Sorry its a little late in responding and thanking you all, have been a little 'jet lagged' a very busy day yesterday - I can not tell how much I enjoy reading and seeing all the pictures on all your posts on facebook about the weekend - throughout the weekend, we as a team had our ups and down, for me and I know that Jon 'spanners' felt the same, the problems we had were really tuff to deal with, as a rule mechanical issues just do not happen with us, just our turn I suppose 'thats motor racing' ! I really did not start enjoying the race until the last 3 hours - throughout the whole weekend the team grinned and got on with the task (s) that were thrown at them and pulled together calmly and got the job done, also having a little fun along the way (I love the chair racing - at whatever time of night that was)

I am very lucky to have so many great people who want to be a part of the team, as always thank you to Jon 'Spanners' for all of his time and endless knowledge throughout the season (he is already talking about next season!) Anthony who as a few of you know, he married Jess last weekend and put the honeymoon on hold so he could be with us at the 24hr, Russ for putting the team together and to all of you at TEAM LUMACA I2F a REALLY BIG THANK YOU to you all

Some stats for you all:

Starting - 17th on the grid - Row 8

Positions on the hour
1hr - 14th
2hr - 12th
3hr - 13th
4hr - 15th
5hr - 23rd (5 lap tow back)
6hr - 24th - (the fight back begins)
7hr - 24th
8hr - 23rd
9hr - 23rd
10hr - 23rd
11hr - 20th
12hr - 20th
13hr - 17th
14hr - 16th
15hr - 18th
16hr - 17th
17hr - 20th
18hr - 19th
19hr - 19th
20hr - 16th
21hr - 16th
22hr - 16th
23hr - 15th
24hr - 15th - completing 654 laps - 67 laps behind the winner

Teams fastest lap 1.54,436 on lap 576
17 pit stops
197.65 litres of fuel (during the race)
Highest position in the race - 9th (by 2030hrs on Saturday night)

We still have a few Team T-shirts and mugs available for a donation to Tigersharks ASA (Abbies swimming club) should anyone want any - PM me

Hows this for a graph!

Have a look at page 80 (I think) of the latest Autosport. There's a picture of the cars on the grid, complete with Max and Jack in the background.

I'm loving the graph, spent ages studying it in a really geeky way . And just to say I loved every minute of the weekend, and could happily do it every week... ok, maybe every other week. Either way, I don't know how I'm going to manage to wait a whole year before doing it again.

Yup, me too! I loves it! I think it might be my favourite weekend of the year. It's unpaid work with antisocial hours usually in the pissing rain and freezing cold, but it's such an experience.

This time last week, we were damn near in 9th position. Damn the water/grit/powder coating/carb icing!

Yeah, but in fairness that was partly down to other's bad fortune, and what goes around comes around.
However I do like to think of every problem we've had in the last two years as mistakes we won't make again, and the more problems we've had the more knowledge we take into the next year's attempt, which I why I'm so looking forward to next time. The car was running beautifully at the end of this years race, trouble was we were already 50 odd laps behind. Imagine being in that situation again but with the slate wiped clean.

having had a look at both our weber carbs this week including stripping the 'powder coat one' which on a complete strip down I didn't find one bit of powder coating inside the carb, also this week for three days the air filter housing (the powder coated bit) has been sudmerged in petrol and no more has come off or gone soft! I went to the powder coaters yesterday both the guy that runs the place and the guy that actually did the coating both came to the conclusion that an air bubble in the coating 'would have contributed to the failure' of the coating.

The main thing why I think that we had such a difference in carbs were: both carbs have different jetting! which was a surprise as I brought two complete sets of the identical jets for each carb which were fitted, so it looks like I was given the wrong jet set up for one of the carbs.

I was unconvinced at the time about what had stopped the good weber from working, and wondered if the peeling powdercoat might have been a red herring. It appeared to be coming off in lumps far larger than were capable of blocking a jet, also, Spanners had a look in the carb after it was taken off and found no powdercoating in the jets, yet when refitted it worked fine.
The word in the pits was that several teams had had problems with carburettor icing, and it did start playing up soon after dark, and did restart fine after being towed back to the pits(enough time for any ice to have melted). However I then would have expected the car to run fine for a couple of laps, and it didn't. Also what time did we refit that engine? I thought it was early in the morning, surely it would have been colder then than it was at 9 or 10 in the evening when it was playing up, and yet it ran fine for the rest of the race. Would either of you (Simon/Spanners) know how overnight temperatures compared with other races over the year? Have there been any other races held on particularly chilly days? Maybe some winter testing is needed and if a problem is confirmed, then a warm air feed can be developed that can be fitted for the overnight stint.
Having said that I'm not yet completely convinced that ice was the problem. In hindsight perhaps we should have tried the 'infra-red tyre temp thingy' on the carb body.

Where is your coil? what time did you have problems?

24 hr racers suffer from wet coil in the small dark hours when the dew is really heavy, the pit wall pipe rail was dripping wet just after dawn.

Norry who had won a few times always sprayed silicone and wiped the coils at the start of the night section and always had new leads on standby in case of a stutter especially at dawn.

the yellow coils are prone to giving you a belt when they get damp

the webber carb seems to suffer when wet too so perhaps it was just the heavy dew?