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- Created on Sunday, 18 July 2010 16:00
(1) 2010 Peking to Paris: Here we go again!
Three years after the 100 year celebration of the original Peking to Paris of 1907 we are again set to take part in another 9,000 miles Challenge, linking the same two cities, driving the same 1956 Magnette ZA. It will start in Beijing on September 9th and will finish again in Paris at Place Vendôme on October 16th.
Why do it again, you might ask?
Well, I could perhaps just say that these long-distance events (3-5 weeks long) gradually grow on you and become sort of addictive. Having entered several of them, including the 2004 London-Sydney Marathon, the 2006 Carrera SudAmericana, the 2008 Classic Safari and the 2009 Nile Trial, we are always ready for new adventures like these. In between, we did a number of shorter events, some of them as demanding and using equally rough gravel roads. But it is not the same thing. The really long-distance events create a different type of feeling: they are a strange mixture of meeting old friends and new countries, the myriad unexpected (and cumulative) problems that come your way day after day and how to solve them, and the wonderful feeling of breaking away from the old job routine into a new almost “permanent” one. Very difficult to adapt back once the event is over…
But in this year’s Peking to Paris there are at least 3 very specific reasons for doing it again.
First, the very best part of the 2007 event was the week long crossing of Mongolia, from China north through the Gobi into the capital Ulaanbaatar, then west crossing green plains, waterlines and more tracks into the west border of Tashanta into Biysk in Siberia. Guess what: this year’s event goes almost the same route there. Can’t wait to be back.
Secondly, from then on and instead of crossing Russia for two weeks, the route goes south through Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan and then crosses Iran east-west into Turkey. Well, we have never been into any of these “stans” neither in Iran, so this was very appealing. (Hope the current troubles in Kyrgyzstan will have faded away by then, otherwise and unfortunately the route will be re-routed away from the country).
Finally, the classic cars cut off date for this year’s event was 1968, so we could have entered our tested and trusted, “bullet proof”, ex-Tony Fall, rally prepared 1968 Volvo 142 S. But no: the third reason is of course to find out if we managed to sort out and improve upon the many weak parts of the Magnette for this sort of punishment…
So there you are. Ready to rock and roll (so to speak) …
Preparation
One of the problems of having done it before is the risk of complacency! Almost unconsciently we tend to play down the required level of preparation for both the car and ourselves. Of course we did not forget some of the lessons learned in the past so a few new details that need to be implemented now are always very present. But at the same time we take for granted a lot of other stuff that worked well then.
The car is of course at the centre of everything. Since 2007 we addressed some of the more critical problem areas:
- Front Suspension: This was the single mechanical area that gave us the most problems and sorting it out was at the centre of our worries. Since then we designed and built a new front suspension using fully adjustable coil-over Ohlins shock absorbers on redesigned suspension towers and linkage arms. The new setup is covered somewhere on this site:
So far it worked very well and we expect to have thus reduced considerably the then daily suspension breakages…
- Sump guard: Both the sump material and the sump mounts were also breaking daily. The new one seems to be up to the job, but of course we have not been back to Mongolia and only the real test will tell if we did improve it sufficiently.
- Exhaust manifold: We produced a new manifold, re-routing the exhaust pipe.
- Reinforced rear axle and diff casing:
But our last outing in November 2009 for the London-Casablanca Challenge turned out to be a real disaster in other fronts! Details on http://www.mgcars.org.uk/mgccz/reports/casablanca/casablanca.htm
So we have now entrusted the final car preparation to RPS-Rally Preparation Services of Whitney Oxon (www.rpsrally.com) who have prepared a number of classic cars for Peking to Paris and other events and who will also run one of the mechanical backup services for this event.
Main areas of improvement now are:
- Chassis: Chassis cracking on NSF, needed re-welding.
- Radiator: New core, new rubber hoses, plus an aluminium water expansion tank.
- Exhaust: New exhaust and silencer.
- Wheels: on two consecutive days in Morocco we cracked and then split broken three original steel wheels! We could not detect anything wrong with them beforehand or with anything else, on the suspension or tyres, so just assumed that after 54 years of good and honest service they had reached the end of their useful life and cracked out of metal fatigue… We lost one wheel and tyre down the hill when it broke, so with only two spares to start with we had to weld (!) the remaining two … One of course broke again after the end of the rally before we reached Tangier and the ferry crossing into Spain…
And would you believe, we had just received 6 new 5.5” x 15” 2001-2003 Hyundai Elantra wheels from the US, the day before we left ! Hope they last another 54 years like the originals…
- Engine: You may recall that in 2007 we ended up in Paris running on only three cylinders, with a broken valve and broken piston rings. Back home, we did repair this engine. But since power was limited, we decided to buy a “Stage 2” prepared 1860 cc. MGB engine from SC Parts and use a 45 DCOE Weber carburetor and a special inlet manifold, also supplied by them.
After two thousand Km of careful engine running-in (gradually increasing rpm’s but at the end still under 3,000 rpm) we drove another 700 Km or so from Porto to Ronda in Southern Spain for the start of the rally. The engine was already too smokey for my taste… During the rally it revved well but the oil burning gradually intensified and it lost power too. Something was wrong.
At RPS we decided to open the engine and found a number of assembly errors (head gasket fitted upside down, two pistons fitted the wrong way round, valve seats not cut in), plus a lot of worn out and/or pitted components (cam bearings and followers, piston rings, etc.). SC Parts could not be bothered to answer our e-mails or help with the sourcing of repair components so RPS went over the task of finding rings and other parts for this special engine size and of rebuilding the engine on their own. Unfortunately the rebuilt engine still sounded pretty rough and was still burning oil (porous block?) so after considerable deliberation it was decided to find and install a “regular” MGB engine. This is now finished and the “new” engine is being run in now. It sounds good and we are hopeful… Ah, and we went back to SU’s…
- Differential + Drive shaft: The diff broke up after the end of the Casablanca Challenge so a new one was mandatory. But it was found that the length of the drive shaft was not perfect so a new one was fabricated. Also, with the new suspension setup with greater ground clearance the diff positioning was adjusted so that the drive shaft “normal” operating position is now more horizontal than before.
- Seats: Our rally seats had very good lateral support but were rigidand this proved less than perfect for long days. Also, I had back surgery a year ago so we now opted for more comfortable seats with adjustable reclining backs.
- Tyres: Three years ago we relied on commercial 8-ply Chinese tyres, which proved up to the job. Running on 45 lbs/sq in (!) we did not suffer a single puncture throughout the event. We now kept the same tyre size (185 x 15) on the new ½” larger wheels and now opted for Korean heavy duty 8-ply Kumho 856 tyres.
Apart from the car, the logistics this time are much more difficult, with 8 visas to obtain, a process that can take more than 8 weeks to finalize.
Two other details:
- There will be 3 MG’s on this year’s event, the Magnette plus 2 SA’s from Australia. We all will be showing large stickers of MGCC, MGOC and MG Enthusiast magazine, promoting a new MG museum to be installed at Abingdon Town Hall, that has been campaigned by Brian Moylan, former MG Abingdon employee and author of the 2007 book “MG’s Abingdon Factory – Those were the days…”
- You will be able to follow our progress on the net. We have installed a SKYTAG-GPS locator in the car which will allow tracking information and real time mapping, so you will be able to “see” our position on line at their website. For more information visit http://www.skytag-gps.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=119%3Ap2p&catid=14%3Abanner-cat&Itemid=1
I will visit RPS at the end of this month for a final test drive of the Magnette and will send you pictures of the car, just before being shipped to China.
Wish us luck.
José and Maria de Sousa
Car nº 92
1st testdrive
I was in England a couple of weeks ago and test drove the car for some 120 Km. All seems OK. I enclose a few pictures with the rallye numbers and the MGCC and MGOC stickers.
On the engine bay you can see that:
- the new standard engine is now coloured blue;
- there is a large aluminium expansion tank;
- and we kept the Weber after all….
The car is now on its way to Beijing.
We collected the cars yesterday from a warehouse some 30 Km from the Hotel. Scrutineering and final briefing plus last 
minute preparations took virtually the whole day today and this will be topped up by an official dinner in an hour. Here is the Magnette and the two SA's at the hotel car park this afternoon. The rally start will be tomorrow from 7.30 am at the Wall at Badaling, about 60 Km from here, so an early start...
Hope to be able to send you some pictures from Day 1, tomorrow night from Daihai.
