Monday, January 31, 2011

Living slightly over the edge

...staring into the abyss.

Got the car back last night, and spent till 1.00am doing stuff, like improving the jack mount and making the steering wheel point straight ahead when the wheels do. But the serpentine belt (which drives pretty much everything) was knackered so the first job this morning was to find a six-rib belt 2020mm long, how hard can that be? Well, it took all morning but eventually I returned triumphant to fit the belt and finally take the car out for a blat (oops, I mean shakedown). This was around 2.00pm.

All started well. The water temperature, even in some tricky 2nd-gear dunes, was getting only up to 85c and everything felt good. Then the 16" fan stopped working and the temp started to rise. I nursed it back out of the dunes and onto a gatch track - when suddenly the rear end made a very unhealthy noise and I ground to a halt. (That was the car's rear end, by the way, not mine. Just thought I should make that clear.) After some phone calls to Gareth, I decided to remove the rear prop shaft (in the middle of a sandstorm) and see if that made any difference, which it didn't. 'It's the diff', says Gareth. Anyway, to cut a very long story short, Gareth and Katrina dragged my trailer out into the desert behind his F150 and, after a few dramas, stucks, and a shredded trailer tyre, got the Patrol back to the blacktop where it was picked up by a recovery truck about 8.00pm this evening.

So now we only have to:
- sort out the diff
- sort out the fan
- make various lights and the firex system work
- weld a 24mm 1/2" drive socket onto the nut which holds the jack down (to create my patented quick-release mechanism, using the rattle-gun)
- apply all the stickers (did I mention they arrived - and half of them were wrong? Don't ask..)
- get the carnet from ATC and the police permission for the car to go to Saudi
- pay Saeed for the transport
- change the wheels and tyres
- fix a leaking spare tyre
- fix the new air tank valve which leaks
- and shakedown the finished product? Yeah, right...in my dreams.

By my calculations we (i.e. mainly Gareth) have about 40 hours to achieve these miracles. So no pressure, then.

On the plus side, Mark and Fadi have given up the unequal struggle with Saudi beaurocracy to get visas, and will now concentrate on the DC. So that's two cars we won't be behind in Hail.

The other day, I put out a call to Al Thika Packaging's service engineers, asking if anyone was interested in joining us for the DC adventure. This involves long hours of boredom whilst camping in the desert, interspersed with periods of panic-stricken activity which can go on all night, whilst being sand-blasted and periodically deafened by the testing of other competitors' vehicles. So far only one engineer has decided that he's sufficiently desperate to escape from fixing packaging machines for a week to volunteer. So - welcome to the crew, Fred Santiago! Fred normally services our customers' machines in Oman, and clearly has no idea whatsoever what he's let himself in for. Maybe I should keep it that way...

Stay tuned for the next nail-biting instalment of 'The Race to Hail'.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Living on the edge

Well, Saturday came and went, A2B didn't get the power steer pump back till just short of closing time, and then found that the damned machine shop had pressed the pulley on too far - meaning it's out of line with the fanbelt. Brilliant - they only had to copy the position of the old one, but clearly that was beyond their wit. So rather than send it back to the idiots at the machine shop, Gareth is going to make up some shims to space it off the engine block and bring it back to alignment. However, they have managed to complete a list of other jobs, like making a new mounting for the trolley jack, and lock-wiring the hub bolts, so the pump is the last item. Potentially, some time tomorrow (now our weekend is over) I might have it. I'll just have to bunk off work to do a shakedown.

Meanwhile, I can leave you with some links to videos featuring NewTrix Racing!

This one shows us on the prologue for the Hail Baja 2010, at about 3min 30.

Yet another link to the same event, showing the start of Day 1, again we're about 3min 30 into the video.

Finally, this one shows us starting Day 2 at about 7min 50.

This one contains some in-car footage from DC 2010, and was kindly edited by Rick Carless, my Technical Manager. Watching this is about as close as I can get to driving a rally car at the moment, which is a bit sad!

Further news of the Hail Rally is that the Toyota Team are planning to run two Toyota FJs, including the V8-engined prototype which Abdullah Bakhashab (absent from the 2011 crew) piloted last year. They've asked for help in shipping 1200L of AvGas from Dubai to Hail - yet another team with problems!

Rumour has it that Nasser Al Attiyeh, fresh from victory in the Dakar, may compete in one of the VW Touregs. Yazeed Al Rajhi will be trying for 3rd straight victory in the event, driving an Overdrive Nissan Navara.

In the continuing absence of any worthwhile website from the Hail Rally organisers, you may be able to find updates at Neil Perkins' NDP Publicity website.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Still no car - AAARGH!

Well it's good news/bad news back at A2B garage. The best bit of good news is that they reckon they've found the cause of the overheating headers and the backfiring - seems that the camshaft position sensor was never connected. And I mean NEVER, as in it wasn't connected for Hail 2010 or DC2010! So that fact that we did as well as we did is a minor miracle. Funnily enough, Gareth reports that it 'runs much better' now it's connected - there's a surprise! Could this have been contributing to our earlier overheating problems?? I suspect so.

Bad news is that the new power steer pump wasn't a simple drop-in replacement, the fittings are wrong and the pulley needs a spcial tool to press onto the pump - so it didn't get finished yesterday. Now we're shooting for a shakedown on Saturday afternoon. Nothing beats the excitement of leaving it all till the last minute, does it?

There are still various tidying-up jobs to finish off but, if it runs tomorrow, I'll feel a whole lot happier. And by Sunday, all three of us will have Saudi visas in our passports, which is another step closer to Hail.

Some consolation is the fact that most of my fellow-competitors from the UAE are in at least as bad a state as us. Mabbsy's FJ is still not finished, Team Saluki have visa problems, and work is still in progress on the two Predator Buggies Mark and Fadi Melky plan to drive. His old Honda-powered Fast & Speed buggy has been re-engined with a Nissan 4L V6, and now belongs to Nazer Shanfari, but so far it's not been tested.

My old friend Saeed Al Hameli has decided to rent a complete car transporter, so I've bought a slot on that. I've decided that Dh4500 to save towing the race car 3500km is money well spent, although it does mean that the car has to be ready to pick up Wednesday evening, rather than next Saturday - which is when we plan to head off in Sheila's Prado.

Weather in Hail is a chilly 8 deg.c. at night and only 22 at midday, so I think we'll be needing the thermal underwear more than the sunscreen. At least the engine has no excuse to overheat this time!

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll!


Is it really that long since I last updated the blog? Has anything worthy of note happened in the interim? Are we going to be rallying this year?

I am happy to give you the answers to these pressing questions, which are yes, yes, and inshallah.

Well, the clutch got reassembled, but when road testing it made a horrid noise, so we had to drop the gearbox again and take it out, check it, not find anything wrong, carefully re-assemble it and it worked OK. Big sigh of relief – until it went out on the road with its new radiator. It returned from a quick trip to the traffic lights and back with the headers glowing red-hot, which is generally considered to be a Bad Thing. My first guess – subsequently borne out by my mate Kolby at Turnkey Engines – was an overly lean mixture. The big question is - why? We haven’t messed with the ECU or anything else, so maybe we’re short on fuel pressure, or the airflow sensor is under-reporting the amount of air going in. Or something.

Anyway, we needed to get the paintwork sorted and the dent in the rear door fixed, so as soon as it comes come out of the paintshop, we can concentrate on the mixture problem. Fortunately Mark Adams, Saluki Motorsport’s chief tuning guru, is about to arrive from UK, and we may need to call on his expertise. And time is running out.

And so to Hail. While marshalling at the Yas Marina F1, I had a fortuitous meeting with Richard Phillipson (photo attached), who has rallied extensively in saloon cars throughout Europe. I mentioned that I was looking for a co-driver for Hail, and (mad fool that he is) he immediately volunteered! Together we took on the job of course opening for the Dubai International Rally in the ‘00’ car last month, and managed to get through two days without coming to blows, so it’s settled. We plan to leave Dubai on 5th Feb, 8th Feb is the prologue, and the main event is Feb 9th-10th. Since the Saudis still refuse to allow Sheila to compete, the event is not part of the 2011 FIA Cross-Country World Championship, but it is still an FIA event. Sheila will once again be our indispensible Team Manager.

Now, if only we had a car…