You are not logged in

A Triumph at the 18^th UAC Circuit of Ireland Retro Rally

by Tony Sheach
Car 34 Triumph TR4
22^nd October 2004

My own mission this year was not to Max any of the tests if at all possible (well maybe just one!), to get the car round whole with minimum fuss, not be last and to get it home ... in that order. Anything else and we’re on Bonus. Terence’s mission I’m sure was to clean all the regularities and keep calm in the left seat. Tougher job by far and I surely did my best to frustrate him as he would no doubt tell you.

Test 1 at the LVLP was a bit scary and I got a bit twitchy as all the cars queued up to be flagged away by the President, straight into Test 1. No messing. Terence did the driving here ... And good he was too. I stood cowering by Test 1 trying to learn it, watching about 12 cars in front of me go through it ....Mark in car 22, the white TR4 – looked OK and taking it easy, Keith Saab 96, car 23 - nailing it, Ronnie Griffin in his Escort – bloody hell! That things got skates!, Kenny Graham in his blue Midget ... another hot shoe, Stephen Potts in car 29, another Midget – tidy and quick. This is serious stuff and I just must learn to drive! Into Test 1 then, ... bit of overdriving with my wellies on, 2 line faults and had to reverse to get into a gate – no good, but an improvement on last year. Terence hands me the Test 2 diagram minutes before I’m due in – I rattle round it cleanly, pissed off with my first attempt and its not a bad effort, still too much tyres and Weber’s and not enough slidey rear end ... but I’m only little. Clifford Auld follows me in car 35 (Rover P6 – instead of his Triumph 2.5PI which is no longer with us – shame as it went like stink) and shows even more tyres – he’s probably quicker too! Bugger.

Off down the road to the next 2 tests at Gosford Castle Forest Park, via Moira, Gilford and Tandragee due in at 14.18 and we’re cooking on gas. Terry Pickering’s TR3 is already mixing it with the Mini’s, Midgets and Escorts ... So im quite up as another TR doing well is as good as my own (well ...) – I hope he does well. 2 more tests (quite tricky) and we’re still clean, albeit a little slow but no faults. Finally I have discovered one of the tricks to testing ... look at the diagram as you see the test, memorize it quickly, get in the car, tootle up to the start and get on with it. More aggression required says TB, less noise. Maybe ill get quicker too. Terry is car 39 and I hang about to watch. He is quick ... and he can get the back of the car round – we must talk. We have a transit distance from TC 0 (LVLP) to TC 1 of 37.5 miles and its Friday afternoon, total time allowed is 110 minutes to do 4 tests, gawp at others doing 4 tests and leg it to TC 1. We legged it a lot ‘cos I gawped a lot. I’m only little.

Onto TC 1 and the start of the first regularity on the western side of Markethill, County Down, taking us on yellow roads through Armagh, to and fro across the rolling landscape and the (I’m reliably informed) trout fee lakes, through the first batch of time controls to the finish close to the site of the battle of Clontibret. We didn’t do too badly but Terence was unhappy about his route. Time dropped no doubt.

Off via Clones on a long transit stage, caught up in traffic and road works so its getting tighter and tighter by the minute. We see car 50 the Mini Cooper S of Eamonn Byrne and Paul Phelan (multiple winners of the event) do a u turn and leg it up the road. Terence was here three weeks ago and says the roadworks are short. I stay put, but we’re in first, handbrake (errr ..) off and clutch down. Ready and GO BABY GO is ready to be pushed. I love lateness ...

We get through Clones and we are all late, a long line of rally cars of all sorts of shapes and sizes, testament to the broad appeal of this event. Terence gets us well up the field but we are still late. We are routed through the lower parts of Upper Lough Erne, east of Belturbet and all you can see is watercourse after lake after stream. Surprisingly we come across a flooded section, with 4 cars running behind us. I thought back to my days in Skye wading landrovers with my friend John the local SSPCA Inspector and driver of the millennium, look at the fence posts along the road, depth of vegetation ... about 18 inches. First gear, 3000 revs and the bow wave is very impressive. As we get halfway in I can see car 16 the maroon Riley Elf behind me and a line of Mini Coopers parked, some U turning, man in the left seat head down replotting. I look forward and its getting deeper, my feet are getting wet and as I look out the window I can see an eddy round the wing vent – all that is holding the water out of the engine bay, damp LUCAS bits and certain disaster. Speed is critical it seems (and you know I feel the need ...) and I hold the course and speed until the nose of the car lifts and we start to climb out of the water. It had to be 100metres long, had to be 18 inches deep and the maps didn’t get wet. Car kept going ... heh heh.

We roll forward as I keep the revs up and the fish fall out of the back of the sump guard ... nae chips so we let them go. Terence knocks the bungs out of the floor pans, deftly catching them to preserve my originality. No red lights, pulls like a train and we damply proceed on our way, testing the brakes to ensure that our next disaster is deftly avoided. I look back in the mirror and the Elf is still sitting on the tarmac, wings at the ready, nose down for the surge. Im sure he can make it. We park up to set ourselves straight and minutes later the maroon Elf rolls up alongside us, very damp. He says it floats. I believe him. Nobody else came by.

Onto Ballyhugh for TC2 and the start of Regularity 2, due in at 17.18. We are on time and this time it looks like the wet routes are plotted ... maybe. This is a complicated one, time dropped but a good performance – running on Tulips so they are tight, repetitive and frequent. Great stuff, but Terence was working hard and keeping on speed was difficult. I counted 4 time controls, all marshalled by smiley people who are a credit to the UAC – but there don’t appear to be enough of them as Im sure I saw the same faces twice. This was a very long regularity, something like 120 tulips finishing us up on the north western side of BenCroy. End of Reg 2 and it’s a dash in the dark to Curry for PC A and the supper halt, where we arrive with 25 minutes for dinner, car fiddling and the rest. Next is the Night Navigation also know as the Navigation Test... Heh heh. Back to Hart Motor Club 12 cars ...

Start at Banada at TC 3 through to TC4 IN which is in Westport at the somewhat sumptuous Hotel Westport, via Fuel somewhere on the N5 where I managed to get one 500ml pack of gearbox oil. No more in Ireland. The roadbook says “Route Instructions for this test will be issued at TC3 and at subsequent Intermediate Time Controls during the test. This means instructions often, in awkward places, probably where your navigation is off unless you’re on fire and definitely structured in such a way that it will upset your afternoon. Distance 63.8 miles, time allowed for the whole run is 150 minutes. Its plot and thrash time.

We had a ball on this one, save for a few wobbly moments, a brush with a wall and a little dawdle into a farmyard some 200 metres later. Terence was not happy – more below. We started running down by the River Moy and round some dark places, with lots of walls, lefts, rights ... We ran on a familiar series of navigation favourites that we had both seen before, grid square entries, herringbones, grid references and herringbones mixed, a few tulips thrown in there with those, a trace (well done Terence for remembering the transparent plastic sheet! more spot heights ... all with speed changes at regular intervals, usually just after a junction and always just before a Passage Control where our arrival was timed to the second. Tough and lots of concentration required, even just to get the route right.

I have no idea where we went. The only landmark I remember was around Swinford where we howled up to a junction, turned left in ... and went straight on ish as the rear of the car slid round the corner, while the front decided to do much the same. We parked gently ... on a wall, lightly scratching the right front wing (why is it always the expensive side!! ??) Terence’s only responses was “what the f*** was that ?”, I could only reply that the steering wasn’t working. 200 metres later we approached another bend, this time right ... steering failure again as we drifted across the bend and ended up parked (engine running and in neutral!) waiting for it to find us again. He got cross this time. I couldn’t explain this as genuinely I turned in in plenty time (sure) and we had no brakes on when it happened .... puzzling. We were also lost. ITC 3blah blah was somewhere in County Mayo. We got there but how is still a mystery to me, but we did go near Swinford as I saw the signs. ITC3B ran us north of Swinford and so on for the rest of the day to at least ITC3H. Swinford ... I’ll remember that place. I wonder how blue that wall got.

I went under firm instruction to get my foot out and as we got loster and loster, but the revs crept back up, the front got more jiggly and slidey to the point where I had to practically stop to turn in. This was tyres for sure but we had no time to get out and look. We tanked up to another bend and found the course car, sweeping up the field to close the stage. We were very late. Terence picked up the location of the NN finish by intuition, as he had done so to find several of the Passage Controls throughout the night by judicious guessing and map reading – top guy! I kept us in front of the course car by a few hundred metres by pure grunt, apparently showering them with dust and sparks as went booted along through the narrow lanes. Fantastic stuff ... Eat my dust! Heh heh. I was later accused of not braking by one of the CC marshals, but they must have guessed that I was ... heavily sometimes, to get us round corners on what turned out to be completely tread free tyres. Hence the sparks from the rear and the thunderflashes from the pipe.

Exit the NN late but still in the rally and with what proved to be a very skittery motor car but having minimised what could have been a very bad night for us. Top job by the man in the left seat. I was mentally ringing the ever helpful Walter Petchey already, thinking up a good way of asking for a right hand front wing in exchange for a minimal amount of folding stuff or old bits and blagging a favour from his friend Neil to paint it Wedgwood blue. I hadn’t dared to look yet. We hoofed it to Westport by the longer but faster route and the close of the first day and night at TC 4 IN, pausing only briefly in the car park to inspect my work and the tyres. Some silver tank tape and wheel changing in the morning maybe – but it’s a TR4 and you need to do much worse than that to break one of these. Off to the bar to see some old friends and meet a few new ones ... Interim results showed that we had dropped about 650 seconds all day. Not bad but Terry and Anthony in the TR3 had more or less cleaned the whole day – fantastic performance. Talk of human computers, night sights etc. in said bar. Clearly they were just on the button from the start. But ... I’m only little.

To be continued ...

[Part 1 2 3 ]

If you wish to make contact with Tony regarding this article then visit the contact us page and we will forward your messages on.

Fancy seeing you and your classic on these pages? Get in touch via the contact us page and we will let you know how you can provide your own article.