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.