It’s getting better – the interior of the car is now complete, with carbon fibre trim and safety gear all in place for the rally, and a stereo with an auxiliary input that works!

With drills and hairdryers needed, it was dangerous work thanks mainly to the ever present threat of thunderstorms, but we’ve managed to restore the inside to a reasonable standard and, quite frankly, improve on what Renault did back in 1992.

It’s not the last word in style, and there’s little support in the seats for hundreds of hairpin bends we’ll be taking, but there’s worse places to spend seven days and 3,000 miles.

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Today saw another trip to Swadlincote to finish off the paintwork on the Renault, despite the weather forecast being for scattered showers.

So, late on Saturday night I got a head start, masking off vast swathes of car before the drive to Swad. Sunday morning therefore made me feel slightly ridiculous as I headed up the M1 in a car that looked even worse than it did when I’d bought it.

As it was last time, a quick trip for paint and thinners inevitably led to breakfast at McDonalds, where my good friend Jason Jenkin from T-Mobile wolfed down a Meat Ball Melt Deli Sandwich with fries and a chocolate doughnut. Being the healthy kind of guy he is, he washed that down with Coke Zero.

Alright, it’s not relevant to the story, but I know someone is laughing at it…

So the sun stayed out, the paint went on without too many mishaps, and we decided to do the wheels. Around six hours later all was done, and the car now looks more like the Williams-Renault FW14B than ever.

Still left to do, cosmetically, are the wing mirrors, the brake calipers and some details on the wheels. Oh yes, and a massive wing.

Beyond that, it’s all mechanical.

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Our sponsors are going to be thrilled! We’re not content with showing the car off to money-laden shoppers, and then parking it in London for a launch party. Oh no.

We’re going to take it Donington Park and drive it around the circuit in front of 100,000 people! We’ll then park it in the middle of a historic Renault display, generally lowering the tone of the Renault World Series weekend.

And (yes, there’s more) we’ll be taking our sponsors up to Donington for a day out over the weekend, allowing them to enjoy the luxury of our hospitality suite (thanks to our friends at Kia Hospitality) overlooking the start/finish straight and the first corner as they sip at the wine (thanks to Hallgarten) and enjoy the racing.

Amazingly, there’s even more! As we’ll be driving our delightful Renault Safrane around the track on both days, we might as well put the spare seats in the car to good use and invite some lucky guests to join us out on track.

If you’re a team sponsor and you’re reading this, your invitation will be in your email soon. If you’re a supplier, sponsor or just a regular fan, then we’ll have a bundle of tickets available to buy (or up for auction) before too long, and they’ll be waaaay cheaper than any other hospitality options.

Of course, all profits will go to SPARKS, the wonderful charity we’re doing the whole rally thing for, so don’t hold back when the time comes to put your hand in your pocket.

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That’s how many people now know about our entry in the rally, thanks to our good friends at MoneySavingExpert.com – they’ve put us in their weekly email and linked that to a post by Martin Lewis himself on the message boards.

If that doesn’t raise any cash for SPARKS, our nominated charity, I don’t know what will.

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Thanks to the lovely people at Serpentine Green Shopping Centre in Hampton, Peterborough, the swishly painted car will be spending the 29th of August parked right inside the centre itself, right outside Boots and Tesco.

As well as keeping me dry, and offering shameless promotion for ourselves and our supporters, it also means we’ll be able to extract money from thousands of shoppers and put it straight in to our charity fund for SPARKS.

That said, I’m not sure what the shopping centre management are going to say when the ‘rally car’ turns up…

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My delightful red Safrane is no longer delightful or red. Thanks to my good friend Jason Jenkin from T-Mobile, the Safrane is now a very bright yellow on top, and blue down the sides.

With paint codes direct from the Williams F1 factory, we were certain of getting the right colours, so off we went to the Swadlincote branch of Halfords to mix things up. A hearty breakfast at McDonald’s while we waited set us up, and it was then off to create a spray booth from 50 metres of polythene supplied by Parker Merchanting.

Other than having a compressor die half way through, running out of primer, and missing a large part of the roof, everything went extremely well, even if it did take from about 10am until 11:30pm to get it all done. I then had to drive the freshly painted car home, and it really does get people’s attention, even at close to 1am!

There’s still more to do, as there’ll be black and white covering the lower panels, but they’ve got to wait a few days.

As ever, a picture speaks a thousand words so, rather than write 6,000 words, here’s the pictures of the day…

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The car has to get to Swadlincote tomorrow and, following the weekends overheating issue, I’m not too confident. Sadly time is against me, so I took the car down to ASAP again and got them to investigate the fan, or why it’s not doing anything.

A short while later I get the call – it needs a new switch, but it could be one of two types, and only one type is available. Even if the courier it, it won’t arrive until about 5:30pm, and even then it might not be the right one. Fortunately the people at ASAP are nice guys, got the part couriered, and stayed late on a Friday to sort the car out.

With fans now apparently working properly, it’s off to paint a car in the morning.

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Thanks to our friends at Renault UK, I was heading down to Silverstone for the British Grand Prix. I was meant to arrive at Finmere Airfield just to the south of the circuit to meet up with Renault and have some breakfast, before heading in to the race track. I’d got my Platinum tickets and various other passes, and was poised for a good day.

It was a hot day, and driving down towards Finmere was pretty enjoyable. Generally high speeds and clear roads meant progress was good, and it also meant a healthy airflow over the radiator. Then I hit Buckingham.

Coming to a grinding halt, temperatures soared almost instantly, but I was confident that the newly installed vents and the whacking great big fan at the front would keep things in order.

I had assumed that the fan was working.

Fortunately, the rearward facing scoop now installed (it was always intended to act as a vent) meant I could actually see inside the engine bay from the drivers seat and see things starting to go awry. Shutting down instantly, a cursory glance once things had cooled showed no damage.

After that, it was time to ring Renault and make my excuses before heading home.

Heikki Kovalainen and Giancarlo Fisichella qualified in seventh and eighth places, while I sat at home missing out on the generous hospitality I’d been looking forward to.

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A lovely summer’s evening, a jig saw and some bits of a Subaru Impreza. Sounds like a plan hatching.

Yes, tonight I started to hack away at the Renault and create a sports version. I’ll be making the car lighter, thanks to cutting out parts of the bonnet. It’ll also be more aerodynamic, thanks to a big scoop (don’t bother me with technicalities such as a big lump of glass fibre being a bad thing, aerodynamically speaking). Importantly, it’ll also look cool.

Kind of.

First, we removed the bonnet.



After (roughly) masking off where the vents and scoop were going, it was time for the first cut. I’ll admit that, just for one moment, I hesitated. I feel ashamed and dirty admitting that.



Some jig sawing later and the hole for the scoop was done.



Time to crack on with the vents.



Resting the parts in place to get an idea of what the finished article will look like.



And, after more drilling so I could fix nuts and bolts, and a lot of filling, there is the finished bonnet.



Back on the car, it almost looks sporty.



I think that’s a suitably high level of rubbishness achieved. Job done.

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It’s all be a bit quiet recently as I’ve been concentrating on planning various events in the build up to the rally, details of which I’ll be able to share before too long.

With the car now being quite reliable, there’s not even much to do on that, although the overheating issues still plague it. There’s only one thing to do, and that’s fit a scoop and vents to the bonnet!

A few beers followed by a quick trawl around eBay, and I’m now the proud owner of a set of bonnet vents and a scoop from an early Subaru Impreza. They’ll look great on a Safrane. Honest!

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Well that was an interesting day. Rising fairly early in the morning, I took the car down to K&P Tyres in West Ewell, stopping off in Hatfield to allow the car to cool down. I really ought to investigate the overheating problems…

The very busy but very efficient guys at K&P had the tyres sorted quickly, after a short queue thanks to their popularity. With four new Falken tyres fitted it was off to Sutton to meet up with our good friends at Micheldever. Thanks to incessant rain and dropping temperatures, the car stayed cool and ran faultlessly, although not smoothly enough to impress anyone. I think the phrase ‘rally car’ conjours up images of Colin McRae bouncing over yumps in Finland, and not an old luxury barge.

Still, from there it was off to Frieda B, the swish Clapham bar hosting out launch party. Shown some lovely hospitality by bar manager Richard, we can’t wait to get our supporters there to drink too much and hand over more cash for SPARKS.

The only downside is I’ve got avoid the drink, as somebody’s got to drive the car away at the end of the night. That’ll be me then.

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The car heads down to London next weekend, ready to get a new set of tyres from Micheldever, and presented to our supporters at Frieda-B in Clapham, so I’m working flat out to make sure it looks as good as possible.

That said, it’s a 15 year old Renault Safrane so expectations are probably quite low…

First up was some cosmetics in the engine bay. The snapped engine cover was replaced with one from the spare car, although not without a bit of hacksaw action in order to make it ‘fit’. I’ve also chosen the best five alloy wheels and fitted them to the car, sorted out some minor bodywork issues, fixed the interior lighting and taken a look at fixing the voice synthesiser.

I’ve also added a half carbon fibre interior! I say carbon fibre, but really mean plastic film printed to look a little bit like carbon fibre. It’s now covering the centre console and, amazingly, looks a lot better than the vast swathes of plastic that was there before. The fake wood trim is next for the carbon treatment, but that’ll wait for a bit.

A quick wash and vacuum and the car looks almost presentable.

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After three days of walking to and from work, forgetting to bring the necessary kit to swap the battery over, I’d had enough. I called out the RAC.

A very very nice man (I know…) came out and surprised me, not least because he was the same man who took a hammer to the underside of my sports car last year, before declaring that it was broken.

I didn’t let that put me off (he was actually very good, but that doesn’t read as interestingly) so I let him loose on the Renault. After fiddling around for a while, he diagnosed a flat battery, at which point I revealed my Halfords branded box. Against all the rules, and because I was raising money for SPARKS, he agreed to swap them over.

Ten minutes later, the car fires. I can drive home!

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The gorgeous and lovely tyre people at Micheldever have come up trumps, happy to supply the rally effort with a new set of boots, which should keep the tread depth police off our backs for a while.

Supplying us with a shiny new set of Falken tyres, to be fitted at K&P Tyres in Ewell. I’ve got to get the car down there next week for its tyre transplant.

Probably best not to mention the fact that the car’s still not moving…

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The rally car is still sitting in the car park, refusing to play ball. Having being connected to countless cars, for no real reason, the battery is still empty, and the car still won’t start, so a trip to Halfords for a new battery is in order.

£70 later, I’ve got a heavy lump of lead by my desk, but no tools to put the battery in the car.

I’ve not thought this through. I’m walking home again.

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Oh dear. Fresh from being fettled with, the Safrane has decided to let me down. Perhaps being helped along slightly by me leaving the lights on, the car’s battery has died entirely, with the car refusing to even acknowledge the fact that the key is being turned in the ignition.

To the rescue comes my hefty jump leads and a SEAT Alhambra. Duly hooked up, the keys are turned and… nothing. Leave the Renault charging for a bit, try again, and… nothing.

I’m walking back home tonight.

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I guess it’s time to reward the Renault, seeing as it’s got itself past the MOT.

It clearly likes oil, seeing as it’s drinking about a litre a week of it, so I’ve made the effort of patching up the holes and keeping the oil in the engine rather than along the bottom of the chassis and the road behind. When I say ‘I’, I obviously mean ‘local specialists ASAP‘.

We also took the opportunity to remove the damaged undertray and fiddle around with a few other bits.

Total cost? A pretty reasonable £140, so just slightly less than the cars cost me.

Cashback.

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I’m stunned. Literally, stunned. The Safrane has sailed through the MOT without any problems, and not an advisory in sight (if you ignore the tyres being low on tread).

It’s beginning to look like this £51 car was a bit of a bargain.

Roll on September!

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Risking £45, I’ve put the car in for it’s MOT. As it’ll no doubt fail, I figure that at the very least I’ll have a nice list of what absolutely has to be done to the car.

As it’s still spewing hot oil from the top of the engine, and the air intake isn’t actually connected to the engine, there’s a very good chance they’ll simply laugh at it and fail it there and then. Still, I’ll then have a month to put things right before I go for a free retest.

As an aside, the tester at local specialists ASAP looks at the daily list of cars to test, and suggests whether they’ll pass or fail before even seeing the car. The Safrane’s down as a fail…

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There’s now exactly five months before the start of the rally, so what still needs to be done? Quite a lot, seemingly…

The car

• Still spewing hot oil
  Needs new brakes
  Needs an MOT
  Could do with some tyres
  And countless little jobs that aren’t entirely necessary

The rally

• We still need to book hotels
  But we don’t know where we’re going
  Or how we’re getting back

Sponsors

• We need tyres
  And fuel
  And hotels

That should keep me busy for a while.

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