• The development of any software program, including, but not limited to, training a machine learning or artificial intelligence (AI) system, is prohibited using the contents and materials on this website.

No 56k: Ringmeet 2011 - What could possibly go wrong? (Dump all your pics & videos here)

Sidenote to all picture-taking folks: If you got pictures of the damage on MXM's hood which show more than the uneven bit at the front end, please let me know! If someone has a pic from inside, even better.
 
I'm about to start on my photos. This could take some time, especially because my head is still spinning from that ferry ride.
 
I'm about to start on my photos. This could take some time, especially because my head is still spinning from that ferry ride.

Which one - the cross channel ferry or HMS Saab? :lol:
 
Second car was something really old. Not really sure of it?s exact name is, I think it?s an 8c something. But I?m sure Macgeek would correct me here.




1931 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Monza :woot:
 
I didn't take many, wanted to just enjoy myself rather than be a camerabore (which kinda failed anyway)...

Full moon during the meet (was cloudy during the actual full moon so this is all you're getting)
https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2011/08/15/_ICE7711.jpg

MXM looking for bushings
https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2011/08/15/_ICE7718.jpg

DaBoom
https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2011/08/15/_ICE7722.jpg

nicjasno is not amused
https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2011/08/15/_ICE7719.jpg

equiraptor was easily amused, though
https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2011/08/15/_ICE7727.jpg

grumpy dad
https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2011/08/15/_ICE7729.jpg

What's the weather forecast? QUICKLY!
https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2011/08/15/_ICE7732.jpg

Suedschleife doing is part
https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2011/08/15/_ICE7733.jpg

Our portion of the campsite looked more like a carpark
https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2011/08/15/_ICE7734.jpg

The Texans staked their claim
https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2011/08/15/_ICE7743_001.jpg

He was really amused by swek, the poor lad
https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2011/08/15/_ICE7785.jpg

My flashing around wasn't liked by all
https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2011/08/15/_ICE7788.jpg

Eye-Q had already gone blind
https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2011/08/15/_ICE7789.jpg

WAAAAAAAAH!! I DON'T WANT MY PICTURE TAKEN!
https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2011/08/15/_ICE7790.jpg

After a hard day of looting and burning
https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2011/08/15/_ICE7792.jpg


https://pic.armedcats.net/i/ic/icebone/2011/08/15/_ICE7793.jpg
 
Yeah - can you change title to "Ringmeet 2011 - Getting wet at Br?nnchen during Touristenfahrten 14.08.2011" so people can find it? And add tags like touristenfahrten ringmeet nordschleife etc :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
No pics from me (I didn't take any), just a short report concerning the 7. Wall of text warning.

First of all great thanks to everyone who helped me get through the weekend with a running car. So just about everyone :)

But special thanks to D-Fence, who brought me the bushings (and enabled this post by assisting with lidl-prepaid :p), Beni, who spent most of his meet under my car, DaBoom and nicjasno for assisting with repairs.

So this is what happened...

On Thursday on my way to the ring I noticed that my car behaves weirdly, and found a destroyed a-frame bushing. That's the piece that holds the axle laterally in place. It was actually upgraded to a rose-joint, which worked itself loose. I decided to replace it with the (original) rubber bushing, since finding a rosejoint would be impossible on such short timeframe. On the campsite that evening we take it apart, and on Friday morning we went through all the shops in the area, but none could help us. One parts store found the part number and told us it's from Rover. The closest Rover shop would be in Cologne, so I phoned Adu and D-Fence to see who was closer. Adu was already at the campsite, and D-Fence was the man. At first we couldn't match the part number I had with the Rover's, so I phoned Caterham, who only told me this is the old Rover number, and Rover replaced it with something unknown. I phoned Redline (classic Caterham specialist) who knew the answer. Simultaneously I get SMS from D-Fence, he found the same part number from an MG shop in Cologne. They had rubber and polyurethane, so I asked him to bring both.

At the campsite I put rubber bushings in, everything looks great. And then, as everyone was leaving to Brunnchen and I was still organizing the tent, thomas drove over the bonnet of my car, which was laying on the grass between our cars... Oh well, shit happens. One corner was flattened, but I managed to bend it back into the general shape (it's alu). Too bad didn't take any pics of it before "repairing". Upon arriving to brunnchen I noticed my brake pedal pumping against my foot over the uneven ground at the parking. Checked the wheels - front left is wobbling like mad! Thinking that I destroyed the bearing or something, I started thinking about the worst case scenario, and we found out that Caterham Deutschland is only 80km away, so I could bring my car to them to fix it, sadly only on Monday. So instead we decided to try our luck and went to the shop with tons of Minis in front. We've been there before to remove the old rose-joint bushing from the a-frame :) Well, the guys jacked up the car, removed the wheel, the axle cap, and found a backed-out axle nut without a lock pin. No one to blame here but myself - I've put that corner together, forgetting the lock pin. The wheel was _really_ loose, so I was pretty lucky to get this fixed so easily, just by tightening the nut. Took a quick test drive - feels great.

Saturday. Right away we went with Der Stig to get the oil changed, as I didn't have time to do it before leaving Finland. After the oil change I went on the ring with DanRoM in the passenger seat. To be blunt - it was rubbish. The amount of fast traffic was overwhelming. Combined with my useless left mirror, and the very twitchy behavior of the car at high speed, I mostly just drove hugging the right edge. It was just frustrating. As went back to parking, I went under the car to see how the bushing I installed was doing, and... it was shreaded to pieces. The sideways stresses were too much for the rubber to hold up even for a day. I still had a pair of poly-urethane bushes, and after Beni (who just arrived half an hour before) offered his help installing it, we did it right there at the ring parking lot. It wasn't easy, it was a very tight fit. Poly bushes will hold up the stresses, but the bad part is the rotation of the axis (=roll of the body) is working directly against the hard poly bushes, which is why I tried the rubber ones at first. We went on the scenic drive with Beni navigating. Generally it felt good, apart from car noticeably pulling to the left when braking. I was a bit paranoid and paid a lot of attention to the left front wheel behavior, because it still had some looseness in the bearing. During the drive we had an almost fail-moment, when I suddenly realized that my last fuel stop was on my way to the ring. The gauge was reading E. Situation seemed desperate, so we TomTom'ed our way to the nearest station. There was only 95 octane fuel, so I've put just over 10l, so I can mix it with more 98 later, and minimize the damage :) Fuelling up next day (only few km driven in between), I've put 26l in. My tank is 35l...

Sunday. Morning rain, so most people left home. Little they knew it's be nice and dry from 3pm on! I went on the drive with DaBoom, and decided the track is dry enough for me to attempt another lap. Adrian went with me as a passenger (I see he posted a video, but I haven't watched it yet). Well, there was almost no traffic, and the car felt so much more together that I found some confidence and had a blast. It wasn't a flying lap, I still held back at most straights, but I enjoyed it so much more. After we came back, Adrian's friend offered to buy me a lap if I take him out, so I accepted the offer :) That was great as well. The things I said earlier about how the car is too twitchy and unstable for such a highspeed track are bullshit :) If my clock was right, it was an 11ish min lap, which is still way slow for a 7, but I could cut that a lot if I actually had balls to go flatout in all the straights (and especially the long uphill some time after Adenau), followed the actual raceline and learned the last 1/3 of the track. In the evening, only me, DaBoom and Kip were left. We swapped cars with Kip for a while. I drove his with the handbrake on :rolleyes: The cars are shockingly different in almost everything...

Today (Monday) me and DaBoom went to Caterham's dealer in Neuwied, to look at all the problem places in my car. Very nice people there. They lifted my car, inspected the wheel, said the bearing is ok. If it was damaged it would make noises. The little wobble there is not optimal, but acceptable.. just. The real problem is the right side caliper, one of two cylinders is stuck. They found a caliper, but it was wrong side. Sadly, there was not much to be done in one day. They offered to swap the caliper from on of the other cars they had, but it would take it to tomorrow. So they just said to take it easy, it shouldn't get any worse, just the brake force is pretty unbalanced. I'd have to replace/repair it when I back to Finland, of course. The rear bushing they said is ok. It's not great to have polyurethane bushes there (the rose-joint was there for a reason), but it should hold up. Finally they noticed that the rear left wheel is wobbling! Its the same problem, the nut is backing out, but this one doesn't have the lock pin by design, just tightened with a massive torque. We checked it earlier at the campsite, but it worked itself loose already during the weekend. I will check it periodically on this trip, if it keeps coming out, I'll glue it in with the locktite or something. Anyway, we spent a lot of time at their service, they had up to 4 people dealing with my car and in the end they didn't even take any money. Much obliged.

That's it so far.. Planning to go to Porsche museum tomorrow and head further south after that. For a change, DaBoom's car was playing up today, some briefly appearing symptoms of strong vibration at high speed, and some knocking in the turns, but it's still going.
 
Awesome pics so far, anyone got a good shot of Matt and my dalek shirt? I see only a partial one :(
 
MXM: i noticed that knocking before if you remember, when we drove around to find the part for your 7. Should be looked at when you get back home.

Good to hear that the 7 is allright now.
 
Last edited:
Yeah we would have stayed on for another couple of hours had we not had to leave about 3pm - was really annoying to drive home in beautiful weather. Thinking hard about next year though, now. :p
 
So my post.... lets begin!

in the begin was airport in finland, and i'm quoting Zeeal from the irc:
Code:
<Zeeall> oh-jesus-fuck-thats-early-o'clock
aka 6:55 am gtm+3(dst).

So 2,5hour flight to frankfurt, where we had to walk about 1km to get our luggage at the counter.
After 5min wait we got them and got out and thomas jumped up from his seat and greeted us.
After minor greetings we got lost @ the airport and then found the machine where thomas had to pay the parking.
in the parking we jumped into audi A6 3L tdi wagon and left.


BTW the car was so confortable that i sleeped some part of our journey in the backseat.

The parking was labyrinth, 11th floor parking and the "exit" divited us to -3 and the up to ground level next ot the road we wanted to go, and then to next parking structure where we finally found exit.

After some autobanhs we arrived to the campsite and was greeted by somewhat confused adunaphel who raided me of 70eur for my tent.

mah tent <3

Thomas and someone-who-nearly-lost-his-car-keyes-to-the-tree :p put the banner up


so the meet went forward with more people coming in and etc.
Many tents popped up and many handshakes done.

After someone decited that we should go to ?bruncchen? and take pics of the oldtimer gp, me and h-p jumped into thomas' rented a6 and drove over 7's hood.
We informed thomas about the accident and then he turned around and went to apologise.

Finally after some mending the hood, we went to ?bruncchen? and took the pics, or vid like me :p


After the awsome sounds (and my boredom of counting how long the mini had laptime [15mins]) we went to ?Breisscheid? and took more pics and vid.


After some time was time to top-up the drinks and also had to refuel our driver.


After that we went back to the campsite (which was pretty and the commuter train even provided the clock every hourly) to have some bbq with slovenian flavoring.


Luckly my lowrider chair was optimal position on the other way of smoke direction.

On saturday we had some buns and after it to Nordschleife, i jumpted into D-fence's ibiza and @ the ring we found russhour because of the oldtimers @ gp-track.

atleast there was canadians with their car.

Then we parked to grass parkinglot and walked to entrance, some time later d-fence decited its time for a lap, and we went to get the ibiza.
Right in front of us and the van before us the ring was closed because of some bikers.


we waited 1 hour then saw ringtaxi go to be first, rushed to car and still had to wait for 30mins or so and i saw white sls with red interiour park next to us and after some time it decited to leave.



after that sls left, a silver one parked right into the same place :p


The lap was nice and ride was relaxing, Thanks D-fence!

After the lap we ended back to the ring's front entrance to watch some cool cars.
(And some slovenian motorhome)


i somehow managed to hide myself into ice's a4 and bumd my head.
After it he gave me part of his ring-sticker and placed the rest to the backwindow.


and then went to see how the repairs od the 7 went along.


Then some v12 bmw just happened to park next to us and opened the hood.


Then happened the scenery drive, it was so awsome and the smarts driver was nice enought to give me a ride.
(and yes i have totally forgot who you were, sorry alot).

@ the campsite i made this vid of the tents and carpark:


And then came the restaurant! we managed to hide ourselves into the upper room and started to order.
After some weird happenings and ?3hours? later we got our bill's and nearly every table paid more than the bill since the chaos was immense :D
for examle: our table had placed the proper ammount of money to table when ginger appeared from bathroom and told he hadn't paid.
After this some of them suggested that he places his part of the bill as a tip, and so he did.
We left and ice wanted some ice @ dark-hours (and he forgot his normal glasses @ campsite) so we went to adenau and were somehow supriced by the sudden hairpin after "welcome to adenau" -sign :p

BEWARE of very very crappy pic of ice :(

Ice got his ice @ some random petrolstation, and we headed to the camp.
After that trip i was tired and went to bed.

Then came sunday and the "Annual Finalgear Ringmeet sunday rain!".
this was waiting for us @ dawn:

sad chair is sad :(

We packed our tents after the rain had somewhat turned into drizzle and i even maneged to put mine into nice package with some nice instructions from the-one-who-almost-lost-his-car-keys-into-the-tree.
We had our group-shot and then went to ring to get wet.

At ?bruncchen? we got soaked and saw 3-series with too much damage :D


Then Adrians buddies arrived and asked if anyone had ringcard, and he went to the ring.

after rain stopped we went to ring-entrance and joel arrived with his RSR.



And then my chauffeur went to have a lap inside i dunno anymore whose car.

After his lap we had to say goodbye and left to frankfurt to catch our flight.
We managed to pass group of japanese tourists and dropped luggage, after that it was molesting time for me in the metal-detector-area.
then we waited hour and fly back to finland.

Rest of my crappy phonecam-pics can be found @ here :eek:

And finally here's somewhat "accurate" math of my total expendures:
Code:
Total cost of the last weekend= 
+ planeticket: 98 
+ bbq 3 
+ campsite 24 
+ restaurant: 22.20 
+ tent: 70 
+ my share of the a6: 40eur 
+ some random cola etc 5eur 
== TOTAL = 262.2 eur
 
Last edited:
I didn't even know you were with us going back, I knew Dave was there but didn't look behind me. :lol: Sorry if you thought we were ignoring you.
 
Just finished uploading the two lap videos to youtube.


Lap #1 with Der Stig and Adunaphel in the back. Ran out of space on the card after the Karusell. :(

Lap #2 with D-Fence and Galantti in the back or as I like to call it "3 fat dudes bouncing around in unison". Watch Galantti's head at the mini Karusell. :D
 
Top