The Rally on Top  of the World 2010

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The following is the account of our first trip as competitors to Iceland, we had been twice before as tourists and had made fantastic friends. We now go every year to comepte in the rally and to visit these same friends, for whom we are now God Parents to their two boys. In 2007 we will be taking our new toy, an ex MSport Freelander. This has also been to Automotive in Chetser and Roland has worked away at the V6 providing an additional 60bhp and cganging the IRD gear ratios. In addition the gearbox now has a bespoke control unit with button change. The engine runs under an OMEX ECU and the vehicle has custom made Reiger suspension.

We called it the The hot water rally in 2001

It's about 12.45 and Frances and I are having lunch, two open sandwiches together for me and a Gravlax roll for Frances, we have about 16 minutes before we are due to leave - plenty of time. Then someone says "You should be going, shouldn't you." "No no plenty of time" then they thrust a results sheet in front of us. S___t. We started the rally in 17th place but have now moved to 7th in just 6 stages.

That change in running order was to have dire consequences on the our progress, though it could equally have been my tempting fate and phoning a friend (Roland the engine designer and builder) to say that every thing was going fine. Ha Ha. Remember Murray Walker tempting Mansell's fate?

The honest truth of course is that we made a mistake with the road book timing and how they organise service time and park ferme. (In the UK we give a road time based on stage finish time, then you are given a separate service time. In Iceland road and service time is the same and times are based on first departure time.) We had to put the Land Rover into parc ferme or incur penalties. So we never put in the last 17 litres of gas.

Mind you I had better be even more honest and say the stage after lunch should have been easy (as easy as any rally stage is) but no I manage to swipe a rock, mount the track's bank( aleap of about 2ft) drive across lava rocks burst the two nearside tyres and damage both rims. I did get it back on the track and after 5 ks we changed the rear wheel, with no other spare we drove the remaining 14ks on a flat front and bent rim. We lost 12 minutes possibly 16 with the service crew swopping the front and fitting a new spare on the road section.

At the next stage, which is the second longest, we drove flat out and passed one Lex Army LR and caught the next, we had made up about 3 minutes. By the end of the day we should be back ahead of all the Army LR again. Ha Ha.

We are now in the National Park, no service allowed and the organisers have a refuel stop in the middle (see picture), our LPG tanks and hand pump would be there again, with 12 minutes steady pumping I'd put in about 30 litres, as we burn between 1 litre and 3 litres every kilometre we would have enough to finish the next two stage and meet service again as we exit the National Park. Well that was the plan! But some 8 ks short of the refuel we ran out.
Game set and match. Frances was absolutely gutted this was her 50th birthday treat and I'd failed to deliver.

We received a tow to the refuel zone from the Doctor in his 110, the Army team had stopped to ask but they where close to their own maximum times. We refuelled and managed to exit the two other stages, but we were well out of time. An eventual tow to Arnes [see photo] and a major refuel allowed us to return at top speed to Reykjavik. Mainly to say thank you to all the Icelandic sponsors but of course to show off this unique Liquid Gas Injection 100" Land Rover, I had blagged our way into the spectator stage as the last car. Fame was ours for a short while as we had appeared on the 10 o'clock news the night before because of the Butane LPG fuel. We arrived on the start line as the second last car took off. I made a complete Ar– of this stage and stalled it (well I was just 1 metre away from the harbour's edge), tried to do a hairpin left when in fact it was a right left chicane, tried left foot braking to keep the rev's up for fast corner exits but all I did was create a lovely smell - nope not the best demo. I was later told by Snorri Gislasson, one of Iceland's renowned lifted vehicle builders, that I was crap but the vehicle was very impressive across the bumps the smoothest of all the jeeps, Toyotas, Nissans and some rally cars. I'll live with that.

That night we received permission to run as a fast closing car, two or three minutes behind the Army. This was, I'm told, because we had taken such a gamble on bringing the vehicle over and not being sure if we could refuel it. The intention was to drive fast, on Saturday, but not flat out so we would finish without damage but more importantly test and work out a refuelling strategy for next year.

Saturday has the longest stage, some 44ks, and to begin with I drove fast, then started to speed up I had seen an Army LR ahead.(red mist disease). Now our version of pace notes are not Nicky Grist style of 40 FlatL 100 R5 more a sort of "after 5.2k crest is straight on", only the trip was out and this crest was sharpish left! We did a swift 5ft drop off onto an old track, drove along it and back onto the rally route later. Woops, throw away the pace notes - to be honest we had found they were useless after the first stage on Thursday. After 35 minutes we had finished the stage and passed one LR and caught another. So much for a gap so we can't catch them. In the rally's penultimate stage we clocked up the 6th fastest time which was only 27 seconds behind car 1. Now I really hate driving fast down hill and hate marble topped roads even more, this was both. I can only think that all the others had swept it for me. The top three were still batteling to secure their final places.

Doing the recce was fun in itself though a huge mileage it has to be said. It took two and half days and as you can see it was not really that successful in providing us with pace notes to drive flat out with. However the 4x4 Challenger, lent to us by ALP Car Hire in Reykjavik, our main sponsor was very good. Comfortable, quite quick a little softly sprung but very economical. The advantage of course was that it had a similar viewing horizon to the Land Rover and thus help me visualise the stage route better. Thanks Diddi and all at ALP. The only small thing we did in return to help was all 5 of us drove a car back from the airport for them. All cars end up out there after holidays so they have a problem of ferrying them from Keflavik airport back to Reykjavik. When you have over 300 cars for hire that's a lot that can end up in the wrong location.

Taking part in a rally is fairly straight forward if a decent amount of pre event planning takes place. Firstly do you have the finance, entry fee, fuel costs, service crew, food etc. Where will you service – per road book but where to meet the management car. Then you need to arrange accommodation, spares package, how to split the spares and finally the pre event vehicle preparation or check. Easy really but when you decide to compete abroad where there is no roll on roll off ferry or train service, you need to really plan ahead. Witness this recent foray to Iceland for the 1200k Rally on top of the World.

Our vehicle went by container from Immingham (Humberside) we live some 500 miles away in Inverness so I had to have everything organised three weeks before the event. From tools to spares, helmets and overalls, everything had to be packed into the vehicle, listed for customs declarations and packed for a 5 day North Sea voyage. Without the help of the Lex Army rally team, the authority of Alan Parramore and the on-day help of Jason and Chris we might never have made it. As it was I had to make a last minute call to Richard Shipley to help out as no one in the Army could procure a 50mm hitch to tow the trailer to the docks. Theory was to deliver vehicle to the Army and they would complete the logistics, something they excel at. However Richard had to jump in and tow the vehicle. Thanks pal. Why did we not drive it there? Because it had to be shipped less fuel, ours is a Propane fuelled engine and the shipping company requested empty gas tanks.

This was just one of the many problems we had to overcome, each a last minute call. On the way back home from dropping the vehicle at Richard's I had to organise insurance in Iceland as the event organised system had stopped doing this some two years earlier. (We subsequently discovered that the organisers just reprint the reg's and stage road book every year without any changes!). Minutes before driving the vehicle onto the trailer to tow it south, I climbed out and knocked the indicator switch clean off the column. An oil leak at the rear diff made me remove it to seal it better - I found an allen key in the diff pan. The Ashcroft LT77 to Series transfer adapter was weeping oil, I thought I'd forgotten the gasket (it was built together nearly two years earlier) on removal I discovered that all the internal bolts had worked loose and one was lying in the bottom of the case. The exhaust kept falling off - it doesn't know Ha Ha (it did again in Iceland). New battery meant new battery case. Poor starting was due to painted earth points. Odd steering with the ARB was caused by the front and rear connections being transposed. Head lights an spots work together if there is an R in the Month - vehicle preparation was a laugh a minute - I think not.

The event was Frances' birthday treat and should really have been quite affordable, as the entry fee is waived for UK entrants. There was the shipping and fuel costs of course but that had been planned for. However we then discovered the event ran to FIA rules and so FIA helmets and overalls had to be bought, a big £600 out of the budget.

Fuel in Iceland is no more expensive than the UK – if you run on petrol or diesel but there is only one LPG station in Iceland (which turned out to be Methane far less octane than propane and just not suitable) . We had quite a logistics problem to find Propane. To give some measure of comfort for refuelling I had shipped over our hand pump and two empty liquid take off bottles. We managed to get these filled but it took a bit of investigation to find the only Propane import plant. However these alone would not cover our needs so additional fuelling was needed. The theory was to use Bar B Q 12Kg Propane bottles turn them upside down and let it run out. Problem was our pipe would not fit their threads so we had to have new ends fitted. Even then the fuel ran so slowly we would have been out of time with just the first refuel. Hot water was the answer but a flask is not enough, you need about 14 gallons of boiling water to move 12Kg of gas quickly – not a problem in Iceland with all the geothermal hot water! Our service crew of Richard (yep the same guy) Andy Mills of Hillrally organisation fame and John Dominy were simply outstanding at this gas transfer game. To the extent they appeared on the daily headline TV news. [See photo]

All in all the event used nearly 30 bottles of gas so the boys moved some 450 gallons of hot water. Ingenuity knew no bounds with them, de Bono would have been proud. Using an old foam mattress like a tyre warmer and collar. The Land Rover 130's Webasto heater to pre heat the cylinders over night. The 130, was the same one featured in the wedding of Ann and Diddi. It was the boy's pride in car hire just £55 a day plus insurance of about £90, from BL. But the best has to have been immersing the bottles of gas in a Geyser stream to pre-heat [see photo] them until we arrived – I have to tell you that was like an F1 refuel stop is transferred so fast, you needed gloves to hold the bottles. One filling station owner saw us arrive and came out to greet us carry two containers of hot water, he'd seen it on the news the night before.

Our friends in Iceland Diddi and Ann are without doubt the key to our success in Iceland, they arranged the ALP car hire loan vehicle sponsorship. Money from Metan the methane gas company and from Olis (BP) discount on gas bottles bought at any Olis (BP) filling station.
Plus his unending resourcefulness and translation service. Many many thanks you two we look forward to July next year when we can begin to pay you.

Perhaps our main sponsor but also the person responsible for our refuelling fun must be Roland Marlow (he of Automotive Component Remanufacturing fame). Without his liquid gas injection supercharged intercooled 200+bhp 4 cylinder Omex managed engine we would not have caused such a stir, never have had the fun and certainly never have been able to drive a vehicle with power to get out of trouble. Thanks Roland.

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