A little puzzled, we left Kings Wood to make our way to the road rally. That at least was the plan until we ground to a halt again. At least now we knew where to look & sure enough there was no fuel. Once again bleeding the system got us going. With an obvious problem facing us, we opted to cut the road event & head straight for Dover to be sure to catch the ferry. It was about now that Robert Pike appeared on the scene & agreed to shadow us down to Dover, just in case. Some of you may know Robert as a clerk of the course of the Rallye Sunseeker. In the end we took a tow deeming it quicker than constantly stopping to bleed the system, hoping to have a good look at the fuel system when we got into Dover.
With some time to spare there was a chance to take the injectors out, check fuel delivery to the mechanical metering unit, & the filters, in case we had picked up some dodgy fuel. When it all went back together we went for a test drive & all seemed well, so with full fuel tanks, we boarded our ferry. With a long night in front of us nearly everyone got their heads down for a bit of sleep. After all, the Somme stage beckoned.
Feeling none the better for an hour or so's sleep, we headed out into the French countryside. Richard now took a turn at the wheel. All was well for about 40k, when the car started playing up again. Bleeding the fuel system in the dark, on the side of a French motorway, with trucks whistling past at warp speed, god knows what became quite character building.[a bit scary really] We eventually made it into the Time Control at Aire d'Urvillers, where true to form the car stalled. Needing to bleed the system again we dropped a couple of minutes leaving the control late. In order to try to give ourselves the best chance, we bled the system again just before the start of the Somme stage. Having driven the UK stages, it was Richards turn to do a WRC section[ie Timed to the second]. What a nice stage, even if the middle bit did contain a very muddy section, which we were warned about at the start, the car again taking everything in it's stride.
We had by this time come to the conclusion that the trouble lay in the fuel pump & were going to take a bit of time out, trying to source a replacement high pressure pump, before making our way to the overnight stay in Beaune.
At the first town of any size, we stopped to try to find a garage, it was however too early for any to be open so, we opted for a coffee in the local cafe. They phoned a local mechanic who came out & told us what we already knew & gave us directions to another garage who might be able to help. The Renault shop was of no help but suggested we head for Laon where here was a Peugeot Dealership.
By this time I had had it with the bleeding business, the Garage Tuppin was so different, couldn't do enough to help but were unable to come up with a suitable fuel pump. They pointed us in the direction of a major local factors ADS. All we wanted was an in line high pressure fuel pump with 8mm in & out unions & despite their very best efforts over about 2 hours, the best we could come up with was a following morning delivery of a C class Merc pump which was supposed to tick all of our boxes.
With no where to go we found ourselves a local hotel & settled in for the night.
