sunday, loaded with stuff needed at the bivouac. Dave Aldis has lent me another GPS, so Ian Cooper will have one in his car as well. Begging and borrowing is working OK – we haven’t had to resort to stealing (yet).

5 days to go. Mabbsy’s FJ still isn’t registered, and Glen seized his gearbox in his V8 Patrol first time out at the weekend. Maybe we’re not doing so badly after all…….