Not quite the beginning

Dec 28th 2012

I'm starting at the beginning, but not actually there.
I'm now 3 months into my indoctrination into Sporting Trials.

Sporting Trials is a form of motorsport in which you drive a spindly little car with road tyres up an impossibly steep off-road course. Several times.

The winner is the one who does it best and most consistently.

As a Novice you won't be a winner.
You may think you'll be OK and pretty handy, but that is before you learn that you may have to forget everything you have learned about driving. Even if you have been rallying, sprinting, hillclimbing, autotesting or whatever.

I wanted to stop sailing as that seemed to be aggravating a weak back which I've suffered from for 20 years or so. Every time I went out in a motor boat, yacht or dinghy I would spend a week or so in pain.
The concept that jostling up a hill in a tiny car would be easier was difficult to convince others of, but as it turns out I've done two trials and not had a twinge from my back.

OK. Yes. I have cracked my sternum falling on the icy ground (not in the car though) and slashed my mud-covered hand, leading to an infection and a course of two different antibiotics. But that was trying to extricate the car from the mud, so wasn't actually in the car.

An early lesson is to stay in the car.

I'm going to explain my route to this strange sport and my choice of car. I will show the work I have done and will do to it and explain my reasoning.
I'm doing this blog because, although the sport has been around since cars drove up hills there is little about it on the internet and whilst the competitors are keen and the events are well subscribed, it seems to be an invisible activity.

I am just going to put down my thoughts and experiences. They may be wrong. Some may say I am not going about it the right way, but it doesn't matter. It's all fun and I don't want to get too intense about it.
On the other hand it would be nice to progress from being a novice to being a bit better.

First Event

October 2nd 2012

It was actually supposed to be at Lindale in the South Lake District, which is only a few miles from home but the site was too wet as a result of the awful rain. It was moved to near Sedbergh in the foothills of the Howgills (which are in the pic at the head of the page) to a place called Fox's Pulpit which is just near the site where George Fox started the Quaker movement. I don't know what George would have made of a bunch of people swarming all over the fells in cars on a Sunday.

I made my entry for the event by phone and contacted my passenger to tell him of the arrangements.
You need a passenger to move the weight distribution about in the car to try and make the most of the traction available. They lean uphill, basically, or if the car is travelling directly uphill and no advantage is to be gained by loading one wheel or the other, they tend to lean backwards to keep as much weight over the driven (rear) wheels as possible.

I should explain that the tyres are specified by the entry regs and the competition rules. You can only use about four makes and patterns of tyre. They are all the same size. Things like limited slip differentials are not allowed and the lowest tyre pressure allowed is specified at the beginning of each day's competition. These pressures can be as low as 2 psi for really boggy conditions.

My passenger is a guy called Ian who expressed interest in "bouncing about" when I mentioned my new hobby on a sailing forum I follow. He lives up near Carlisle, which is very handy for him as most of the events are around the Penrith area, in his neck of the woods.

We are, neither of us, spring chickens.

The day of the trial was very cold indeed. -3°C by my car temperature sensor. 
I loaded the car onto the trailer. 
(That's a bit of a bind really as if I could squeeze the trailer into the garage I could have it ready-loaded. Need to work on that a bit more. It may just be possible.)
We drove through Kendal and on towards the site. The final 4 miles was on desperately icy roads, just one car wide. The last mile or so was also steeply uphill. Good job I have 4 wheel-drive as the tyre tracks already on the ice were all over the place.

I am not going to cover the day in a blow-by-blow account. Suffice to say I arrived and unloaded. Went for a bumble about to get used to the car and conditions and signed-on. I spoke with some other competitors and found 2 other Novices on their first event as well as me. One, however, was returning to trialling after a few years' lay-off. 
A scrutineer checks the car to ensure it's all within the regs. On this occasion it was the guy I'd just bought the car from so no problems there. It would be his fault if it failed! It's all very laid-back and much like I remember motor club events in the '70s. Ian arrived a bit late as he had trouble with a particularly steep hill on the way there.
We set off straight away to catch up with the others.

The site is very wide-spread and some tests are nearly half a mile apart. Initially there is no indication at all where you are heading for, so spotting a wooly-hatted head bobbing along through the gorse and grass ahead of you is a bonus.

How are the events set out?

Generally there are six hills to climb. Each hill will be attempted 4 times during the day with lunch in the middle, very civilised.
A hill has a series of poles with numbers on from 12 at the start to 1 at the top. Getting your front wheel past a post eliminates that score for you. For instance, if you manage to get past post 6 your score will be 5 for that hill. If you hit post 6 your score will be 6 for that hill. The posts with the number on are yellow and you leave them to your right. Each post has a partner (blue and without a number) which you leave to your left. Sometimes the posts are close or they can be quite far apart. All you have to do is make sure your chosen route passes between them.
Now and again there will be an extra pair of intermediate posts which are yellow and blue, but without numbers on. These are to ensure you take a certain route, but are not worthy of a score just for passing them.
The course is not just a climb up. It can turn and traverse the hill or go back down to create a sharp hairpin at th bottom of another climb. The topography of the site can create some tricky turns. The guy who sets out the course can make it easier or more difficult.

You can only remain stationary for 3 seconds once on the hill, any longer and you have finished the test. 
If you roll backwards you have finished the test. 
If you hit a post you have finished the test.
If you stall the engine and th car stops you have finished the test. (If you stall the engine going downhill and restart whilst moving, you're OK)
The marshal will write your score on his own sheet and a card you carry in the car. Each car is assigned a number which you fasten to the front of the car.
If you get past the number 1 post at the top of the hill you have cleaned the test and score 0. If you don't even get to post 12 you score 12.

Cars start on all the hills at once. Let me make that more clear. If there are (say 18 cars) then 3 would go to the start of each hill and set of in number order. Then you move along to the next hill. Generally you'll keep this order unless you have a problem, Some cars share a passenger so they need to travel together and some cars are shared so swap driver/passenger within the car and run the hill again.
The score card you are given shows the hill number that you will start on.

How did it go?

Not terrific, if I am honest. The icy conditions were a problem as we were having trouble identifying where there would be traction on a good day. The course was also very technical. Some competitors complained loudly about this and changes were made. Some packed up and went home.
We were there for the duration, however, being made of stern stuff. The weather was fantastic. Yes a bit chilly, but no wind and lovely sunshine. It was a pleasure just being there.

Getting even to the start of some tests should have merited a medal. We picked up some high scores (bad) but were having great fun. As the sun warmed up the ground we started to improve a bit. Our goal was for each run to be better than the last. 
I did injure myself at one point. Having parked the car at the bottom of a hill I got out to watch a car ahead attempt it (very important to see others on the hill) and fell over. The ice took my feet from under me. I got my hands to the ground behind me and broke the fall, but felt a sharp pain in the middle of my chest. I knew I'd cracked my sternum (breastbone) straight away (I used to be an ambulanceman). I was OK getting into the car but couldn't lift myself out. I had to wait for Ian to get out and then roll over onto the spassenger seat and shuffle out of the car.
Still, I could have broken a collar-bone falling like that, so it wasn't too bad.

Something we didn't know about and hadn't been told (or hadn't taken in), was that once you have done all 6 hills you move on, by 2 hills, to start the next round. 
For instance if you started on hill 2 you would work around the hills and finish the first round on hill 1. Instead of going to hill 2 again to start your next round you go to hill 4. As people were running out of order all over the shop this didn't become apparent to us until lunchtime. It doesn't make a lot of difference as you can see from your score card which hills you have done, but it can mess up the marshal's sheets. If they want to change the course they can't until you have arrived and done it to complete the round.  

By lunchtime the weather was starting to cool down again so they decided to run just one round of the hills in the afternoon. Probably a good idea. Our scores took a slight tumble again as the ice reformed. 
A milk tanker on the road alongside the site slid backwards on the ice and into a ditch leaving just his front wheels dangling above the road. Luckily there was another route to leave the place. You can see it's cab in the background in this shot.

A fantastic day out. Great fun and all the club members were very welcoming and helpful. 

Came last

Except those who broke down or packed up, of course. 

 

2nd Trial

16th December 2012

This was the Xmas Trial at Southwaite, a couple of miles South of Carlisle. Bit of a bugger for me, but suited my passenger, Ian, who could have walked there from his home.

We arrived,and having a slightly better grasp of the form after the first event, got unloaded and set ready for the driver's briefing and our day's fun. 
We still managed to do the wrong hill first, but soon corrected that and cracked on. Shame that this was also a very wet site. It seems that a very wet site, like an icy & technical site, doesn't suit my car a lot. 

People were very good, commiserating on our bad luck in having tough trials for our first 2 events. 
The Hills were, to us novices, a bit confusing in that whilst some looked fairly dry, didn't respond to trickling and some which were very muddy just didn't respond to blasting. I did manage to get stuck at post 11 on Hill1 on the first attempt, and the next time, by trickling, got right up to post 2. However that never worked again as subsequent cars tore up the grass.
Hill 2 was a toughy for us and as the approach to Hill 3 was directly from the end of (a clear pass) of Hill 2 we had a problem. We weren't anywhere near the top of the hill. We went around the back of the course and reached the Hill easily enough.

But not before getting stuck in a bog that we had been warned about!!
In getting the car out (and thanks to the marshals and competitors who helped) I cut the back of my hand on the plastic mudguard. I didn't realise until a bit later when I noticed the mud on my hand was a ruby colour.
Using the best dog technique of licking my hand I found a flap of flesh with a nice filling of mud inside. I (too late) put my glove on until lunch time when I could wash it and put a plaster on.

Thankfully, someone else kindly got stuck in that same spot to show that we were not total  knobheads.

The rest of the hills were very muddy and mainly beyond my skills at the moment. 
Conversations since have shown that my 1040cc engine is hampered in that it will hardly pull the intermediate gear in the mud, but on the other hand, in first gear, it won't spin the wheels fast enough to clean the treads. We noticed how others were flinging half the field up in the air whilst out efforts looked a lot more serene.

I also learned a valuable lesson. 
On Hill 3, which had a very slippery approach my first two attempts only got me to the 10 post and (I think) the 9 post. After that the course went right behind a tree and past a couple more posts before turning downhill.

I had been concentrating so much on the start and the first slope that when on the 3rd attempt I got to the top of the first slope and turned right, I didn't know where I was aiming for. The brief lift of the throttle was enough to bog me down right there. I should have got past another 3 posts if I had been on the ball.

Another lesson learned : Know the course

Another Hill was so deeply rutted and muddy that this is where I decided the diff was digging in and that a skid may help. Another post on the blog describes the making of the skid. You can see here that the car is down to it's axle tube.

You can see in this video how muddy it is for one car on Hill 3. The slithering is the car approaching the start. There is also a bit of our ascent of Hill 6, but the camera fell off!

So. All in all, another fun day and a lot of lessons learned. Some people said the next event at Edenhall will be more suited to the car. No pressure then.

I also found out my pressure gauge was inacurate and have now bought a 0-15 psi dial gauge.

My wound festered and my hand swelled up, so I went to the Docs. I was given a tetanus jab and two courses of antibiotics which meant strictly no drinking. It's a similar thing they give to alcoholics to stop them drinking. I t will make you violently ill if you have a drink. Even the alcohol in mouthwash can set it off!. This meant the first drink I could manage was Xmas Eve!!

Anyway it's healed now. My sternum is still a bit sore.

Getting oily and stuff

Jan 2nd 2013

Right. The car I bought has been developed over the past 4 years by the previous owner. He has rebuilt the under-bonnet scene and everything is very tidy and well prepared. He has done a lot of work on the suspension, without spending a lot of money, to soften the ride (and improve traction) and lots of other detail things.
I did notice when I took the car for a bog-about on a friend's 750 acre fell-side farm that the sump grounds quite easily and once we got stuck and had to actually lift the front of the car.

Looking underneath it's obvious that the sump is the lowest part of the car.

 It has been deepened to increase the oil capacity (and improve cooling) but that has had a negative effect on the ground clearance.

The previous owner (I'll call him Brian ....erm.... because he is called Brian) has welded some steel straps along the base of the sump and across to the bellhousing to allow the car to slither across obstacles.
However the front face of the sump, whilst having these straps up it, is a vertical wall and is lower than the front axle.

Looking to the rear of the car I also noticed that the "banjo" of the diff in the rear axle sticks down and presents a partially vertical face to rocks and stuff. 

I decided that I needed to modify both aspects to help the car over obstacles and also to reduce drag in deep mud.

The sump was the first job. So I drained the oil and dropped the sump pan off.
It had been my intention to remove the extra depth of the pan and possibly install an oil cooler to restore oil capacity and cooling. However the front suspension "A" frame actually knocks the oil filter (unless you "relieve" the canister with a mallet). This meant that a sandwich plate to fit oil cooler pipes wouldn't work as the oil filter would be even  further forward into the travel arc of the suspension arms. So I would be looking at a remote oil filter as well and also would need to modify the oil pick-up pipe to sit in the shallower sump pan.

This was becoming an expensive and time-consuming project. I decided instead to just weld a skid to the front of the existing sump to help it over rocks and stuff. 

 It's not designed to be a proper sump guard as it is still a part of the sump, but it should help deflect obstacles (or rather, the car) instead of bashing straight into rocks etc head-on.

Fitted back on it looks about right. Anything the axle gets over will glance under it.

You can see how the oil filter end is battered in to clear the "A" frame

From the front you can see how the axle is slightly higher than the sump. You can also see how the diff hangs down (into the mud).

The Diff Skid

It's my thinking that if the car is on the edge of breaking traction and the diff digs in to mud, grass or something it'll be enough to start a wheel spinning. Just skidding the diff might be enough to prevent that happening and maybe gain a bit of better terrain. 
I had a conversation with someone who knows a lot more than me (or than most people) about the subject and he thought it not necessary.
But being stupid, and having a bee in my bonnet, I shall give it a whirl anyway. 

As you can see in the pic above the diff banjo hangs down and presents quite a vertical face to obstructions. Here is a better shot from just below the "A" frame bearing.

A piece of steel cut and roughly bent

A clamp over the diff nose.

Some studs welded to the diff case

Some straps to connect to the skid

What can go wrong?

Well. It could lose me possibly 1/3rd of an inch in ground clearance. It could try to tear off if I reverse over a rock. But my thinking is that if it allows me an extra foot of uphill motion before the mud grabs me that may just be enough to nose past the next post.

(Yes, I ought to have welded the straps inside the skid. However they are out of the way and I can soon do them the other way if needs be.)

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?

Bit bouncy

Feb 26th 2013

We were out trialling again on Sunday, this time with better weather. Way up on top of the fells. All day people kept saying. "There's not many sports you can have views like this"

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.

Spring deals

March 8th 2013

On the last event we had some problems I described in the previous blog. One was the extra weight of Ian compared to previous passenger, Jackie, that the car had been set up for. I got the 125 lb/inch springs from Bryan that he had dug out. They are new and unused. He had actually fitted 100lb/inch springs to the car and found them ideal for the crew weight they were running.

Shot of the passenger side coil/shocker

 I fitted the 125lb/inch spring to Ian's side but have left the 100 lb/inch spring on my side. I weigh about the same as Bryan and so reckon that as Ian stays mainly on his side (and when he leans to my side it's because that is the uphill, and lighter side) it's his side that needs the extra resistance to stop the coil/shocker bottoming on the bump rubber.
I measured the clearance on the push rod; at rest; with me in the car; and my neighbour (who weighs 18 stone, like Ian) in the car.
The compression was 1" with me in the car (12 stone) and 1.5" with my neighbour. Which sounds about right. But it only left 1.25" before bottoming. This was at rest, so under trial conditions the compression when hitting a bump or at the bottom of a hollow would easily have the suspension locking up. That leaves only the tyres giving any suspension and this will have an effect of grip. Probably reducing it, and possibly having an unwanted steering effect

With the new spring in place the "at rest" measurement was increased by an inch. With me in and my neighbour these went down by 0.8" inch (1 inch previously) and then 1.2" (1.5" previously) so the stiffness seems to have gone up by 20% (or is it 25%? my maths doesn't stretch to this).

I also raised the spring platform by 1/5th of an inch to allow a little more in hand and pre-load the spring a touch. Whilst I was at it I wound a bit of resistance into the shocker setting. They are Spax adjustables, but presently with the adjusters backed-off.
It looks like this may be a move too far as this side of the car now feels substantially harder. However I can unwind the adjuster easily from under the car.
We need to test this on my friend's fellside farm before committing it to the heat of competition.
 
I have also had problems in getting the car to turn sharp uphill corners which I have mentioned previously. The front end just doesn't bite and the car slithers straight on. Part of this, as many helpful voices have suggested, is due to me not using my fiddle brakes enough.
However there are moments when you want the front end to start to make the turn before you want to be piling on the power and these are the moments that catch me out.
Bryan (the previous owner) mentioned that he had found it understeered a lot and he thought it lacked any Ackerman angle effect on lock.
I knew what this was as it's something I've been involved in before. It's the mechanism to get the inside wheel to turn a smaller radius circle than the outside wheel.

Measuring it back at base I found that there was no toe-out (that would indicate the ackerman effect) on lock. Researching this it appeared that the steering arms are not quite right in this installation and would need bending inwards. There is a reason for this, but it needs diagrams etc to show and I can't be arsed.
 It also appeared that moving the steering rack rearwards can increase the rate at which the ackerman angle is applied as you put on lock.

I didn't fancy bending my only pair of steering arms and possibly knackering them (heat required) so decided to try moving the steering rack backwards first, as a trial.



Excellent. I’ve now moved the steering rack back by 2” and this has resulted in some measurable Ackerman angle. On lock the rims now have toe-out amounting to 1” (rim to rim) on full lock. But neutral steer in the straight ahead position.
Actually measuring the rims back and front demonstrated about an inch difference. As the rims are 17”  it can be expressed as a percentage, but I’ll leave it to those who understand geometry to work that out.!

(Yes the string really is in contact with the rim. It looks strange because of the offset in the angle I have taken the shot from. The string is also higher than the hub, as that sticks out and makes touching both the rims impossible)

So, you can see from the pics that the inside wheel is turned more sharply than the outside one. It works the same on the opposite lock as well. This fits in with the information I have found on the ‘net about increasing the Ackerman angle.
All I have done at the moment is to mount the rack on the rearmost hole on the axle bracket using the front leg of the U-bolt.

Obviously I need to make some substantial pads which bolt to the existing brackets and provide a further hole further back to take the other leg of the U-bolt.
I also need to make the pad thick enough to lift the rack a bit as the radius arms are now very close to the rack casting and may contact it on full suspension droop. Something I have yet to measure.
The steering column needs shortening by the 2" I have moved the rack.


The tie rods now approach the steering arms at right angles to the car centre-line when in the straight-ahead position.. Before they sloped backwards. On lock these angles change and it's that that creates the ackerman angle.

Before

Now they lead to the steering arm at 90° to the car centreline. This is the crux of the advice on moving the steering rack.

After

Some people have suggested altering the castor (caster?) angle. I thought that not possible but it looks as though that could be achieved by adjusting the A_frame and radius-rod rose joints. This would improve self-centring. As the car is used at low speeds on non-sealed surfaces I can't see this is a particular advantage.  I am not going to start messing with that until this initial change to the rack has been properly installed and tested on an event. If at all.
All I’m looking for is an improvement in turn-in on loose surfaces.

Looking at the before and after from above it may seem that I have achieved the toe out at the expense of ultimate lock. The outer wheel now doesn't follow such a tight radius as the inside wheel. However as the outer wheel will now actually steer the car instead of ploughing straight on, that is only a theoretical loss.

Before

After

I'm pretty chuffed that a simple mod has already probably done enough to improve the car's steering performance.

Oops: A Slippy Slip-up

April 5th 2013

Being a house-proud sort I gave the car a good clean and as the black PVC seats were a bit shabby I looked around my "Car Care" shelf in the garage and lighted upon some CarPlan "Original Black".
It's a spray which brightens up the trim.

Looks lovely

I went to get into the car and slid straight off,  onto the floor. Wow! It was slippery!

Hmm. It seems the spray has a silicone-based finish. How to resolve it?
I tried white spirit, Swarfega and Fairy Liquid. No good.

After asking on a forum I follow, someone suggested a silicone remover (why didn't I think of that?) so I got some from the local Build Centre and rubbed it on, left it for 2 hours and wiped it off.

Result! Back to a grippy seat and backrest.

Ian will be well pleased. We went for a trickle around a friend's fellside farm during the week and the slippery seat was a major problem, not least because Ian slid downhill onto me most of the time.
However the good news was that the new, stiffer, spring on Ian's side had really firmed-up the car. I had put 2 clicks on the Spax shocker, but that seemed too firm so I wound that off. A cable-tie around the shocker push rod showed that the car had bottomed a few times, but it didn't seem to be a problem like it was before.
The farm isn't really much of a test as, whilst it has 750 acres of mainly steep fell, it has a huge number of rocks in amongst the grass and bracken so setting a test hill is tricky. Another problem was that there was so much grip with the grass being dry and unused that we couldn't find a hill to defeat us.

This bit of video of the approach to the test area is one of those disappointing films that doesn't look as steep as it was. The bit where I'm driving through the gate is so steep you can hardly walk up to the gate.

We tried an area lower down and found a couple of spots we could use, but not enough to form any proper opinions. People do say it's only worth trying things out actually on an event, as that is the only place you will find the sort of conditions that matter. The funny thing was when we went searching for some good land along a pasture area and the sheep (mainly Herdwick) thought we had brought lunch.

Later in the video a pheasant joins in the chase.

We also identified that whilst the fiddle brakes do work, I am not pulling them hard enough to lock the wheel for a quick spin on the spot. I think this is due to the knob on the lever only being big enough to hook one finger on properly. So I've extended the knob by about 1/2" (no bloody metric here) to see if two fingers does the trick. As long as I pull hard enough.
This pic shows the original on the right and the modified one on the left...

I have done them both of course....

l

Using my new bead breaker I've had the tyres off the rims and stripped the paint and rust back. I've spray painted the rims and done the centres in gold to try and make the car look a bit more "classy"

So this Sunday we try all this out.

We missed the early March one as Ian was in Germany and the late March one was snowed off.

Almost Summery Weather

April 14th 2013

Our latest event, at Gale Hall, Melmerby, Cumbria was held in almost tropical conditions.

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.