I'm part of the Oxford Universities Motorsport Foundation (OUMF) and
we've been invited by the Barbados Rally Club to compete in the Sol Barbados Rally for a second year in our Riley 1.5 historic rally car, of course it would be rude not take up such an invitation!

The cars already out there thanks to the generosity of the Barbados Rally Club and Philips Tyres of Oxford covering the shipping for us! You can see it hiding behind the white M3 here. As you can see we've definitely got the smallest budget and the slowest car on the rally, it's been described as wonderfully hopeless which I think sums it up nicely (but somehow managed to finish 46th out of 89 last year).

There are six of us going (four of the lucky sods already out there) and I'm flying out with my mate tomorrow morning, courtesy of Virgin. We're doing a shakedown/rallysprint event this weekend and a two day tarmac stage rally next weekend, with a week to fettle the car and party on the beach in between (I should emphasis that this is not a holiday ).

Hopefully I'll be able to keep you informed and post some pictures from out there, if not the Barbados Rally site should be updated regularly.

Attached photos of the car on the rally last year and on display at Race Retro (sorry about the size I've got nothing to resize it with on this PC).

Quote from ajp71 :

(sorry about the size I've got nothing to resize it with on this PC).

Large images are acceptable for vintage rally cars. & hot naked women (jokes...Honestly).

Quote from spiderbait90 :

Large images are acceptable for vintage rally cars. & hot naked women (jokes...Honestly).

Time for a few more then, taken at the somewhat slower environment of a production car trial, probably at least as tough on the car though.

Alex I'm very jealous. I remeber seeing the coverage of the Barbados rally festival on Motors TV a while back and thinking how amazingly good fun it looked. Everyone seemed so relaxed and out to have a good time, and the fans and locals really made it seem like a social event rather than a competition which I think looked great.

Best of luck, your car look great, lots of character. Please keep us up to date.

Quote from ajp71 :

You can see it hiding behind the white M3 here.

Are you the guy standing next to it scratching his balls?

Not exactly the car I'd choose to take part in a rally, but best of luck to you all the same.

Got back today and what a fortnight we've had.

Thanks to the generosity of the locals we managed to stay in a beach house and the car stayed in the Ullyett's Machine Shop. Quite a few of the local rally cars were built and maintained here, notably Nigel Recce's white Datsun (Toyo R888s on the front budget tyres on the rear), a trio of matching yellow Starlets and Jonseys awesome 2.4 Sierra Cosworth engined mark 2 Escort. For the locals winning the rally is second to entertaining the crowds and huge drifts, gratuitous use of the handbrake and the odd donut are obligatory for the Bajans!

First Sunday we did the King of the Hill hillclimb, and to some people's embarrassment didn't finish last! The car ran fine on this shakedown event (the return road offering a literal shakedown for the car) on Tesco 99 that it had been brimmed with before it left.

Nigel's Datsun, that had just been finished the night before, didn't fair so well, a rocker fell off, but that didn't deter them from going back to the workshop and finding a spare one and fixing it. He then had a puncture in the next run and then melted a bearing in the following run (the fact the engine was revving to nearly 10,000rpm within 30 seconds of being run for the first time probably didn't help). In the week before the rally they decided rather than rebuilding the current SOHC engine they'd build a completely new twin cam engine, gearbox, exhaust and propshaft for it in 4 evenings, the rate of progress was astonishing, right down to reprofiling camshafts with a file!

All the cars were ready (just) for driving off the ramp on Friday night and starting the 2 days of stages on Saturday. We ran into problems after the first few stages on Saturday with fuel starvation, we were running the rally on a 50/50 mix of race fuel and local pump petrol. Something in the fuel was persistently clogging the carbs and we ended up doing the majority of the rally on two cylinders (though the Suzuki hire mpv thing still couldn't keep up with it!). Stripping and cleaning the twin SUs at every service wasn't really ideal. We guess the problem was either caused by the hopeless local pump fuel, which the locals later told us is known for producing chewing gum like residue from the wax that naturally forms in petrol when the correct additives aren't put in it (we found stuff just like this in the filter and assumed the race fuel must have attacked the sealant on the sender but the wax explanation makes sense), or it could have been caused by the race fuel attacking something and bringing it into the carbs (rubber hoses). Whatever the issue we could do nothing about the fuel because we did not have enough race fuel to run it neat and running anymore pump fuel would have been too risky.

We finished 65th out of 66 finishers and 91 starters, winning historic class by default, not quite the rally we had planned, hopefully we'll be back next year with the problems sorted and some opposition in the class.

Nigel's week got more expensive after going into a bank after bursting a damper and underestimating the effect it would have under braking, doing minimal damage (as seen in the first photos) on the Saturday. Then he got over ambitious sliding on the Sunday and went into a concrete wall hard, that the locals know well as a place where people go off (and of course the Bajans are obliged to go sideways wherever the crowds are!).

The rally was won by Kris Meeke after local hero Roger Skeete had a big off on off on the Saturday (both Subarus). There was a fantastic selection of cars including an Aston, a totally bonkers Mini (2 litre Astra engine, still front wheel drive and still steel bodied) and lots of M3s (which have to take the prize for best sound). The most impressive car for me in the rally though had to be Phil Collins seriously fast highly developed mk2 Escort, with fully independent suspension, a sequential gearbox, a really tidy enigne bay and new block cast in some special material it was licking at the heels of the WRC cars and was amazing to watch.

Overall it's the locals spirit and kindness which make this rally and the parties so special and so unique, I couldn't think of a better way or place to spend two weeks

Quote :

Are you the guy standing next to it scratching his balls?

No I wasn't able to leave until the 22nd May and flew to St Lucia and got a local connecting flight to Barbados (which was an adventure in itself ).

Quote from Minimaxman :

Everyone seemed so relaxed and out to have a good time, and the fans and locals really made it seem like a social event rather than a competition which I think looked great.

As one of the locals said, the rally is the fun part the parties are the serious bit

Quote :

Best of luck, your car look great, lots of character.

Yep it has no shortage of character and a sense of hopelessness that everybody loves, the amount of attention it gets both from local fans and in the motoring press is amazing given that it's the slowest and oldest car on the rally, bought for £300 on ebay. Getting publicity is crucial for us because without the help of so many people and companies it would never be possible to get so far literally without a budget.

The locals love the flamer as well

That looks brilliant, shame about the problems with the carbs getting clogged up but at least you finished the rally, and not last! I'm very envious, would love to do that one day. Any vids of it? Or will it be covered on TV somewhere again?

I remember one or two years back one of the final stages had a specially built "tabletop" jump which some guys decided to try and clear by going flat out, others didn't. Did they have this this time?

Quote from Minimaxman :

That looks brilliant, shame about the problems with the carbs getting clogged up but at least you finished the rally, and not last! I'm very envious, would love to do that one day. Any vids of it? Or will it be covered on TV somewhere again?

They are making a TV program again and did catch some good video which was shown at the prizegiving party, I don't think it's on youtube yet though, there are lots of shaky handheld videos already up. This is what it's all about

Quote :

I remember one or two years back one of the final stages had a specially built "tabletop" jump which some guys decided to try and clear by going flat out, others didn't. Did they have this this time?

After the rally there is a special fun stage at Bushy Park, a small tarmac race circuit that's like a flattened version of Lydden. Last year they built that ramp intending it to be a permanent feature but removed it shortly after the rally due to safety fears of circuit racing cars hitting it, which is rather strange seeing as the pitwall was made of loose tyres and one Starlet quite literally went through the perimeter fence out of the circuit. They ran Bushy Park with cars three abreast this year.

you lucky, lucky boy. I thought students were pennyless individuals who drank cheap beer & lived on tesco value beans. Turns out they fly around the world for free competing in international rally's . I'm soooo jealous .

The victorious Riley returns on Thursday and ever optimistically we're intending to pick it up from the dock and drive it straight to the Goodwood Festival of Speed, where it'll be on display on our stand. Quite how we're going to get it all the way back to Oxford on Sunday night I'm not sure, hopefully we'll be able to solve the fuel issue before then