Monday

I'm up bright and early to I get on with some car-cleaning and rally-stickering. Breakfast at the Jabelain is not a culinary tour-de-force, with its cold scambled egg and congealing Arabic slop competing for top honours in the World's Worst Breakfast category. The fact that this establishment boasts exactly no stars is clearly no oversight.

After this uninspiring interlude, I carry on with the car while Sheila and Ian set out on a hunt for suitably-rated 12" tyres, and pick up the GPS, Sentinel and Iritrack from Rally Control. Once fitted, we proceed to Scrutineering for our 1450hrs appointment.

Oh joy. The Toyota Service Centre is heaving with locals and their (alleged) rally cars, and chaos is in full swing. They can't fill in their scrutineering forms properly, and half of their mandatory equipment is either missing or out of date. The schedule has clearly gone out of the window some hours ago, and we finally get through about 1800hrs. We escape with only a minor admonition for the absence of high-mounted stop-lights, to be corrrected before the DC.

We decide to celebrate at a nearby Indian Restaurant, a strange place spotted by Ian. Inside are many colourful murals, fake timber beams, and in interesting menu. It features many previously unheard-of culinary delights, including 'Chicken Jal Freddie', 'American Jobsi', and my personal favourite, 'Chicken Masala Amputation'. (Quite why images of 'Nightmare on Elm Street' run through my mind I am unsure.) However the meal is excellent, and almost as enjoyable as reading the menu.

Sunday

We only lose one more tyre en route to Hail, and I decide to drive the race car the remaining 120km. By 1600hrs we reach Hail's answer to Fawlty Towers - the apalling Jebelain Hotel. They aren't expecting us till Tuesday, and they aren't expecting the four of us to need more than one room. We blag the available room and head out to Maghwat Conference Centre, a.k.a. Rally HQ. After completing our documentation and picking up the rally stickers, and Dr Saleh of SAMF sorts out our hotel problems. By the time we get back to the hotel, we're ready to hit the sack.

On the road again

Saturday
Our convoy of five vehicles - two of them on trailers - sets off from Seih Sheib ADNOC at 0715. By midday we're at the Saudi border and our problems begin. Of the six of us, it transpires that only one has a 'road' visa, and that's me. All the rest are 'air' visas. After a two and a half hour wait and various phone calls, they eventually allow us to enter the magic kingdom.

The short-cut to Riyadh via Haradh and Kharj takes its toll on our trailer. First a tyre delaminates, and we fit the (only) spare. Then I hit something in the dark in Kharj and knacker another tyre and bend the rim. The only available 12" tyre is Kharj is unsuitable, but we buy it anyway, and after attacking the damaged rim with a sledgehammer it is persuaded to fit. But we have little faith in it, and decide to keep it as a spare. That means re-fitting the wheel with the delaminated tyre and praying a lot. Somehow it gets us to Riyadh, where Team FJ have already located a couple of halfway decent 12" tyres for us. The next morning, we fit them and set off again.

The Final (Final) Shakedown

So we're back into dunes this morning, just me and Sheila, to test the revised set-up in the same area that did the damage last time. The on-road temperature never gets above 80c and even on the sand tracks we're not above 90c - so far so good. But the real test is in the big dunes.

There, I manage to get the temperature up to 100c - but not the disasterous 115c of last week. Now 100c is a bit warm, but as soon as I'm on the track beyond, it's down to 90c again.

So what does this mean? Well, the ambient is similar to what we an expect in Hail - mid 20s - and the terrain in Hail is not as extreme as my test area (based on my recollections of last year's route). So I feel reasonably confident that this set-up is good enough to cope with conditions there. However, adding another 15c onto the ambient will probably cause a similar increase in the water temperature, so we will need to upgrade the fans before we attempt the Desert Challenge.

So Mr Pacet can expect to earn some more from me very soon - and if you know anyone who needs a pair of very slightly used 13" fans, let me know!

The Final Shakedown (not)

The fans have arrived, been fitted, been tested in the workshop and on the road and the results look good - they are holding the water temperature at 80-85c. So Friday morning we're back out in the sand to see how the new set-up works in the dunes.

Well, it doesn't. As soon as we hit an HP (off-piste) section , where we're typically in first/second gear and pulling some 4000rpm without a lot of forward speed, the engine overheats. At one stage it reaches the absolute limit of 115c, at which the ECU calls 'time out' and shuts down 4 cylinders. We finish the stage but, considering it's a grey and cool February morning, and we're not actually doing race speed, we're clearly onto a loser. When the DC starts at the end of March, ambient temperature will be around 15c higher than it is now.

So this morning the car's back with Rick at Carwise, and we decide to vent the bonnet and install a bigger radiator. The one we choose is a triple-row after-market unit designed for a Land Cruiser V8. It sits above the chassis rails, unlike the narrower Patrol unit which drops down between them. The change in dimensions will enable us to fit twin 16" Pacet fans, so a new fan-box is being fabricated to accommodate these. But for a first test we'll retain the 13" units we have already. Monday I'll be on the phone to my friend at Pacet, to see how quickly they can ship out a pair of 16" fans.

Saturday morning, ready or not, we leave for Hail.
So no pressure, then....

Water Pump Update

Rick pulled the water pump, and the bearing - although not seized - is shot. We looked at the one off the old engine, and that's the same, plus it's leaking through the seal. Between them they've only done about 9000km - which is singularly unimpressive.

I've looked into electric pumps. A so-called 'high performance' electric water pump is available as a bolt-on replacement for the standard mechanical one, but it only shifts 55 galls/min. This compares with 85g/min on a stock mechanical unit, and 100g/min on the high-flow one. Of course the electric will pump 55g/min at any revs, whereas mechanical ones are rated at around 3000rpm, so the electric probably has the edge at idle. However, at (say) 4500rpm a mechanical one is pumping three times what the electric can manage, so it's pretty clear to me that electric is not a viable option for our sort of usage.

Word from the Autodrome is that they had the same problems with mechanical water pumps on the V8 Luminas - one actually exploded (the pump, not the Lumina)! So now they've gone over to the pump used on the Corvette which has double bearings, and this appears to be reliable. So that's what we're getting.

Rick has fabricated a fan box to fit to the radiator, and the fans (ordered yesterday) are being collected from the Pacet factory today. How's that for customer service? Now I just have to hope TNT don't lose them....

Shakedown Blues

So, the washers are in, the front axle is once more complete, so it’s time for a blat! Except that us rally types don’t just go for a blat – we go for a ‘shakedown’. Now in other circles, a ‘shakedown’ has a different connotation, involving extracting money from people by dubious means. We do that in rallying, too, but we call it ‘sponsorship’.

The purpose of a shakedown is to test the car in a semi-race scenario, and iron out those annoying gremlins which might just stop us from finishing a rally. And if something falls off or breaks, we can grit our teeth and sound happy about it, because it’s ‘better to happen now than in the rally’. However, equally important in this case was to give Ian Rodgers an opportunity to get to grips with the vehicle, and to show me that he could navigate.

So I spent Friday fabricating a mounting in the rear door for my new toy from the States, a 24v rattle-gun, and another for the hydraulic jack. Oh, and trying to find someone to run as chase car with me, because if something does go horribly wrong it’s good to have someone in the vicinity to bail you out. Failing to find anyone else both (a) free and (b) willing, I persuaded Sheila to be our support crew.

Saturday dawned. Well, I suppose it did, but it’s hard to be sure when the country is covered in a thick grey duvet of fog. By 8.30 we were on our way, peering through the gloom and dodging the heavies down the truck road leading to the Abu Dhabi-Al Ain road. Here starts the old SS6 of the Desert Challenge –a 166km route ending just outside Dubai, and therefore not used since the DC became an exclusively Abu Dhabi affair. Soon after 9.30 the fog had thinned enough for us to get moving, and Ian managed the tricky navigation around the farms and tracks pretty well, considering he’d never done the stage before. The car was pulling strongly, the engine temperature was fine, and as the sun gained strength the new roof-vents brought a cooling breeze into the cockpit.

50km into the stage, on a rather flat section with no real challenges, the steering became suddenly heavy and it was obvious that we’d lost power steering. Knowing that the belt that drives the power steering also does some other more mission-critical jobs, like powering the water pump, fan and alternator, it seemed a good idea to stop before anything bad happened. But a quick glance under the hood showed that something bad had, in fact, already occurred. The serpentine belt was off, but the fan and its pulley were also lying in the bottom of the fan shroud. The massive shaft – ¾” I guess – which should connect it to the water pump had snapped like a twig. ‘Oh, bugger’, I said. I may have said it more than once.

Sheila was waiting for us to come through Nahel Town, some 50km from an underpass which was our nearest road access. She negotiated the 10km of tracks and low dunes between that point and our location, and we soon had the race car hooked up to our faithful road-going Patrol. So now I had to tow the race car out, while Ian drove it without much in the way of brakes or steering. After a couple of minor dramas we reached the underpass and – having enough problems already – we decided not to risk the attention of the law by towing it back to Dubai.

That meant 150km back to Dubai, pick up the trailer, back to the underpass, load up the race car and back again to Dubai. By which time it was dark, we’d covered well over 600km and we were knackered.

So, with only three weeks before the ‘Highway to Hail’, we have a broken car. Again. Now the questions are, what caused the problem, and how can we avoid a repeat? Should we change to an electric fan and/or even an electric water pump? The recommendation from Kolby at Turnkey Engines in the States was always to go for twin electric fans of 1600-1800cfm each, whereas the gurus at Marks 4x4 in Oz said to stick with the mechanical fan. However, it looks as though the heavy load on the shaft from the fan may be at least a contributory factor – although until we dismantle the water pump we won’t know if the pump bearing has seized.

After further discussions with Rick at Carwise, we’ve decided to go for the electric fan option. We can fit twin 13” high-performance Pacet Pro-Fans into the available radiator area, which each shift close to 2000cfm, and we need Kolby to ship us another high-output water pump. Hopefully within this week these two items will be winging their way towards Dubai – TNT permitting.

But let’s look on the bright side – it’s ‘better to happen now than in the rally’. There, I said it – through gritted teeth.