Day 4 – Sunday
We woke up early raring to go! Chucked the kettle on, sprung open the curtains to the worst sight we could have hoped for! Rain! Lots of it!
Before we could even think of doing anything car related, we needed to satisfy our stomachs! Can’t race on an empty stomach! Luckily, even with the rain, the view from breakfast was a goodun. Some other Brits were prepping their cars for a few laps:
After stuffing ourselves with continental style brekky, we proceeded to try and see to Mick’s sick Honda. After a quick Google and a PH search, there were a few suggestions and one was to see if RSR Nurburg would help us out as they’d been helpful in the past. Armed with a knackered back box, we jumped in the cars to see if they could rescue us. Alas, there was nothing they had that could help us out. Bugger. Back off to the hotel it was.
We’d made a make-shift garage out of the terrace area in front of our room and set about tackling the nasty idle. We disassembled the throttle body and removed the idle control valve. Which itself was not an easy job situated on the back of the inlet manifold, with not much room between the bulkhead. Once off, we gave it a good dose of carb cleaner and cleaned with a complex tool comprising of a flathead screwdriver with some bog roll wrapped around it. It washed a lot of gunk away and we were hopeful as it was bolted back together. But it was still f
ked. Balls. We failed fixing it, so now we moved onto succeed in bodging it. The issue was that the idle was dropping to a point where the car wanted to stall. So, we adjusted the throttle cable and idle control screw so the car idled at 1500rpm. Which was hilarious when stopped at traffic lights or junctions watching Mick sink into his seat as others looked on in disgust at this absolute bell hammering his “launch control”
!
Here we have Mick looking curiously at the intake. I assume he’s wondering something along the line of “What the f
k is this?” or, “Does it go up my arse, or do I stick my cock in it?”
Back to the exhaust and the almighty hole that had developed. Well here it is:
Barry the b
ksd Back Box
We scratched our heads to see what we could come up with. The answer? A Monster energy can, some foil, a tub of gum gum and a ratchet strap! Whatever else could we need?
Perfect fit:
Gently does it:
Fixed!
It worked surprisingly well and reduced the noise to an acceptable level. I’d say, that of only 5980498 hornets in a Cadbury’s biscuit tin. Before it sounded like 409870 Louis Armstrongs with sore throat. We were worried they’d pull him up for excessive noise.
Right next to our hotel was the half way entrance to the Ring, so we headed to the café, bought 1.5 laps and set off. I’ll get some videos uploaded soon and post the links. We did the half lap to the main straight, pulled over and had a cuppa at Devil’s Diner:
Once we’d refuelled ourselves, it was back out for another lap. Again, I’ll upload some links to the onboard footage, but below is a gif that perfectly illustrates how my lap went. In a low-on-fuel, semi-slicked MX5 in the pouring down rain!
We stopped again and compared laps. There was one thing in common, it was WET! I’d decided that paying 30 euros to tootle around the track trying not to stack it wasn’t worth it. I was too scared of ploughing into the barrier and having a bill for a million euros! So I jumped in with Craig for a lap instead and Mick followed. After a decent, but slippery lap in with Craig, we pulled up and waited for Mick. And waited. “Look out for the big yellow ADAC truck!” I jested with Craig. A few minutes later, we saw a Honda Accord in the distance. “That’s not Mick, that one’s got Lexus style lights…” said I to Craig. But it was Mick! We ran over to see what at happened and were greeted with a slightly crumpled Honda and a slightly sheepish looking Mick.
The damage doesn’t look too bad in the pics, but the front impact had shifted the subframe and the engine had decided to relocate a few inches over and forward in the engine bay. It still drove, but was very sick! The front engine mount was a gnats b
k away from the rad fans and the battery was no longer where it should have been. The back end was fouling the rear wheel but it didn’t look like it was crabbing. He’d suffered a bit of lift-off oversteer, overcorrected and put the front end into the ARCMO, span the back end around and put that into the ARMCO too. I’ve GIF’d the onboard footage for the LOLz
It’s worth noting that he was ok. We did check that first before laughing at him. The laughter stopped once the bill for the ARMCO came
. I won’t say how much, but if anyone has watched the Danny DC2 crash video on YouTube. It was more than that. It was a very sombre drive home and Craig and I felt terrible for poor Mick. We all went into this understanding the risks and knowing the consequences. We’d all watched enough YouTube crash vids to know how easy it is to stack it in the dry on the Ring. Never mind the wettest day of the year! We got back to the hotel, gave Mick some words of wisdom along the lines of “Could be worse, you could be in a hospital bed or even worse, crashed into something we’d have been sad to see turned into a washing machine!”. We knew we’d have to repair the Honda before we got home, but were worried Mick would end up pouring a gallon of super over it and lighting the f
ker! So we dumped the car in the car port and made the strategic decision to prioritise beers, over cars! We had a beer in the room and headed out for some grub at a place called Cosy Corner in Adenau
We had some food and headed over to The Crown as we’d had a few recommendations. It wa sdpretty dead, being a Sunday. But a few Coronas and a game of Dirty Scrabble and Connect 4 lightened the mood
We got back to the room and was eager to see if we’d made our 2.8 seconds of fame on any of the bug Ring YouTube channels like Auto Addiction, EMS and TOP Nurburgring. Well, as a previous poster mentioned, I’d been caught by Auto Addiction!. Skip to 5.13
Craig got caught on the EMS channel too, will get a link and GIF uploaded soon!
Also got snapped by a few on track photographers:
Not sure if anyone is reading/interested, but I’ll crack on with the final day soon!
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