So, its been about a month since the Boddington Safari Rally, and after doing some work on the car this weekend it dawned on me that I’ve not done any sort of update for quite a while.

The last rally was great fun, quite slippery gravel, many kms of sideways action to be had.  It’s quite a tight rally in most places, not in terms of road width, but in terms of lots of corners making it lot of fun.  Our notes are getting better and better each rally, hopefully getting closer to the point where we can safely push harder without leaving the road.  Hopefully by Kirrup I’ll have it sorted enough to push a bit harder again.  It only takes one tiny error in your notes to be off the road, so my first priority is to get the notes right all of the time, then start pushing again…

Getting to the end of an event without hitting something means that for the first time in 4 years, I have some time where I wasn’t building or rebuilding the thing.  Post event, we backed the car and trailer into the shed, where it has sat until the weekend.

After unloading it, I starting doing some of the jobs that I have wanted to try for the last year, all of these being performance related – rather than just damage repair.  The car has run the same camber settings since it was built – and I think that it has too much camber.  Job one was adjusting all 4 corners for less camber, and add some more caster to the front at the same time.

While the rear arms were apart, I replaced some of the bushes and a ball joint (split boot), and re-greased all of the other parts that needed it.

Also changed the front sway bar to see what effect that has during the corner as I transition onto the throttle, as I need some more front end here if I haven’t slid the back in hard enough.  I may have just made it worse – time will tell!

Add to that some planned damper changes to try during the event and hopefully I’ve made it feel a bit more stable in the fast stuff.

Another item that has been on the shelf for quite some time is the build of an airbox.  The 4 socks that are on it now was a temporary thing just for the first event, as I ran out of time.  Its now two years later and the socks are still there, still sucking it lots and lots of hot engine bay air which is doing nothing to help power.

As I had so much free time, I spent a little bit of time to advance the progress of the air box buck.

I found a rag that was made from stretchy material, pulled it over the outlet pipe and secured it to the main air box body.  This makes a nice, natural transition from the inlet tube to the rest of the box as the fabric is stretched it self-levels so to speak.  I then coated the fabric in fiber glass resin and now it has set hard.

Post the Collie event, sand it all nice and smooth and it will be ready to make the fiber glass mold.

I’ve also got a couple more things that I’m working on the background, hopefully they will be ready for the Kirup Stages rally too.

Scrutineering for the Collie event is tomorrow night, see you all then!