Stage Rallying
Stage
rallying I have been competing in the East Midlands area in single venue events
for over 10 years now although I haven't done an event for the last 3 years
I hope to return to active competition in 2003 with a limited number of
outings based upon my favorite venues
My brother in law Trevor was responsible for the start of my rallying career he suggested we should give it a go and we promptly joined Matlock Motor Club and tried to hunt down a suitable car TKU 861S was bought as a shell and built up by a small motor sport company using a 2 litre pinto engine we spent several years developing the car into a solid reliable vehicle and we had quite a few fun outings for a couple of seasons until the second engine let go a con rod parting company with the rest of the engine at Twyford Woods on the Archie Moss Stages in May 95
We sourced a new short engine and took the engine down to Burtons in London for all the necessary machining , stress reliving of the con rods, lightening and balancing , Mahle Pistons etc and we rebuilt the engine trying to make the next rally but were unable to get the engine run in and set up in the 5 days before the event this car is currently for sale for more details click on the For Sale link
After a few seasons sharing the driving and co driving with Trevor I was well
and truly bitten by the bug and decided I wanted to drive more and so now
my mind returned to my original plan my original Escort was no longer in
use and sat in the corner of a barn
The Car was originally 1979 1300cc OHV , my original plan was to run a 1600
Cross Flow which was built from a kit from Minisport of
Padiham although a
house move and a slight change of plan meant the car was returned to road
usable condition for use by a member of the family to learn to drive in the
crankshaft was swapped back for a 1300 stroke version the twin 40'swere replace
by a single choke Webber and the engine detuned
So over a period of about 9 months I started to cut out all the rot and
rust from the shell and welded in lots of new metal and panels with all the
welding I managed to use 10 kg of welding wire which seemed to defeat the
process of making the car much lighter to improve the power to weight ratio
, my wife (Shirley) NEW Co Driver thought I was going over the top with the
strengthen work but several months latter she was to praise my work after a
roll at Swinderby on the first stage on an event
We last competed at Manby in 1999 and were running really well in 7th overall when I took a yump a little too quick on the second to last sage and despite a sump guard I managed to hole the sump and this led to more or less immediate retirement work has resumed on the car and I hope to compete this year 2003 for more info please use the navigation system on the left
