Feb 26th 2013
How true ……
(I'm cheating. The pictures are old ones. I didn't take a camera as I thought I would concentrate on driving on this occasion. Glen Bennett didn't go either so there aren't any pics ) However this really is what it looked like. We had snow on the Pennine tops.
I have bought some new tyres. The old ones seemed hardly worn but Brian who I bought the car from assured me they were knackered. As we were out on the Solway Firth one day I popped into Harold's Tyres in Penrith and got two new ones. You are limited to the ones you can use so the choice was simple.
Worn tyre top, New tyre bottom
.
I have made a bead breaking device which I have bolted to my garage wall so swapping the tyres over was easy. I have a compressor and no balancing is needed so it's straightforward.
On the event the new tyres were helping a great deal.The conditions were reasonably dry and the surface was mainly grass. I am assured these conditions are quite good for my underpowered, live axle car.
We did seem to be making better progress than usual. Since the Jigger's Jug trial I have moved Ian's footrest forward so that he can keep inside the car better, as a few people had suggested his (considerable) weight was too far back and too high.
Following turn-in problems on one particular turn at the last event I decided (after advice from club members) to use the fiddle brake more severely and this seemed to work pretty well. Brian did tell me the car tends to understeer and wash out on uphill turns a bit. The extra weight in the car compared to Brian's wife is also causing the suspension to bottom-out. At a few places this caused some unintended changes of direction. Brian is digging out the old springs he removed and I will be doing some experimenting to alleviate this problem.
They don’t look that steep from this angle really…(again, Glen's pics from previous trials at Lindale)
But up close an personal you see they are quite a trial (see what I did there?)
So with the better conditions, new tyres and Ian being more streamlined within the car, the progress was better than previously. I connected together a few turns and managed to start getting further up the hills. That is, after all, the whole idea.
However, with the confidence of stringing a few tight bends together comes arrogance that leads to hitting rocks (boulders actually) by attacking the narrow gaps between them too fast and getting deflected. The bottoming out of the rear suspension didn't help any in this. The crack was heard around the place, although it was just a bend on the rear wheel rim. Once I had hit it, everyone had a go. But the rock steadfastly won.
What was pretty annoying about that hill was that on the two occasions I got past the boulder I actually got up to 3. (Low scores - good).
(again, it's a pic from a previous trial, but that shows the route we were using and the rock we (and most other people. I'm not taking all the blame here) hit.
The driver in that pic gave me a bit of advice which I have found to be the best tip I have had so far. But I'm not going to tell you what that is........
There was also the arrogance of choosing a different route at the start of a hill. The one I spotted was steeper and shorter. But was on virgin grass. Not churned with a bend like the tracks everyone else had created by the time we got there. It was within the course so I decided to try that. That netted me an 11 score (bad) on a hill that I managed to get 6 and 5s on subsequently. I just didn't get up the steep bit. My own fault, possibly because I was used to getting stuck on mud with my old tyres so was trying to avoid mud.
Then there was the arrogance of assuming that, whilst I had noted the course changes between rounds, I didn’t need to walk them all and see them from the approach angle. I took three penalties (twice) as a result of that. I'd already decided that not walking the hills was foolhardy, but somehow seemed to think because I had noted a move of posts that I would "see" it when I approached.
No.
It doesn't work that way. When you are in the car they look different somehow. You really need to walk the hill and commit the poles to memory. On hill 3 I blithely drove to the right of post 9 when I already knew it had been moved down the hill. Something in my head told me that I needed to turn right and that the yellow pole in front of me wasn't important. I scored 10 for that when it could been a 2. As I managed later on at that hill.
It's all my own fault. The feet and the hands and the car are willing - but the brain is resisting.
But the most arrogant bit of the day was the assumption that I had devised a good plan to do a sharp right uphill turn, over a 3ft bank, dip through a gully and up another 3ft bank, and that it would work.
The arrogance was that I had stood and watched other, better, drivers do it steadily and smoothly. I noted that the surface was still quite good grass, but when I got there I gave it some gas.
The right fiddle brake turned us into the corner, the front wheels launched into the air over the first bank, the car bottomed into the gully and the front wheels skimmed the next bank, over which, because I was now steering (almost) just with the fiddle brakes (front wheels not touching the ground in any meaningful way), I went too far too the right on and hit a rock on the top of the bank, which we should have passed to the left of.
The right thing to do would have been to back off, even at this stage. However I knew that once on top of that bank I only had to fiddle-brake to the left and pass through the gate. So I kept the gas on to try to clear the rock. The car flew over the rock, removing the top of it (the rock) and we ended up stuck at a crazy angle, rather unable to move. Ian couldn’t climb out of the car as he was leaning so far over (onto me) and it seemed the only exit was to tumble down a long, and steep, fellside if we got it wrong and the car tipped over completely.
With the help of the marshals and other crews we managed to get out of the predicament. Luckily it was the last hill of the day and crews had stopped to collect the poles and tidy up and we were running last on this hill so there were plenty of people about.
It was quite unnecessary. But I had been getting better throughout the day, apart from my obvious errors, and it seemed like a good plan at the time, which turned out to be poor to say the least. I could have "trickled" it with no drama. Perhaps the previous wet events have given me a subconscious wariness of uphill turns, in case the mud sucks my car in, never to emerge.
We, as a crew, haven’t really addressed the possibilities of a flip-over yet other than that we thought it would happen at slow speed. Well, that isn’t entirely true. The chain of events, once in motion, doesn’t appear to give you much opportunity for modifying the situation.
Anyway, no-one damaged and no damage to the car. The marshals and other crews seemed more traumatised than we were. One said “Your passenger wheel was over 6” in the air!”
I thought this a bit alarmist as you see some cars with the front wheels in the air at the slightest bump.
It was only whilst sitting in the bath on the evening that I realised he meant the rear wheel!
And we didn’t come last either.
So, another great day out.
The club members are so helpful and pleasant.
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