foreigneRS

Sorry for those who are sick of hearing about the weekend at the 'ring, but I’d like to tell my story from it.

I left work on Thursday and drove in to Wandsworth to get in with my mate Simon in his Elise 111s. Got there about 5:30 and we set off for the tunnel to get our 8:20 crossing. London traffic was shite, as was the m25, so we didn’t quite make that crossing, but did make the 8:50 which was perfect as that was the one that another car in our convoy, the world famous Goonybus, was on



Coming off the train in Calais, the fun and games began. The Goonybus was behind us on the train and as we drove off I saw a horrified look on the face of the steward - something like this Turning around, I could see the Goonybus coming along the train with the tailgate open We carried on to the fuel station where we planned to stop anyway, but it was ages before the goony arrived. Turns out that they had caught the side exit exhaust on a speed hump and nearly torn it off – running repairs were needed already.

Somehow the whole exhaust had moved back a couple of inches so would no longer go up into the mount. That meant drilling 2 new holes in the floor to move the mount further back. Slight problem, we didn’t have a drill. Never mind, it’s only the Goonybus, lets twat a screwdriver through the floor to make some holes :folllow:







The Goony all ready to go and we set off for our hotel in Gent. The convoy didn’t go particularly well as we were leading from behind, and despite shouting down the walkie-talkie “STAY TO THE LEFT”, the Goonybus headed off to the right down a toll road towards Paris. We left them to it and arrived in Gent some time later to find the rest of our group already there, despite missing their original ferry crossing. There was Dave in his Elise, and another Dave in his Impreza Sti with passenger Pete. The hotel was the F1 in Gent, and is a shithole – worse than any other F1 I have stayed in.

A while later, we heard the familiar YB burble of the Goony as it rolled up outside the hotel having encountered the French police and a farmers field. Stu (the original), Pervy Paul and young Andrew had had a bit of an adventure, but were pleased to get a bed for the night (not all together, although Paul might have liked that).

Friday morning in Belgium dawned a beautiful sunny day. We left the hotel about 9 hoping to get to the ‘Ring by lunchtime.



Again, the convoy did not go too well and we lost the Impreza at the first stop for fuel and breakfast We took the roof off the Lotus and headed out onto the E40 that we could follow for a while before heading off at J38 and taking the N67 through Eupen to cross the German border and take the B258 directly to Nuerburg.





We joined up with the Impreza just before Brussels ring road and managed to stay in convoy for that part of the journey. Traffic can be bad around there, but luckily this time it was only in the opposite direction. There was heavy traffic, and looked like a normal working day in Belgium from the amount of trucks on the road. No Good Friday holiday for Belgium?






After Brussels, all we had to do was follow the E40 to Liege, but somehow the convoy once again got split up . We were leading the group doing a steady 70 mph (steady on lads) and managed to leave behind the rest of the group. We went on for miles at 70mph hoping that they’d catch us soon, but after a while they didn’t. We dropped down to 60 mph and they still didn’t catch us up. After a while the phone rings and Stu asks “Where are you?”. “On the E40, we need to get off in a bit to head across country”. “Oh, you’re not in Holland then?” “No, why the fuck would we want to be in Holland, it’s the Nuerburgring we’re going to, not you’re favourite hooker Anal Anita in Amsterdam”. Turns out we were the only ones taking the route we’d agreed on, and the rest of the convoy just followed their TomTom after putting in the ‘Ring as the destination, taking them the long way around by Aachen.

We managed to find our way off the motorway at the right place and go through Eupen. Nice tree in the front garden, you won’t get any monkeys up there.



As you cross the Belgian/German border, the road is horrendous. You can see from the dead straight line and concrete construction that it was made by the Nazi’s to drive tanks along to storm across the continent and conquer the world. Well, that didn’t quite happen then, but it is happening now with all you buggers abandoning Ford and buying BMW’s

As we passed through the countryside overtaking the dawdlers with their caravans we went by a couple of wind farms. I love these things, I think they look so good and I can’t understand how people can object to them.



What confused me was that one wind farm had what looked like a lot of wind with all turbines turning quite quickly, yet 5 miles down the road they were all stopped. Simon noticed that they had turned the blades around by 90 degrees so that the wind would not turn them. Why would you do that? Surely if there’s wind energy to be had, you should get it and back off a coal power station or something?

After a while on the B258 we arrived at the Zufahrt Nordschleife at 1pm, an hour later than we had expected, and parked up in the field. Starving hungry we went for a salad in the Gruene Hoelle restaurant in the middle of the car park. Jesus the prices have gone up in the there recently. €3 for a 500ml bottle of water Just finishing that, and the others all show up, only half an hour later than us, but having driven quicker but further.

Some of us went and checked in at our guesthouse in Herschbroich. It’s a great place that we go to every year run by really friendly owners. He is a stonemason and has massive hands, with fingers like Cumberland sausages. After unloading all our gear, it was time to meet with Andrew who had brought the ‘Ring Taxi, our plaything for the weekend.





I set up my GPS logger and went for a passenger lap with Andrew who did a 10’03” BTG according to the VirtualCup software.

http://www.virtualcup.fr/EN/index.html

As there had been a couple of incidents around the lap that he had to slow for, he was confident that it would have otherwise been less than 10 minutes, and was happy thinking that he could beat Clarkson. To be honest, I am sure that Clarkson’s diesel Jag must have been quicker than a 19 year old Sierra as proven when Sabine took it around, which makes a 10 minute lap in it quite impressive



I then had a warm up lap in the old girl to familiarise myself with the circuit again. I filmed this lap with a bulletcam that I have had for years. Previously I used to record it on to a mini dv camcorder, but although that gives the best quality, it’s a bit of a pain to then get off the camera to share. This year, I recorded directly onto my Archos 604 Wifi, and the quality is pretty good and very easy to share or edit or whatever as it is in AVI format. I also had a new camera mount from www.motorsportcameras.co.uk that is very good. It’s got a double linkage on it so that you can mount it on the inside of the windscreen after you’ve gone through the barriers.



I didn’t bother to time that lap, but it was probably less than 10 minutes.

We then met up with another friend Masaki in his 4 door M3. I have been out with him before when he only had a 320 and I didn’t enjoy the experience so didn’t fancy repeating it in something much faster. Andrew took his life in his hands and had a go though



A bit later, Stefan joined us, having recovered from his hangover from the night before. Too many German beers is not good for you

I also bumped into Jim, Chip, Shitbox, RS500/364, Alex and his mate Simon. After a bit of a yarn, Jim very kindly took me for a passenger lap in his banana coloured M3. What a lovely car. Just coped easily with everything and was under no stress whatsoever. Must be nice to drive and Jim seems to manage quite well, despite a little off at Bruennchen (showboat to some ) I tried to film the lap for him, but was having some troubles with my bullet cam. Turns out the batteries were going flat, as it was mint in the morning after I’d changed rechargeables



I did get the bit where he went fully on the dirt in front of hundreds of spectators though. The guy on the bike behind wasn’t best pleased, but that’s his tough shit for following so closely. Excuse the lines down the camera, it's because of the low battery


As usual, the traffic started to clear after 6, and by about 6:30 it was a good time for a lap. I think the Goonybus had made it out on track once already, but then got a little unwelcome attention from the ‘Ring Nazi’s.



Unfortunately, the dummy exhaust had not fooled them, and the noise from the side exit was above the limit.



It turned out that the brakes weren’t particularly behaving themselves either, pulling to the right under braking as if the left calliper was doing nothing. The track was closed for an accident (another dead motorcyclist? ) at that point so it was time to head back to the guesthouse for the first Pils of the weekend We couldn’t be bothered to go out, and figured that most places would be booked up anyway and wouldn’t have space for 10, so we ordered a takeaway from Pinocchio’s to be delivered to the guesthouse One massive schnitzel later, and there was no space for the salad that came with it. It’s quite obvious I’m a salad dodger anyway. As usual, those who ordered the €6 pizza could not finish it – nevermind, something for the morning



Stu wasn’t feeling too good, having got sunstroke through the day. Who would have thought that we needed to take a sun hat and sunblock after looking at the webcam just a couple of weeks before



He disappeared outside for a while and came back laughing about having puked up somewhere

Saturday morning dawned colder than the previous day – hopefully that would mean less visitors, especially less bikers if there is a threat of rain. We were also hoping for less visitors as it is the only day during the Easter weekend when the German people can do anything like shopping, washing the car, mowing the lawn etc – all not allowed on a Sunday or public holiday.

Going out to the cars, we could see why Stu had been laughing – he’d added another bit of decoration to the ‘bus





In true Dirty Sanchez style, the dirty fucker picked out a bit of mushroom from his Jaegerschnitzel and ate it

We headed for the carpark about 9:30 to get a space to work on the ‘bus and check the brakes out.





It turned out to be the same problem as last year – the copper pipe between the calliper and the flexi hose somehow gets damaged but only on the ‘ring. It never happens all year on the road. Must be a combination of steering lock and bump – maybe in the Karussel.





A cunning plan was hatched to swap the callipers over so that the flexi hose could go directly to the calliper nowhere near the suspension so that nothing could get hit. However, the brackets required the callipers to be modified. Back to the guesthouse where ‘Fingers’ Mueller lent us a Winkelschleifer – top man





Callipers suitably modded and refitted, it was time to try and silence the exhaust a bit to get some more laps in. Various attempts to stuff cans and bottles up it were fruitless. The best that we came up with in the end was to ram a bit of speaker grille up there, but it didn’t really do much and was still pretty loud Anyway, I decided to try my luck and crept up to the barrier as quietly as I could. Luckily there was only one bloke on the barriers so I went to the other one. Slipped through and onto the track

Had a very enjoyable lap throwing the old girl around the lap. No idea what the time was, but it was a brilliant laugh. The look on people’s faces when you pass them in that is priceless, especially Porsches etc If anyone has any video or pictures, please post them up

Dave got settled in and had a few laps during the day. An early spin at the 90 degree right at the end of Tiergarten (where the link to the F1 track is) didn’t do much for his confidence, but he cracked on and learnt the track a bit more. Was his first time driving at the ‘Ring, and it’s easy to forget sometimes just how scary the place can be to a newcomer in their own valuable car.



I only had a couple of laps in our ‘Ring Taxi during Saturday, both at 9’ 14”. The first with 2 incidents with yellow flags, and the second with one bigger one. I was really disappointed with them both as I was really on it both times and heading for my target for the weekend of a sub 9 minute lap. I think that they would have both been under 9 minutes, but I still wanted to officially get one under my belt.





At the end of the second, I came up behind Shitbox in his mint black Escos and followed him in to the carpark. A marshall stopped him to have a word, and I wondered what was going on. I parked up elsewhere and came over a bit later to see what was going. He had been accused of loosing coolant causing a biker to come off. I had not seen any evidence of it, and any incident involving the biker must have been a bit before I went through as the safety personnel were already on the scene and had coned off the road (ruining my lap time ). Things did not look good when the cops came and saw the rear bumper with some oil on it, but show me a Cossie that hasn’t after a good thrashing around 20km of mountain roads

Andrew did another 10’ 03”, again with a yellow flag and was pissed off not to officially get under 10 minutes, although he obviously would have done on a clear lap.

At some point during the day, we saw an amazing incident. Someone, somehow, had stuck their Evo 20 ft up the bank into the fence around Kallenhard. God knows how, but the car was Irish registered









Stefan met up with his girlfriend and her brother who despite growing up only 60 km away in the Moselle valley had never been before He gave them a lap in the Taxi, but she really did not enjoy it. She did finally agree to another lap, but at that time the rear brakes were making a lot of noise as the pads were worn out. Strange, we’d fitted new ones in 2005, and since then the car has only done a couple of thousand miles, although it was the second Easter weekend on the ‘Ring for it. Luckily, we bumped into Mike Rainbird who called Guido for us and he would deliver some used ones free of charge on Sunday morning. Big thanks to Mike & Guido for that

With the Cossie out of action, that left no option but to have another go in the Goonybus. 3 up we set off at quite a pace. I still wasn’t sure about the brakes. The fronts seemed to be ok, but the rear drums didn’t seem to do much, so it was very easy to lock up the fronts. That meant that I had to slow up early, but could still be reasonably confident of the old girl in the corners where it handles surprisingly well. It was all going well until about Kallenhard / Wehrseifen when I noticed a knocking coming from the engine. Probably lack of oil pressure knocking out a big end or main bearing under cornering on the downhill section. Luckily it was just before the exit at Breidscheid, so I got off there and limped her back to the guesthouse.

This is the Goony’s final minutes, but at least she died doing what she does best – taking it hard up the ‘ring


It was getting towards the end of the day, and I’d had a lot of stress from running to and fro with various things getting broken and I hadn’t even been spectating anywhere. Somehow it was a good day, but a hard day and a good meal was in order. We’d booked up the Paddock restaurant in Nuerburg village, and Alex and his mate Simon joined us for dinner there. Unfortunately they cocked up Siomn’s order and he got a beef steak instead of pork, and they also cocked up the drinks order and he ended up with a Pils instead of a Weizen. It really fucks them up when there is a group of people that all go in speaking English together and then some of them order in German That wasn’t the best meal we’ve ever had in Germany. A lot of visitors say that they’ve never had a bad meal, but the service in some of the local restaurants around Easter time is appalling because they know that they can get away with it with the foreigners.

After that, back to the guesthouse for another drink.







Sunday dawned another beautiful day like Friday had. Bad news for traffic, but nice for spectating. Again we went to the car park early to get a good spot to be able to change the rear pads on the Cossie. Needn’t have bothered, as the pads were at ‘Ring Racing with Mike, so we zipped up there and the 'bumcrack brothers' fitted them in double quick time.



I’m fairly sure that the old pads were finished, but they may have had another lap left in them - yes that is his hand you can see through the hole in the one on the left



Meanwhile, the 2 Daves and Pete were having a good day driving and spectating at various places.







As the Goony was out of action, Stu had a drive of the Cossie, taking me, Andrew and Mike Rainbird out for a rather nervous lap. Halfway around when told that Stu had only done 20 laps, Mike said “This is why I don’t go as a passenger with beginners” Even so, Stu managed a very respectable 4 up lap of 9' 20"



We met up with Nikola from RP Labs on his first visit to the Mecca with his friend Didi. I took them for a passenger lap in the Cossie and asked at the beginning if they were nervous passengers. The reply came “no problem, drive to your limits”. Well that’s a problem straight away – the limits of the car are far lower than my limits I went reasonably quickly, but not flat out and then at some point Nikola asks me to slow down as he was feeling sick. I cruised around the rest of the lap trying to stay slow so that he could recover but it was no good. He got prepared to jump out and go to the toilet, but didn’t quite make it. He jumped out as we were just rounding the corner coming off the track to go to the car park and hurled into the bush. It was like porridge I’m surprised that hardly anyone standing around at the entrance saw it. After that, the poor bloke was ill for a couple of hours.

During the day, Paul had finally managed to contact his insurance company who had arranged to collect the Goony and send it back to it’s homeland to be buried or cremated. We considered stripping it down and cremating it on German soil, but thought it disrespectful

Last we heard, it’s sitting inside the recovery company’s warehouse, as he didn’t want to leave it outside (not because it’s precious, because he didn’t want his customers seeing it ). Who knows if and how it will ever be back to live again. It was Easter, so there is a chance of a resurrection



We also sadly lost another of our group of vehicles. Simon’s Elise has done the head gasket – Rover shite Luckily it did not dump any coolant on the ‘Ring and he was able to be recovered without incident or injury to anyone. That was also collected from the guesthouse on the back of a recovery truck, but as it is worth considerably more than the cost of repatriation and was properly insured with breakdown cover, there is a good chance that it will be back this week.

It was getting towards the end of the day and the place was getting quieter, so I rounded up Dave and Stu for a final lap and my quest to record a sub 9 minute lap. The camera was prepared, and the GPS logger started and we headed off through the barriers.



After getting through the barriers, I had to stay slow whilst Stu attached the bulletcam to the inside of the screen. I reckon I would have gone under the bridge at least 20 mph faster if I had been able to floor it straight out of the cones (the excuses are starting already). Stefan had reported something funny happening when turning into Schwalbenschwantz on a previous lap, so at the beginning I stayed quite slow and did not push it until I had felt what was going on. By the time I’d got to Hatzenbach, I was confident that all was well and started to go for it.



Caning down Fucshrohre, the GPS registered a maximum speed of 134 mph, but I daren’t take the corner at the bottom at that speed and backed off a bit. Adenauer Forst was slow but entertaining with a little slide for the few remaining spectators there.

The rest of the lap was good with a bit of traffic. Made a big mistake going up the hill – at the top end of 3rd I accidentally selected 2nd instead of 4th Wouldn’t like to think what rpm the engine did

Kept it steady around the first part of Bruennchen – didn’t want to make any mistakes there in front of all those people.





Second part was a different story – I used all of the kerb and a bit more

All in all it was a good lap, although there are still a couple of corners near the end that I always think I could go much faster around, but concentration is getting low at that time. I crossed the line in what I thought was a good time, but was it sub 9 minutes? We would have to wait for the GPS data to come up to see.

I’m fairly proud of the lap and have posted up on BTG

http://www.bridgetogantry.com/btgfor...php?topic=99.0

If you want to see the video, here it is


8 minutes 57 seconds according to the GPS program









At the end of the lap, slowing down on the straight the engine was misfiring at under 3000 rpm We went back to the guesthouse and changed plugs and injectors, but still number 1 was misfiring, although OK above 3000 rpm and on boost. My thoughts are loss of compression but we could not check at the time. I think it’s either bent valves from overspeeding it, in which case we’ll be lucky if it is only on number 1, or headgasket but there is no loss of water, pressure in the system, mixing of oil/water or anything. A compression test is required, and then probably head off job. So that was 3 cars out of a group of 5 that did not survive fully intact. You can’t wonder at it really, how much of a hammering they get.

All in all, it was a good trip, but the constant problems and running around put a bit of a dampener on it for me. I’ve been a couple of times a year for the last 6 years now, and I think it’s time to give it a rest. Maybe I will change my mind, but for now I am satisfied that I have learnt the track fairly well and don’t need to go again for a while. But who knows when the Green Hell will call me back

On a personal note, it was good to meet with those that I did, but was a shame not to meet those that I didn’t. I would have especially liked to take Stu @ Motorsport Developments out for a lap to thank him for doing business with my mate Nikola. And I would have liked to have taken Alex, Chip and Mike Rainbird for passenger laps.

here are some random pics from the journey home





dave wondering how he's going to climb the ships chimney



you could lose your foot up scooby doo's dirt pipe



sharing a car with the little dude from the carphone warehouse







wonder if he really had come from dakar



the pillion was cute

Paul Eggleton

Nice report Nick

Stu @ M Developments

iTrader: (12)

Excellent report. I must start mine.

I missed you ALL this trip. Such a small place, yet so many thousands of people.

Lou Lou.

Good times couldnt believe that Evo when i went past that was a shame Shorty didnt have a camera to hand

Fil

quality report

GARETH T

cracking report

Marc LJX

iTrader: (2)

Great report!

Only 6 weeks to go for me

Mike1

Great write-up Nick - enjoyed reading that

Jim Galbally

cant beleive that you got THAT bit on video

Munch

good write up mate, maded a really good read

the original

great report Nick

foreigneRS

thanks for all the positive comments

i've edited it to include some pictures of us working on the goony at calais and i forgot to mention that Stu did a very respectable 4 up lap of 9 minutes 20 seconds

Arfur

Good work, Nick.

AlexF

Right thats it!

I'll do my report tonight

Great write up nick - You have to go back soon though.. I want that lap!

Alex

gingeRS

great write up

pmsl @ "starving hungry, we went for a salad"

looks like a top weekender

foreigneRS

it was a big salad

alex - we'll see. i'm really not fussed at the moment

AlexF

give it a year or 6 months

Mad Matt

iTrader: (2)

Nice report mate, great effort.

Nash

iTrader: (3)

Good write up Nick

carlo

iTrader: (4)

Cool pics & story and as for the gooney bus

foreigneRS

found some pics of the goony on track

if anyone finds any, please post them up or links etc

foreigneRS

just got sent a link to the goonybus going around adenauer forst having a tussle with a 911

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qYpQo14UgA

comes in at 2:05

just need to find out how to save youtube videos' i know there was a post on here about it

the original

Nick , post the pictures of your tyres by the end of it

foreigneRS

there's one on the BTG thread already, but here is one of the fronts





don't know if that's just from the kerbs or the sidewall flexing?

lead_foot

iTrader: (1)

Awesome!!

Ade

Great story and love the car! Pure style

So so so so want to go and do the ring.....

Andreas

What a great story, loved the bit with ze tanks.

foreigneRS

yeah, think i want to go again later in the year maybe when i've got my s2000

Chip

iTrader: (3)

Good write up nick, cant believe ive managed to STILL not get a lap with you!

Wazzzer

sorry if someone has already said this but they turn the blades round so they can't spin (also the brake and gearbox inside the tower is locked) if work is needed to be carried out on the site ie routine maintenance

foreigneRS

Wazzzer i thought it might be a maintenance thing, but the whole lot of them were like it and no german is going to be working over the easter holiday

Chip-3Door cheers mate. didn't see much of you to offer one when i did get the chance to go on. a couple of times there were only 2 of us in the car and you would have been most welcome

Wazzzer

It could have been an emergency thing, prob a new fault found and they had to examine every blade before they could let the turbines spin again

The site owner would get compensation for it anyways, its very expensive for the manufacturer to shut just one turbine down let alone a whole site

foreigneRS

here is a video montage of our bank holiday weekend at the 'ring featuring a cossie, the world famous goonybus, a scooby and a couple of elises

some photo's, some in car video etc.

hope you enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed the whole experience

Part 1 of 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toYbtu4PfIc

Part 2 of 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiFOgvCcaPk

thanks to dave for making the video - very impressed with his creativity. you deserve an oscar mate