From RS-P to RS-R

It's easy to think that all it takes to turn a road car into a Targa competitor is just bolting in a rollover hoop. In reality, even after the pipework's been done there are weeks of work required to optimise even a standard car for a competition outing.

The requirements of Targa are close to unique. The competition vehicles are used across 40 stages and six days on a variety of roads and tarmac surfaces. Just six tyres are allowed to be used. Modifications are very limited and the cars must run on normal pump fuel. In many aspects the art of building a car for this sort of event is balance -- not just in a chassis sense but also in the sense of a balance of performance and reliability.

Our chief engineer Craig Tulloch has not only supervised the work on our wagon, he has been intimately involved -- physically working on the car himself with the rest of the PPE team and specialist suppliers as required. As noted above, it can take weeks to get a Targa car ready for the event. In our case time was a luxury we couldn't afford. Craig has had less than two weeks to reassemble the RS-P from a gutted state and have it ready to front the official starter next Tuesday (April 27).

The first step was to thoroughly clean the vehicle of any welding and painting detritus and reposition the myriad wiring connectors etc ready for the re-construction of the interior.

A purist might suggest that racecars should have a fully stripped interior. In discussion with Skoda we wanted to keep the RS-P looking as close to standard as possible. While the clever folding rear seat had to go permanently (in its place there are the rear support bars for the rollcage), we wanted to make sure as many trims as possible were replaced.

This made things hard for Craig, but PPE rose to the challenge. In addition to adding wiring for rally equipment like a Terratrip and Intercom plus onboard video equipment, the team dealt with the various redundant seatbelt and airbag wiring items. Then using old Kelloggs packets (NutriGrain's the favourite out at Hallam it seems!) Craig painstakingly cut templates to custom cut and refit the standard interior trim pieces.

It's hard to express the level of care and effort required to be able to do this. Refitting the original headlining into the wagon, for example, is a case in point. Rather than look like a piece that has been cut and shut 'willy nilly', thanks to the skill of Craig and the team the end result has the appearance that the rollcage tubes have been threaded through the headlining and welded into place.

The same level of expertise was applied to the rest of the interior. It's a cracking job.

From here the rest of the interior was comparatively straight forward but still time consuming. In went the special lightweight HANS-compatible seats, six-point harnesses, cage padding and safety equipment including fire extinguishers, emergency belt cutters et al.

Another example of the level of detail PPE employed is the driver and co-driver footplates it fitted to our RS-P. Custom-made from alloy, powered coated and then non-slipped, these plates are fitted in the driver and co-driver's footwells on turned alloy spacers around 50mm above the 'normal' carpeted level.

In the case of the co-driver this provides extra bracing to keep him (or her) firmly located, comfortable and focused on the pace notes. On the driver's side the plate positions the feet perfectly for action, takes away any 'imperfections' from the shape of the footwell and reduces any chance of fouling a heel on the carpet. They also look the business!

THE HARD PARTS
All this work on the interior doesn't mean, however, the hard parts have taken a back seat on Team Skoda Carsales' RS-P. As much attention and detail have been lavished on the RS-P's mechanicals -- it's just the effort doesn't show as prominently.

For example, all of the RS-P's fluids have been replaced with race-spec product. PPE favours Castrol's Edge synthetic motor oil and the braking system will be supplemented with SRF high performance brake fluid from the same brand.

A full 'spanner check' has been performed and belts and hoses checked renewed where required. New Pagid race compound brake pads are on the menu, but as the RS-P already boasted braided brake lines that's something that we could strike off the list of 'to dos'.

Instead of the standard wheel bolts, PPE fits specially manufactured high-strength wheel studs. These are the same units fitted on production racecars. They can live with higher torque loads, resist loosening and make wheel changes quicker and easier.

Attention to details items include tow points, safety stickers and the like. Targa also requires cars to be fitted with an FIA-approved fuel sampling device. All of these are small items but they mount up in terms of the time it takes to get all of them done.

With the RS-P in pieces one minute and back together the next, we expected some problems on the reassembly. What we didn't expect was a car that totally refused to start. With three days to go to make the boat to Launceston it was a hiccup we didn't need...

So a big thanks to the service department crew at the Bayford Group's Camberwell Volkswagen and Skoda. Once we trailered the RS-P to their workshop they descended on the car en masse with specialist diagnostic equipment required to trace the problem. It turned out to be a partial earth leak -- just milli-amps but enough to bring the whole plot to a halt. Though it was a tense time, a new earth circuit and a resetting of a bunch of fault codes (in part because of the amount of equipment stripped from the car) had the RS-P back in hearty good health.

The cooperative effort from both PPE and Camberwell VW/Skoda was doubly appreciated given that all the time the guys were fault tracing, we were also signwriting the car! Talk about multi-tasking.

Once again we employed the skills of Decently Exposed. Not only responsible for the fitting but also the design you see hereabouts, Decently Exposed promised and delivered on short notice. We can only recommend them highly.

Still rolling on the multi-adjustable K&W suspension fitted when the RS was converted to Skoda Australia's RS-P spec, we're confident we'll be able to dial in the car pretty quickly. This requirement makes PPE's initial chassis set-up all the more important.

And that's what Craig and the crew at PPE are hard at work on as this update is written. Just as we pride ourselves on our real time publishing at Carsales Network, so we pride ourselves on real time racecar production...  And though the process is still on foot, we reckon Team Skoda Carsales has no longer got an RS-P, it's now very definitely an RS-R...

Roll on TT!

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