On the Toledo front

With only 3 weekends left before the AutoEcosse Bryce has been working on his Toledo to get it better prepared for it's first long distance event.

At the same time, other than buying bits of ebay there's nothing I can do to the 2000 until I get the crankshaft etc back fully balanced from Drakes (must contact them by the end of next week if I haven't heard anything). So, with that in mind I have been over to help out Bryce on the Toledo.

He has successfully (but not irreversibly) fitted the twin headlight Dolomite front and is currently awaiting a full set of halogen conversion lamps complete with relays etc.

He has really gone for it on the suspension by fitting Sprint suspension including anti roll bars etc.Along with this also he has a full set of polybushes and AVO shocks/springs. Most of the work I was involved in today was the two man job of fittng the front suspension which as usual was a bit tricky but we got there.

Below are pictures of all of this.

Those Sprint wheels have to go though, Bryce isn't happy with them so we needed something more "period". As I have a set of miniltes spare at the moment these are now on permanent loan to the Toledo project.

I reckon the car is going to look pretty damned cool, in addition to handling well. There's more on the braking side of things to come as well as other developments.

Testing times in September

Away from actually working on cars and competing myself I am trying to put something back in to the club.

I am organising a new entry level competitive event for September 2nd. The full regs and entry form will be in this month's Club Torque and I will then put them on line.

It's quite a bit of work calculating all sorts of things out and the logistics of this simple event are not easy so I take my hat off to those who organise much bigger ones.

I have emailed MSA officials today for their approval so hopefully all will be well there.

Something that has been very interesting and good fun though is designing the tests to be driven along with the fact that I have given each test a name as well. They start off easy enough and then get progressively more challenging as people's confidence grows on the day, or at least that's the plan. I also think the names of the tests are relevant and there's some humour there - we'll see if everyone agrees when it comes to it!