1981, Century Oils Rallysport Magazine Championship

Competing on the National status rallies in 1980 had been great but it was also pretty expensive so I decided it would be a better idea to find a less expensive championship for 1981.  The obvious choice was the Century Oils Rallysport Magazine championship which was aimed at the club driver and with a good selection of rallies.

Over the winter I had been introduced to Sue Sanders who was a keen co-driver and looking for a ride.  Oliver's work was now taking much more of his time so he needed to take a step back from co-driving and  it was agreed that I would do the Century Oils Rallysport Championship with Sue in 1981.

First round was the Red Garages Cambrian Rally based in Llandudno.  The weather was very cold, with snow promised as we set off on the first stage round the Great Orme toll road.

The next few forest stages were a mixture of snow and ice and I made a mistake on a downhill corner and put us off onto a log pile.  With me pushing and Sue driving we got the car back on the road but a lot of time was lost and so there was no option but to retire. 
The problem now was that it was getting dark, it was snowing heavily and we were in Blaenau Ffestiniog which is miles away from our base in Llandudno. We abandoned our Granada service barge at a local garage and all set off for Llandudno in the rally car which was now fitted with snow tyres. To get there we had to cross the Crimea Pass and we found a couple of policemen at the bottom who told us the pass was closed until the snowplough arrived. Great, no option but to wait for about an hour until the plough arrived. By now quite a few other cars had turned up and we set off in a convoy following the plough.

All went well until we got to a much steeper section near the famous Llechwedd slate mines.  The snowplough slowed right down and was now going so slowly I was having to slip the clutch in first gear to stay behind it. When the smell of the burning clutch finally got too bad I decided to take a chance and overtook the snowplough. With the rally car on snow tyres and LSD working well we were able to cruise gently across the top of the Crimea Pass.
It was a pretty surreal experience passing some stranded cars as we slowed to tell them " Don't worry, there is a snowplough following behind us".  You couldn't make it up.

Sue Sanders was a very good co-driver and we had a good season, with a string of good results that ended up with winning the 1600cc championship class.  There were some notable results along the way, including 9th overall on the Rothmans National Rally in Somerset, and 4th overall on the Trentham Stages near Stoke on Trent which was the last round and Sue's local event.

Oh dear,  I do look a bit of a plonker !

Who are these young people?  

Yes its Sue and me collecting our Century Oils Rallysport Magazine Championship awards.










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Various 1981 Pictures 

1980, Talbot Sunbeam, MDD 281 V

 After the success of winning the West Midlands Stage Championship in 1979 it only seemed right to step up to events at a National level.  As luck would have it Chrysler/Talbot were starting a championship for their new Talbot Sunbeam TI cars in 1980 so that was obviously the way to go.

There were several reasons for this decision,
1. All the Avenger mechanical parts fit straight onto a Sunbeam,
2. I still had backing from Gordons of Stonehouse, so could rely on their help as well.
3. We knew the cars and their strengths/weaknesses.

With Glenn Gordon's contacts I was able to buy a brand new Sunbeam shell from the factory.  This of course came as a completely bare shell with not even any glass or wiring.   Ironically it did come with all the seam sealer and soundproofing pads so they had to be laboriously scraped off before the shell could be seam welded and the roll cage fitted.!  A horrible job.

New Sunbeam on its first ever rally stage

Bob Major helped out with the welding and cage installation in his own workshop in Gloucester. I bought the parts to build a brand new 1600 engine from Dave Vanderlist ( Dutche Components ) and most of the suspension was my ex-Avenger stuff.

First event for the new Sunbeam was the Granite City Rally based in Aberdeen, over 500 miles from home. At 3:00am on the day before the rally we were still fitting the exhaust system in Gordons workshops so it was going to be touch and go.

Suffice to say we made it to Aberdeen and finished the rally without major problems.

The 1980 season was a bit of an eye-opener. All the rallies on the Sunbeam TI Champioship were National status events so were on a much bigger scale than we were used to and also much more expensive.  Next event after the Granite was the Manx National on the Isle of Man, so that involved ferries as well as hotel bills. We were just getting to grips with the car on tarmac stages when the engine expired in a huge cloud of blue smoke. I had put some standard spark plus in to get the engine warmed up but had forgotten to swap to the harder racing plugs before we started the rally. Result was a melted plug and a melted piston.
A very expensive lesson.

The rest of the TI Chamionship events went much better. We had some good results and usually featured well in the Sunbeam TI Championship class, typically 3rd or 4th.  With it being a pretty hotly contested championship we considered this was a good performance for us.

One exception was the Peter Russek Manuals Rally run on the Epynt military ranges near Brecon. The rally uses the very fast tarmac roads and good pace notes are essential to be quick and safe.  If you get the notes wrong however it can prove disastrous and there have been lots of big accidents as a result.
We made just such a mistake at the notorious "Deers Leap" and went off at high speed but by a miracle did not roll and was able to continue.

 
 I think we gave those marshalls a fright, they had been standing just where the car is shown in the photo.

Only damage was a bent halfshaft and a dent on the inside of the passenger door caused by Olivers elbow.









1980 was not without its other problems however as you can see from this next photo

The Ebworth Chase Rally was run by Stroud Motor Club and my friend Glenn Gordon was involved with organising it.  It is a single venue rally in local woodlands and no actual navigation is required so I agreed to take Sally Prout along so she could see what rallying was like. She was going out with another driver but did not trust his driving and I was considered a safe option!
Francis Tuthill was leading after a few stages with us lying second so naturally I tried a bit harder to catch him on the next stage and the picture shows the result. I recall Sally was not too impressed to find herself upside down and covered in glass splinters. She found out a bit more about rallying than she expected.


Highlight of the year was another non-champioship rally, the  Jason Hire Tools Stages. This was another event in a local woodlands and I took along a friend from work called Alan Say.  He had never seen a rally except on TV so was keen to see it for real.

 Result was an outright win with us finishing First Overall and Alan went home with a winners trophy on his first event.
He descirbed it as "like being stuck inside a washing machine" and vowed never to do it ever again, but added that he would not have missed it for the world.








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Some more 1980 pictures 

Dave Tigwell new shell preparation

Back in Gordons Garage after Ebworth roll

Back in action but not repainted yet.

 

1979, West Midlands Stage Champion !!

Around this time two of my friends, Bob Major and Dave Tigwell,  had started a garage business together called Severnside Motors. They mostly did ordinary garage work but as both were keen rally drivers they offered to paint my car in their colours. I still carried Gordons advertising on the car and got help from Glenn Gordon.
Severnside also had a Transit and trailer which we could use to get us to rallies and carry spares etc. A proper service crew for the first time!
The Transit was called “Brian” and did excellent work for quite a few other friends on many and various events.  There was an unofficial speed competition with crews using Brian, I seem to recall the record being 102mph (complete with trailer and rally car) coming down from Shap Summit on the M6.  I should point out that it was not me driving at the time!

1979 turned out to be a great year with a string of good results and ending with winning the Association of West Midland Motor Clubs Stage Rally Championship. It was a hotly contested championship and great to win it outright in a 1600cc car.  Several different folk came along as navigators during the year as Oliver was away working for Shell in Brunei most of the time.

Our local paper - The Stroud News and Journal -  sent along their sports editor as navigator at the end of the year and I gave him a good day out finishing 5th overall on the Ebworth Chase Stages Rally. This was in the same woods where I had been on the roof a year before, luckily with no repeat performance. He did a nice little write-up in the paper which helped with publicity.

More Pictures from 1979

Very first run in the re-shelled Avenger getting ready for the 1979 season to come

 

First event of 1979 was The Trentham Gardens Stages run in deep snow near Stoke-on-Trent.   The M6 motorway was closed so even getting there was difficult but we finished 7th overall.

    

1979 Championship Prizegiving

 

1976-78, The Gordons Garage Years Begin

Hillman Avenger   RKX 924 H

In 1972 I had bought a brand new Hillman Avenger 1500 as a road car for the huge sum of £1053.
By 1976 I decided that forest stage rallying was the way to go but thought the Imp was a bit too small and low to survive in the forests.  I sold the Imp to Phil Madely (another 143 Motor Club member) and swapped my nice Avenger road car for a slightly battered Avenger rally car registration RKX924H  from Gordons Garage at Sonehouse who were a Chrysler dealership.  I knew Glenn Gordon the garage owners son from schooldays so already had contacts there.

RKX924H had already had a pretty hard life before I got it but it was a good starting point to learn from. We did at least a dozen proper rallies over the next couple of years, not counting navigational exercises and by the end of 1978 it seemed time to move on,  the pictures below show the old car on its last event.

Last rally planned for the old car was called  the “And Now For Something Completely Different Stages” run by Dursley Motor Club at the end of 1978 using forest tracks in Ebworth Woods near Birdlip.   I had invited  a friend from work called Trevor Panter along as co-driver. He was a pretty serious motor racing type who was interested to see what rallying was all about and what better way than to actually sit in the car. He got more experience than he bargained for when I put us on the roof in the first stage.

The marshalls quickly had us back on the wheels and we finished the stage looking well battered. I was not worried as the shell was going to be scrapped anyway so we continued the rally in enthusiatic fashion finishing last - but having a lot of fun.
It was here I first met Frank Round who helped us straighten the front suspension with a hydraulic body ram. He was to be a more significant part of the story later.
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I had bought a bare Avenger shell and planned to re-build it over the winter of 1978/9.
Glenn Gordon was kind enough to allow me use of their garage workshop and facilities after hours so this was big luxury for me. It was warm and dry with all the usual garage facilities like hydraulic lifts. Amazing luxury to me after working mostly outside.
Glenn had previously taken me up to the “works” at Coventry to buy factory tuning bits for the Imp and now we did the same for the new Avenger and I was able to pay him later which was really huge help.  

I took the “new” shell to Autopoint in Gloucester to be seam welded and have the roll cage fitted as this needed to be done professionally. Autopoint was run by Andy Chambers who was a pretty quick driver himself, but most of the work on my shell was done by Roger Coates who co-incidentally used to work at Gordons and had rallied my old car.  Cost to supply and fit the roll cage and seam weld the shell was £150, see the invoice below.

assorted pictures 1976-1978 (sorry for poor quality on some they are taken from small proofs)

Prescot Hill Climb Stage

Cheltenham Racecourse Jump

Sorry I don't know whose proof this is !

Road Rally mid-Wales