Stoneleigh Kit Car Show 2017

Today's the day!

Having missed last year, I was determined to have the car there this year. A good ol' battle to get the car driving had paid off and with about 5 hours sleep having fixed a major oil leak, I was on my way to meet some of the West Mids Rhocar crew for breakfast.

For some reason any pictures or GoPro footage of this were forgotten, my main aim was to make it for breakfast in one piece. What I can tell you though is the car still drives like crap. It struggles to accelerate, needs to be throttled on gentle and can't seem to do more than 40/50mph....I couldn't tell to be honest, my digidash calculations were way off so my speedo was reading 150mph+ for most the journey. Anyway, despite being a steady drive up there, it was thrilling to be back behind the wheel of the Zero and even more so when I rocked up after 13 miles without issue!

A good hearty fry up and off we went to make our way to the show....but wait, the Zero wouldn't start. The battery was flat! Good job I had a booster pack. Jump start and off we went.....or so I thought.

Well....I'd got about a further 8 miles. Battery was dead again and my booster pack appears to be good for a single jump. Hmm not ideal.

Luckily a friendly Ferrari Replica owner pulled up and let me borrow his spare electric boot lid battery. This gave me enough charge with the booster pack to get the car going again.


The theory was, the alternator wasn't spinning fast enough at idle to keep the battery charging. So another 2.5 miles latter and we were stopped again. Revs dropped and died, no power to restart.

Big thanks to Richy and Jackie for sticking with me, calling Gaz for help as he luckily had a tow rope. Maybe I should figure out a proper towing point....

Eitherway, I was still getting the kit to the show!






In true Rhocar fashion, the moment my car hit the stand, it was set upon. Bonnet was off, alternator wasn't charging, identified the reason, and fixed. Turns out I'd wired two wires into the back of the alternator wrong and as such, the alternator wouldn't charge. Success. It was charging! And then the dreaded....."Is that running on all 6?"

Erm...well....new exhaust system, not properly tuned, never heard it running on all six vs not all six cylinders. I had just assumed this was how it sounded! 3 HT leads later and it becomes apparent we have some fan-dangle cylinder deactivation - for fuel saving of course - problem is, its permanent. Most the day was spent head scratching. New plugs, swapping HT leads. Even the coil pack. Still seemed to make no difference. On the positive, it makes sense why the car was such a bag of crap to drive! With that I left it for the day and enjoyed the 1st day of the show. At least the sun was shining!

We'd came down to 2 scenarios. 1, the firing order was not right, or 2, the throttle bodies are so out of balance the engine isn't firing. In the end, the 2nd day was written off as the car stopped being able to move under its own power, any touch of the throttle would kill the revs and stall. As such, it remained in the camping area......until the rescue team arrived.

After much deliberation, it was decided the best thing to do would be to utilise my AA membership to ensure I got home. The roads around Stoneleigh can be quite bendy with little to no space to get out the way, especially if those with working cars decided for a spirited drive home.....

So that was my Stoneleigh. Arrived with 2 problems, left with 1. Success if I don't say so myself!