B52 Stages Rally, Edzell Airfield

1st May 2004

With nearly 5 long months elapsed since Gerry and Davie teamed up in a competitive rally, high expectations were to be had of the 1400cc class regulars.

Not only had the pair not sat alongside each other for this length of time, the last 6 weeks had seen some major work carried out on the car. The work in question was the engine transplant from our very quick & reliable 1400cc 8-valve engine to a full works specification 1400cc16v Bowyer developments engine once owned by one of our fellow competitors Nick Runcie. We had hoped it was a simple case of bolting the engine in and turning the key, but no such luck !! However, after 6 weeks of converting, cutting & adapting, the car was eventually road tested in anger THREE days prior to the event.

With all going well on the testing session there was little else to do, so we headed to Edzell for the cars first outing in over 5 months and its first time out with the new power plant.

This event was perfect for its first full test as it is based within a redundant airfield with central servicing, so any problem occurring could be easily dealt with. The event was made up of 6 stages with a varied amount of chicanes, tight and twisty sections, to mile long straights, which would certainly stretch the cars legs.

On this particular event, we were also competing in a higher engine size class due to the regulations concerning 16-valve engines, so the pressure would be on from the word go!

Stage 1 was seen as a test on all newly fitted parts. The car drove fantastically with only a half spin entering a tight chicane and a 10-yard overshoot after a long straight, which was a result of us out braking ourselves from 120mph! The second loop of stage 1 was much better with no real problems and crossing the flying finish at 7m 44s.

We promptly headed to service to closely inspect the car, with the only issue being the oil breather pipe-ejecting oil due to being slightly overfilled. Happy with the cars performance we prepared for stage 2.

Stage 2 was a blinder! With the car being pushed more and more to reach the high revs that this engine craves, this stage was far better and seemed as if we had shaved a few seconds off our time, which we did, a full 22 seconds quicker! We were back on the pace like we had never been away from the car.

Stages 3 and 4 were identical in mileage with a slight route change to stages 1 and 2. With that we matched a time of 6m 40s on both these stages. That goes to show how committed and consistent we were even at this early time.

After these 4 stages we compared times to our nearest competitor, which was Ford Puma. With only a few seconds separating us, we decided to up the pace in an effort to extend our lead.

Stages 5 and 6 were probably our best runs of the day, even managing to race with a Ford Escort Cosworth over a 1mile section of the stage, which demonstrated the sheer power of our new engine. The car handled fantastically over the rough sections of the stage and the only near miss we had on stage 6 was on the long straight carrying a speed in excess of 120mph, when a hare ran across the road in front of us! We swerved slightly just to miss the animal and avoid a very messy finish to a perfect day. Consistency was obviously the rule for the day as the stage 5 time was 7m 00s and stage 6 was 7m 01s!!

We finished the event 1^st in class 2 by almost 1 minute. We have to admit that this was one of our best results to date given all the time, effort and expense we had both put in over the past few months.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank our sponsors for their commitment to supporting us in what will be a new, exciting and very very rewarding future for the team and all concerned.

With the continual upgrading of the car continuing, we will be in touch within a couple of weeks to inform you all of the latest additions to the car.