PI gets PI Power

Yes! Finally we've started to convert the PI back from Webers to PI. Actually we are swapping engines as I have a fully reconditioned PI engine lying around. Wasn't completely pleased with the Webers as they only performed (sort of) at higher revs. Doesn't really suit the character of the car me thinks. Of course you can make Webers work, but it would involve many engine modification. Coudn't be bothered either as I quite like the idea of mechanical injection. Italy - England 0-1

Taking the old engine out was an easy job. I'm very lucky to use Robs workshop facilities including ramp and electric pallet lifter. Once the engine was out I took the chance to waxoil most parts of the car (inside of nose cone etc) and of course clean the enginebay. We also painted the subframe and crossmember. Everything is fresh and clean now! Last weekend we've put the PI engine back in, another easy job. Plenty of space in a Saloon engine bay. Now it's a matter of connecting all bits together... Might be the most complicated part of the engine transplant. I'm sure we can work it out and get the PI going!

Meet and greet

PI meets PI

PI meets GT6

Getting it MOT'ed...

.... or APK as it's called in the Netherlands. The car came with a fresh Control Technique so I wasn't too worried about getting the car tested for APK. Obviously a French test is not the same as a Dutch test. It failed! Needed some new steeringrack gaitors and balljoint covers. Also the headlights needed replacing as the units in the car had a beam that pointed straight forward. Always good to blind oncoming trafic! Replaced the lights with Cibie H4 units and changed the gaitors and covers. Yes, there's another 2.5PI back on the road! Could be the only one in the Netherlands at the moment...

A trip to sunny France

To collect the 2.5PI.... a 2300km trip round. We did it in 32 hrs!

We left home friday late afternoon. Packed the Golf with all sorts of tools and spare parts so we would be able to repair the PI in case of a breakdown. You can expect it all from a 39 year old car. A car I've never seen before in the flesh. Only received some pics and a rough discription from the seller. (who only speaks French!) Sometimes you have to take a risk in life.. The first leg of this trip was pretty much uneventful. The Golf diezzzeled us very reliable and quick towards the South of France. We made good progress and arrived 01.00 at Nimes. The plan was to find a F1 hotel and get some sleep. We used TomTom to find the nearest F1 hotel, this nearly succeeded as we never arrived exactly at the address. Still, it was close! Unfortunately (due to French holidays) all F1 hotels were fully booked in Nimes. So we continued our trip towards Montpellier. Here we found a F1 hotel which had a room available.

The next morning we wake up in sunny France. 16 degrees and palmtrees, crazy! From Montpellier it is only a 30min drive to St Andre de Sagonis. We arrive exactly 9.00 at the workshop from Serge. The lady of the house (and 2 friendly dogs) are already waiting for us. She also speaks French only. The PI is waiting for us on the ramp. Which is good because now we can inspect the car from underneath as well. A happy surprise as the car is really as solid as expected. No rust at all! First impression is good, although the paintwork is very flat. In the meantime Serge has arrived. He explains to me in French about all the work that is done to the car. Amazingly I can understand him very well. Oui oui, merci, tres bon! After a short testdrive on the industrial estate we decide that this car is actually very good. Well worth the trip!

After arranging the boring stuff (paperwork and money) we start for our second leg on this trip. Plan is to take the scenic route back. We have 2 days left. First we need to fill up with petrol, those webers need some juice! Luckily there is a Esso station down the road. Even better, there's a Lidl supermarket on the other side as well. Very odd to walk into a Lidl in France. You feel directly if you were in Germany. Grafwalder beer makes me think about Nurburgring weekends! Time for breakfast. Buying old cars makes hungry.
After breakfast we take the scenic route towards Valence. This turns out to be a rather interesting stretch of road. Very twisty and almost no trafic. Very good for testing the big Saloon. Have to say it goes really well for such a big car, Webers sound awesome. Especially above 4000rpm. After 1hr of enthusiastic motoring we stop to inspect the car. All seems ok! Feeling more and more confident about the car. Once we have reached Valence we stop a second time. After checking TomTom we realise it's only 880km back home and ETA will be around midnight. Very tempting! So we decide to take the motorway from here and try to drive it home. Change of plan! Saloon goes really well at motorway speeds (130-140km/h). It's quiet and really comfy. I don't feel the need of changing to the modern Golf. Only concern is the fuel consumption. It needs loads! From Lyon to Dijon trafic got worse due to the end of some French holiday. It slowed us down but luckily trafic never stopped completely. After Dijon towards Metz the roads got quiet again so we could speed up. A last petrol stop in Luxemburg. Good coffee as well! From here it was only 250km back home! 0.30 we arrived in vlaaiburg. Totally exhausted but we made it. Saloon made it too. Without any breakdown! Think it is a good buy.....

Whoops I bought another Triumph

Triumphs, you can't have enough of them... so I bought myself another one. Haven't seen it yet as the car is still in Southern France. Will collect on the 8th of March, a 1100km trip (single). Will be an interesting trip, as we intend to drive the car home! Fingers crossed.

Anyway, this is it... a '69 2.5PI currently running on triple Webers. Some more modifications are done to the car (Mk2 rear axle, oilcooler, TR6 engine/box/od) It's should be in mechanical good condition and hopefully the sunny climate protected the bodyshell against rust. We'll find out in 2 weeks!

Hillclimb Belgium

Just some random pictures from the Hillclimb we went to a couple of weeks ago.

10CR Preparations

Well... I'm ready for it! Or nearly, only have to check the roadbook and draw the route in our maps. A job for tonight, or maybe tomorrow morning.. The car should be up for it, Beans has spend loads of time and money on the wegdy thing recently, so I guess it will be reliable transport for the next couple of days. The weather isn't looking to good at this side of the canal for the moment, but it should improve over the weekend. The south side of the Alps has very promising weather. Bright sun and 25+ degrees. Hope we can do most of the event top down as it's much for fun.

Really looking forward to this! See you al in France!

PS: The 10CR text message service is on again. Click to see the latest 10CR updates during the run.

Oldtimer GP

See below for the full report!

Oldtimer Grand Prix at the Nurburgring

Sorry it took soo long for my report on the Oldtimer GP weekend. I first had to wait for all the photos to come in and then got really annoyed by the blogger program, so badly that I didn't touch it for 2 weeks. Now it seems all to work fine, so here we go!!!

Yes we did it again, another succesfull camping weekend at the Nurburgring Oldtimer GP. And it was just as much fun as the previous editions. Arriving on fridaymorning in the Eifel turned out to be a rather foggy welcome. In fact it was very foggy! At some places visability was really poor. Hopefully it would clear up later. First thing to do was setting up the campsite. Luckily this year our die hard camperman Hay was present again with his magic Citroen Jumpy van. This van is really amazing! It has all the facilities to make every camping weekend succesfull. In no time we had a big tent, BBQ, music (incl MP3's for at least 1 weekend), cooled beer and running water. The plan now was to go shopping first in Adenau and watch the race at the Nordschleife from Breidscheid afterwards. On our trip down to Adenau we realised the fog was getting worse. After the usual shopping (and Mario buying all sorts of high alcoholic drinks..) we deceided to go to Hannes (again) for pommes und currywurst. The races should have started at 15.00 but it was still very quiet at the track. Which made us worry a bit, it all sounded like they cancelled the whole event for the day. After some investigation this turned out to be the fact. No race, time for a BBQ! So we went back to the campsite for an early start with beer and fire!

The Dutch arrive in style

Pommes und currywurst at Hannes

Time to fire up the BBQ, Hay style!

Ofcourse pyro Rob couldn't resist to give it a go...

Da Mario! Next time he really should bring his Hotrod!!!!

BBQ nearly ready for food supply.

Mark da firestarter!

How cosy.........Hay equipment

Remember our Berliner friends from last year? Well, they came back. They even brought us Berliner Pilseren this year, which tasted very good! Danke jungs!

Mario shows the latest German hat fasion... is he asleep????

Yes he is! Time for another "Mario" wake up call.. :-)
Mark practises his German and chats about Simca's (or Volvo's?)

Saturday we had a very friendly wakeup call from our next door neighbours. They thought it would be funny to ignite some rather noisy fireworks. And we thought also that is was a good sense of German humour! But not our other German neighbours. It's an understatement to say they where not amused.. The day started just as foggy as the previous day ended. This wasn't looking to good for the races. Ofcourse we had to make our famous breakfast first before we could walk to the track to see the races. Luckily the sun came out and it turned out to be a great day. We watched several races at the GP track, did a pitwalk and returned to the campsite late afternoon to fire up the BBQ

Good Morning Nurburgring! All bright and fresh, time to do some cookie cookie!

Our own Swedish Chef, Herbert cooking the eggs! I'm supervising..

We have many of these pics, will not bother you with all of them..

Watching the races and Beans doing the professional photoshoot

Great Bentley! I want one...
In the paddock...Meet and greet with Rob and Monique

GT40, Don't we all want one??Rather nice car you can see during the pitwalk

Get wired! Trying to look important between the racing trucks...

Yes, we even saw some racing Triumphs!If you like Gullwings, this is your weekend. Many of them around. This Corvette has one of the best paintjobs ever seen.

More German humour! Yes it exists!!!Back at the campsite Rob takes a beauty sleep.......while I got lost in the forest!We also inspected the toolbox of the Germans. Proper quality stuff inside!Finally went back to the track to watch the last races of the day. We also spotted this German version of the beertender!
First we saw these pre-war cars
A little sideways! Then it was time for the best race of the day, GT and sportscars up to 1965

Time for the last race of the day... Expensive line up of cars!

Racing is boring..........No it's not! :-)

Back at the campsite we did some more cooking and drinking. The very expensive ( € 1,50 for 1.5liter??) Lidl Sangria tasted ok. Hay and Mario had most of it I think. We all had a great time!
The next morning it was all sunny again and after the usual breakfast it was time to pack up. Most of us went home and some of us went to the Nordschleife to see some action on track. Unfortunately it was very very busy on and besides the track that we deceided to go home early. It was the end of another succesful weekend. Next year we'll do it again!

Jumpy Puzzle... how not to fit a seat

This is looking way better. It needed some agression but in the end it all fitted!

Triumph event at Nurburgring

It's already 2 weeks ago that we visited a (sort of) track day organised by a German Triumphclub. They hired the famous Nordschleife for 2hrs. Basicly it's Triumphs only but you will find the odd MG or Jaguar as well on track. Who cares , it's good fun!

First I drove down to a petrol station at the German autobahn to meet up with Rob and Monique in their TR7 V8. Due to major roadworks we ended up in heavy trafic which slowed us down a bit. Luckily we made it in time for the infamous lunch at Hannes. Traditional pommes und currywurst always tastes good! Suddenly it started to rain, typical for the eifel region. But now the sky looked very dark and I had a feeling it wouldn't clear up anymore. Not good for driving the Nordschleife. The track becomes very slippery when wet. Just before the openening of the track it stopped raining. Time to go out and have some fun in the GT6. First lap was still wet so I took it easy. GT6 was going really well, I felt really confident about the car. Amazingly the track dried up very fast so the second lap was mainly dry. Still took it easy as you can hit a wet spot after every corner. Never trust the Nordschleife! Only once the backend came out as I was a bit to quick on the throttle. Luckily it happened at slow (ish) speed. Third lap was completely dry and I really started to enjoy myself. Amazingly I was one of the quicker cars on the track. Even more amazing as you see what cars the Germans bring. Their Triumphs are all very well build to high standards. (a big contrast compared to my rustbucket) They spend loads on go faster goodies (including racy outfit!) but for some reason there's not much go! They prefer to look fast instead of going fast... In the first lap I was behind a E-type in full race trim (including driver) but he could'n get away from me. At Adenauer Forst I think he got nervous from the white mini E-type in his mirrors that he spun his fancy racer. Finally I could get past him, as the E-type is the faster car in a straight line. (no surprise) Not sure how many laps I did in the end, must have been 10 or 11. I drove 2 hrs full time! Must have been the best 2 hrs in my GT6. Rob also had a great time in his Tr7 V8. He has done many laps on the Nordschleife but told me he never had so much fun as today. He only had to stop once for fuel. That V8 needs loads! Afterwards we stopped at "Pistenklaus" for dinner. which was excellent. Finally an uneventful drive home and again we enjoyed a great day of Triumping!