Last Saturday’s we ran our Cinch backed rally car in the Plains Rally which was based in the North Wales town of Bala and used the fast-flowing forests to the north and the south of the town, including the famous Clocaenog Forest (which was a regular special stage in the British round of the World Rally Championship). The event used some very fast stages, which were generally dry and got quite dusty in the afternoon leg. Fortunately, running the cars at one-minute intervals meant that we did not suffer any major visibility issues. We went well and were setting competitive times compared to the cars around us, which I was pleased about, considering I hadn’t been in the car for an event for six months. The only real drama we had was on special stage 4. Part way through the stage a big red warning light on the dashboard came on and as I wrestled the car around the corners, I kept glancing at the dials to see what the problem was. I could see the water temperature climbing steeply and eventually by the end of the stage the temperature was off the scale. It puzzled me because we hadn’t hit anything to puncture the radiator, and the engine seemed to be running fine, so we decided to push on to the next road section and get to the next stage. Luckily, we had a few minutes to spare at the end of the road section and jumped out of the car. By this point we figured it was alternator as the volts were dropping. Sure enough when we got the bonnet up, the alternator belt was missing. I guess a stone got thrown up and made the belt jump off. Fortunately, we had a spare belt in the car and the right spanner to undo the alternator. We quickly fitted the new belt and got to the start of special stage 5 with no time dropped. We got the car through special stage 5 (Clocaenog) and then back to service where the service crew did a proper fix on our temporary repair. The car ran perfectly after that and in the afternoon stages we were two seconds a mile quicker than in the morning stages. |