Evening all. I'm back!
Well, the trip was awesome, and very enjoyable. Sadly, the Granada didn't make it - she died on Day Two of the event. We went to start her in the morning and there was simply no spark at all. Either a faulty coil or a dodgy crank sensor, neither of which were we able to remedy in time, so the decision was taken to leave the car and to arrange for the RAC to scrap it. Fortunately, one of the other teams had been delayed fixing their Volvo 940, and were just ready to go when we found out we weren't going to be able to carry on in the Granada, so they offered us a lift as far as Salzburg. We would then leave the rally and continue on to stay with my parents in Austria, before cadging a lift back home with them.
Hell of a trip, even if most of it was seen from the back seat of either a Volvo 940 or a VW Passat. Losing the Granada after one day was a bit of a punch in the gut, especially after 6 months of preparation for the event. However, it did have its advantages - we no longer had to worry about whether our car was going to make it, we could drink as much as we wanted, and we got to know not only the blokes who were driving the Volvo, but also those they were convoying with.
The irony is that the 940 was actually the car least mooted to make it. On the morning of Day 1, in Calais, they spent two hours trying to find a new MAF sensor to cure a misfire, then on the evening of Day 1, they developed a brake fluid leak which resulted in fluid spilling onto the hot turbo and going up in flames. This meant they ended up rebuilding the brake hoses in the engine bay on Day 2 - a boon for us, because it meant they were delayed by 2 hours, and could thus give us a lift after the bloke from the RAC had come and declared the Granada officially dead!
I'm still not certain what killed the Granada, to be honest. We had no spark at the king lead, although the battery was fine and the engine was turning over OK on the starter. Having spoken to a couple of people who knew much more about it than we did, we suspected either a dodgy coil or a knackered crank sensor - both things which would have been easily curable had we had a) time to find a scrapyard, b) a car with which to get to a scrapyard, and c) had it not been a Saturday, and everywhere closed anyway. As such, the decision was made to leave it with the hotel owner, who willingly took the keys from us, and we jumped in the back of the Volvo, which by then had working brakes and a disconnected MAF sensor
It was a shame, really; we were expecting the Granada to go bang in a big way, with lots of smoke and nasty grinding noises from something in the drivetrain. For it just not to start one morning was quite gutting, really!
Nevertheless, we did have an excellent time of it, and I'm glad we did it, although I'm not sure I want to do it again! There's quite a few photos ready to upload, which I shall get round to later on.
Don't forget, you can still donate to our charity at http://www.geocities.com/crappyfloggits/donate.htm should you so wish, although that's now going to be for a limited time only, so if you haven't donated yet, get it done now!
Pics of the event can be found at http://www.fiestaturbo.com/forums/viewt ... p?t=138583