To stop the bottom of the engine, the steering rack, pipes and other show stopping items getting damaged, or more probably ripped off on stage, we fit a sumpguard. It is essentially just a piece of alumnium thick enough to withstand likely impacts. Thicker means stronger, but also means weight, so you have to make a call. WRC boys use carbon, or carbon kevlar, but then £s means a lot less to them than to the average clubman rally driver.

Mounting it is always a challenge, easy to remove, yet strong enough to take the weight of the car, the mounts must transfer load, yet not buckle the chassis if you drive over a rock.

We decided to make ours quick release. As you will see in the accompanying photos the back has two brackets which sit over the “X” brace, and the front locates on the frame we made, secured by two lynch pins. To remove sumpguard, extract lynch pins and push sumpguard back, gracity does the rest. To put back on lie under car with rear of sumpguard on knees. Locate rear brackets, lift front, insert lynch pins.

We made the front bracket using a piece of unequal angle. In a standard car there is a piece of tin across here to keep the chassis legs the correct distance apart, but we needed something bigger, and also somewhere to hang the oil cooler, and mount the sumpguard from. In the end it also works quite well as an attachement point for the tow eye. We drilled out the studs that were on the front of the chassis legs and made up some decent backing plates for the bolts.

The unequal angle had to be modified around the bumper mounts.