Emirates Desert Championship R1

The first round of the 2015-16 Emirates Desert Championship kicked off at Lusaili on Friday.  Being the first race of the season, the EMSF sensibly decided to bring the start forward to 0830hrs to make the most of the cooler morning.  Some 115 competitors – bikes, quads, buggies and 4x4s – set off in waves at 30 second intervals, bikes and quads taking the longer outer circuit while the rest of us took a shorter loop.  It consisted mainly of short, choppy dunes with very few places where you could get any speed up – I spent most of the event in 2^nd gear.



I was still moving at this point...

I started to hear some worrying noises from the front axle early on, but pressed on regardless – until I found that the acceleration of the engine was no longer matched by a corresponding increase in forward speed.  At first I thought that the clutch had given up, but then it dawned that I had no drive to the front axle – the diff had died.  And I was stuck just past PC5.  Eventually the sweep team came to the rescue, and after a bit of faffing about I was free.  With the tyres down to emergency pressure (about 8psi) I was able to get going, and almost made it to the finish.  Suddenly the car just stopped as though I’d pulled on the handbrake (although actually, the handbrake isn’t that good).  So clearly something that had died in the diff was now trapped between moving parts.

Chasing a buggy

We tried towing it.  Forwards, backwards – no chance.  Maybe with a bulldozer, but not with a 4x4. We headed back home to pick up more tools, drinks, shade and returned along with Tim Ansell and Tom Bell to dismantle the front axle to make it mobile.  As it turned out, it needed rather less dismantling than we expected. 

After jacking up both front wheels, you could rotate one and the other would rotate in the opposite direction.  This means the crown wheel and pinion are working.  So removing drive to one hub will get the vehicle working in 2WD, and that’s surprisingly easy.  After taking off a wheel, there is a press-on cap which covers the end of the stub shaft.  Once this is off, there are 6 bolts holding the end plate to the hub, and a circlip holding it onto the splined stub shaft.  With these removed, the plate comes off and there is no longer any drive from the shaft to the hub.  This done, Tom easily towed the Beast out of the desert, so that I could drive it onto the trailer.

Due to some error in the system, EMSF decided I was 3^rd in T1, when really I should have had a DNF.  So I got a nice trophy which I didn’t deserve, and they haven’t asked for it back.  However, it’s ‘nul points’ in the T1 championship, and a new front diff required.



Undeserved trophy
 

Having thought about possibly replacing the ARB rear diff locker (for which I no longer have a working compressor), I have finally decided to give the Lokka a try.  This is a rather clever Aussie invention which by default locks the diff, and only unlocks when one wheel is required to go faster than the other, when cornering on a hard surface.  They are promising a 2 year warranty with no exceptions about race use, so one for the front axle is winging its way over from Australia, hopefully to be fitted before the next round of the EDC on 23^rd.

Big thanks to Tim and Tom for help with the recovery, Tim again for photos, and to EMSF and ATC for putting on another great event!

Down to the Wire

Well, the Painless Performance wiring loom arrived, and shortly thereafter the repaired Monit tripmeters from New Zealand.  Monit, bless them, had not only replaced the PCBs on each unit, but also clearly given me new cases for them as well.  So the only original bit was the screen – effectively they had saved me about £800.  Any company that serves their customers that well – on 7-year-old equipment – deserves a massive vote of thanks.

And so Jason and I (OK, mainly Jason) set about re-wiring the Beast.  Nanjgel had already modified the rear wings and installed a pair of Hilux rear light clusters, which look really good.  Jason did the clever stuff – like figuring out where all the wires go, and what extra bits we needed.  I fabricated and painted a couple of replacement dash panels to accommodate the new switches and indicators, mounted some relay bases in a weatherproof enclosure and generally shouted encouragement from the touchline. 

The job ended up being rather more of a challenge than Jason had anticipated.  The loom and fuse box is designed around American wiring practice, which (it turns out) is not entirely compatible with non-USA vehicles.  Being unable to persuade the ECU to come to the party cost us a couple of days which we could ill-afford, before Nanjgel’s electrician finally came to the rescue.  However, around midday on Friday we decided it was sufficiently ‘finished’ for the following day’s event, and we blatted off to Siyouh to recce the stages in Sheila’s Prado.

The Mobil 1 Rally is the 4^th round of the Emirates Rally Championship, organised by the EMC.  It comprised two gravel stages, each run three times, in an area where we’d previously competed.  Saturday was almost certainly the hottest and most humid day in the last few weeks, which made the event hard work.  Starting 16^th out of 17 cars, we completed the first two stages around midday, and on returning to service were shocked to discover that we were leading T1, by a massive one second margin from Ali Al Shawi.  (Ali, who was already leading the T1 championship, has spent the summer upgrading his Chevy Silverado to multi-link suspension and pruning back the bodywork to pickup-style to make it even more competitive, was pretty shocked as well.)

Low flying

On the second go-round we extended our lead on SS3, before losing it all on SS4 where he went quicker and I pushed too hard and made a few errors.  So after four stages we were 5 seconds adrift from Al Shawi.  We pulled back a second of that on SS5, and did our fastest lap of SS6 – but it wasn’t enough to catch Al Shawi who was a massive 14 seconds quicker on the final stage.  We ended up 18 seconds behind him, 2^nd in T1 and 6^th overall – which coincides exactly with our overall standings in the championship.  17 cars started, 11 finished.  Shk. Abdullah Al Qassimi won the event in his Ford Fiesta, and Sheila once again took home a ‘special trophy’ for being the top lady finisher!

There is still work to do on the wiring.  Despite the repairs to the Monits, Sheila still found them unreliable, with both the trip meters and timers randomly re-setting.  However, the next couple of events are the opening rounds of the Emirates Desert Championship, which I can manage without a co-driver.  The amount of oil the engine consumes is also a concern – I got through at least half a gallon in two top-ups.