Moving On

We've entered the Flying Scotsman Rally as a practice run. This takes competitors from Yorkshire (in the North of England) to Gleneagles in Scotland - home of the famous glof course. This is a distance of some 250 miles using main roads.

Our car is located at RPS in Witney, near Oxford whereas our base is North London so the question arises of how to get the car to York for the start of the rally and back to Witney from Scotland at the end.

After much discussion and some research we've decide to have the car transported to York and from Gleneagles.  All the other options are full of problems.  Richard has obtained various quotes and the best firm seems to be CARS Europe who will charge £1000 +VAT for the round trip.  They use rather luxurious fully enclosed transporters and insure the car for up to £20m, which should be more than enough!

Born to Rally

I found this picture of my sister and me.  Looks like the Buick was meant to be.

The Work Continues

I'm posting this in February but it relates to a quickie visit I paid to the team at RPS during January.  The entire fuel system has been replaced with something much simpler and hopefully more reliable, the brakes, gearbox and clutch have all been tinkered with to make them work properly, the seats have been anchored more safely and the driveshaft completely inspected. Some nasty metal shards were found in the driveshaft that would never have been detected without RPS's thorough inspection and which could have led to grief on the rally.  The shaft is being sent away to specialists for repair.

So far RPS has spent £10,000.  It looks like another £10,000 before they are finished. Merde!

After this visit I sent the mechanical checklist from "How to Win A Rally" to the team at RPS to cross check that they had picked up on some of the simple but crisis averting ideas in Alan Smith's book (coconut car mats that can double up as grips for getting you out of sand - I would never have thought of that, or that you tie them to the rear bumper so that you don't drive off and leave them behind).  I think there were a few new ideas for RPS and many that cost only a few pounds.