Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Getting closer...

The traditional last-minute panic to get ready for the DC has now kicked into high gear.

The new helmets have arrived, together with some funky gel-pads to make the HANS devices less painful to wear.  New seats are in.    Robbie has modified the shock-mounts and fitted the sand-ladder mounting brackets.  Nangjel have sorted out the electrics, although that needs a bit of tidying up.  The new heavy-duty battery bracket which Richard fabricated is installed.  The Beast now sports new Bridgestone MT 265/75 R16 tyres - 4 plus 2 spares. So what's left?

Shock tuning -  tomorrow I'm putting the car in to Mebar, for Rashad to work his magic.
Stickers - ready to pick up and be applied this weekend.
New harnesses - I splashed out on some up-market Sabelt ones with nice aluminium adjusters, and they should arrive Sunday/Monday.
Re-registration - always a trial, this one.  I have to get the car over to Bin Sulayem Garage for Rob Bryan to inspect it, and issue the letter which enables the RTA to register it as a rally car.
Spares - need to chase up Arabian Auto for these, but they promised they'd be ready
Photo shoot - the PR people from the DC want a photo of Team NewTrix, so I need The Phantom Blogger to get back from Europe to do the honours.

Meanwhile...we've been seeded 25th for the DC, with race number 326.  That's a bit of an insult really, considering we've never come lower than 18th in any DC that we've finished!  We'll show them...

Over in The Magic Kingdom, the Hail Rally is in progress.  Home favourite Yazeed Al Rajhi (Hummer) is out at the end of day 1, as is Emil Khneisser in his spanking new Nissan-sponsored Y62 Patrol, fresh from Mebar's workshop - both seemingly with engine failure.  Our mate Matar Al Mansouri (UAE, Nissan Patrol) also appears to be having a torrid time of it on day 4, as is Khalid Al Jaflah (UAE, Chevrolet Buggy) - who was leading the event last night.  After some 7 hours in the stage, they both now appear to be moving again, but are still in the desert and a long, long way from the finish.  It will be dark soon so I doubt that they are having much fun.  All the aforementioned are entered in the DC, so they won't have much time to rectify any damage from Hail - one of the reasons we didn't bother this year!
 

Monday, March 10, 2014

More racing, more problems


Apologies to you, dear reader.  I have been neglecting my blogging duties.
With the windscreen replaced, and the front wing temporarily beaten back into shape I took part in the final round of the EMSF Desert Championship on 14th Feb.  This followed the format of the earlier rounds, with a course running some 15km through the desert run multiple times in 2 hours.  All went well until I had a rather hard landing and after that the car was pulling to the right, and it was clear that something had broken loose in the back.  A few minutes later the car stopped, and it became clear what had come loose – the battery had made a bid for freedom.  The retaining bracket had disappeared, so I tie-wrapped it back into position and came back to the pits, found the bracket and mounted the (leaking) battery into position.  Out of the pits I ran straight into the chequered flag, so that meant I had only completed 6 laps, which turned out to be enough to give me 3rd place overall, and 1st in T1.




Thanks to Tim Ansell for these great shots of EMSF R1
Although I only competed in 2 rounds out of 4, two good finishes were apparently enough to win the T1 championship!
For some time, Sh. Abdullah Al-Qassimi (international rally driver and all-round good bloke) has been trying to get a new rally series organized in UAE.  His efforts came to fruition with the announcement of a 3-race series to run from March to May 2014, in conjunction with ATCUAE.  The first event was held last Saturday on a gravel track out beyond Mileiha, suitable for both saloon cars and 4x4s.

Our Friday practice revealed that the car was still pulling heavily to the right, and then we found one of the front right shocks was broken!  This must have happened in the heavy landing and hadn’t been spotted at the time.  With no chance to repair, we removed the shock and ran without it.  After that evening’s ceremonial start on the corniche (with fireworks, no less!), we headed out next day for the event, comprising two stages repeated three times.  Predictably our times weren’t that great, but we completed the event without incident and got 5th place in T1.

The hazards of rallying...
So we have a few issues to resolve on the car: repair the shock, and more important, understand why it broke.  The shock mounts may need some work.  The car in currently at Nanjgel, who are looking at the problem of the car pulling to the right under braking, and also re-fitting the windscreen – the mastic they used originally must have gone off, because it didn’t set properly and has been dripping everywhere!  Robbie also needs to sort out new brackets for mounting the sand ladders.  Then we have to get the car through its annual test, and fit a new 36mm restrictor and new harnesses.   New helmets to meet 2010 FIA regs are on order from Demon Tweeks.

Our team for the fast-approaching 2014 Abu Dhabi DesertChallenge now comprises Richard Bailey, and Rick Carless and Kate Stedman, who are both flying in from UK for the event.  Watch this space…