TRIAL REPORT
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Bristol Motor Club - Allen Trial
27th November 2005
As reported in my review of the 2005 Exeter Trial I had intended to "take a year off" in 2005 and that, indeed, is what I did after the Exeter. The Marlin was cleaned-up and brought out on several occasions during the summer including a very memorable "Members' Garden Party" day at Prescott - as many untimed runs up the hill as you like for £2 a run - whilst I deliberated over what to do with the engine. In the end all I did was restore the full-depth MGB insulating spacers on the carbs and replace the existing heatshield with a new insulation-backed one. I've temporarily replaced proper air filters with gauze sheet until I'm 100% convinced that the problems are cured and I'm ready to take a hacksaw to the bodywork to make room for a decent pair of K&Ns.
When the Allen Regs arrived it occurred to me that it was rather silly to take a car with untested mods on an event like the Exeter so it seemed sensible to give it a try-out on the Allen first. So it was off to The Pitstop in Brize Norton for a rolling road tune. Apart from the usual "Who the b****y hell tuned this last?" noises, they did admit that the heavily-filed needles (which Aldon did some years ago) were spot-on and limited their changes to a set of slightly-hotter-than-standard plugs which, apparently, they always recommend for unleaded B-Series engines. They were very sceptical that the spacer thickness would make much difference and just thought that it had been way out of tune but, whatever, the car came back from them running like a dream.
So the morning of Sunday 27th found me sitting in the warmth of The Cross House in Doynton studying the route card and wondering if I could remember what to do. Tog Hill on the outskirts of Doynton is a very gentle warm-up, and Henry's Hitch in Dyrham Park was new but was cleaned by everyone except me after I tackled it rather too fast and went straight on when I should have turned left. The restart on Bitton Lane has given me lots of trouble in the past but it must have been easy this year because everyone in Class 7 went clean, including me.
Big Uplands was back in use this year, for Classes 6, 7, and 8 only, although Classes 6 and 7 were spared a restart. There were horrendous delays on both Uplands sections as car after car came reversing back down and I think we'd been there nearly an hour before we got to the start line. The start line marshal advised that, for Class 7, it needed "plenty of speed through the restart" which is, in my case, the same as saying "drive normally". We really thought we'd made it until we just ran out of grip-and-grunt at the '1' but at least that meant that we were pushed out of the top rather than having to reverse back down. Whilst doing this I managed to find some grip at the 'wrong' moment and sprayed Roger Stanbury, my trusty passenger, with a veritable muck-spreaders-worth of mud - he'd almost forgiven me when I spoke to him several days later.
On to Guys Hill which, if this is a section to sort-the-men-from-the-boys, we put ourselves into the 'wacky teenager' camp by being so overcome with shock at actually leaving the restart line (many didn't move an inch) that we then gave it far too much throttle and failed at the '4' - apparently there was a chorus of 'experts' on the start line yelling "back off" at us, but we never heard them. Strode is another easy section, cleaned by the entire entry, followed by the mudbath that is the Strode Special Test. At this point we were doing pretty well, for us, having dropped only 7 points which meant we were around the middle of the class. This was to end, as on every previous year, when we failed the Travers restart, along with half the class.
After the normal cold and windswept half-hour lunch stop by Chew Valley Lake it was off to the marvellous Burledge although several of us had "got wind" that it had been somehow tamed this year. It turned-out that the 'taming' was due to the local council tipping tons of gravel and hardcore into the deep ruts where Bristol normally place the Class 6/7/8 restart so, this year, they'd moved the restart back down to just above where they used to start the section. By a total fluke of bad driving, or even bad luck, we managed to stop in totally the wrong place. We even managed to drop back, whilst still keeping the front wheels over the line, then drive off without any trouble. Damn! ... but those were the last points we were to lose.
We got the measure of Nanny Hurns some years ago (thank you, Tim Lakin); Mill Lane was cleaned by the entire field, which didn't explain why we had a significant wait before attempting the section; and the hastily-introduced restart on John Walker caused a few nervous butterflies - John Walker is usually a good 'blast' so I had no idea where they were likely to put a restart - although it was cleaned, without trouble, by all but four of the field.
I've had a long-standing love-hate relationship with the Allen because, on the 'love side', it uses proper roads and tracks whereas, on the 'hate side', it has lots of tyre-pressure-restricted restarts on polished stones - one of the 'standard' trialling challenges that I've never really mastered. This year, by contrast to previous events, we didn't disgrace ourselves although we did finish in the bottom half of the class. Mal Allen was 'Best Marlin', and Fourth-in-Class, by just one point over Bryan Phipps. They both failed the restart on Guys Hill but Mal cleaned Big Uplands whereas Bryan, like me, failed at the '1'.
- Results: View as PDF File
- Photographs: Classical Gas