Toughest autotest yet…
On to the July SOCC Autotest and a return to a venue local to me, just 20mins up the road on the A41 for the next evening grass autotest.
The field was known to be bumpy, and it was smoother than last time but the challenge this time would be length of tests, and dust which just hung in the air.
I started the event in Red Shed II, which really didn’t want to start the night before and this would come back to haunt me…
I went into the event with a good entry not expecting to do that well as the tests were long and flowing giving those with power an advantage, but at the end of the first test we had a slender lead of less than a second.
Then as the tests progressed on the lead got larger with each run, I did get a bit lucky when I hit one of the truck tyre markers that this event used as cones. The venue was rough though, and one part I hit ruined the relatively new rose joint track rod ends I was testing on the car. Seemingly these last no better than standard/OEM parts, so they will be replaced with these as there was no improvement in steering feel or feedback with them.
Then just over half-way through what was to become an epically long event, the car started mis-firing and running rough. I thought at first this was hot fuel as the weather was very hot, however cooling the fuel didn’t solve it. I managed to get it running a bit better and went out for a run, but this didn’t last long….. So I parked her up before any real damage was done.
I then swapped to the SOCC Club car, a even more standard Mk6 Fiesta (scrap head special) with the 1.25 engine in. However this was a runner, and by this time I had a sizable lead, so all I needed to do was complete the test correctly at a decent speed to keep the win.
Thankfully the Fiesta withstood the abuse of me and others using it, and we took the win by over 13 seconds.
Turns out the engine Red Shed II needs a bit of work (it was sold to me as head gasket may be going, so I always knew this was a risk). So its off to head the engine refreshed, before some more work to get the car ready for the Witney AutoX at the end of August.
This video shows how late it was getting at the end of the event, but also how the dust stayed in the air making it feel like driving in fog!


