Ian Arden and Phil Stone survived an amazing series of dramas in getting their Ford Escort Mk2 to the finish of the Astra Stages (Saturday 9 April), the second round of the HRCR Classic Stage Rally Challenge. "In nearly twenty years of rallying I've never had a rally like this one," said Arden, before relating a day that would have sent less determined crews heading for retirement. Somehow, they got back to the finish in Llangollen to take third in class!This is Arden's diary of an incredibly challenging day."On Stage 1 the car would not rev over 4000 rpm. That was largely fixed at the end of the stage by changing the coil and altering the float height."Stage 2 was fairly uneventful apart from still dealing with a misfire. "On stage 3 we slid off the road just after the double hairpin when the car refused to turn left. We also broke the exhaust. We went from there into service and found the problem with the misfire. It was a broken plug lead. We did not have time to repair the exhaust at that time. "Stage 4 was the only stage where we had no problems at all!"Stage 5 was going well until we slid sideways flat out on a slight right. The back of the car slid into a very large hole which pitched us in the air at around 70mph. We both though that we were going to barrel roll into oblivion but got away with it. However, that incident bent the axle. In second service we welded the exhaust but could not do anything about the axle and broken fuel tank that we had picked up in the same incident. "We set out to stage 6 with a car that was crabbing badly. We knew that we were 10 seconds ahead of Bryan Gill in class D3 but we also knew that we could not keep that lead. Stage 6 went better than we had hoped. The handling of the car was better on the loose and the only obvious problem was that it was a little twitchy coming out of corners. "Stage 7 was yet another disaster. One mile into the stage the distributor cap came off. We put it back on only to do another 500 yards before it came off again. This time we had lost the rotor arm as well and Phil had to sprint back 100 yards to find it. We set off again to do another 500 yards before it came off again. By this time the course closing car had caught us up! This time I tie-wrapped the cap on and we finished that stage with a maximum, which ended our chances of a reasonable result. "Stage 8 was going okay for the first five miles until we lost oil pressure and had to creep out. What an event!"