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It’s Wednesday afternoon and I’m on my way back to Amsterdam from a foreign assignment. My plane has just come in so there’s good chance I’ll be arriving in Amsterdam as scheduled. Tomorrow is T-2 for our Winter Trial adventure and I finally have time to consider how close our departure is now.

My friend Lex and my son Daan have been keeping an eye on the finishing touches to the rally car in my absence of the last 10 days. Our mechanic has been honing the wiring to the kill switch, which seemed vulnerable to chafing by the fuel tank. The Messerschmitt fuel pumps have been connected and double checked and to avoid risk around the ignition set up, Ton has downgraded it from optical to points-based. The logic being that we don’t know the origins of this ignition system (not OEM), so bringing spare parts is not a short term option. I didn’t want to risk having the CDI box or coil  it came with frying, and having no chance of recovery during the rally.

So we will bring spare points, coil and CDI box, sand paper and a gap tool to set the points should any of these components fail. The rotor cap is new, so that should be a limited risk.

In the same vein we have decided at the last moment to bring a full spare wheel in the luggage compartment after all, instead of the space saver, so we can replace a whole wheel, should one of the rims get damaged. The fire extinguisher was past its service date and small to begin with, so we replaced that with a 2 liter FIA approved OMP item, located forward of the gear lever.

Space between seats and cage, despite sliders, is limited, so a folding mechanism was mounted underneath the co-driver's seat.

To be able to use the space behind Silverado’s S/T buckets more effectively, a folding mechanism has been mounted under the co-driver seat. This way we can place our travel bags under the roll-cage by flipping Joost’s seat forward, have the full spare wheel in the luggage compartment AND benefit from the 85 liter fuel tank.

In the meanwhile, Joost, my co-driver, has taken receipt of the special roadbook produced by Dutch champion navigator Jan Berkhof and he believes this tool will be a big improvement over the standard item due to better scale maps (1:50.000) for the areas where we will drive regularity tests. We don’t have the routes for these stages up front. The instructions are usually handed out at the check out time just before the regularity, to test the navigator on his plotting skill in a tight time frame, whilst keeping the team on schedule towards its bogey time.

Last year we had a few “learning moments” during which we ended up so lost, that we weren’t even on the map any more… Joost has vowed that there will be no more reading the map from from finish to start, instead of the other way around! I remain highly optimistic, but am packing a healthy dosis forgiveness towards my friend…. just in case.