Finisher Stats

[Tim Bancroft]

Last time alot of the retirements came from the crews new to the event, and was mainly down to insufficient prep work.

I partly blamed myself for this as I probably did not bang home the fact that the event is not easy and the cars are going to be worked hard.

Most experienced crews either take far too many spares or none at all. Personally I would be gutted to retire because I did not have a spare wheel stud or something trivial, so I tend to take too much.

I will send out the Prep notes we issue each time.

[ferny]

I think it's different if you use your car a lot. That way you build up confidence in it and don't expect the normal things to fail. Just like jumping into your normal weekday hack. I tend not to take any spares other than bits for the electrics, wheels bearings, brake pads, etc. I mostly carry oil, water, petrol and sometimes a little bottle of brake fluid.

[Deleted User]

Tim, don't beat yourself up about it!

We were nearly out when the water pump failed coming out of Land's End.

2 years of sitting in the driveway from me and a year sitting in a garage in Devon while Greeks was off romancing in Oz was probably the culprit for that failure.

God knows, I spent enough sorting the car out for the run and the thing that failed was the only thing we left behind because we didn't see ourselves replacing it at the roadside.

Without David Aspinall offering us a spare water pump, Theo's speed as a mechanic in changing the pump and Bodders assistance, a mechanical dunce like me would have been going home to Scotland on a yellow lorry.

So, a big thanks to all three then.

Which gets to my point, namely, that perhaps so many newbies failed either due to having a similar amount of mechanical knowledge as me (next to none) or the event simply overwhelmed them to the extent that when a problem arose, exhaustion or whatever made them throw in the towel, whereas old hands on the event would have circumvented the problem.

Whatever the reason, the high number of retirements is not a failing of the event or the organisers but purely a symptom of the popularity of the event, which in a way, is no bad thing.

If the RBRR was too easy to complete, the acheivement in finishing it would be greatly diminished. :)

Jim.

[thescrapman]

Over the last 2 RBRR's we have had the bonnet (or bootlid!) open quite a few times

2006 - blocked washer jets on the way up the country, a badly leaking stromberg jet on the way back down, both fixed, easily, though we had to blag a PI injector o-ring to fix the carb. I suspect it was the constant flow of nice clean fresh fuel that washed the gunge away that was sealing it.

2008 - Alternator was not up to the job requiring a few jump starts as battery kept going flat, you can not have lights and wipers on at the same time when running a 15AC.
Fuel pump failed after 9 hours of constant running. I had 4 spares in the boot.
wheel stud snapped.  I had a spare drive shaft so I robbed it.

Both cars had done only 1500-odd miles of intermittant prep work so were piled high with spares each time.

What we will do in 2010 I don't know.

Spare input shaft i guess for starters. Or 2 or 3.. :-)

Cheers

Colin

[mikeyb]

thescrapman wrote:

What we will do in 2010 I don't know.

Spare input shaft i guess for starters. Or 2 or 3.. :-)

No big piles of spares in 2010, we're all a fair bit bigger and fatter than in 1990.  As we'll only be running a 4 speed 1300cc motor, we'll travel light on the grounds of speed and economy  :P

[thescrapman]

MikeyB wrote:

No big piles of spares in 2010, we're all a fair bit bigger and fatter than in 1990.  

Speak for yourself porker!

I weigh the same now as I did then!

:-)

Colin

[yogi]

If it's 1300 input shafts your after I've still got two in my glove box even though I'm now running a 1500 'box (I've got two 1500 shafts in there as well!). If you like you can have them at the start. My boot is always full of spares, you'd be amazed at what I've managed to squeeze in in and around the spare wheel and all under the boot floor.

Don't worry about it being low geared, yours is a TC as well isn't it? Peak power is at 6000rpm and it's quite happy cruising 70-80.