Soon after my 18th birthday, in October 1990, Dad let me drive the Sprite on a Single Venue event at Colerne and, following a competitive 5th in Class A, I persuaded Dad that I needed to either drive his car on a more regular basis or buy one of my own!

Needless to say, the latter option was favoured by Dad, and in February 1991, half way through the first year of my Mechanical Engineering Degree, I bought a Road/Stage Rally Sunbeam from a chap in Cranleigh. He was about to build a decent Peugeot 1.9 GTi and had not really spent much money on the Sunbeam, so I got it for just £950!

The specification was really quite low, with a Fast Road Talbot Ti engine, a standard ratio Sunbeam 1.3GL 4-speed gearbox, standard non-LSD diff and solid discs at the front with twin pot M16 calipers and Mintex M171 asbestos pads. The rear brakes were just standard drums and shoes with a cable handbrake and standard servo/single master cylinder controlling the whole lot.

The first modification we made was to the springs, as the ride height of the car seemed inexplicably high, about 2" above standard, even though the previous owner reckoned they were tarmac springs! All four springs were shortened with a hack saw in a couple of hours until the ride height looked about right. I often get asked what spring rates I am running and I can honestly say that I have no clue, they have remained the same from day one. The Bilsteins are also the ones which came on the car, and I don't even know what their ratings are!

With the car in this specification I spent 3 years competing on single venue stage events using old Pirelli P6's rescued from the scrap pile, Yokohama A-001's which came with the car, or tyres which Dad had discarded. My most regular navigator during these three years was Simon Linley, who many Southern Car Club members will know well, and we had some great fun over those three years, even knocking on the door of the Top 20 overall at Avon Park on a couple of occasions. We never actually won any awards in this period and we didn't tackle any championships either as I was only doing four to five single venues each year.

Over the winter of my final year at University, in between hangovers and studying for my finals, Dad and I made some mods to the car, namely to the engine and transmission. The Talbot engine was uprated from Fast Road to Rally Spec, a Sierra 5-speed Type 9 'box was fitted out with a brand new Quaife Clubmans Gear Kit, and a brand new LSD was purchased from Peugeot in Coventry. I had also decided that some decent tyres should also be used and, after some long thought about the type of events I was going to do, Yokohama's A-008Rs were decided upon. I chose these due to their reputed near slick tyre level of performance, which I can now vouch for, their asymmetric tread pattern which would allow them to be used for road sections of multi venue events and for any damp weather as an intermediate. The A-008Rs was also reputedly very hard wearing, and the set which I ended up with only cost me £230 and they lasted me a whole season. I would recommend them to anyone wanting such value for money.

The 1994 plan was for Simon and me to contest the second year of the FAST Tyres Tarmac Clubman Championship, starting with the Heart of England. We finished the event, albeit with an ignition problem on one stage. We then moved on to tackle Imber, again finishing the event, although we did scare ourselves a couple of times over these dauntingly fast roads.

The third round of the series was at the Millbrook Proving Ground, Vauxhall's Test Venue near Luton. Having navigated for Dad in his Sprite over Millbrook for several years before, I could not wait to drive over these fantastic roads myself in what must surely be the best single venue in the country.

The event was my best to date, Simon and I were running in the Top 15 Overall and 3rd in class until a couple of stages from the end when a valve head parted company with its stem, trashing the head and who knew what else. I was gutted because I really couldn't afford a new engine as I was in my last year at University. As it turned out a new head and piston was all that was required, and a couple of non-championship events were then contested before Avon Park in September 1994. We were having a great run, leading the class and in 9th place overall until the penultimate stage of the two day event when exactly the same engine problem we had at Millbrook caused a repeat retirement.

This time we decided that the Talbot engine should be binned, as nobody seemed to know enough about these engines to be able to find the cause of our problems. In retrospect we have been told that PTS were selling new heads with two piece valves - this could well have been half the problem, although there may have been an underlying problem in the valve train to have caused identical failures on two different heads.

I ended up buying a Ford 1600 X-Flow from a chap in Plymouth who had been ahead of us at Avon Park in September until he crashed out, so we knew it was a fairly good engine. In fact it was an ex-Wilcox all steel dry sumped race spec engine, with Cosworth pistons and A6 Cam, Farndon crank and rods, Swaymar head (with dustbin lids for valves !) roller rockers and twin Weber 45DCOE's. The clutch is a twin plate Tilton race version, and the exhaust is a 4-1 Ashley manifold into a 2¼" home made system.

1995 then proved to be very interesting indeed, and the first event was back to Avon Park. We came off the first stage 9th overall, only 5 seconds behind a chap called Roger Binyon in his Metro 6R4. However, I was having problems with Mintex's new M171 replacement, the asbestos free M1144 and, after crashing into a chicane on Stage 7 we retired with a bent steering rack at the end of the first day. Millbrook was next and this turned out to be my best event to date, finishing 6th overall and 1st in Class B, although a collision with a chicane again marred the day slightly.

The rest of the season continued in a similar vein and by September I had won my class and finished inside the Top Ten in every event I finished. The plan for Winter 1995/96 was to uprate the brakes so that they were up to the job of coping with the increased speed brought about by the new engine.

I was unsure which path to follow here, as even second hand alloy 4-pot calipers are very expensive. Another option was the Princess 4-pot caliper, although I would have been limited by the range of pads available to suit. Each of the major pad manufacturers were marketing asbestos free pads for these calipers, but following discussions with several competitors in 2 Litre Escorts, I decided that I should find a suitable caliper to take some sort of Carbon Metallic pad.

I decided that Wilwood Supalite calipers would be too large for a 1600cc car, and that the slightly smaller Dynalite 4-pot caliper with the similar Polymatrix pads should suit the Sunbeam perfectly. As luck would have it, the following week in Motoring News I saw the exact calipers I was after, and bought the pair for £180, instead of about £160 each. I haven't seen any similar calipers in Motoring News in the 12 months since then!

The pads were bought from Rally Design in Faversham, Wilwood's British agent, along with a booklet which they sell, titled "Designing Your Own Braking System".

After several hours poring over this booklet, some appropriately sized master cylinders were chosen, 0.625" Front and Rear (0.700" Handbrake). The servo and single standard master cylinder were scrapped as I thought they may have been half the cause of my 1995 braking problems. At times I found myself with an abnormally solid brake pedal, but with no retardation, other than from solid objects such as chicanes!

The rear brakes were quite a simple decision, with solid Fiesta front discs machined to fit the Sunbeam rear axle and Sierra Cosworth 2wd rear calipers with Mintex M1144 Fast Road pads. The calipers were mounted to the rear axle and front hubs via some nifty brackets knocked-up by Dad on his lathe, the front calipers striding Capri 2.8i vented discs which have been on the car since about 1992. Dad also spent several hours modifying the standard Sunbeam pedal box, fitting in a bias kit which had been purchased from Trans Auto Sport, along with the master cylinders.

My first event of 1996 was up at Elvington near York, and the difference made by the new brakes was phenomenal. Whereas the old brakes had been very inconsistent and therefore not very confidence inspiring, the new brakes were spot on all day. In fact the pads have lasted me all year, 8 events in all, and they have even ground the discs to a better condition than they started the season in!

Last year ended up being even more successful than 1995 with the Sunbeam winning it's class on each of the seven events it finished, including the Imber Stages which was a round of the EARS / Motoring News Championship. The highlight of the year was of course Millbrook where I finished 4th Overall, beating an ex-Prodrive Group A BMW M3 and a hoard of Escort and Sierra Cosworths. We'll have to see what happens this year when Millbrook is included in the EARS/Motoring News Championship for the first time!

Later in the year, navigator and money permitting, I am hoping to compete on some of the more challenging venues such as Epynt and Otterburn, although the main aim is a trip to Ireland for the Wexford Rally in September. Meanwhile, I will have been out at Avon Park by the time you read this and am also planning a trip to Longcross on April 20th as a shake down for Millbrook. Keep a lookout for us on events, the car is white with two red stripes over the top of it, and come and have a chat.