MAN Racing

We took a few videos at Coney Green Farm. Here they are:

Setting off and getting the first punch
The special stage

As so, with the damaged lights fixed after West Harptree and a shiny new tent purchased, Nase and I headed off to Coney Green Farm for round two of the Challenger 4×4 series. Due to our excellent logistic situation it took nine hours to get from London to near-Birmingham, but never mind – we’d arrived in time for the Saturday evening barbeque, and that’s pretty much all I cared about.

After struggling with our new tent for around half an hour, Lucy from Challenge 4×4 showed up and did it for us in about five minutes while we watched. We then met some new friends, ate some cheeseburgers and drank some beer until it got dark. It certainly beat getting up at 5am on the Sunday to drive to West Harptree. Lots of people told us how good the site was, and told us we should do quite well as the site suits a small car with a low centre of gravity, as there are so many hills.

We had changed our targets somewhat since last time, and they were now:
1) Don’t break the car
2) Don’t break ourselves
3) Do better than last time
Oh dear.

Anyway, to challenge day! After the biggest bacon sandwich I’ve ever had the pleasure of eating, we “listened intently” to the driver’s briefing (making the obligatory joke of turning and walking away after the instruction “if there are any punches you feel are too hard for you or your vehicle do not attempt them”), and then set off for a Daytona-style rolling start. We weren’t even last in the queue this time, so we were already improving.

Coney Green Farm is huge. At West Harptree the punches were tightly-packed – if you were at one you could always see another – but this wasn’t the case here at all. We drove for quite a while before choosing our first punch - a tight drive through dense woods with a ninety degree bend. Using some magical talent I wasn’t aware I possessed, I managed to balance all four wheels off the ground using only one tree stump, making us (I’m pretty sure) the only people that had to winch at that particular punch. There was meant to be another punch nearby, but we couldn’t find that. We looked at a punch seven feet up a tree, but not for long.

The next punch we took on was at the top of a very long hill, attached ruthlessly tightly to a tree. With the throttle pinned to the floor our little Tomcat shot up toward the top of the hill, again refusing to let the bigger cars show it up. When it came to us humans displaying some talent, however, things didn’t go so well. We winched as close to the tree as we could, but we were still an inch out. If it was punch 5 rather than punch 7 we’d have been able to reach the right part of the card, but we just couldn’t quite get there. We reset the line several times and tried some different angles, but each time we were an agonising few centimetres from success. In the end, we had to admit defeat. I did a winch assisted descent (going backward) which was fine until I ran out of winch rope and slid backward into a tree. Scratch number one from the target list.

Finding a flat spot to reattach the front winch rope, I noticed that the engine temperature, which had climbed quite high during our failed assault on punch 7, hadn’t come back down. Still, it was well under the red, so we carried on.

The next punch was more technical – straddle some (very) deep ruts so you could reverse to a tree. After a couple of failed attempts negotiating the ruts, we decided to pull out the waffle boards and try driving straight across them. Despite the rather worrying co-driver command of “don’t look, just keep driving” we reached the punch easily. Hurrah for the technical approach!

The special stage for this event involved getting to the top of a very steep hill only to find that some idiot had felled a tree in your way. You had to get over the tree, drive around in a circle (collecting a punch while you were up there), pop back over the tree again and descend a steep hill, stopping in a taped-off box near the bottom. This would stop the clock, and the stage would be over. It’s rather a shame we didn’t listen a bit harder to the instructions. After storming up the hill (I believe we were one of only two teams not to have to winch up it) we took one look at the felled tree and decided we didn’t have a hope of getting the punch behind it. We turned around and started heading down toward the finishing box for a good time, only to realise that people were shouting and jumping up and down. Sticking his head out of the window, Nase learned that we had to drive over the tree to complete the stage. After a rather ambitious three-point turn, we set up some waffle boards got the front wheels onto the tree. A few feet further and… *clunk*
“What’s it caught on?” I shouted, having (again) lost my radio.
“Everything.” Came the reply.
A quick discussion later and we decided to abandon all hope of getting over the tree with all the bits of the car still attached, and abandon the stage. A glance at the temperature gauge revealed the engine was a few degrees warmer. Oh dear.

Still, ever onward. Next to the special stage was a simple punch – drive through some foot-deep water, winch onto the bank and punch your card. Into the water we went, and while I waited for Nase to rig the winch, the engine died, and refused to restart. A quick glance under the bonnet revealed that the electrics were still dry, and after a few seconds of winding over the engine started again, sounding a lot more like a TDi than a V8. We limped out of the hole with the temperature gauge displaying some alarming figure and got onto some dry land, white smoke trailing. A more thorough look under the bonnet (thanks to the folks that came to help) didn’t reveal any clues so, in sticking with the target list, we decided to call it a day. Only two successful punches in and our challenge was over.

The upside of this is that we got to watch a lot of more experienced teams and gain some valuable clues on what we might be doing wrong. We also got to witness the rather alarming moment when, heading down the hill at the end of the special stage, one of Chris Kelly’s brake pipes popped off and his truck launched itself at the spectators. Being young, fit and nimble (!) we all scooted out of the way, but by far the most nimble was Chris’ co-driver Jason, who made the, er, ‘interesting’ decision to jump out of the runaway truck. Happily, no-one was hurt, and Chris was good enough to avoid my camera that I left behind. He found a spare brake pipe, borrowed some of our tools, and was quickly on his way again.

And that was about it for us. When the engine cooled down we trundled to the finish line, so at least we didn’t have to retire. And we now have something to fix (and an MOT to pass) before Somerley Estate at the end of June.

The lights are repaired, we’ve tweaked a couple of bits, and we’re ready for the next challenge on the 15th.

We had three goals at West Harptree, our very first winch challenge event. They were, in order of importance:
1) Don’t break the car.
2) Don’t break ourselves.
3) Don’t come last.

We arrived at the site at 7.30am and had a quick glance around, quickly determining one thing - all the other cars were awesome. It seemed almost all of them were running twin motor 8274s and beadlocked 35″ Simex (or Simex-like) tyres. Suddenly our second-hand 8274 with the frayed rope and our budget Recip Trial tyres were looking a bit feeble - and we thought it was a beginners league!

We gave Lucy our money and she handed me a T-shirt that was missing at least one ‘X’ from the label, and a collection of stickers that had to go on the Tomcat before scrutineering. We were worried about scrutineering. We had spent over a year slowly building Jeremy the Tomcat when we had the time and adding bits when they came up for sale at a price that didn’t make our eyes water. We poured over the AWDC regulations over and over again, making sure everything complied (often going overboard - one of the regulations regarding engine kill switches could be misinterpreted, so we added two switches instead of one) and that we understood all the rules. It all came down to three minutes with some men in orange hivi vests, but I felt like I was taking my driving test again. Still, joy of joys, once we added some insulation tape to our battery terminals (which we borrowed from the team next to us) everything was fine. The scrutineers offered two pieces of advice: “Put a cable tie around your brake fluid reservoir to stop it coming off.” and “Get some bigger tyres.” Bah.

The event would start around ten, but at 9.45 people were queueing up near the start line, making notes on their maps, testing their winches or making last-minute tweaks to their car. Nase and I were eating cheeseburgers for breakfast. We quickly made the decision that we would just watch other people to start with.

Once the briefing was over (”Don’t kill yourselves, have fun”) everyone hopped in their cars ready for the off. Everyone but us, that is. We put our wellies on and watched them drive away. Ten minutes later we had almost got to the start line when we remembered that we hadn’t put Vaseline on the distributor to keep the evil puddles away, so we turned around and went back to our ‘garage’ to do so. At ten thirty, we were off!

Basically, we treated it like a slightly-more-structured pay and play day. We merrily bounced around the site for a while, looking at what other teams were doing and being impressed by their cars. And then - our first punch! It was a simple one, through a big hole and then another big hole to a tree. Lockers engaged, we drove in, stamped our card, and reversed out. Success!

The second punch we tried wasn’t so easy. We had to drive down a big hill, punch and then winch back out backward. Going down wasn’t so bad, and we quickly got our punch. Nase ran back up the hill and jammed in the ground anchor (we were near the edge of the site and there were no trees) for the very first time. I proceeded to drop my radio onto the floor where I couldn’t reach (or hear) it. Assuming his manic waving meant ‘winch in’, I took up the slack and started driving backward, only to go forward instead. It turned out that the soil wasn’t ideally suited for the anchor, and it took us a lot of repositioning to get some purchase. Still, ten minutes later we were back on the track (facing the wrong way). Success!

We then watched another team do the same punch. The drove into the tree, punched, then waved another car down and used them as an anchor. The whole thing took about ninety seconds. Live and learn.

The special stage consisted of eight ‘gates’ that you had to pass through in a certain direction (but in any order). You got 100 points for passing through a gate, and 200 points if you were the fastest team through, 190 if you were second fastest, 180 for third, etc. We were the first team to try it, and had a wander around the gates, plotting a route before instantly forgetting it. So, ever the innovators, we got into the car and just drove at it. It was brilliant. We bounced around, missing gate posts (and a penalty) by millimetres, disagreed about where to go, powerslid on aired-down tyres and chased Lucy the timekeeper and another team that was walking the course out of our way on our flat-out run to the finish line. We were laughing like lunatics, and somehow managed to be the third fastest team of the day, which was a nice surprise. Perhaps the Tomcat’s Comp Safari pedigree was shining through.

We spent a while driving around looking at the punches, ruling out any that had water (some) or large rocks (lots). We slid sideways on a short uphill climb and bent one of the tree sliders. We pulled another team out of a hole that was bigger than they thought. We marvelled at the cars other people were driving. But mainly, we plodded around, averaging about one punch an hour and having a damned good time.

We got all the way to the last punch of the day before we broke anything - a misjudged winch-assisted descent left us caught up on some sharp rocks, so we used the rear winch to pull us sideways off them. Unfortunately the left-hand light cluster got in the way of the winch rope, but didn’t put up much of a fight before being torn off. Then Nase tripped over a root and (we found out the next day) dislocated his ankle. So that’s goal 1 and 2 scrubbed from the list, then.

And then, the day was over. We watched the prize-giving, begged some water for Nase’s poor tired Disco that pulled us up (it seemed) every hill in the Bristol area, and were thrilled to find out that we came second from last, and that wasn’t even including the people that didn’t finish. Goal 3 achieved!

So, we have a list of things to fix on Jeremy (the lights, the winch blew an oil seal, and it needs some more stickers) before the next event in May. We also need to be more brave, worry less about rocks and (if I’m being honest) we could do with some bigger tyres.

Photographs that aren’t mine courtesy of najw and Mr Nick from the LR4×4 Forum.

We survived West Harptree. More soon.

On Saturday night we are bundling up to West Harptree for our first event ever. We need to be there for 8am (and, rather annoyingly, the clocks go forward that morning, so we need to be there for 7am in our heads) to see if the Tomcat passes scruitineering.

We’ve had no practise. None. Nase doesn’t know the winching hand signals, and we can’t get our radios to work. I haven’t driven the Tomcat (or any car) off-road for two months. The spare tyre has a hole in. Nase hasn’t run anywhere (let alone up any hills) for about a year. The Tomcat still has an allergy to water, and will need the rear diff replacing before we set off. We’ve never used a waffle board, or a snatch block. Nase isn’t even a member of the AWDC yet. I can’t find the MOT certificate, which we need for scruitineering. And if I’m honest, we don’t actually know how the competitions work - we always meant to go and watch one, but never managed it.

Oh bugger.

We have officially joined the AWDC Challenger 4×4 Series. We are number 25!

Jeremy is a 1990 3.9V8 Range Rover Automatic, with the following modifications (from the bottom upward):

• Recip Trial tyres
• Diff, steering and track rod guards
• Front and rear axle ARB diff locks
• 3″ suspension lift
• Extended-travel propshafts
• Modified rear suspension linkage
• Shortened chassis
• Engine moved behind the front wheels
• Tomcat rollcage
• Tomcat bodywork
• Warn 8274 winch with Gigglepin modifications and synthetic rope
• Britpart DB9500i winch with synthetic rope
• ARB air compressor
• Twin batteries
• Daytona Cobra racing seats with five-point harness
• Radiator moved behind the cab
• Snorkel

An ongoing website detailing the build process can be found at http://www.mattbuildsatomcat.co.uk

Welcome to MAN Racing! We plan to enter some winch challenges with our off-road car, Jeremy the Range Rover Tomcat.

Take a look at the about us page to see a little more about us.