Missed one - did one

Feb 13th 2013

I missed a trial in late January as we had severe weather and although the snow was clearing away by the Sunday, we were cut off electrically. We were off for 35 hours and the thought of leaving a cold and dark house in the snow and rain and getting back to a cold and dark house, without hot water, later in the day wasn't appealing.
However the next event was 2 weeks later on the 10th February. It was the Jigger's Jug. Not quite sure what that means, but Jigger does have some strange definitions.
The event was at Langwathby, East of Penrith, located entirely in a wood.
This was good as the farm where we parked the towcars and trailers was exposed and the wind was really bitter. The wood was in a small valley alongside a small river and was well-protected from the weather.

I decided to try my alternative rear tyres to see how they performed. Probably this was a mistake as the grip was shite and people did keep saying "Why are you using those?"

However. There is nothing like making your own mistakes to learn the lesson. We changed to the usually tyres at lunch-break (doesn't that sound civilised?) and improved a bit in the afternoon.

Other issues were the lack of turn-in when approaching uphill bends. Various sages thought that it was lack of proper use of the fiddle brakes.  I really concentrated on this and we managed to get around some bends that had fooled us in the morning. There was still a hill that got me fooled. Someone else tried the car to see if the brakes were working properly, but they were fine.
I think it may be a culture thing. My experience of motorsport is rallying and Autotests. When you use the handbrake to get around a corner you back off the throttle.
In trials the fiddle brake helps because the one wheel is braked but the other is powered-up. I reckon, although I do it properly when messing about on the flat, when I am actually trying to do it on the hill my old technique is taking over and I'm not powering at the right moment.
It's a theory.


Another problem I have had is not getting far enough up the hills (fundamental really) so this event I used the intermediate gear (between 1st and 2nd) and tried to use as much throttle as possible to make up for the higher gearing. Julian Fack told me that my engine would struggle to pull 2nd gear in this car and as the intermediate gear and the diff are both his products I take this advice as Handed-down-from-the-Mount.

We did get further and got stuck less. I still think I need more attack on the throttle right from the start. It seems wrong to lose traction right from the word go, but the hills were quite broken up so I suppose there was little to be gained by being gentle.

Every marshal will give advice and as they are all (mainly) competitors themselves it's worth listening. Sometimes the advice is contradictory, so you need to weed out if what they are suggesting applies in each instance. By following some tips the next hill can worse than before, so it may be that I need to tune the "That Makes Sense" filter a bit more acutely.

I did make some dreadful mistakes. The main one is to fail to walk each hill before each run. The posts do get moved between runs and following the tracks can be wrong, especially if you are one of the first to use the hill after a change. I needlessly took 2 extra points (more points bad, less points good) by going the wrong side of a post which had been the right side on the previous run (if you follow my drift).
I also took a good 2 or 3 points by not walking a hill where you could pass either side of a large bush, from the bottom of the hill it looked a good move to pass below the bush. In the event it wasn't the wisest route.

I was following a car driven by the BTRDA champion Ian Bell. This may have seemed to be an ideal way to "Watch and Learn". However he makes it look so easy that identifying what he is doing is not as obvious as you would hope. Taking a high line near to a blue post may not be something that seems an issue, until you get there and realise your approach hasn't allowed you that option and that the next gate will not be possible from where you are.
It is a form of learning, but it's more like having it beaten in with a yard brush.


We did get the exhaust caught on a tree I turned around a bit close (from following some advice, unfortunately). It dragged it off a bit but not enough to stop us. I've re-fitted it and painted it silver as well. It was black and rusty before. We'll see if that lasts long.

Some people did keep suggesting my passenger Ian was sitting too high in the car and this would affect the stability on the steeper sections. Inside the car there is a large alloy plate as a footrest and a block of wood in front of it. This was obviously from the previous owner whose wife passengered. The alloy plate was too far away for Ian and the wood too close. He used the wood as otherwise he couldn't lean out of the car, being sat too low if he used the alloy plate.
Taking in the advice offered, I have moved the wood block forward 4" which should be about the right spot to allow Ian get his position right.

You can see the original holes in the floor where the block was.

I did take my little Keycamera with me to film some of the hills. It is literally the size of a keyfob and can be velcroed to anything. I fixed it to my woolly hat. It wasn't very successful because to avoid filming just the hat it was aimed a bit high, so missed a lot of the stuff I wanted to see.
In retrospect I should have left it at home and concentrated on what I was there to do.

Here is the video. You'll get fed up before the end.

But as usual. Great fun. Nothing broken and this time I didn't injure myself.
What more can you ask?