Endurance Rallying: First Round Gearbox Drama
New Car Syndrone Strikes - broken engine mount causes retirement on the Audi South West
Audi South West Endurance - 6/7th March 2009
The first round of the 2009 Endurance road rally championship didn't go quite as planned! The car went through scrutineering without much difficulty, but only only the 2nd selectif, the problems began! One of the gear selector links popped off - this is a nylon bush right next to the exhaust. Of course it wasn't really easy to put back on because you couldn't reach it from the top and from the bottom the sumpguard was in the way - so 8 mins lost before we'd really started.
This didn't inspire me with much confidence over the next few selectifs and the gearchange seemed sloppier than it should, as well as a gradually worsening knock on drive take up. Nonetheless we did manage to catch up with another car even though the selectifs were quite short (less than 3 miles that one I think).
The selctifs were mainly forest based and really good fun, although the pace was a bit fast for a car without a full cage (this is no.1 on my must do list). I was enjoying the Oakhampton camp stage a lot until the linkage popped off again. This was put right in much faster time, but some investigation at the end of the selectif identified the real fault - the gearbox engine mount has snapped. Without anything sensible to hold the 'box up with we had to cut to the tea halt (another 60+ mins lateness due to selectif maximums). The very effective Banham technical assistance managed to chain it back together to enable us to continue for the Friday night section.
I don't know what it is about when the sun goes down and the spot lights go on, but these were the sections that I enjoyed the most by miles. I just really enjoy rallying at night. That said we had a load of trouble on the regularities - the first IRTC we were virtually spot on, but then we met a nice lady on a very narrow bit of lane. She didn't want to reverse, and wouldn't pull into the side (it was a bit tight and rocky to be fair), so eventually we had to do a load of reversing. Didn't make a lot of difference to us following events earlier in the day, but it would have been a disaster if we'd been in contention (1m40 lost). Despite that I'll still stick up for these - I like the road sections.
Gradually the gears were getting worse - 5th was near impossible to find, and very sloppy between some of the others. We tightened the chain and bolts back up at the end of the evening, then continued in the morning for several sections. We picked up a puncture, and a big egg in one of the tyres and decided to call it a day having gained the experience we wanted and not wanting to do further damage to the car.
I doubt a front cage will be in place for the EACS so will still be taking it a bit sensible (early excuse there) but hopefully the rest will be all sorted!
Thanks to Andy Manston for the on event photos. http://www.mandh-photography.co.uk