A German currently in Japan

[Hama86]

One of best biggest automobile suppliers in the world. It has its benefits when you own a few test facilities and tracks.

Bosch is the name.

[banpei]

Nice!

[Hama86]

Tokuchi-san, the car dealer, called me this evening. He finished the maintenance earlier than expected and the car will be delivered to me on next Wednesday. This means, I can attend my companies Gymkhana event. (Will probably s**k the first times )

[banpei]

Congrats! That's good news!
And of course we expect to see pics from the event!

[Hama86]

Thank you. Sadly there are no photos or video recordings allowed (secret test facility).

I hope there will be an official photographer who can shoot and publish the harmless photos.

[Hama86]

I have uploaded two photos of my car in the OP.

https://www.aeu86.org/forum/Thread-A-Ger...#pid171595

[banpei]

I'll just add them here as well:



That's one sweet looking hachi!

[decryphe]

(10-14-2017 03:10 PM)Hama86 Wrote:  [...] After visiting a few dealers from Goo-Net, I opted for Carland. [...]

That means it's probably one of the cars I saw on the lot in June! Good catch, all cars were in great condition. It's a real beauty, congratulations!

Hope to see it in Europe some time!

[mad.matt]

Oh man! 14x7 et0 TE37s too! She's a looker!

[Hama86]

Hello. Thank you for the kind messages.

I drove from Yokohama to Nikko last Friday to join the Gymkhana event on Saturday. After a short night in Nikko I was on my way to Nasushiobara, for the event. Sadly I didn't make it to the reception of the event. In fact my car wasn't running when it arrived on the venue.

It looks like I blew a head gasket. While I was waiting for the tow truck, I took the chance and shot some interior photos.

You can read the adventure after the photos if you are interested.

               

When driving the car up to operating temperatures I occasionally accelerated hard, gradually, to test the waters. After a 190km drive the car was still happy. On Saturday I lost the throttle with white smoke from the exhaust.

Carland gives 3 months of warranty starting from the day of the delivery. So it should hopefully be not a problem. The problem was, that I did my insurance on Friday, and the break down happened on Saturday. The insurance is a full coverage, with towing services and what not. But I did the contract per email and the hard copy of the contract did not reach the company yet, therefore I was not in the system for the road service (which would tow the car where I want it for up to 150.000 Yen). I was in the northern parts of Kanto, far away from home and from Kyoto.

I called JAF (like the German ADAC) to tow me, but I am not a member of JAF, therefore they will only deliver the car to the nearest Toyota dealer or shop. So the tow truck driver called the dealers in the environment but they all refused to take my car (they don't have the personnel to work on AE86s).

I tried to call my bosses and ask permission to park the car inside our test facilities, but they didn't pick up the phones, so we just drove there without permission. There the Gymkhana event still took place, and I asked the people there what I could do. They let me and the tow truck driver wait for 30 minutes, which made me really uncomfortable. In the end we dropped the car in a shop that belonged to a brother of one of the participants. On Monday (today) I called the insurance company, if they received the contract, which they did. But now comes the part that I feared. Only the first transport/towing after the incident is covered, but the car needs to go to Kyoto (630km). In the end I could make a deal to also cover a second transport as it is an uncommon event, but the first and second transport have to be max. 150.000 Yen in total and I paid 32.000 Yen for the first one already. Impossible to tow to Kyoto.

Carlands solution was to tow the truck to a friend of his who is closer to the current location of the car and get it fixed there, as it is a specialist in 4AGEs, too. And this is the story of my first road trip and how my car will end up in Koshimizu Motorsports in Tsukuba.

I hope I used all my bad luck coupons this year already.