The trip in which my 933 became a 944, and the first of three successive Ring weekends. :-)

The run-up to it had been fairly eventful ... First, the final stage of the 944 prep. Second, the C-Car syndicate acquiring a second Golf. Third, one of the syndicate members having a bit of a Whoops moment in the original Golf.

Preparation

Regular readers may recall that my 944 was nicknamed the 933 after it managed just three laps before blowing a head gasket, and a further three before doing the same thing again.

Ring Racing immediately diagnosed a blown head, but it seemed sensible to take it to a Porsche specialist for a more thorough examination. Christian suggested Rolf Kaul, of what used to be Kaul & Will. Rolf happened to be in the car-park at the time with his own 944, so we were able to make the necessary arrangements straight away.

The core fault turned out to be the water-pump. Other 944 owners will now be wincing, because while the water pump itself is not expensive, you have to dismantle most of the engine to get at it. However, the head was also not terribly flat so it was replaced at the same time. A couple of Ringers had recommended the gasket from a Turbo, and Rolf went one better by installing a Turbo head too.

I'd asked Rolf to do a thorough inspection of the car to check that everything else was ok. He reported that the drive-shafts were on the way out. Mindful of the fact that I had three successive Ring weekends coming up, I told him to go ahead and replace them.

Rolf Kaul also completed the Ring prep: replacing the shocks with Koni Yellows, fitting 6-point harnesses and a (conservative) Ring alignment.

Even in racing circles, it seems American lawyers have been spotted hovering:

Rolf had recommended these harnesses as being easier to adjust and more comfortable than the slightly cheaper Sabelt ones, and he was right on both counts.

Ensuring that the 944 was fully-prepped turned out to be an excellent idea because Jochen had a bit of a whoops moment in the C-Car a week before this trip. The damage was such that it definitely wasn't going to be ready in a week.

This wouldn't necessarily have been a problem thanks to some extreme generosity on the part of another syndicate member. Joerg very kindly donated his G60 to the syndicate in return for the rest of us funding the Ring prep. The syndicate thus had two cars, so in theory we had a backup backup car. Being a G60 model, this was promptly nicknamed the GCar. We managed to get sequential number plates:

However, a broken CV joint meant that it was unlikely to be driveable for this weekend (RR schedules ...), and installing cage, seats and harnesses was going to take another few weeks at least.

Rolf arranged for the 944 to be delivered to Ring Racing ready for me to collect on Friday night, and told me he would be at the Ring on Saturday to see what I thought of the setup.

Friday

Birgit had recently bought a book in the UK by a new author whose second book was coming out today. She loved the book, so my first stop at the airport was to pick up a copy. How a book becomes a 'new bestseller' on the day it is launched is a mystery to me:

As usual, the week before a holiday meant a nightmare week at work, and an evening flight meant arriving at Nurburg at 11pm. As we'd both had a long week, we again skipped dinner and headed straight to bed.

Saturday

As we couldn't pick up the key to the 944 until RR opened, we had a leisurely breakfast at 8am:

Amazingly, collecting the car took only minutes. It was already/still outside, and Moni knew where the key was. Straight to the Ring and straight out for a sighting lap.

Birgit discovered a slight technical hitch. She usually wears trousers on Ring weekends on the grounds that it is rather more dignified than a skirt when getting in and out of cars, but had opted for a skirt this time in deference to the scorching weather forecast (proven absolutely correct). What she hadn't appreciated was the nature of a 6-point harness. :-) For those not familiar with them, two of the straps come up through a hole in the seat, right between your legs.

I also got reminded of the need for men to make, er, careful arrangements when adjusting a 6-point. You want to consider very carefully where the forces would be applied in the event that the harness was called upon to do its job ...

I was mindful of Christian's experience with a loose harness, and took care to ensure that both our harnesses were extremely tight.

The tyres were very slippery, so after half a lap of sliding all over the place I decided things were bad enough to pull off at Breidscheid to check the pressures. I think this disappointed Karl, who had been hovering behind me waiting for me to put my foot down. :-)

The tyre pressure gauge seemed to have disappeared from the car, so we went to RR to borrow the one I'd bought for the C-Car:

By the time we got back to the Ring, it was closed. It was looking like this might turn into a repetition of the June trip.

The car-park situation was not helped by all the stupid BMW bike tents. The entire top lane of the office-side car-park was blocked by this:

And most of the right-hand spaces were taken up by play houses:

I couldn't help but feel that this was not a good way for BMW to win friends and influence people.

We spotted the BastardWagen, so I called Karl to see where he was. He appeared with JW and Stelvio in tow.

A brief moment of entertainment was provided by this car in which the sun-roof appeared to be an essential item for the very tall driver:

The closure was apparently due to a dispute rather than a serious injury. It was about an hour before the track re-opened.

Two more laps were followed by checking the pressures and finding that they were 2.7 hot. I reduced them first to 2.5 hot and then to 2.3 hot. They were still not gripping well (a mystery that was to be solved later), but 2.3 hot was a definite improvement.

Photo: Andy Eccles of www.b1a.co.uk

I was too happy about having a working DRT to be too worried about the lack of grip, and it was still plenty of fun at reduced speeds. The 944 was also happy to be in her natural habitat.

Photo: Fastlap of www.pixum.de

A Brit had emailed me to say they would be there with some Caterham 7s. He enclosed a photo of his, and said that he would be easy to spot in the car-park. He wasn't wrong:

This look was achieved by affixing individual vinyl tiles. It took 20 hours. When I asked him why he had been moved to do this, he said it was because his mate had already taken the dayglo paintjob so he had to respond somehow.

I decided to be kind to the car by doing only two back-to-back laps, followed by a cooling circuit round the industrial estate, and then a break. Admittedly there was one occasion in which I did the cooling circuit then headed straight back out, I was generally good.

Photo: JW of www.ringbunny.nl

A break, and time to wander around the car-park:

There must be a Halfords equivalent in Germany:

What were Porsche thinking???

The lengths Keith will go to in order to cover up his armco damage:

This was very cool. The stabiliser system meant he could transfer himself from bike to wheelchair unaided:

One of the slightly surreal things about my Ring trips is the complete strangers who recognise me from here and, having followed my trip reports, ask me for an update on whatever it was I'd last written about. In this case, it was several people saying 'Hi Ben, you don't know me, but how's your 944 doing'? :-)

Rolf and Doris Kaul arrived with their son to see how I was getting on with the 944:

Rolf also fixed my non-opening tailgate while he was there - this was just a hook that had come off the catch. He used my flag to do it.

Rolf came out for a passenger lap with me, but my impression of the setup turned out to be distorted by the tyres - more on this in a moment.

Doris said that she was out of practice in technical English as Christian now spoke enough German to speak with Rolf directly. She gave me a handy translation booklet for car parts:

I'll try to remember to scan this and put it online, as I'm sure it'll come in handy for other Ringers.

My impression of the 944 handling was generally good - it felt very stable, tracked perfectly, coped well with bumps and was rock-solid under braking. I was really enjoying how 968-like it felt. However, grip was poor, even after adjusting pressures, and it was a little bit more tail-happy than I would have ideally liked.

Rolf suggested this was due to the tyres, but I couldn't understand this as Eagle F1s are normally good if not spectacular, and I couldn't understand how tyres could cause the back to slide more than the front.

Until I took a closer look at the tyres on Sunday. I ordered four Eagle F1 GSD3s from www.mytyres.co.uk. Ordering from them was always hard work, as they would invariably phone you to say that they couldn't find your address (this happens to absolutely everyone I know who orders from them) and they tend to deliver later than promised. But a tyre is a tyre, and their prices are very good.

The tyres went straight to Jon Mitchell, so the first I saw of them was when they were on the car. Neither he nor I noticed that what followed the word Eagle was not F1. Not only were they the wrong model of Eagles, but the front and rear tyres were different models! The fronts:

The rears:

I have no idea what either tyre is, but suspect they are from the same factory as Karl's old tyres and are thus made in Poland from coal. This explained both the general lack of grip and the rear sliding more than the front.

The real pisser about this is that I suspect there's nothing I can do except shout at mytyres and avoid buying from them in future. The tyres were sold last year, we didn't spot the mistake at the time they were delivered and they are now in Germany having done (in total) 35 laps of the Ring. Under such circumstances, a refund seems a trifle unlikely.

But take a tip from me: buy your tyres elsewhere ...

In the meantime, I just had fun at slower speeds and will replace them once my bank manager has stopped glaring at me.

Birgit's Ring routine is now to do paxlaps with me in the morning and to go off photographing and videoing in the afternoon. On Saturday, Birgit set up camp at Hatzenbach:

She then moved around the corner to Hocheichen. The plan here was to get some low-down video of the cars coming around the left-hander by balancing the camcorder on the armco.

Which was where she managed the rather impressive feat of being involved in a crash whilst spectating ...

Birgit had the camcorder resting on the armco pointing down the track towards Quiddlebacher-Hohe. There had been a closure, and I said that I'd be one of the first cars out, so she was waiting to video me as I came round.

One of the first cars out was a black Mitsubishi Evo. It lost the back on the right-hander and did a 180, sliding sideways into the armco - hitting the section on which the camcorder was resting. The camcorder flew off and hit the ground, the battery popping off.

Birgit went back around the corner to warn traffic, breaking a heel from her shoe in the process. Ironically, I was almost the next car around the bend, so thought I was getting my own personal marshalling service.

The German-speaking driver and passenger picked up their front number plate from the ground, decided the car was driveable, got back in and drove off. Unfortunately this all happened so quickly that none of the spectators got the registration number. A quick check at the office revealed that the Evo driver had not reported the crash.

We're hoping that the car was caught on tape before the impact. Nurburgring GmbH are also very interested in this, as the armco damage was extensive. They have filed a report with the police, so if the driver is identified he will be facing a charge of leaving the scene of an accident.

Update: A photograph has come to light of what we believe to be the Evo concerned, showing the number plate.

In the meantime, back in the car-park, I met Dan, an American with two SLRs under his arm. One was a Canon 10D with a borrowed IS lens, the other took some kind of strange compact flash storage that has to be dunked in chemicals before you can retrieve the files.

Kevin was there with his modified Mini Cooper. This was apparently up to about 235bhp. Even more remarkably, the first 40 extra horses are virtually free - it's just a question of plugging a laptop into the diagnostic socket and reflashing the ECU. The software and OBD cable are from www.mth-powerchip.de and can be bought from the German mini site www.new-mini-ig.de for just €60! There is even TUV approval available. (For others who, like me, got confused about Kevin's polo shirt, Keevan is his Mini forum handle.)

I notched up 16 laps by the end of the day, a modest total by the standards of my old back-to-back habits (when I would typically do 25 laps on a Saturday), but a good number for a DTM August weekend.

Part of my nightmare week at work was a 13-hour day on the Thursday. As I had to transfer a sizeable number of files to three different laptops, I used my own PCMCIA compact flash adapter and a 256Mb CF card. Which I then left in my work laptop. The card didn't matter, but this left me with no way to transfer pics from my Ixus to the laptop as I never keep cables. Until I realised that there was one cable I did still have from one recent purchase, so I was able to transfer the pics using the world's most expensive card reader:

Dinner was incredibly quiet as there weren't many Ringers here this weekend, and most of those who were around were staying further out, so it was just us and Soren.

I was persuaded to look at the menu to consider other options. I duly did so before ordering my usual steak on hot stone accompanied by a bottle of our usual wine. :-)

Sunday

Sunday was also sunny:

As yesterday, the car-park was busy:

Again, though, the track was remarkably quiet. There were a couple of other 944s out there, one S2 and a rather garish Turbo:

On one particular lap, there was a BMW following close behind me but seemingly not wanting to overtake. I find it distracting to have a car close behind, so I slowed and signalled for him to pass. He stayed behind me, and refused several further invitations to pass.

Eventually, I got annoyed and slowed right down and pointed very clearly for him to pass. At which point, I realised it was Soren who had simply wanted to do a convoy lap. Ooops!

There was one long closure, during which time the car-parks became absolutely jam-packed. My 944 ended up surrounded by Brit bikers, and one of them managed to knock off one side of my front number plate while getting off his bike. Ruud had gaffa-tape in his car first-aid kit, so that did the job. It is nice to have a car where such things can be shrugged off.

Birgit assisted by sitting in the shade:

JW asked for a paxlap, and we headed out as soon as the Ring opened. I'd been telling JW how easily the harnesses adjusted, but this is only true once seated if you slacken off all the straps beforehand. So after an unsuccessful struggle to adjust the leg-straps while sat in the seat, he settled for the seat-belt! This at least meant that Birgit was able to jump straight in at the end of the lap.

JW commented on how well balanced the 944 was, and how much it felt like the 968.

After the next lap, we took a wander around the car-park:

This reminded me of a similar screen I had on my first bike, a GPZ400R. The screen, like the bike, was red. It looked very nice, but was so dark that you could barely read the instruments. (A problem I solved by trading the bike in for a CBR600.)

You can rely on there being at least one comic helmet each trip:

When the track re-opened, things were busy:

Having previously experienced DTM traffic, we had decided that an early escape was a good plan, so I was aiming to get a reasonable number of laps under my belt by lunchtime, and then set off by 3pm latest (the race being due to end at 4pm). I was thus sticking as much as possible to a regime of 2 laps, cool-down, rest and repeat.

After a brief lunchtime drink and ice-cream with Rene and Ruud, I decided three more laps and then we'd head off. Birgit had pretty much reached her normal limit of paxlaps, so asked that these final three be gentle ones. I'd already done 10 laps and was very happy, so had no problem agreeing to this.

Photo: JW of www.ringbunny.nl

Approaching Laudaskink, a red 911 was gaining on me, so I stayed right and indicated for him to pass. He did so just before the kink.

As we rounded it, we spotted chaos at Bergwerk. One biker was down, against the armco, several of his mates were standing around near him and Ruud's Scooby was parked on the grass on the right. Someone who I think was Ruud was heading back up the track to warn traffic.

The red 911 somehow failed to notice all this until he was quite close. At which point he slammed on the brakes and locked all four wheels. There was a huge cloud of smoke. Through which a figure could just be spotted leaping over the armco with some alacrity. :-)

Fortunately the 911 didn't hit anyone or anything. As the biker didn't look to be badly hurt, and there were plenty of people at the scene, I decided it was best not to add to the chaos, so we carried on.

We completed that lap and back out for a second, then a cooling lap and a brief break before there was just time for one final lap. I was especially careful to avoid 'one last lap' syndrome at the end of such a successful weekend. :-)

Back to the B&B to pick up the Merc, then to Ring Racing to drop off the 944 and to leave some cash for Peter for the work done last month. Learning Jochen's lesson, I asked Uwe to check the brake-pads on the 944 before next weekend. Any bets as to the chances of this being done?

We made our post-DTM escape with literally minutes to spare. Spectators were already streaming out, with barely a pause to get through, and about ten minutes later the traffic report was warning of a 10km tailback on the road we'd just taken.

The journey was quick and scenic, taking in a smaller, curvier and prettier autobahn than adds a bit to the journey length but nothing to the time as it is quieter.

Although Birgit does not often drive on the Ring, she is not in the habit of hanging around when behind the wheel of a car, even on the curvier sections:

Visiting the Ring frequently, it is tempting to think one has seen it all when it comes to vehicles. Occasionally one is proven wrong:

Not having the energy to cook, we went straight to an Italian place in Selb and ended the evening appropriately:

I got a phone call shortly after we got home. It was Doris Kaul, saying they just wanted to know how the rest of the weekend went. How's that for good service?

And that was, eventually, the first proper weekend in my DRT! And just five days to go before the next one. :-)