Wednesday evenings in the summer means Grass Autotests, and I’ve been out on my clubs local events.   We managed to get 5 of the 7 rounds to run between the rain storms of this summer, the first 2 rounds I was runner up in the RWD class to an MGTF my excuse was that I was carrying a passenger, My 5 year old for one round and one of our rally marshals who had never seen an autotest before and wanted to see what it was all about for the other, so probably not fully committed on the runs, a damp field for the 3^rd round worked in my favour with a class win as Trevor in the  MG was demoted to 4^th in class in slippery conditions. Round 4 was very dry so the class win went to my usual rival in the RWD class, Jim in an MX5 who also took overall FTD on the event with a very impressive drive, while I hung onto another 2^nd in class, The final round was wet again so I went all out, with 4 bags of sand in the boot and tyre pressures dropped to below 10psi to maximise traction, this gave me my second class win and got me just half a second of overall FTD, This gave me  1^st in the RWD class for the championship and 2^nd overall just behind a bloke called Dave in a Corsa.

Having really enjoyed the Lake District Targa event we decided to support the first event of this format (mostly based on the tests rather than navigation and regularity), to be held in the Midlands. It was run by a Derbyshire club which are known for running rough Rallies but they promised some smooth venues so we gave it a go. The day started lined up in scrutineering between a row of fully stage prepared Subaru’s and Escorts which looked a bit worrying, but the first two tests were at an old grass airfield with a series of tarmac and gravel perimeter tracks, they were a lot bigger and faster than the Lakes event but we were really enjoying it and surfaces were fine. Next up was a quarry which we’ve used before on Night rally’s, I knew this was a bit rough, but it was also very wet and muddy so a sensible drive through, kept us on the road in a respectable time. The forth test was through a farm, it started out on a fabulous tarmac drive which meandered through the fields to the main house, through the farm yard round some cones and out up the hill on a broken concrete track, and on to the final section along a dirt track, this was a little rough and rocky so I backed off slightly to the finish. The final 3 tests before lunch were at Darley Moor Race circuit, Having spent plenty of time testing there with Honda Racing in the past we were discussing how they would use the circuit on the way down the road link section, only to arrive and find the circuit was in use for a Cycle race that day and we were actually on the disused bits of airfield the other side of the fence. The First of the 3 tests was on the end of the runway round Silage and gravel heaps with plenty of dust and mud on the broken tarmac to slide around on, big smiles all round. The next Test took us down the side of the race track and clearly hadn’t been used for many years as it was very overgrown, and this was where the front valence bit the dirt, I still don’t know what we hit but the front panel was folded up both sides of the sumpguard. The 3^rd test was a freshly laid gravel track linking up old aircraft parking bays which were set up with hay bales for us to slide round, again great fun and plenty to talk about as we arrived at lunch. The afternoon was a repeat of the morning with the tests run in the opposite direction as we worked our way back up to the Start/Finish venue. The Darley tests being the exception to the rule as there was not time to turn them round between the last car finishing and the first car arriving for its 2^nd run so they just sent us the opposite war round some of the cones and gravel heaps to keep the crews on their toes. The 2 young ladies on the start of the 3^rd test at Darley were clearly out for a Dirty weekend as the Escort in front of us covered them in mud as he spun the wheels turning right off the start line. The 2^nd run through the Farm was enlightening as we had a bit of a que at the start so saw a few cars setting off, the rough track which I was taking at about 50mph was now at the start and I watched a 2.5L Subaru leaping several foot in the air as he pulled 4^th gear along it, the same was true of the Meandering tarmac drive way where he had clearly taken the straightest route from the farm to the finish across the grass, We spoke to Guy at the finish who told us he took the Bogey time (30mph target limit) on that test as he was actually some 50 seconds quicker in reality, I on the other hand was happy to get within 6sec of the ideal and finish with all 4 wheels still attached. We had a fairly fun afternoon even if we knew we weren’t going to be challenging for a win, however on the final test of the day we lost about 30 seconds at the grass airfield, when we met a farmer in a pickup truck coming the wrong way down the track we wanted to get to the finish, not a lot anybody could do about it, but it cost us a top 10 finish at the end of the day and probably several of my nine lives.

We did this event last year and despite losing a calliper bolt and having to limp to the finish with a large collection of penalties we really enjoyed the event and promised to go back for a decent go at it again in the future. Roll on June 2017 and we heading back up to the Lakes from the midlands, to the start at Penrith Truck Stop, I’m not sure Kingpin winter remoulds were the best tyre choice for cruising up the M6 after a week’s heatwave, and I might of used the word blancmange more than once when describing them on the journey up there, but hopefully they will work on the event, as forest tyres are not allowed. The event starts with Scrutineering, a trucker’s breakfast and then we watched the first few cars on the test at the truck stop before our first run.  Test 1 was slaloming cones up and down the bays of the truck stop, from here we went off to Kirkbarrow farm for a Y shaped test round a cattle shed, I didn’t make the most of the handbrake turns either side of the shed so cost us a few seconds on this test. The 3rd run was a forest track at Thornsgill, where a TR7 had gone off in front of us the previous year so I took this one neat and steady, much to my surprise we were 4^th fastest overall on this test.  The next test was called Bridge as it was a single track tarmac road through a field which went over a stone hump back bridge and was then cut short by the new A66 at which point we did a 3 point turn and went back down the track, I however missed judged the stop line on the reverse and picked up a 10 second penalty.  Threlkeld mining museum had us winding round lots of old machinery in a former quarry followed by Grapevile Ind Est where we had to spin round a cone in the parking bay, having seen the car in front take about 5 attempts to get round it, I chickened out trying to spin round it as the buildings were fairly close and just drove past it reversed back the other side and drove round it again, just before the end of the test Chris called a stop in the box, I even comment that the box was a bit tight, only to pick up another line fault for over shooting the stop astride line. The final 3 tests of the morning were back at Penrith, 2 at the cattle Market which is a great venue using the access perimeter road and on and off the gravel carparks, followed by a repeat for the first test at the truck stop, before handing in our time cards for lunch to find out we were 6^th overall after the mornings run.

The Afternoon restarted with a trip back the Penrith Cattle Market to repeat the 2 morning tests, practice doesn’t seem to help me as I went 1sec slower on both tests in the afternoon, I think trying too hard meant carrying too much speed and going sideways rather than making progress on the gravel. From here we headed to High field which seemed to be a concrete 2^nd world war airstrip slowly being taken over by a field so plenty of dirt and grass to slide around on as we slalomed and 360’ed round cones; watching the MK2 escort just before us, I need to get the LSD fitted to be able to power 360° round a cone. Next up were 2 tests round Waters Farm, this was a half mile narrow tarmac track up to a farm splitting so test 1 went round the farm house and test 2 going round the barn in the farm yard before both picking up the track again to head out of the farm to a quarry access road and some slaloms to the finish, I thought this was the most fun test of the day, but I don’t know whether it was a lack of local knowledge or pure lack of bravery but we were well off the pace not getting inside the top 15 on either run.  The farm test, lead us into the infamous quarry where we retired last year when the calliper bolt failed, luck was on our side this year and a top 8 time was defiantly counted as a success. The run back to the finish saw us return to Highfield, were we managed to match our time from the first run on the airstrip, but 6 people went faster dropping us back to 12^th this time, this was followed by a return to the finish and a final test at the truckstop.  We finished the Day 11^th overall and 2^nd in class.

By May I’d managed to brake the central locking on my BMW so the Porsche was in use as a daily driver in the week leading up to this event, always helpful when you’re trying to prep a rally car you have to drive every day, I knew it was going well when the replacement steering rack decided to bind up on the Wednesday coming home from work to the point where the steering wouldn’t self-centre.  Despite some valiant efforts by Andy P & Woolie we weren’t able to source a replacement early NA rack for the following day, so Thursday night’s task was to learn to rebuild steering racks, a good strip down and re-grease was as far as I could get but it was better than nothing. We left straight from work on Friday evening and headed to Chepstow Racecourse & Wales, by the time we arrived the grease had actually freed the rack off so it was working again. The route was all pre-plot so we had it on the maps before the start making our job for the day more focused on following the route and getting the timing right. The rally started with 3 tests at Chepstow Racecourse, our event started well with 5^th & 6^th fastest on the first 2 tests. The 3^rd test was a run round the camera track at the racecourse and off onto any other bits of track they could link in, we weren’t as quick on this test, as the track was very rough with a washboard type finish so I backed off a little on the worst bits. From the racecourse we were off into the first regularity of the day, which didn’t go according to plan we missed a left turn as it looked like a farmyard entrance, meaning we drove several miles along a narrow track before having to turn back and retrace our steps to get to the time control about 6 minutes late. Next we were into Coombs Wood for 3 tests on a mix of gravel farm tracks and dirt tracks through the woods, they were a little rough in places but great fun and we managed to catch the car in front just before the finish on 2 of the tests, an A35 on one and a Cooper on the other, taking a minute out of other competitors times in only 2 miles, showing how good the Porsche can be. The next regularity saw our performance improve to within 10secs at each control, which won’t worry the top crews but was fairly respectable for us, this lead to another regularity this time on private land, in some woods and run at 30mph, we took the decision that this meant flat out, which was a good call as the muddy track was very tight and twisting through the woods and we were 1 of only 3 crews to not drop penalties at the next control, unfortunately shortly after this we caught a 911 who was short of ground clearance and held us up by over a minute to the next control, as we couldn’t get passed him. The final section was back on public roads and at a reduced speed so we followed the 911 until he missed a slot right and we could nip passed him,  however after the regularity we arrived at the next test with smoke pouring off the rear of the car as one of the rear brake shoes had locked on. A quick crawl underneath and backing the adjuster off freed it off and we got away with nothing more than a bit of brown and crispy over cured paint on the rear drum. After that I don’t remember much of the test through the grounds at Cefn Tilla Court but a top 15 time means it must have been an acceptable run to finish up before lunch.

After lunch we had 2 long regularities 15+ miles each with controls every 2 miles to keep us busy, which were going well with us keeping within 10 seconds at each control until we met a tractor and hay trailer coming the other way, despite him being just feet from a farm yard he clearly wasn’t going to / able to reverse up so I had to back up several hundred yards, which not only delayed us by about a minute it also threw the trip meter out, the next car a minute behind us was by now also behind me waiting for the tractor to get passed us so we knew we were about a minute down, and as the next control was just round the next corner we had no time to pull it back. The regularities took us back round to a repeat of the mornings tests, first up was the 3 woodland tests and 2^nd time round I took about 10 seconds off each test time getting us just outside the top 10 on each test.  Next we went to Caerwent, which is a Military training ground, I’ve previously done a whole rally in here, it looks like an abandoned industrial estate (similar to Bicester Heritage) only this one looks like it’s been the scene of a computer shoot’um up. You can therefore imagine I was a little disappointed to find out that there was a training exercise on so we could only use a small part of the site, the test slalomed up an access road to a large roundabout, which we had to 360 round before going over the centre for a semicircle 360 and back down the slalom, we put in a top 10 time on the test to keep us happy. The finish was back at Chepstow race course with a re-run of the 3 morning tests, again with top 10 times on the 2 carpark tests, but backing off slightly on the fast and rough camera track test. After all this we finished 3^rd in class, 40^th overall and 16^th fastest on the tests out of some 60 cars.

The North West Spanner & Sponge gave me a chance for a visit to Chateau Saysell, having been out rallying quite a lot my only chance of getting out doing Porsche stuff again was to take Jess along and give Mel  a day off, so we loaded the 924 up with soft toys and kiddy stuff and headed north. Pete did a cracking job on the BBQ as usual, the only man on the spanners was Dr.John who rebuilt the rear suspension on his Audi, although after the BBQ Pete was seen fixing a Honda Trike for the kids.

This year’s Warwickshire Wander started from Costa Coffee at Cannock, with a slightly disappointing turnout, we lost about 5 people in the 48 hours leading up to the start, leaving just 3, Myself, Darren in the Red S and Kevin who was working flat out to get an MOT. As Darren and I sat in Costa, Kevin arrived in his Audi to say he hadn’t managed to get the Mot and was about to head back to the garage, leaving just 2. We set off down the A5 to Shrewsbury, although Pete and Richard had bailed we still stopped into Dobbies to check and found Dave B had popped along in his red S to see the group off, although he couldn't spare the whole day to join us, after a quick chat we continued on our way. Next Stop Llangurig, the weather was very kind to us as was the traffic, so Darren & I had a good run into Wales with some great views of the rolling hills in spring time, we even picked up a convoy at one point with a 944 and an old Merc, but they didn't stay with us long.

We arrived at The Bluebell Inn at Llangurig to catch up with Mark, Steve, Trevor & Dave who had already started on the coffee. After a quick refreshment we headed off cross country on back roads Passed the Sweetlamb rally complex and through Devils Bridge, At Pentir Pumlumon I miss read a sign and took us down a very scenic back road through the woods alongside a stream, despite being off route it was far too nice and a bit narrow to turn round so Plan B kicked in and we followed the sat-nav the rest of the way to lunch at Aberaeron, for Fish & Chips at The New Celtic. We opted for take-out and sat on the Quay side in the sunshine to fight off the seagulls.

After lunch we followed Mark up the road to Area 51, what a place, Mark has bought an old farm and converted one of the barns into a workshop with a lift, in front of which he has built space to house over 10 cars, including 4x 911s, a 914, a beach buggy, a merc, 2x GT's, a GTS, a 924S hillclimb car with an S2 motor and the Boss GTP. The only thing more impressive than the Barn & the Porsches was the Office with the world’s largest toy collection on the shelves, with over 100 radio control Porsches of varying sizes from 12^th to 5^th scale. After a great day out, we may have talked Mark into another trip again in the future, maybe including camping over to give Steve more time to work out how to liberate the GTS. Huge thanks to Mark for hosting us and everybody for making it a great day

Dark winter Wednesday nights were also spent charging round the lanes of Warwickshire and the West Mids on our local club Road Rally championship. For a club championship it is getting fairly serious with about 6 or 8 of the crews out on every event capable of winning and the top 4 are separated by only a few seconds at the end of a 2 hour, 60 mile event. We didn’t start the winter season well by getting lost on the first round and finishing well down the order, but fort our way back over the 9 rounds saving our best result of a win for the final round to grab 4^th overall in the championship.

My Dad was diagnosed with Lung cancer at the start of the year so hadn’t been able to get out with me on the first round of the Historic Rally championship, as a result he twisted my arm into letting him drive the 924 for his local event up near York, leaving me as navigator in charge of the maps. What could possibly go wrong?  The event started early on Saturday morning, and the route took us from the start venue straight into several of the special tests the first at a Farm followed by 3 more on a local Airfield. 

We set off round the farmyard, Dad having never driven the car competitively before the event, with the usually sliding round a mucky farm yard, all seemed to be going well until we headed out to the finish and a final 360 round a cone, coming in too fast the car understeered wide towards a muck heap, we just missed the piles of S*** but ran up a fairly large curb with one hell of a bang, which bottomed both front shocks and took a lump out of the sump-guard. We managed to complete the 360 and get to the finish line, but I was already working out how to get back to Dads to collect the trailer, however we pulled forward from the test and everything seemed to still be working, the rally tyres had taken the worst of the hit and despite a few marks on the rims were still holding air, likewise the shocks had clearly hit the bump-stops but again everything seemed to be in tact so we carried on to the airfield for 3 more tests. These were nice and flowing in comparison to the farm yard, but dad was really complaining about how heavy the steering on the Porsche was, I didn’t know whether there was something wrong or if it was just a case of Age/illness and over familiarity with modern power steering. We came out of the airfield onto a long road section so I grabbed a quick drive and it was immediately obvious that the steering was binding to the point there was no self-centering, after another quick look round, we couldn’t see anything seriously wrong, and so we decided to carry on anyway. The first regularities were pre plotted so I did fairly well trying to run to speed and was seeing good results, next we went to the Mintex test track for some more tests, one included the test hill, we had been warned not to jump it as its very steep so caution was the order of the day as we had to stop on the top to collect a code board.  The 3^rd test at Mintex saw us off again as we understeered off the runway into the field while looping a cone, probably not doing any favours to the suffering steering rack, good job it was only a cheap 2^nd hand one from Woolie. The rest of the morning went fairly well until just before lunch, when I miss plotted the final regularity missing a dirt track through a farm and continuing along the main road missing a time control.  Lunch was at an Agricultural college along with 3 more tests, the first one was very tight round the carpark, but the advantage of walking passed it to lunch meant I could modify the route instructions to reverse back rather than trying to 180 round the cones saving us any more understeer visits with the curbs/scenery.  Then another regularity around the south side of York took us to the Cattle Market/auction site, where we had a mix of gravel tests up and down the rows of farm equipment for sale, followed by mucky concrete round the cattle sheds.  The final regularity was plot on the move to really sort out the navigators, with clues coming through the window every 2 miles to plot on the map while trying to drive a different average speeds, by this time tiredness was kicking in and dad missed a slot left while I was still plotting the route meaning we had gone several miles off route making us very late for a control and picking up a load more penalties. Despite the bent steering rack we managed to get to the finish to claim 7^th in class and 44^th overall out of about 70 cars.

Having spent the winter using the Donington Autosolos to set the Porsche up and get it handling fairly well, I managed to get Chris T to volunteer to navigate for me on some HRCR historic rounds.

Our first event was the Tour of Cheshire, we went up Friday night after work to get scrutineered and signed on. It wasn’t the greatest of journeys up with heavy rain and lots of traffic around Stoke on Trent. Scruitineering was fairly straight forward once the scrutineer had finished ribbing me about the flat 6 engine I was hiding in the car; apparently the organisers had applied for an engine waver for cars with more than 4 cylinders, for all the Porsches.

Having signed on we received about half the route as pre-plot which we worked through during dinner in the start venue at the Bickerton Poacher.  Even with two of us plotting in good lighting it took some time, perhaps due to the style of handouts which were a little difficult to decipher, Made worse during the following days event by numerous re-routes due to flooding from the previous week’s heavy rain.

Running at car 63 we had just over an hour from the briefing till our start time so chance to watch the front crews off, before collecting the rest of the route handouts and a short run out to the first regularity. Even with a GPS trip meter we are a long way off being able to do speed change regularities to the second, we were keeping within 10 seconds at each control until we missed the 4^th IRTC, something we also managed to repeat in the afternoon, I think there must have been a trick in the pre-plot designed to catch us out.

The mornings special tests went better, despite my co-driver Chris waving his arms at the wrong cone on test 2 and me over cooking it on the brakes in the cattle market, we managed to keep our times in the top 25 on all 6 tests. We got to lunch and Chris finished the plotting while I queued for food.

The first section of the afternoon was a Jogularity which took us into the Cheshire Show Ground and with trip distances of 0.01 between junctions we missed a slot and got lost, we followed a Mini, who was a loop out of sync with us, to a time control so we could work out where we were but this cost us several large penalties.

The rest of the afternoon went fairly smoothly with just the 1 more missed IRTC which was due to a re-route which I think we miss plotted, and we got as high as 6^th fastest on one of the tests with me memorising them autotest style.

At the end we finished 55^th overall and 5^th in class, with a satisfying 12^th fastest on the tests

I spent the winter months keeping my skills honed and Competiting against Nige Ryan in the S at our Local Clubs Donington Winter Autosolo series. We kept the scores even with each beating the other twice on the 4 events; I was quicker in the wet conditions while Nige & the S got the better of me on the slightly faster drier events, but never with more than a couple seconds separating us over the 6 timed runs.

I used the events to try different suspension settings in an effort to improve the car for rallying, by playing around with different ARB setups and tyre pressures. By adding a rear anti roll bar and reducing the tyre pressures we made significant improvements in the low speed turn in when trying to get round cones. I actually felt the car was at its best with the Front ARB disconnected but the times did not reflect this as the extra body roll was costing me more time on the faster sections than the improved turn in gained in the slower bits.

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Mercian Autotest 1^st June , 2^nd in class & 7^th overall

On The First of June my Car BAH241W had its 35^th birthday, so I took it out for the evening & gave it a “Dam Good Thrashing” or words to that effect, on one of our club night grass autotests. On a very wet day we managed to dodge the showers enough to slide into 2^nd in class, getting beaten by a BMW 318 compact.

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CCC AGM & trophies, picked yo awards for, Rallying, Autotests and Newcomer as I only joined this year

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CX75 12-car rally 4^th April, we finished 6^th in Class & 6^th overall

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Beige Leapod 12-car 23^rd March, Gearbox back in we finished 4^th in Class & 8^th overall

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Excellent Adventure 12-car 10^th Feb, I didn't get the diff changed in time so had a run out as Navigator in James car instead

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Donington Autosolo 30^th Jan 6^th in class & 19^th overall

I started 2016 with an Autotest at Donington, they have recently gained permission to use the Tarmac Lake behind Redgate for events so we had been upgraded from the aging and pot-holed paddock area in front of the Paddock Diner to a lovely smooth piece of tarmac. A cold and damp morning meant plenty of sliding around, a new set of tyres would of helped but I’m using tarmac events to run off the left over’s and this set which came with the car are refusing to die which may indicate how old and hard they are, do they date back to 1981 the same as the car? The photo shows how much fun we were having even if the Porsche is at a bit of a disadvantage to smaller FWD Corsa’s, Saxo’s and some Kitcars, and a mid-field result was fairly respectable. On the final run of the day I heard a noise from the rear, like a driveshaft knocking, but on a run round the paddock all seemed ok, so I headed for home. On the way past Twycross Zoo changing down into 3^rd for a bend there was a big thump and the engine cut out, I freewheeled into a side road and nervously restarted the engine, all seemed ok until I realised I was still in 3^rd and not going anywhere. That’ll be the diff then!

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Fox & Hen 12-car rally 27^th Jan, we finished 4^th in Class & 8^th overall

East Anglian Classic Rally was next up, in preparation for the event we had a new set of tyres, as 14” rally tyres in the correct size are proving hard to get (they are all designed for small FWD cars) my Peugeot Steel wheels have been retired in favour of some 15” minilites. I set off on the Friday night after work to meet Dad at a campsite, he wanted to try out his new caravan, an Eriba Puch, which is small enough to tow behind a classic car, so he booked us in for camping rather than a hotel, I arrived about 10pm to discover the caravan was a 1 berth and he had also forgotten to bring the cover for the awning, luckily having done things like this before with my dad, I'd thrown my own tent in the boot just in case, so at least I wasn’t sleeping outside. Saturday morning started off bright and sunny for scruitneering and signing on, we even had time for a Bacon Butty before we set off.  We departed from Elsenham Golf course on the back of Stansted Airport for the day’s event, it was the usual format a series of road regularities taking us to and from some tests, the morning sections were given to us an hour before the start, just long enough to get them on the map before we set off. The regularities took us around the Essex, Suffolk & Norfolk country side and I couldn’t believe how quiet the narrow country lanes were in the middle of June. This took us to Wethersfield Airfield (disused) where they had laid out some great tests, there were 4 tests each over a mile in length around the airfield and we did 2 laps giving us 8 tests. They varied from fairly open sections on the perimeter track, to slaloms through aircraft bays and narrow tracks round the buildings by the control tower, with a good mix of tarmac, broken concrete and dirt. Leaving the tests we had another regularity to take us to lunch at a local pub. The afternoon was a similar format to the morning except the route was not given to us until we started the regularities which means we again loose time trying to plot it onto the maps. As we set off for the afternoons run the weather changed meaning some very wet roads and very slippery tests when we returned to Wethersfield Airfield, the tests were run in the opposite direction in the afternoon to make them different and there were times when I didn’t recognise it as the same place we’d been in the morning, not helped by heavy rain which meant visibility was quite poor at some points. I was glad the rain had stopped for the final regularity of the day as the driver’s side wiper linkage failed meaning I spent the last 20 miles trying to avoid puddles splashing up on to the screen. We finished the event 4^thin class and 26^thoverall and 16^th quickest on the tests, having set 5^th fastest time on 2 of the days 16 tests, so fairly happy with that.