my nurburgring trip Options

[mrgt4]

As you would imagine, there were highs, there were lows but the overall trip was amazing and I will be doing again.

The trip started off with waking up at 11pm at night and then meeting up with most of the team at 2.30am on the 9th.

At 3am we set on our way to dover to catch the ferry, all went fantastic with not one hiccup on any of the cars.( this being a success in itself due to my self and 3 others building a skyline from pretty much scratch in 2 -3 weeks)

The convoy down was great, the empty roads making for a easy journey and when the sun rose to a fantastic sun sky and we looked forward to a great few hours driving in the sun and on actuator settings and a gental trottle I was amazed to see I had done 230miles in only half a tank!!! I never knew a gt4 could do that in ¾ tank! Lol

We reached dover at approx 6.45am and straight into booking in……… this however is where the first of many problems went wrong.
Whilst waiting for passports to be checked the skyline decided that it wanted to randomly overheat… a problem which had not been there in the last 3 weeks, much to the amusement of many ferry passengers we got the skyline onto the ferry in the pouring rain which had begun when we hit port.

We arrived in Dunkirk to rain and basically… crap weather, great.
Thankfully we had radios as the skyline was clear… it wasn’t going to make it to germany without a few stops to refill coolant as it just wouldn’t stop overheating and coming out the expansion tank. L

Matt in the omega with trailer and a mk1 fiesta with a rsturbo engine transplant set off 3 hours previous due to no room on our ferry… we had travelled for a few hours then another disaster struck.

Mat rand one of the lads and the omega was not in good shape, they had broke down in germany,the water pump bearing had basically gone tits up, the belt had shredded and the car was not moving.

The convoy motored on, we reached the campsite and no matt in the omega and no skyline as it overheated big style on the way and steve stayed back to provide support.

An hour later the skyline appeared but no omega was about, another phone call later and the omega was back in action with a make shift belt and it made it all the way to within 7 miles of camp on a homemade belt!
The omega had had it though, so the omega and trailer where abandoned and the fiesta finished the drive to camp in the rain and dark at 10pm.

A new day dawned and a new belt was ordered from Vauxhall the next day and amazingly, the sun was shining.

We all put in a few laps and the track was all I hoped for, the most challenging and amazing place that I have ever driven, addictive isn’t the word for the ring.
The cars there, well there is a lot! You name it, its there, a merc slr tonnes of Porsche lambos and the alike.

After dinner the belt was picked up, but only the bearing was there! No belt! arghhh!

So this time we decided to tow the omega and trailer back to camp, phill in the gt4 provided the towing and pulled what was a rather large omega and trailer all the way back to camp.

Rain stopped and fast laps the next day and I went in the rain, lethal is what that place is in the rain, sideways, and all kinds of directions are achieved! Lol
The next few days where good, we fixed the omega, the skyline appeared to be runing well and many laps where put in.

Another minor hitch occurred when my brother over cooked it and went backwards toward a kerb at 40mph, amazingly we hit the curb, bounced back and ended up straight! The damage to my amazement was minimal, just a slight kerbing of the alloy, jammy git!

Later on in the week we decided to run the skyline, this however proved to be a big mistake, at bang on the 13km marker the skyline decided to give up the ghost, proving to be a costly bill being picked up.
The gt4 motored on though and never missed a beat.

On Monday morning I had my last lap, what was meant to be a slow lap ended up being my fastest by an era, smashing past 3 skylines, 2 r34 gtr’s and a 33gtr along with multiple 911’s and bmw’s.

Nothing can prepare you for how much you learn about your car on the ring due to the various kinds of bends and hills, I will be needing a wrc wing for next year as the car topped 145 over the brow of a hill on my last lap and the rear wheels basically left the floor, scary it was!

The trip home was meant to be on Wednesday, however jo and I left early to make sure that the skyline had cold air over night and left at 10pm on tues. the car made it to port with barly and problems…. Sods law! However my car suffered a slight mishap on the autobahn when my front section of under tray wanted to detach itself from the car at 171mph according to the road angel! Oops, so that, was in the back of the boot for now!

We caught the ferry and again made it home with not too many problems on the skyline, however others wernt so lucky.
The civic type r that came with us had its gearbox decide to give up and has been trailord home to the uk, and one of the gt4’s has now got a very very bad transmission whine.

But all in all, a great trip! And after 14 laps on my gt4 and 22 laps from phills gt4 they never missed a beat and proved Toyotas reliability to the max.

Some pics from the trip, there shall be many more but there are over 1000pics taken so for now, here are a few!

phill on track



my brother


me



chris


danny


and george


there are loads more and loads more of the lads, but these all for now!