Another short gap in blogging, another catch-up post to write about. Its been a while since my last blog post and a lot has happened.
Last weekend (actually, the weekend before last – its that long ago) my time had come to do my day course at the Silverstone Rally School to try out rallying in a Mk2 Ford Escort, pure rear-wheel drive action! This was my 20th birthday present from my parents way back in December. We decided to stay over at a Travel Lodge near-by Silverstone on the Friday since the day of the action started early on Saturday morning.
I’d also arranged to pick up my new engine for my Mini (the Red one) from MED in Leicester which I ordered several weeks ago, so really it turned out to be a good-ol’ cars weekend, of which my parents and my girlfriend Amey tagged along.
First up then, the MED engine. And wow, its sexy! Let me run through the specifications of this engine quickly… (anyone who doesn’t give a damn, or understand, skip this section!)
Its a 1380cc with 73.5 bore, 0.20 reface, new cam bearings, CM strap, oil ways & an acid dip. The crank has been re-ground to next size, ni-tempered, x-drilled and wedged. The rods are all new and lightened end-to-end. Pistons are of the Omega flavor and have an 11cc dish. The cam is a Piper XTR (about 296 spec) with new followers & pump. I have also opted for new Piper duplex vernier timing gear, a fully lightened and balanced clutch & flywheel with a competition clutch cover and AP turbo clutch plate. And then some gaskets. And breath!…
And some photos. Its beautiful!
Its so nice that I almost don’t want to assemble it, but I will do shortly. Naturally I will photograph and write articles about the entire build, so watch out for them in the near future.
Secondly, my 20th Birthday rally driving experience day. It was incredible! I’ve done a "bit" of rallying before, and when I mean a bit, I mean a very small amount, but nothing like this before. From all the people that were there on the same day as me, we were split up into two groups of about 5, and the group I was with did hand-brake turns firstly. I thought I would have little difficulty doing this since I’ve done plenty in my time of driving, but never in a rear-wheel drive car. One thing that totally seemed to slip my mind was the fact that you must have the clutch down while the hand brake is up. This is really, painfully obvious when you think about it, but for the first couple of times I just couldn’t understand why the car kept stalling. I got the hang of things quite quickly on my 2nd time round the stage, here’s some photos my Dad took of me
The groups swapped around and then my group did power slides – much more fun they told us. We practised this by spinning the car around 180 degree’s around two cones while in 1st gear without hand brake or changing gear, and it proved easy. As the instructor told me, basically point the front wheel in the direction you want to go, with as little as a quarter-lock on, then floor the pedal. The back then kicks around, and you rapidly come off of the power again – job done. I found this quite easy and got the hang of this very quickly.
Next along was to improve on the power slides some more by creating a figure-of-eight around the two cones using the same technique as the power sliding, again no gear changing or hand brake usage involved. Again, I enjoyed this and managed to pick it up quickly. This one was really great fun!
We went to (a very brisk) lunch, organised by the Rally School itself, and shortly got back in the cars to do some more stuff. This time each person in each group in turn will drive the entire stage with no stopping while the instructor tells us how to take each corner, by doing this we will put into practice all of the techniques we’ve learnt from the beginning of the day. This was incredibly nerve-racking while awesomely exiting, although I didn’t do too great since I still couldn’t get the hand brake technique quite right.
By messing up quite a few times on my go, this put me on quite a downer. I was not pleased with myself at all, although I know what I was doing wrong, I just couldn’t help but do it incorrect because of natural instinct. This was so irritating! Anyway, everyone went back inside and both instructors told us all that we were now going to drive the stage at more speed and with proper co-driver-style instructions. We had a 10 minute crash-course in understanding co-driver/driver talk and back out again we went to do our final drive…
My turn eventually came around and I was pumped with adrenaline, ready to go! Off we went and it started well. The first few corners were spot on and I began to relax – I felt this coming to me slightly more naturally. 5 minutes in, however, and again I pulled the hand brake without dipping the bloody clutch, DAMN! The car stalled, but I fired it back up as quickly as possible and floored it ready to enter the next corner. I was quite pleased with my run after I finished and I was hoping my instructor was thinking the same? Here’s some photos of me on my final run.
Everyone went back inside and eventually each of us, in turn, was talked about and handed back our sheet with our scores on them. Apparently a score of half (50 out of 100) is a very good "above average" score. I got 58 out of 100, so I am well pleased with that!
All in all a brilliant, fun day out. Also, both myself and Amey got a ride, in turn, with the instructor driving a full speed! An amazing experience, go try it yourself!