Roy Kemp's Blog (26)

Cool. As you've probably seen from the photo elsewhere, we got the car running, got it to an Autotest, and survived the day with nobody dying in the process. Which is great because that was the goal.

Buy broken and neglected kit car, sort it, Autotest it.

Sweet. First project in a while that's not been aborted or ended up in general disaster. However, it's far from the end of the tale. Because I was so unspeakably shite at the Autotest that I now intend to do…

Ok, you probably read in my technical question about me breaking the pump injector in the carb, and having to hike down to Fife to pick up a replacement carb to rob the part from.

I'm delighted to report that it has been worth it!

Took the new (still old and used, but new to me) carb apart and retrieved the pump injector. It's in great nick - didn't even need to free it off or de-gunk it. Carb in general was pretty good nick, much better than mine at the outset.…

So, where did I leave off...? Oh yes, carb stripped, cleaned out and back together.

With the carb strapped back on, I again attached a bottle of clean fuel to the inlet of the fuel pump. Lots of cranking later (probably to refill the float chamber) she fired into life, didn't even need any throttle. Excellent. There is, however, a squeak somewhere at the gearbox end of the engine. A lot like a fan belt noise, but from the wrong place. And there's an intermittent grumble from…

Ok. So the Phaeton's all back together after lots of labelling, dismantling, stripping, painting, cross-referencing, ordering, wrong-part-returning, swearing, reassembling, racking-of-brains-because-your-labelling-was-wrong, and all the other good stuff.

By the way, if there's anyone else considering rocking an 1800CVH, don't. I'm not being disparaging of the engine itself (we all know it's a boat anchor, I don't need to tell you all again!) but it's damned near impossible to…

Hello again everyone,

Thankfully, my last rallysprint in the 205 went pretty well. No car-conifer interactions this time at least. This means that instead of having to beat the kinks out of a yellow French hatchback, I've been free to spend a wee bit of time on the Phaeton.

I think at the time of my last posting I had got the replacement engine fitted and left it there. And indeed there it stayed for a few weeks, however I've began building it up this very week.…

So. I've been rally driving a little over a year now. Had a mate who was semi-retired from the scene but didn't want to part with his car once and for all, so he'd been hiring it to me for a very reasonable rate. But most informal arrangements of this sort tend to come to a messy end, so I was kinda half prepared to have to end up buying it after all or lose out on it altogether.

Irritatingly, I kept spare cash and driveway space for the day that never came, to the point…