Two weeks later it was time for another trip. On the first day I was there, Friday, the track was reasonably quiet. To start off I did some laps following others, with the camcorder running. The lap behind Sir Bastard in his stripped Golf GTi was particularly entertaining as he was experimenting with his tyre pressures...

Depending on bandwidth usage, this video may be online at the home of the RingBunny in the "Full Laps" section.

Saturday started with meeting fellow 964-owner Arjan (active poster on the 964 forum at Rennlist) at the filling station near the Ring. The afternoon was a bit less pleasant. Having done some good laps I went out for 2 laps with Euan as passenger. The first was pretty decent, the second started well but ended badly. Schwedenkreuz went nicely, about as good as it gets with my rather large margin (about 170km/h indicated, accelerating through the turn to about 180), on a good line into the braking zone for Aremberg, hit the brakes, pedal goes down about the same amount as it always does (with the same pushing effort), but only delivers about 30 to 40% retardation. Release pedal, brake again, same story, pushing harder doesn't help much.

At this point we're about 20m from the turn-in point, and I tell Euan that the brakes are gone. By then he had that one figured out for himself, I think. Speed at the turn-in point is probably about 30 or 40 km/h more than normal :(

I figured there were 2 options: either say "to hell with braking, let's turn in anyway" or go straight, try to reduce as much speed as possible and try to turn to the right a bit.

I didn't really think of it at the time, but went for option 2, as option 1 in a 964 would automatically result in a total loss of control for me. Losing control at that point of the track would probably have resulted in going sideways into the gravel, and I didn't much fancy rolling the car at 100+ km/h, or going backwards into the armco at that kind of speed.

Option 2 worked reasonably well: the gravel didn't slow us down as much as I had hoped (Euan told me later that he was already bracing for a head-on impact with the armco), but I did manage to alter course slightly. The grass verge between the gravel and the armco was almost wide enough and provided enough grip to get away with it without hitting anything. Keyword being "almost". We hit the armco with the left rear, but somehow I managed to avoid hitting the armco with the left front. Came to a stop about 40m after hitting the armco. Got out, examined the car, left rear bumper section FUBAR, center section looked pretty bad, right section fouls the exhaust, tiny armco mark on the left rear quarter panel, gravel marks on left side skirt, but no dents in the bodywork, seams around the rear lid not distorted, engine still running, nothing leaking out, didn't hit the left rear wheel, just the bumper.

The boys at Ring Racing did a quick repair by straightening things, allowing me to drive home without melting the bumper.

June

However, the best independent Porsche specialist I've found so far is Kaul & Will, which is near the Nordschleife. I haven't found a reliable independent in the Netherlands yet and I don't fancy using my own 964 as a Guinea pig to see how good a particular independent is.

Upon arrival Frau Kaul directed me to the garage, where everything was ready to fix my car. A few hours later the bumper was fixed, and a verdict about the brakes was given. The short version: OEM pads are nice on the street, but don't cut the mustard on the track once you start going fast. As mentioned in my previous running report, upgrading the brakes was already on my mind, for the simple reason that my 1991 C2 has those tiny calipers in the rear, and nobody makes racing pads for them. It was therefore time to bite the bullet and upgrade the rears to 1992 and later specification. I made an appointment to have this done by Kaul & Will during my next Ring visit.

August

• new rear calipers (the 4-pot ones used from 1992 onwards on the C2)
• new brake discs front/rear (cross-drilled; or rather: with cast-in holes)
• new brake pads front/rear (Pagid Orange)
• new brake distribution valve (55bar to go with the bigger rear calipers)
• new brake fluid (Castrol SRF)

After bedding in the new pads and discs the rest of the weekend was spent trying out the new brakes. The most noticable differences are:

• they squeal (as expected), unless you use them properly (i.e. hard)
• the car is more stable under heavy braking (thanks to the new brake distribution valve, I think: the rear brakes are doing more)
• at the end of the second fast lap, the brakes feel exactly the same as after a few corners. (Oh, and please keep in mind that in this case "a lap" is nearly 21km long...)
• the bite of the Pagids depends more on brake temperature than the stock pads do. When stone cold, the pedal needs significantly more force. Not so much that it's annoying though, but it is something to keep in mind.

September - Germany

The final visit of 2003 to the Ring in the 964 promised to be interesting: the Swedes would descent on the Nordschleife again, like they do every year in September. This means that there are lots of Porsches, all of them driven fast or very fast. Unfortunately the fastest of them all hadn't had his GT3-RS delivered yet, forcing him to make do with a Mercedes C200-Kompressor. At the end of the weekend he came into the parking lot after a hot lap with his brakes literally on fire...

Another issue that detracted from all the fun was the sheer volume of cars and bikes. There were less full weekends available in 2003 than in 2002, resulting in the biggest crowd I've ever seen during tourist hours. At times there was a queue of dozens of cars on the final straight, all waiting to get off the track. Quite a few people cooked their clutch during this weekend. By going out during the quiet hours (very early or very late in the day), I still managed to do quite a few decent laps despite the traffic.

One of the high points of the weekend was the midnight bike run. Some people had come up with the plan to ride a pushbike round the Ring at night. Figuring that it would be much more fun to take some pictures instead of going on a torturous 21km ride with lots of hills to climb, I met two Danes in an E46 M3 at the first photo location.

As soon as the bikers had passed we went to the next location in convoy. This was one of those drives to be remembered fondly during the winter months. Picture a fine mountain road with lots of twists and turns ranging from long sweepers to tight hairpins, both uphill and downhill, lots of camber changes, and a total absence of other traffic. Now add a driver (and passenger) in a 343bhp car. This driver knows the road very well, and he's leading the two-car convoy. Fortunately I know that road equally well, and despite having "only" 250bhp and headlights that produce decidedly less light than the M3's I managed to keep up nicely.

This is something I've noticed before: despite the big power disadvantage the way the 964 puts the power down makes it possible to stay with more powerful machinery surprisingly easily. For example, on one occasion this same M3 floored it on a quiet Autobahn, accelerating from 150km/h to 230km/h with me on his tail while I was only very slowly losing ground. Suffice it to say that in this case again we had loads of fun braking into tight hairpins, heel and toeing into first gear, and accelerating flat-out up the next bit of straight, into second at 6500rpm, and hard on the brakes again for the corner ahead.

By the end of the weekend a screeching noise started to be more and more apparant when pulling away with low revs. At first I thought it might be the clutch itself, but after a little more experience with the sounds produced under different circumstances, I think it's a bearing somewhere. Anyway, the noise only happens when slipping the clutch. The clutch continues to grip just fine, and it's a smooth as ever. Which was good, as a vacation to the UK had been planned almost immediately after the Swedish Weekend.

September - UK

In the UK we went from Dover to Wales, where we met with a Ring-friend (Trish). The 964 got a day off as she ferried us and her son John around to see some of the more interesting sights in her Audi A4.

The last of these was the school of her son. It was on the way to the Lake District, so we followed Trish and John. The drive included some of her favourite roads, which resulted in some spirited driving from Trish in the A4. As we didn't really know where the school was, I thought it a good idea to keep up with her, which was good fun over the hills and round the sweeping bends. Until that moment we had mostly been cruising around, apart from the odd full-bore take-off, getting used to the outline and placement of the incredible amount of speed cameras. The school run was a different kettle of fish altogether, with lots of short full-throttle stretches and hard cornering. The kind of drive that makes you appreciate the capabilities of a 964 all over again. Not to mention that it puts a grin on your face.

After saying our goodbyes at John's school Trish went back south, and Helen and I went north.

We had booked a Bed & Breakfast in advance, somewhere near Troutbeck. According to the GPS there were two Troutbecks in the area. Naturally we found the wrong Troutbeck first. The B&B turned out to be excellent: a very hospitable husband-wife staff and excellent food. At Hadrian's Wall I couldn't resist taking another picture of the 964.

Having explored the region to our satisfaction (within the limits of a 10-day vacation, that is), we travelled eastwards to York, stopping along the way to have a look at some castles. From York it was down to the London area, where Ben Lovejoy was hosting a Beer & Video evening. For some reason most people were drinking Coke rather than Beer, but the videos were as strong as ever: lots of in-car footage of cars going round the Nürburgring. Highlight of the evening was a compilation tape with lots and lots of near-misses, skids, crashes, and silly moves.

After all this excitement we had some quiet but very entertaining days in the Dover area (including a visit to Dover Castle; highly recommended). On the day of our departure the weather took a turn for the worse: great timing. All in all a very nice trip with ample opportunity for me to indulge my picture-taking habit.

However, because of time-constraints we didn't manage to meet everybody (excuses to John B., Jocke, and Tony): I guess another visit is in order, if only to tour Scotland and do the famous Evo Triangle. Despite the large turning radius the nimble 964 proved to be very well suited to the narrow British country roads: I look forward to the next trip.

Future work

Second on the list is to replace the fuel filler neck: it's starting to leak when accelerating hard.

Something else on the to-do list is reading Adrian Streather's excellent book on the Porsch 964: Porsche 911 - Enthusiast's Companion - Carrera 2, Carrera 4 and Turbo 1989-1994 to give it its full title. In case you want to know, the top picture on page 529 is mine, and so are the pictures on page 532, all taken during my suspension upgrade. :-)