Paul_J
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Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
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Some of you would know I went to the nurburgring this weekend, so thought I'd just write a report of the trip:
My new tyres (R888s) arrived literally a day before the trip, so I was hanging the back end out on any roundabout I could find to try to scrub them in a bit.
This was to the shock / [un]enjoyment of my passenger and previously my dad who literally shouted for me to stop the car as I was attempting this on a public roundabout 
Anyway, got up nice and early 3:45am (after going to bed at 11:30pm) chucked the crap in the car and headed off to pick up my passenger dave (captain_rosco off here).
Since the roads were completely clear, I thought I'd test my car out (shake down on the motorway). My engine had felt fairly lazy recently, but I'd not really pushed it - however, on route to pick up my mate I dropped off at a [certified and legal test track]  to see what my car would top out at and was shocked to find flat out in 5th the car refused to pull past 120 mph. Even when the car was standard it did 138 mph, but now it was getting to about 6400 rpm in 5th and really struggling... 
This was slightly gutting as I knew for the rest of the weekend I'd have a fairly underpowered car - although we think it's either a faulty injector or something stupid like a sensor so should be fixable easily, but just annoying at the time.
Got to Dover at about 7am and saw Adam B off here with Lisa in his vx220.  Then boarded the ferry.
Had a bloody disgusting breakfast (think it had been kicking around since last night) - including a 'pudding' called 'black pudding' which Dave kindly informed me was actually boiled pigs blood  I thought it was like christmas pudding
Quick stop for fuel and then time to start moving... 280 miles to go.
Some people were hungry and so we stopped again, I got charged 30 cents to take a piss! Which takes the piss! - I was half tempted to just undo my belt and drop my trousers and piss on his face, but thankfully for him, I found a 50 cent coin and relieved my bladder.
We absolutely motored across europe, with the convoy splitting up into their 'hotel groups' ... our convoy leader was leading us a strange way through some windy German country roads, when we came round a bend and I went straight through a Camera van camera that flashed fuck, 50 kph = 30 mph...  I was doing considerably faster than this (so that's 1 I'm awaiting).
Anyway we drop our stuff off at our hotel sliders... met Bren (british) and his wife who own the place. He's a local legend, moved out from Britain and has lapped on his bike at 7 mins 32! Infact in a few weeks he was due to set a new lap record on ducati's new production bike! 
Dave decided to spill beer all over the room (hence wet all on his t-shirt and up the walls) and then stuff his face. I had more important things in mind like getting a lap in at the ring!
Got to the ring and ...
Closed for the rest of the day  some big accidents and poor weather meant they just weren't going to open due to the time.
Nevermind - off we go to have some food and a 'few' beers.
This then moved on to the 'Beer' house...
note, we were all walking about sayin 'Right, I'm gonna set my alarm for 6:45 and get to the ring bright and early for some early lapping' ... but note the beers were slipping down easier than a greased eel in a drain pipe.
... Alarm went off and I woke up with the most BANGING head ache. the fact I was drinking 2 litre glasses of beer was probably the start of the problem.
Had some breakfast and set off for the ring to open at 8 am.
Despite how this picture looks, the track was very damp and it had been raining for most of the night. I decided to venture out on completely unscrubbed R888's in the slippy damp which was err... interesting
Understeer ... then Oversteer ... then 4 wheel drifts sideways I had it all under control though  after all me and Sabine are cut from the same cloth
Then finally got out when it was dry!  however, the track was so busy, it was a case of ... overtake porsche, overtake porsche, overtake golf, overtake m5, let pass porsche gt3 rs, slow down for yellow flags, overtake clio, slow down for oil etc etc just constantly coming off line or having to slow down.
My mate in his clio trophey on r888's was not hanging about, so I set myself the challenge to catch him  - I did 'just' ... then passed him on a nice cork screw right but that lap was trash as a bike had gone down on some oil and we had to stop completely up near the karusell. Once we got going again the clio was right up my arse through the latter sections, my car just didn't have the pace to leave him in the straights and we were having to push hard in the bends to keep him behind.
After talking to him in the car park he said 'You showed me how much grip these tyres have, once you went past I thought 'fuck it, I'm not going to lose him now, I'll just go as quick as he does into the bends''. I said to my passenger Dave 'I'm not going out again at the same time as that clio again as I'll have to push insanely hard to keep up now due to the straight line speed issues and the fact the driver now knows how quick he can go' ... Thank fuck i didn't that guy in the clio ended up doing like 8 min 40's or something
Anyway, the heavens opened and the rest of the day looked a bit like this...
Met up with my mate from the group at lunch, who said 'Hmm, yeah... I stacked the car.' ... I was like ??? You must be kidding... but nope, 6th corner, 1st lap
Despite the writing the car wasn't driven by his bird... but it showed how slippy the track can get when it's wet / damp ... he spun it into a wall, then later on limping back to the paddock he spun it again
It looked like the sun was starting to come out, although the track / roads were still wet. Slowly the clock was approaching track closure time and so I wanted to try to get a proper quick lap in (as previously they'd all been conjested or full of yellow flags).
Headed out on a semi damp / wet track ... some sections were dry, some sections were wet.
I said to my passenger (ok I'm gonna warm the tyres on this first corner) - turned in and the car just slid straight oh shit haha... this will be an interesting lap... The next couple of corners the car either understeered or oversteered ... so I started taking it really easy on the damp sections. Every now and then the track would be dry though, so I'd gun it again, basically we were looking ahead at the track surface and driving accordingly...
Sometimes however we got this wrong... horribly wrong
Either limping through a completely dry section... or going flat out through a soaking wet section and completely sliding the car to the edge of the track with the rear dancing about My passenger was loving it, however I wasn't 
So that was the end of that day and we headed out for another meal...
this was at the comfy corner with a load of the northloop crowd. I personally enjoyed my meal, it was a turkey curry with fruit and rice mixed in...
Few more beers and off to the beer house again!
off to the blau eck and ... oh dear... what's this?
Yep, we were all getting mashed Shots of sambuca, jager, etc were flowing and being followed down by many beers and strong spirits... I literally saw my mate get a double vodka + coke, where they put in a load of vodka (about a quad) then looked at the bottle (which had at least a double left in it) and just tipped it in before throwing the bottle in the bin - "Excusen me, bitte. Meine Drinken habe nicht coke!"
Then we started playing drinking games...
"One duck sat in a pond, splosh" ... "Two Two duck duck sat sat in in a a pond pond splosh splosh" "Three Three Three duck du...."
Fair enough... except for I had written down the phrase as 'One duck sat in the pond, splosh. So whenever it got to me and it was on that word, I would say 'the' and get fucked over
Some people couldn't take the heat
Although, how this guy stu tried to punish him is a little harsh (although his face seems to be enjoying it)...
... after feeling like i was going to throw up on the taxi ride home, I got home and made sure I had a bin next to my bed Set my alarm for 6:45 again... I woke up about 11:45 and could barely walk. Bollocks.
After being told everyone else was at the ring, I got dressed had some breakfast and headed up.
it was quite busy there...
but not as bad as I've seen before.
My mates had got some good laps in on a dry track and I was ready to go out! but then the track was closed again!
So few snaps around the car park...
SABINEEEE!!!
People thought I was taking pics of the lambo
So down to town we went for food
Dave said he was going to eat a 'Weiner Schnitzel' which we thought would be one of those big sausages in a big loop.
This arrived
Followed by this which was more like rat meat scooped up and minced into a battered steak... it reminded me of the old horrible chicken mcnuggets with all their bits of mushed up meat and boot.
wicked buildings
Dave : "Who's parked that blue piece of shit there?"
Me : "Where? I can't see it, it must be behind my car"
Cool road
Watched a bit of track action
(I think that's adam b's car chasing down a porsche gt3!)
while watching my mates were going 'ahh pussy, look at him braking into that bend' (at almost every car that went past).
Anyway I decided to go for a lap, and despite getting yellow flags at the start, decided to push for the later half of the lap... As I came through a section I saw the guys at the side and said to Dave (I'm not going to lift or brake here, they'll call me a pussy if they see me brake)...
Kept the foot flat on the floor 4th gear, 110 mph turned in for a right hander thats blind and goes over a crest, before corkscrewing left... all my mates saw was my car turn in stupidly quick and then the sound of 4 tyres sliding across the track... 'They said they saw the speed i was doing and heard all the tyres go and were just waiting for the sound of a impact ' ... I was like 'did you see my brake lights?' ... they responded 'no'  haha.
Car did completely drift across the track though and it was at the limit, so I said 'I'm not going to be doing that flat out again'.
I was still gutted I hadn't got a clean lap in the dry and to make matters worse, one of my breather pipes had got blocked and so the engine was forcing oil up the other breather pipe into my induction kit at high rpm...
The result was on the steap uphill section at 7400 rpm I'd get near the top and due to the steapness, oil would flow back into the engine and my car would have plumes of smoke pouring from behind it and hanging in the air
I refused to go out again due to this as I didn't want to be blamed for leaving fluids on track (it was the only place it was happening and only for a few seconds on a straight, but still risky).
So... the answer? to make a catch tank out of a redbull can First we had to drink the redbull, 3 way team action downing it.
Some people were saying it'd fall out and stuff, so I taped it in there... I did a proper job like v.perfectionist.
Now just needed to test it out on the public main roads before setting on the ring. Unfortuntely there was a truck grand prix on the GP circuit which had just ended, causing traffic everywhere! I found a straight stretch that runs parrellel with the ring, 50 kph limit and it was clear ahead of me... So i opened it up... Was doing 120 mph along it, few cars went past the other way and then ... a police car
I slammed the brakes on ... but they didn't even turn around or flash their lights thank fuck
Checked the catch tank and it was on there properly and was doing the job.
Time to venture for a timed lap.... problem was that my car was a lot more underpowered than my car last year. For example last year my car did 140 mph in places that this year my car only did 120 and the long uphill section last year would be doing 115 mph and now only 107 mph.
Therefore, I knew I'd have to make up time in the corners!
I managed to do a respectable 9 mins 14 seconds BTG time. However, I was gutted as my aim was to beat that vid of the saxo vts doing 8 mins 58! ... I can honestly say with a working engine like last year I'd of blitzed this! (last year I had handling and gearbox issues which are now solved) but unfortunately I didn't have this opportunity.
>> this is the vid
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=rl9gcmv67ss&fmt=18
Video's always look a lot slower than when you're out there.
Anyway, we got back and I felt my car in it's current state couldn't go any quicker, but my passenger said 'Well it'd go quicker without me sitting next to you' ... I was tempted to do a solo lap - but with no one to film I couldn't prove it if i did it anyway.
So ... with 1 lap ticket left, I decided to hunt down some nice machinery and found a nice british bloke with a Porsche gt3 rs to take me out (looked just like the one below)
Wow Awesome... the sound and speed... truely awesome
It really pushes you back in your seat and just keeps accelerating hard through the gears I WANT ONE!!!!!
Got back to the hotel to recieve the bad news that our hotel owner had hit the wall at about 100 mph on his motorbike and was now in hospital with broken leg, shattered pelvis, broken arm, several broken ribs and back verterbrea Gutted... His wife was obviously devastated. His biker mates however said he has accidents a lot and that 'shit happens' ... 'he'll be back and riding again.
Anyway one more meal at night, then to bed.
next morning we tried to go to the museum only to find out it had burnt down... tried to get on to the GP circuit but was stopped by some German guy... so we ate a bratwurst and then saw this Jag Racecar.
I was going to do one final lap, but the track was busy so decided against it.
Watched some track action up at ardenau forst.
took pics of the cars with good scenery behind
We were the last of the group to leave nurburgring, infact several hours behind some others...
So we hit the road to catch the ferry...
Averaging about 110-120 mph most of the way back, we got from Nurburgring to the Ferry in 3 hours with no stops.
However... when I got on the ferry and spoke to the others who had been ahead of us, they all said 'Oh did you see the speed cameras! there were about 5 of them'
Fuck...
So I'm awaiting potentially 6 court summons in europe for multiple MAJOR speeding offenses shite.
Bit of a downer on the whole trip. Does anyone know if they can affect me losing my uk license? or whether I'll just get a fine and banned from driving in those countries again?
I'm tempted to get my engine working properly again (won't be hard) and go back to set this sub 9 min lap, or just wait till next year and go back with something faster.
[Edited on 16-07-2008 by Paul_J]
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flybikeslee
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Registered: 2nd Jan 07
Location: Liverpool
User status: Offline
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awesome trip by the loks of it
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fazza
Member
Registered: 7th Feb 08
Location: Plymouth
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some good pics mate, interesting read aswell. your car all sorted now mate?
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pow
Premium Member
Registered: 11th Sep 06
Location: Hazlemere, Buckinghamshire
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Good read
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Jay
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Registered: 26th Sep 04
Location: Liverpool
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Im sure they cant touch you once you've left the country? My brother used to get pulled for speeding abroad in his truck all the time and just paid on the spot fines or they wouldnt let him go.
Edit: Hes still got a clean licence so
[Edited on 16-07-2008 by JayM]
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Paul_J
Member
Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by corsagsi16vplym
some good pics mate, interesting read aswell. your car all sorted now mate?
As stupid as it sounds, I think it may jut be my induction kit blocked by the oil that had flowed into it (usually the induction hose sits downwards so the oil being blown in would drip down into the air filter - only on the steap sections when engine was revving high i think it was flowing backwards).
I may try fitting a spare filter I think i have in my garage Semi be gutted if it fixes it, as I could of fixed it out there, but on the other hand saves me money.
The oil being blown out could just be a blocked breather pipe so will investigate that.
However, recently I got a load of stuff done, including new rear beam, my gearbox looking at, new bushes, tracking done etc...
and the car drives like a dream!!!
It handles so awesomely - even more so on the r888's it's like neutral to slight oversteer balance.
no understeer at all, sometimes slight oversteer thats easily corrected / balanced.
I can honestly (with the LSD too) drift this car around roundabouts now with the rear sliding and the front wheels gripping... it's funny as So predictable too. 100000 % better than it was last year.
[Edited on 16-07-2008 by Paul_J]
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Adam_B
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Registered: 13th Dec 00
Location: Lancashire
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Good read paul
Yeah there seemed to be quite a few 911s going really slow this weekend.
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Paul_J
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Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
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you see that black + silver one adam? they went round in pairs and it was like 'get out of my way!'
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Dan Lewis
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Registered: 31st Jan 05
Location: Leicestershire
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Data Protection on speed cameras, i got done twice when in france about 9months ago. Nothing in the post or anything. its only if they catch you in the act.
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jr
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Registered: 20th May 02
Location: Kent
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what ever that bar is called in adnau (sp)with the pool table we went to as well pual with lee, giles and spanish from mig, was quite nice
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antoni
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Registered: 30th Dec 07
Location: irlam, manchester
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AWESOME
i so need a quicker car and make a trip their now
as for your 'speeding offences' , i was told a while back they can only fine you and NOT give you points on your license
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AK
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Registered: 5th Jul 00
Location: Aberdeen City
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get a compression/leak down test done.... your rings might be a bit gone and pressureising the sump, blowing oil out
how tired is your engine?
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Paul_J
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Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
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Yeah I'm gonna do a compression test AK, not long ago it was fine... all spot on.
Just hit 100k on the trip
It's strange the engine still pulls really nicely in the mid range, but just doesn't have the peak it had / at high speed - hence me thinking it can't breathe enough air in to get the power.
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Doug
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Registered: 8th Oct 03
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Looks like it was a good trip
I hate seeing these threads as I REALLY want to go back but cant afford it atm
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Steve X16XE
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Registered: 31st Dec 06
Location: Barnsley, South Yorkshire
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My eyes are all dried out
Looks like you had a lot of fun there
Get yourself back there in this car and beat the goal that you set yourself. You know you want to!!!
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Paul_J
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Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
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Oh yeah I almost forgot...
they were filming a new series of jack osbourne adrealine junkie and interviewed me on why it was such a hard track...
not sure if they'll use it though as I swore.
"Well to go quick, you need 25% a good driver, 25% a good car and 50% big balls! ... It's all about keeping it fucking flat out"
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Iain M
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Registered: 18th Aug 05
Location: Wigan - Drives 272bhp corsa ZLET
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I would love to go but i think its best if you go with a group of you tbh.
Quality read by the way.
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Fad
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Registered: 1st Feb 01
Location: Dartford Kent Drives: 330cd
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Paul 110 mph into a bend just to prove he went a pussy... legend
Looked like a good trip chap
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Adam_B
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Registered: 13th Dec 00
Location: Lancashire
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Buy a VX220 Fad
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Neo
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Registered: 20th Feb 07
Location: Essex
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Awesome write up, hope you sort out the problem with the engine.
However depressing picture of the c2 IS it the 1.6 VTS ?
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Fad
Member
Registered: 1st Feb 01
Location: Dartford Kent Drives: 330cd
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by Adam_B
Buy a VX220 Fad
i'm going to have to block you....
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Paul_J
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Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
User status: Offline
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I can't decide what car to get next?
Needs to be fairly light (or have good power / weight ratio) ... tuneable / standard quick so that it is quicker than my gti (when it's working)... fairly stable so good grip from the tyres etc.
I'm thinking ...
VX220 Turbo
S2000 with TB's
er... ?
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Adam_B
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Registered: 13th Dec 00
Location: Lancashire
User status: Offline
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VXT paul. Fads getting one.
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Fad
Member
Registered: 1st Feb 01
Location: Dartford Kent Drives: 330cd
User status: Offline
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Thinking cheap derv and VX220 Turbo myself
Cheers Adam 
You going back again anytime soon Paul
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Steve X16XE
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Registered: 31st Dec 06
Location: Barnsley, South Yorkshire
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by Neo
Awesome write up, hope you sort out the problem with the engine.
However depressing picture of the c2 IS it the 1.6 VTS ?
It's a GT. No fog lights.....
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