Pre-Ringmeet Roadtrip 2014 - Pictures and Videos dump thread

[lip]

Here we go...

Saturday 02. August 2014 (Day 1)

The Laguna. Trouble-free cheap motoring. - So far.

The way from my homeplace at the Swiss shore of Lake Constanze to my meeting-up point in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, was about 1500km. Since I don't like to be stressed for time during such a long drive I planned three days until the meeting-up at Monday evening. Plenty of time. Saturday I spent with friends from Germany to visit the awesome Deutsches Museum in Munich: http://www.deutsches-museum.de/en/exhibitions/transport/

My favourite stuff (as a guy from a landlocked country...) the seafarer history.

When we left the museum a look at the sky showed a upcoming weather change.

Off I went again, eastwards, and it didn't took long until the bad weather hit the scenery. It was really bad. The rain was insane. If it looks to you like that Porsche is floating above the road, well it kinda did. Not a lot of progress possible in such conditions, hundreds of kilometers at 60km/h, meh.

So instead of spending the night in Vienna, Austria, I gave in much earlier near Linz and took a motel room.

More to come, stay tuned.

 

[lip]

Sunday, 03. August 2014 (Day 2)

Good morning, a straight drive through Hungary towards Romania, and the weather was perfect. - That's more like it.

Overtaking a Police car that drives the speed limit, always a bit of a gamble. But it seems in Hungary it's the same as in Switzerland: 10km/h over, and they let you in peace. And as soon as they are out of sight again, you can go back to 160km/h. :lol:

And suddenly in the middle of Hungary the Autobahns ended. Only some wide 90-100km/h two lane roads from then on. I made my first stop. - Beautiful backround, eh

That architecture style. Wow.

Oh yeah.

The border between Hungary and Romania. Altough Romania is in the EU, the border controls are still present, my EU-wide Internet Access stopped, and also my EU-wide towing insurance (As it tourned out later on. ).

Shortly after I reached Oradea, a bigger town in the west of Romania, where I took another hotel room. Very cheap. 35 euros for a four star palace bunk. Wow. - Living the high life. :lol:

More to come. Stay tuned.

 

[lip]

Monday, 04. August 2014 (Day 3)

Good morning. - You just know you hit Romania when a lot of these sheds suddenly make part of the landscape.

When I went for a Snack in a little shop, these guys parked up soon after. - Not hard to outrun... probably.

Bhahaha! :lol:

Also very common:

Somewhere in the nowhere I decided to use up my white Plasti-dip, and paint some white stripes along the side ot the car, just for giggles. - Er, not much stuff in these cans, so only half of it then, eh?.

WTF? Saw a lot of these. Roof all done, the rest not much.

Again. :?

A little mountain hill pass between Oradea and Cluj-Napoca. Finally a place to overtake some accumulated trucks. It was a 90km/road, the trucks did about 40 uphill, and my impatience with the stupid snail Mazda infront of me can be heard at 0:30. So I went for an undertake.

SupeR!

I was quite early in Cluj-Napoca, (the roads were actually quite in good shape) and took some detour around the city, but at the evening I met up with the local tquattro in the city for drinks and salad at a cool rooftop restaurant.

Later on vikirad, another romanian local, joined us for some time. - Forgot to take a picture of you. Sorry.

To pass the time until the rest of the Roadtrip group would arrive, tquattro took me on a local scenery tour in his car:

Cool stuff around:

The city of Cluj-Napoca. - On this place again a thanks to tquattro for playing my personal host superbly for that evening.

Some time later the rest of the group met us back at the little Pension we had rented, and we went for late dinner into the city again.

The way Gallanti parked his yellow starship, I assume he has a tiny garage at home. :lol:

More to come, stay tuned.

 

[lip]

Tuesday, 05. August 2014 (Day 4)

Good morning. - The way it is on these trips, I was first up as usual...

A look outside. Not bad.

Soon after the little lounge massed up, and it was time for some videos: The coming-from-the-north group unintentionally took some serious gravel roads on the way down. Sheesh. What the heck did they dial into the satnav? "Only rallye roads, please?" :lol:

public gave this sticker to me. It actually said "Blipshift", but a bit of modification with the knife and it was perfect.

And off we went. Since the somewhat actual start of the Roadtrip was tomorrow where we would finally meet up with all participants, we took it leisurely. - A visit to a local salt mine was on the plan.

Ok, altough my car isn't fast, if you're together with cars that have much less power than yours, you just can't step back from showing your inner child: - Side by side for a bit of drag racing with the little Suzuki at 0:38, then we went for it: At 1:16 I'm actually over the hill and already out of sight. Thehe.

Inside the Turda salt mine. The entrance was very unspectacular, and at first I was not really impressed. Just some tight alleys that looked like carved out of a glacier with room temperature...

Some tiny staircases down we went... and suddenly the dimensions changed...

Woah.

I was quite suprised and stunned. Hundreds of meters inside the hill suddenly was this gigantic hall. They had a freakin' ferris wheel in there FFS.

And it went even further down, lake included.

Aww, no reception? Haha.

All this looked more like a gigantic set for a science-fiction movie to me than a mine.

Damn, what a cool place. - Back out again, doing some tirekicking and lookatmotor'ing at eachothers cars.

Proof that even the most modern car wasn't perfect: There should be a plastic pipe there in U-shape to connect these two holes. Gone. Basicly the yellow frenchy was sucking in unfiltered air now because of this. Gallanti suspected the guys doing the last service simply forgot to put the part on again. Tsk.

Off we went again on some nice roads, but soon enough we made a detour onto some bad stuff. Ack.

But it was only a short way to a restaurant, with a nice view.

And some nice offer. Hmhmm. Hello!

Superb food, roads and scenery. Great stuff.

Some crap roads trough the villages tough. :lol:

Longer pause to have a look at a gigantic fortress. - No idea where this was. Info, please.

This was shortly bevore meeting up with Ice, so on with some honorary blue wheels.

Impressive stuff.

Eye-Q and a local straw dog.

Yep. Can't do without this.

Now, would you just look at this beauty! :lol:

Roaring towards the next overnight place near Sibiu. - Note the lack of a glowing "check engine you fool!" light. - This would change in a day or two.

Finally meeting up with the rest of the crew. Ice was still not here, tough. Steering pump problems, I heard.

Supper in Sibiu. I need a wide angle lens. - Superb Lady expression of Liga there. :lol:

A ride back to the hotel in the 205. Quite basic, but still, cool car.

More to come, stay tuned.

 

[tquattro]

The fortress is in my hometown, Alba Iulia,

Great stuff, keep it coming!

 

[lip]

Wednesday, 06. August 2014 (Day 5)

Good morning. - Of course I was up early. The usual.

Cool road, and no traffic, hm...

...oh yes, I went for a superb morning hoon for about half an hour. Awesome road on top of that hill.

When I came back it was time for breakfast, and afterwards the usual car tinkering and Roadtrip-stickering went on.

And off we went. Parts of the Transalpina Road were on the plan for today.

And the roads to get there were already great:

Look at these gas guzzlers.

And now look at the economical ones. *Cough*

Welcome to Romania! :lol:

But the accumulated dust from that gravel section soon got washed off again...

Nevertheless, great driving stuff:

And here my unlucky stride began, notice at 5:45 I'm backing off going after the 850, because I suddenly heard some strange noise. What the heck was that?

Anyway, short photo stop at a dam. And yep, I was in denial mode about the car. Didn't even look under the hood.

Beni sure knows how to pose :lol:

Looked almost like somewhere in Japan...

Also some cool lake there, you couldn't actually see where the shore was.

Some tourist from Finland wanted a shot of him infront of that vista. Done.

Classic FG :lol:

On we went, but the tarmac lasted about 100 meters...

The following section was quite slow because of the worsening road condition. Nevertheless, my strange noise suddenly had quite some presence now. But from the inside of the car I couldn't even locate the noise, to me it sounded like I was blowing ceramic parts of my catalysator trough the exhaust. - So we stopped again at another dam, and it was time to finally have a look under the hood. - Oh-oh. 1/3 of the belt gone. - Liga's comment while having a look too: "If that fully snaps, you're complete and utterly fucked." - Well, thank you very much for that information, Madam. :lol:

But anyway, the scenery was great.

And altough we would have dinner in a Restaurant just a few minutes down the road, the brits and some others still went for some er, snacks. :lol:

After dinner parts of the road became very adventurous.

In these sections everybody had to search for his personal best (read: lowest pothole count) lane.

Nice wide road. Just no tarmac yet.

Go-go Suzuki!

Not the fastest anymore, eh 850? :lol:

The road was by now a constant mix of tarmac- and gravel sections. Great stuff.

At 7:00 we all tought for a moment the road had ended. :lol: - Btw, meanwhile the belt noise was gone. - But only for some time until the shredding started again with the next section of its width.

And for sure, at the next stopp: Only 1/3 of it was still there. Ouch.

At least I wasn't the only one with the hood up. For them it was just for cooling reasons, tough.

So after that visual check it was clear the belt would go off at any minute now. Atleast since the road went all downwards from here I could take some stress off the motor, but to no avail: A few kilometers down the road the belt finally went, and my dashboard display showed "STOP" in big red letters. Ah, crap. - But the belt only fell off, it was still in one piece, so Maytum, Davetouch and Beni mounted the belt on again. Awesome guys. - The brits even had a spare belt with them, but it was way to long for the Laguna. - Myself, I was quite unhappy causing these troubles, so I even forgot to take pictures for some time.

But my bad luck wasn't over yet. With the belt mounted again it took only a few kilometers more until I was hitting the next problem. Yes, literaly hitting it:

The other guy:

Yes, then and there I finally popped my crashing cherry. Granted it wasn't a big one and at a very slow speed: I came down trough the inside of a hairpin, the Dacia came upwards, and we met in the middle. Crunch. - Sadly my own dashcam was off (less electric use, less strain on the belt) but at least Gallanti behind me had his one running. I'm sure he will post it in this thread sometimes. - The paperwork was no big hassle since tquattro was there for translations, it only was a bit time consuming because we had to make a copy somewhere of my car papers to hand over to the other guy. A hotel lobby a bit further down the road gladly helped. Done. - But wait, the problems weren't over, since right after the crash the belt was finally gone, and now I just drove on without it. Without any steering- and braking assistance. Eye-Q was surprisingly still willing to be my passenger. Brave man. - Gladly the Laguna's cooling system isn't on the belt that went, so all I did whilst driving on was to strain the battery. Adrian had a spare one in the 850, but mine was quite new and held on until we reached a larger intersection with Restaurants.

We took dinner there....

...and tquattro organised a flatbed truck to get my car to a garage in Sibiu.

Was quite the adventure. - More to come, stay tuned.

 

[47]

Cool, nice write-up and pics, waiting for more. Would rep, but must spread first

 

[lip]

Thursday, 07. August 2014 (Day 6)

Meh. I couldn't go on a morning hoon like the day before, because my car was in the garage in Sibiu, waiting for a new belt.

After breakfast Eye-Q gave me the the opportunity to have a go with the Suzuki to drive down to the garage. Quite cute to drive, this. The whole supension was only some springs in the seat and your own ass, tough. Wow.

The patient was already in the operations room, but I still had to wait more than two hours for the belt to arrive.

But finally: Look at that new belt go! - Meanwhile the rest of the Roadtrip horde was already on the way to attack the Transfagrasan Transfasagaran Transfagasran Transfagasaran Pass.

But it didn't took long until I had it in my sight too:

The weather wasn't the best, but hey, what an awesome location. As a Swiss I'm quite a bit spoiled with our alpine passes, but still. Good stuff.

I wasn't really sure how far the others were infront of me, since the phone reception was bad. - You can hear me yelling into the radio a few times during the video, everytime I heard it crackling. :lol: - In reality they were more than 1 hour infront of me.

The Tunnel on top.

Down again on the other side.

Btw, this was the repairs for the broken headlamp glass. It was for free.

The plannend route for today was to drive over the Transfagasaran Pass, down to the Dam, and the same way back. So no problem to meet up with the others again. I took my time.

During this pause I had a look into my glove box and realised my car paper was missing. I remembered handing it to the garage guy earlier, but I never got it back. So I called the garage, but since it was already 6 PM I only got the security guard on the phone. His english was as nonexistent as was my romanian. :lol: - Oh well, I would just drive up to the garage tomorrow morning to get the papers back. No problem.

Anyway, I drove on, and few minutes later the Suzuki came in sight:
[video=youtube;b1lm-Xo3J1g]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1lm-Xo3J1g[/video]

Back in line:

The whole group:

Back up the Transfagasaran:

We went over the top, but then turned around to go up again to take more pictures.

And when we stopped on the top I forgot to turn off the dashcam... I didn't cut the video, so you can see what we do best: Bimbling around, doing nothing.

That road.

Some went up and down a section multiple times for photo opportunites...

Altough I'm sure Adrian forgot something. :lol:

public was there. Proof.

A bit further down it was time for some group shots...

... and I thanked the brits for yesterdays help. :lol:

Going down again. Sadly the Laguna's check engine light flashed sometimes by now and made me a bit nervous.

A short bit later I took the opportunity to finally have a go myself in the BMW 850: The way this thing grips and goes is amazing. -

Meanwhile Eye-Q drove my Laguna, and after changing cars again he also reported the engine check light flashing sometimes, and a roughness at idle. Damn. - Fun's over again, it seems. - While the others went for supper, I and Liga went straight to the Hotel because it was quite late again. Underway I was able to get my car papers back which were deposited in the garages security guard booth. (The garage had called tquattro during the day and he arranged it). - While the satnav sent us on a unwanted circle in Sibiu the engine light now came on permanently. Crap. - But we made it back to the hotel.

More to come. Stay tuned.

 

[Beni]

Great write-up, looking forward to the rest! I'll add mine soon!

 

[lip]

Friday, 08. August 2014 (Day 7)

Good morning. - Yep, those glasses were the right choice about my car situation.

The Laguna was acting up badly since the evening before, and it wasn't better this morning. Very rough and unwell. - The Roadtrip people were willing to help, but I decided to bring the car straight into the Garage again. Maybe it was one of the coils? (I had spares with me). So a call to the Renault Assistance, another ride on the flatbed and down to the garage again. The car got diagnosed, one of my spare coils went in, and all was well again. - For about 10 minutes after leaving the garage, but soon: Engine light on again, rough engine again. Damn. - It wasn't a coil this time, because that would mean one cylinder off and quite some power loss, which didn't happen.

But instead of going to the same garage again I went to the main Renault Dealer in Sibiu for a bigger check. And according to the mechanic there I probably had some rubber crap in my engine, flaked off the inside of this wheel:

Game over. - And now I had to make decisions: Should I burn repair money on a car I would toss away in 4 months anyway? But that would mean lagging even a day or two behind the others. Or should I just drive on? - Nah, going back on the Roadtrip was out of the question. Trailing behind the others with a car that isn't well is in no way my kind of travel fun. Sad to go off like this without even saying goodbye, but that was the situation. - Anyway, I talked with my towing insurance on the phone and it turned out (as guessed) Romania wasn't covered. The rest of the EU was, don't ask me why. Sooo, if I would break down in Hungary (the border was about 350km away), the car would get sent home with no costs, and also my travel expenses would be payed. - Oh well, on then, towards Hungary, towards Switzerland, towards home.

But while still in Sibiu trying out different speeds to sense if the car was capable of limping homewards, for sure I got me a ticket: 64km/h in the 50 Zone. 90 Lei on the spot.

Good thing looks can't kill, because this one would have sent me to the hospital. At least. :lol:

So off I went, 1500km with the straightest/fastest route. And even then I got reminders that I was still in Romania:

But at late afternoon I reached the Romanian/Hungarian border. Score!

The car was very unhappy with idling and crawling, but at least it held well on Autobahn speeds. - Note the plasters tquattro had put on my bumper. :lol:

About 1000km yet to go... and not sure if possible... quite a tense game, this.

More to come, stay tuned.

 

[lip]

Saturday, 09. August 2014 (Day 8), + Sunday, 10. August 2014 (Day 9)

Good morning. - I spent the night in Budapest, Hungary, and after a few Kilometers on the Autobahn I had to fill the car up. That done, finger on the start button, but the car was now very unhappy at idle. Way worse then before. I feared of stalling it underway at a stupid place, so I decided to end the adventure right here in the safety of the motorway service area, and finally call my towing insurance. Of course you can't just call them and demand they should send your car home, it has to be towed to a contract garage first and checked out there. But since it was Saturday the official contract place was closed, and the insurance agreed to get the car to the next best garage.

So there we are in a small tinkering service place in the town of Tatabanya.

I told them about the fact that there may be stuff inside the engine. Then I asked them how much a check/solution would cost: "80 Euros, but it will probably take the rest of the day". Eh? - "Go on then. You can't make it worse". And they went straight at it:

Quite bored by now with hanging around in garages I took a taxi und went for a lenghty dinner.

When I came back during the afternoon they were happy to tell me that the engine was (almost) as good as new. - Some guy was even checking the lights... :lol:

They had waited with bolting on the manifold again so I could see how they had cleaned (parts of) the engine, all sparkplugs were new and they had changed one of the hard-to-reach coils in the back of the V6 (my last spare). Then we went on a test drive. I could swear there was still a small roughness at idle, but after hundreds of Kilometers lately with a 8 on the shake-o-meter I wasn't really sure anymore. - The total costs: 90 Euros. I gave them 100 and roared off towards Austria:

Of course with a (somewhat) repaired car there was the idea again to just join the Roadtrip again, but my confidence in the car was gone. Also the weather went crappy again. No, I wanted to go home. I would see them on the Ringmeet...

Later on trough Munich I got badly stuck in the saturday night traffic. - Eighter there is no ring road around the city or I simply missed an intersection to it.

It was very tiresome and I took a nap in the car until about 3:00 in the morning.

And then only 50km from home:

Crap. Well, atleast those 100 Euros spent in Hungary brought me home...

But anyway, was quite a week. Ok, I missed parts of the trip and the Ringmeet because of car troubles, but still, quite an adventure, and I can now tick off the Transfagasaran box. And don't forget, there is always next year.

And look what I could show the Laguna while I went shopping shortly after arriving home: - Yes. A Passat W8. - "Look Renault, that's what you get for playing up during a Roadtrip: You get replaced, probably with one of these!" :lol:

Over and out. - Now show me your pictures and videos. FFS!

 

[DanRoM]

At 7:00 we all tought for a moment the road had ended. :lol:

Seriously, awesome pictures and videos.

 

[narf]

I didn't know someone brought his motorcycle to Ringmeet... oh well, must have drowned in the puddle then :lol:

 

[tquattro]

Here's the photo dump from my camera, including overexposed and bluryness magnificence:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/99192028@N03/sets/72157646369138568/

And photos by DaBoom from my camera:
http://imgur.com/a/3bEg4

 

[Beni]

So here is the first part of my grainy pics. I was always happy with the smallness and lightness of my camera and kit-lense, but there wasn't enough light most of the time in Romania...I'll have to upgrade ASAP.


I believe the plan was for the Saab and 850 to pick me up somewhere around noon/early afternoon on monday, but as the Saab's leave was delayed due to aircon bearing issues and the BMW had to return as well due to a fuel leak we in fact left around midnight in Frankfurt.



After around 13 hours of driving (I don't know which time the interior clock is set to) we were somewhere in Romania, we reached Sibiu around 4 pm I think. We had torrential rain after the Austrian boarder and and a stop for breakfast in a run-down place on the hungarian motorway.




There was a plethora of fuel stations, but 98 octane was hard to find.






Not sure if they had 98 in the end here.





On the way to roads near Transalpina pass.

























/Part 1

- - - Updated - - -

The roads got worse after the stop there. Sometimes parts were cut out (mostly in corners), the road just turned into gravel (mostly in corners) or bridges were only finished halfway (mostly in corners).























































The invisibelt.

/part2

- - - Updated - - -

Whilst waiting for the handling of Lip's scratch.



And off to Transf?g?r??an pass the next day...





























At the "Top Gear Dam"



And the place where they supposedly stayed the night.

/part3

- - - Updated - - -



The northern side of Transf?g?r??an pass.



The 8er driving tquattro's brother around.



It's not Lip, but it's Lip's Romanian cousin!



















A spider living on Adrian's aerial.



The next day, driving up to Transalpina Pass.









And almost on top of Transalpina pass.

 

[47]

Beni, I don't know what kind of camera you have, but those pictures are amazing and awesome!
A bit TGish too, I like it

 

[tquattro]

Beni, I don't know what kind of camera you have, but those pictures are amazing and awesome!
A bit TGish too, I like it

+1

 

[DanRoM]

Yeah, those pictures really do have style.

And Adrian's car looks incredibly badass. I can hardly believe that this car, with the mods, all the stickers, a young man at the wheel and no front plate, didn't get pulled over by the police daily.

 

[Matt2000]

I agree that the photos look perfect for the setting.

Looks like it was a really interesting trip, I may be a bit jealous because I'm probably the only person that looks forward to roads like that. :lol:

 

[Beni]

Camera is a Nikon D3100 with kit lense, not quite up to the job...

I didn't take any pics at your place, the battery might have been flat, but more from our way to the croatian coast and getting the Zastava on the isle of Rab:



Ice blows the Zastava straight off the road



2 hours of waiting to get into Croatia





On the ferry to Rab Island/Croatia to take a look at an old Zastava







Taking custody of the Zastava 101 and taking it to the ferry









First breakdown was a puncture soon after we reached mainland. The spare was flat and we had no 19mm tool with us. That night on the Italian Autostrada the fuel hose perished, fuel was leaking but I reached the campsite safely in torrential rain with a cabin full of fumes



Arron looks kind-of-pleased driving the 101 north on the Autostrada





And crawling up Timmelsjoch pass