RobPearce

Oil level had got low - it used a couple of litres on the way round - and it had a very oily backside when I washed it, so I suspect it's leaking rather than burning. Some investigation required, I think. Overdrive switch is quirky - it may respond to cleaning but as it's not very old I'm reluctant to strip it all down to replace with a new one that probably won't last long either. For improved driving pleasure I really need to identify and eliminate all those rattles it makes. I've noticed a slight hesitation developing - and there's been a subtle hint of a misfire for a while - so that's another thing to look into. Mind you, with the fuel economy it gave there can't be anything desperately amiss with the running.

Stalk on full beam and headlamp flash pulled is a combination which, as was noted in another thread recently, applies power to the sidelight circuit from the column "permanent power" (possibly purple?). If the master light switch is on, this also then connects the column power to the permanent power feed to the master light switch (brown). So if your horn and hazards are fed from the same purple circuit as the column (which appears to be the case from the diagram in the Haynes manual) then this would be explained by a blown fuse. Does your interior lamp work? Edit: Thinking about it, the "other thread" was probably on another club's forum. Also, the fuse boxes are notoriously bad, so if your roof light does work then it's probably a bad contact on the fuse.

6mm hose will be a bit tight on 1/4" pipe but will work (probably even without clips!) if you can get it on without digging slivers out of it. 8mm hose will be a tiny fraction loose on 5/16" pipe but hose clips should take that up. However, metric pipe and/or olives will not work on imperial fittings such as the fuel pump inlet.

Not really. It was only the dates that were in there, not a free pass or early access to entry. The dates have also been published elsewhere, and entry will not be open for some time to come. The page in the RBRR road book was merely an advert for an event that people doing the RBRR might well be interested in.

That was my immediate thought, too, but I don't know which of the Malvern and Roadster is which.

When you say "front torsion bar" I assume you mean the anti-roll bar? Not a huge amount of tension. You should jack the car up (and put it on axle stands) for access, at which point the only tension it carries is if the bar itself is bent or the suspension is uneven side-to-side. If you're doing the wishbone bushes you'll be unbolting the links at the ends of the ARB anyway. If the first one you loosen looks to be pulling down then put a jack under to take the strain. If it looks to be pushing up, do the other side first (and use the jack there). Once uncoupled, the mounting U-bolts are only supporting the weight of the bar.

I used a fair chunk of my inheritance when mum died to build a garage for my Triumphs.

Very true! On more than one RBRR I've chosen a co-driver purely on the grounds that we get on well, without any consideration of whether s/he is a particularly good driver. Those have generally been the better ones. However, I read Horace's pairing up / mentoring idea as more of a pre-event pairing of teams - so the novice teams get introduced to an experience team to get to know them as a friendly face and guide in the event of trouble. And I see Horace has clarified what he actually meant.

I'd say anything over 30 from a PI is doing quite well. Mine only gave 26 on the 2010 run.

Most likely. I've habitually washed and polished then applied the stickers. This year I used a different polish and the stickers didn't initially look like they were holding. However, they all held up better than the passenger door one three years ago.

That's better stats than I'd heard going round but I think it's because the five "really really not on" teams were counted in the figure I heard for retired teams.

That one probably varies. My entries have ranged from a car that was my daily transport at the time (2500S, had a failed UJ but I'd packed a spare driveshaft so it was an easy fix) to a car that, due to unfortunate timing, had covered only 40 miles in 4 years before being driven to the start (GT6, snapped fan belt and broken exhaust mount, first easily fixed, latter "bodged" by strapping the tail pipe up to the bumper with a leather belt). This year my local group had organised a trip up through the Peaks, Lakes and Dales for the days after the drivers' meeting, which shook down my Spitfire enough that I bailed at the end of the first day to go home and replace the failed gearbox mount, while I already had time off work, rather than leaving it to the last minute.

Sure, but the important thing about Roger's point is to stress "mechanically competent", not "Triumph expert". If you have a guy (or gal) on your crew who can wield a spanner, somebody in another crew can point out where to wield it.

Slightly drifting from the message diary / being more online... It did occur to me that in this day and age a QR code for the event's JustGiving page could be included on the stickers. Members of the public who ask about the event and want to donate could then scan the sticker. It would work even better if the cars each had a unique QR for that team's JG page but it would be a huge headache to organise that.

Are you looking just for this year's data, or would old-timers with rambling memories be welcome to list things they fixed by the roadside back in 1996?

I had a bit of peeling and flap-damage to one sticker this year - the one on the boot lid, where its leading edge (to the wind) was on a curve. The rear wing ones (which were decidedly not smooth as the panel is a compound curve) survived fine. I've not removed them yet but from past experience getting them warm (I usually pour hot water over them) helps, as Tim says.

Before this year, my best economy on an RBRR was my GT6 Mk3 in 1994 at 36MPG

Alternator - this is something that happened to me in 2000 - the alternator failed somewhere around Huntingdon and I didn't have a spare. I drove on. Keep the revs up (maybe drop out of overdrive) to give the dying alternator the best chance of balancing the loads. Stay on dip beam and turn the cabin heater fan off - try to minimise drain. Get to the next control - Blyth in our case - and ASK. We got several offers of alternators from other teams and club members who were there spectating. Nick says it's easy on a small chassis car - we were in a Stag, which is the worst car I've ever come across for access to the alternator, but we still managed to swap it in the lorry park.

I generally agree with most of what's already been said. This year was one of the best ever. My brother (co-driver in 2000, 2002, 2010, 2016 and this year) said he'd hated the 2016 one but loved this year. A lot of that is down to the car but some of it is what's been said above. On the retaining road books - for most stops it's absolutely fine but at Okehampton, with miserable rain, no shelter, no fuel (so everyone is going to make another stop shortly) and a far better opportunity for rest coming up quite soon, it just felt like petty sadism to make us all stand in the rain until a fairly arbitrary time. It didn't help that I think this was the occasion McJim referred to - certainly we were held back to the very end of the pile despite having got in fairly early. Gartcosh did seem a rather strange place. I'm unfamiliar with either of the cultural references that have been made but I can imagine what they are. As a control it worked fine but had nothing to recommend it above a motorway services. We also gave up on RallyAppLive fairly early. We'd packed enough phones to have one dedicated to it but found that even with that phone tucked into a parcel shelf the display was offputting while driving at night. So we turned the display off... and thus disabled it. The route was really good - that final stretch may seem terminally dull but it works and, the English road system being what it is, it's probably the only viable option. I even found that my dislike of Bude (it feels to be way off course and too close to both LE and BH) felt unfounded this year. From LE we followed a 2000 taking a detour past Newquay to avoid the A30/A39 junction, which is a definite improvement - one to consider for the official route. Between Bude and Dartmoor we followed Google's B-road and minor road option, which is also good. On balance, though, lots to praise and only a very few minor niggles. Well done everyone on the organising team.

Not bad Pete! I've just totted up our figures up to Bude - because we filled up there and got all the way home on that tankful - and it looks like we averaged 44.0MPG, although we got through 2L of oil. Surprisingly, the worst economy stretches were Tebay to Gledridd and Okehampton to Bude, and not the rather lairy bits of driving in Scotland. (Spitfire Mk3 but with 1500 engine, 4-2-1 manifold, overdrive and 3.63:1 diff. Not driven as "enthusiastically" as some people, perhaps)

Did you get that sorted, Charles? I didn't think your problem sounded like MC from what we discussed at JoG

I heard that Howard donated the contents of his Jerry can to another team who were in need, but his TR8 was economical enough to have no trouble. We filled up leaving Bude, even though we weren't low, because I wasn't sure where the next fuel would be. When we got the message about fuel just before Haynes, we still had enough to decide against filling up there. Shortly after leaving Haynes I worked out that we had enough left of the Bude fill to get us to Knebworth... and back home. In fact, the gauge is still reading about 1/4 but that must be optimistic because Google says it's 308 miles and a Mk3 Spitfire tank is under 9 gallons.

We weren't sleeping at Falls Of Shin - we were fixing the "vague steering". All four of the brake caliper mount / steering arm attachment bolts on both sides had worked loose somehow. HUGE thanks to all the far better prepared teams who lent us tools and expertise on removing the pesky grease caps. It saved our run - turned what might have ended up as my first ever failure into what my brother declared to be the best RBRR he's ever done.

Passenger seat swapped, boot packed, stickers applied.

As I understand it, the algorithm they use has been assessed as inadequate for emergency purposes. It fails to guarantee that no two locations sound the same, nor could be easily mistaken for each other due to spelling. And it doesn't adequately separate similar word-triples geographically to allow filtering by common sense.