When Waylon and Jobe Sims debuted their G2-spec Peugeot 207 at last year’s National Capital Rally it was expected to be the start of an exciting year for the young Tasmanian’s, however a troubled introduction sent the brothers back to the drawing board.
“We realized pretty early on that we had a major design fault,” explained Jobe Sims. “We had a rather big problem with the design of the gearbox and that pretty much meant we spent the whole of last year making sure we could overcome the problem before we brought the car out again.”
“We had a choice last year – we could keep turning up to events knowing eventually the gearbox would break or we could take the time to fix it properly.”
Jobe explained that the fault was that they’d actually built the gearbox to be too strong, and that that was causing undue pressure to build up on the gear selector barrel. “The (gear) dogs weren’t engaging properly, so we were having problems even selecting gears.”
The Tasmanian team turned to gearbox specialists Hollinger, and the Peugeot will this year run with a gearbox that has already proven itself inside the Rallychool.com.au Mazda2 campaigned over the past two years by Brendan Reeves.
“It’s the same design as the Mazda’s, so we know it’s proven and reliable, and that’s the main thing,” added Jobe.
Twelve months on, and with an entirely new gearbox mated to their Peugeot, the Sims brothers are determined to put the frustration of 2014 behind them when they return to Canberra for the second Round of the East Coast Bullbars Australian Rally Championship in May.
“Unfortunately we will miss the first Round in WA, but then our plan is to compete in all four of the remaining rounds. We want to go out and have fun and to see what we can do with the car,” Sims said.
“We aren’t going out to win, we have a lot to prove before we can even suggest that as a possibility. I think what’s most exciting is to show what the car can do, a car we built ourselves in our shed in the back of Tasmania,” Jobe laughed. “And if we can take some stage wins too that’d be great!”
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