April 14th 2013
Well, to be honest it was sunny and the wind wasn't too bad down in the valley we were using. After the 5 months of ice, snow, fog etc it seemed beautiful.
The previous event had been cancelled due to the snow and I'd missed the earlier event in March as Ian had been away.
In the meantime, as you will have read in the blog I've put a stiffer spring under Ian's arse and moved the steering rack backwards to introduce some Ackerman Angle. Now to see if it's worked.
The paddock was in a nice flat field and as I've not been to this site before (or any of them, being a newbie) I didn't know where the hills to be tackled where.
Setting off for them we followed everyone else for more than half a mile before dropping down into a hidden vale with the tests laid out.
We were supposed to be following a BTRDA regular in company with another Novice. (Mind you he is actually a returning competitor who used to trial and after more than 10 years away, is back.)
The expert wasn't running so we had the first hill to ourselves (We were starting on Hill 6. The field is spread out between the hills to avoid queuing).
The choice was to wait for someone to arrive from the previous hill and watch them, or give it a whirl ourselves. We opted for that.
For this event I was determined to chat less and concentrate more. I was going to walk each hill, every time, as I'd made errors on previous events which could have been avoided (wrong side of poles that had been moved between runs etc).
The ground was mainly grass and very dry. The tyre pressures were set at 4 psi for the day. These conditions suited just trickling up the hills at minimum revs.
Watching the experts and others there was very little revving of engines and lots of stately progress around the poles. The driver's briefing had suggested that a lot of cleaning (getting to the top without penalty) of the Hills would be happening and they would tighten-up the course between runs to make it more difficult.
Without going into the details we cleaned the first hill scoring 0 (Hill 6) and scored a 6 on the next (Hill 1), we cleaned Hill 2 and then came to Hill 3.
Hill 3 set off along the level and turned right up a steep bank before meandering across to an uphill slalom section. We didn't even get up the bank, scoring 10.
Our car has a 1040cc engine which has all the torque of a poodle pulling a Mini.
This means that if we chug up a hill at low revs, when the car slows because of an increase in incline or the use of fiddle brakes, opening the throttle may not produce a seamless flow of power. Too little throttle and it will cough and stall. Too much and it will overpower the tyres and start the wheels spinning. Sometimes you even have to declutch and feed the power in. This usually results in spinning the wheels. If you use the power against the fiddle brakes you may, or may not, get under way again. However, any advantage you may have been able to glean by using momentum to help a turn will have gone.
Watching someone with a bigger engine (up to 1650cc is allowed) you see them squeeze the gas and just move over or around the obstacle.
Torque. That's what is the name of the game.
On this hill we should have got momentum up on the level before the turn uphill, using the fiddle brake, so that there was still enough speed (and consequentially revs and power) to complete the climb of the bank without having to alter the throttle. To use more momentum uses more revs, and our car is low-geared in deference to it's little engine so it may appear we are going faster than we are, because of the noise. In reality we are going about the same speed as the others but making more fuss about it. So trying to be quiet and stately like some of the others doesn't really work.
On subsequent runs we attacked the bank, got up it and moved on to the next uphill slalom section. There we got stuck at the same pole every time and recorded a row of 5s
Getting speed up to attack the bank
The uphill pole we got stuck at the next three times
Moving onto Hill 4 we cleaned that as well. In later runs the slight moving of some poles at the bottom by the marshalls completely defeated us and we scored a 10 on that hill for the other 3 runs. That is, we only got past poles 12 and 11.
It's interesting that both these sticking points were sharp, uphill turns to the right, with another tight gate straight after. It didn't seem to be related to the modifications I had made until much later. We were pleased at the way the car was turning-in, which I put down to the improvement in Ackerman Angle, although we had lost a few degrees of steering lock in achieving this.
Thinking about it later, and in view of the fact that whilst the stiffer spring under Ian (rear left) had certainly improved the straight uphill climbing ability, it appears that the remaining softer spring at my side is allowing the inside wheel to lift on tight, uphill corners. Whilst using the inside fiddle brake (right hand side in this instance) locks the wheel, unless the wheel is on the ground it has no effect. It doesn't give a point around which to pivot. Even on big holes on straight uphill bits the extra stiffness on Ian's side seemed to transfer the bottoming effect to my side and I had a couple of teeth-jarring, bottoming-out moments.
I have now fitted the other, stiffer spring (125 lb/inch as opposed to 100 lb/inch) to my side. This will hopefully help in the uphill turns.
Two other issues which bugged our day were the new and exciting turn-in that I seemed to have introduced. It was so much better than before that on three occasions the car clipped the inside pole (penalty) as it turned more sharply than I was thinking it would.
Yes. You would have thought I would have learned a bit more quickly.
The other problem was that I still wasn't walking every part of each test on every run. On one hill this resulted in me trying to go to the right of pole 9 (I should go to the left), which had been moved.
Ian shouted "NINE" which actually meant nothing at all to me. We have decided that shouting "LEFT" would be more useful in such circumstances.
It caught me out again, but I did get back to the correct side, although it meant that the next two gates were approached from the wrong angle which was my undoing on that hill.
On another hill we climbed past three yellow poles (leave them to the right) and turned around the top pole at the top to descend. Again, possibly because the car turned more than I expected, I was facing back down the way I had come up. I was tempted to pass these posts again instead of leaving them alone. It makes no sense as even if they were part of the course I should have passed to the left of them as they were yellow poles. Because I was looking at the back of them they had no numbers on display and I couldn't see the next pole I should have been aiming for.
On both these occasions walking every part of the course would have given me the driver's-eye perspective of my next move.
Also, interestingly, because I have less total steering angle available now, I couldn't turn across in front of them to clear them on the correct side.This makes me think I need to put my steering back to nearer it's original configuration.
So the learning curve continues with my own mistakes still being more harmful than the car's shortcomings.
I can take comfort from the fact that Ian Bell (BTRDA champion) picked up a couple of high scores with similar brain-fades.
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