Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Brakes International

Brakes International Many thanks to Brakes International for their generosity. They are importers and distributors of quality braking components and offered us their support without a moment's hesitation. Richard Bowen at Brakes Int was really kind and got some heavy parts to us by post in no time. We've yet to fit the brakes as it seems only right to get the car 'going' before we worry about getting the car to 'stop'.

Magnecor - technically advanced ignition leads

Electrosports 80 cablesLast weekend the Panda officially became a racecar! Sure we've got stickers and have done a few modifications here and there - but our official arrival on the racing scene began on saturday as we proudly unveiled another sponsor. Magnecor. They make high quality HT leads which maximise the performance of the car's ignition system. Equally important, they are blue. None of these boring conventional black leads - we have racing blue ones now.

Phil, the MD over at Magnecor has been really good, custom making the leads to fit our requirements and spec. Unusually, he'd not had a racing Panda before!

Altitude testing!The race tuning didn't stop there, as we spent the afternoon of Saturday over at John's garage, replacing the petrol tank (once and for all) before having the engine properly tuned so that not only are we slow, but fuel efficient too! John also kindly pressure tested the radiator for us - establishing beyond doubt that it is broken. At one point, with the Panda raised in the air, it was wetting itself from three separate places, leaving 2 blue puddles and a clear one to be swept up.

Sunday, April 17, 2005

Success ratio

We've just arrived back from London and the National Pre-Rally meet weekend, and have achieved undoubtedly our best fuel efficiency stats to date. For the journey of around 120 miles we used probably less than a quarter of a litre of fuel. How? Well, because 99 per cent of the journey was done on the back of an AA van.

Yes, we have once again experienced a spectacular failure on a test-run, taking our tally to a thoroughly un-reassuring 2 failures in our first three trips.

So, what's going on then? In short, our car is showing its age. Its pretty much falling apart, and its our job now to break as many things as possible in the hope that we can fix them for good prior to departing for Mongolia in July. On a positive note, the thing that went wrong today was a new failure, and almost certainly unrelated to any blind tamperings we've done to date. And in the spirit of eternal optimism, it provides us with an 'opportunity' to upgrade the car yet further.

The first warning signs of our impending failure revealed themselves just after fueling up in North London. After initially thinking that Ben was applying an 'advanced' driving technique by kangarooing the car violently - he told me that all was not well - and that the lurching was nothing to do with his tunure at the wheel. I made some feeble effort to ignore the problem by mumbling something about dodgy fuel and that it would clear up. Seconds later, and in the spectacular surrounds of 10 lanes of traffic (yes 10 - 6 lanes of North Circular merging with 4 of A1) the Panda decided that its work for the day was done.

Amid a hail of horns and swerving cars we leapt out for some now well rehersed under-bonnet diagnosis/chin scratching. After a few unsuccessful minutes we then did what can only be descibed as some extreme urban manoeuvering, with Ben pushing the car across the aforementioned lanes of traffic, whilst I steered and counter-gesticulated.
Chin scratching not working

After a bit more chin scratching, the AA man turned up and spent a good while with us trying to revive the patient.
He even plugged it into a heart monitor type machine
He was, to use a cliche, a very nice man. He explained what he was up to and showed us a systematic methodolgy for fault finding, finally concluding that our 'ignition amplifier' was broken. As we had already discovered, this had the effect of making our car not work.

We then had to await the arrival of a second van, to relay us back to Birmingham, and spent the time watching 'Long Way Round' (The Ewan McGregor documentary where he covers most of our route to Mongolia) on Ben's laptop. Whilst marvelling at his hopeless predicament at the far end of the earth, we were living out our own, on the North Circular.
The steepest angle this little 4x4 has climber in years
Five and half hours after setting out from London we finally get home.
At last

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Cosmetic surprises

Well, after our successful road trip to London and Longleat, normal service has resumed and the panda is again temporarily immobile. This is a 'planned immobility' - just until friday when Ben's friendly garage mate John will be tuning up the engine and fitting a new gaitor - which should hopefully keep the gearbox oil in and around the gearbox, rather than on the garage floor.

Given the mobility interlude, it gives us chance to mention a few cosmetic upgrades that have occured. The first is the conclusion of a secret project Ben has been doing. After shiftily nipping to the garage and back for 5 minute periods, every few hours for a couple of days - he finally unveiled the masterpiece that is our rally airbox. Formerly just a lump of boring plastic, we now have our own orange spray-painted rally airbox!

See the ceremonial fitting below.

Proud, so proud

Within the next 48 hours, I hope to announce our second underbonnet surprise and indeed our second corporate sponsor (out of over 200 approaches made now!). There's also some external cosmetics that Ben has been sorting....so much to tell.