From the Editor:
Well, I hope all has gone well for everyone. We are now into spring with the winter behind us. I say this tongue in cheek as it pouring rain outside as I write this. I know that for those that don’t use their cars as daily transport it is time to get the dust off and ready for some cruising.
We have a few events planned to finish the year. And have put together a run which I believe you will enjoy and combines the visit to an Automotive Museum opportunity not always available to the public with a nice cruise to get there. See later listing for details.
We also have a dinning opportunity for those interested, the committee will be there so it’s your opportunity to meet up with us.
We will be finishing the year with another go-kart event. We will need to have good numbers for this event to work, so please feel free to invite friends or family to join in. We do require you to prepay so make sure you book and pay soon to secure your spot.
We are also looking into a another drag day for next year, more on that later
On a personal note : I am still busy with my sons Nissan EXA which I think will take me to Christmas, I have all the body work complete and am busy with paint preparation.
I want to spray this one myself and am still working on how I can make a ventilation system inside my temporary plastic booth have, I painted a Mazda 3 for my daughter in law, but the temporary booth got so misty I could hardly see what I was doing and ended up with quite strong orange peel which at some stage will need to buff out. I have been looking into making an extraction fan system that I can set up when needed. Hopefully I can fill you in more on that next Newsletter.
Committee:
I would on behalf of the committee thank those that have rejoined the club, your fee helps us to cover the costs of running the club. We have ongoing costs that we need to cover. We have been able to retain the current fee as we don’t have a lot of cost and have a couple of small investments that are there for back up should we need it and these also help with paying deposits with events.
For those of you who are Motor Sport NZ members, we have had to raise the cost as the fees from Motor Sport to us have more than doubled. Unfortunately, MSNZ have changed their fee structure, where we used to pay a fee of $10.00 for each member, they have change it to a set fee of $500.00 for clubs with under 42 Motor Sport Members. So, divide this by our 10 MSNZ members and then add the cost of the annual, MSNZ AGM it is costing us. The committee really wants to support those keen to have this type of membership partly because Motor Sport was where the club started, and we feel that we should have such an offering for our members. The answer is to get more MSNZ members, so if you know anybody keen to have this membership, please refer us to them, the more we get the cheaper it is for us.
We are still holding Monthly committee meetings in Newmarket at the Eagle Tech Board Room and usually follow the meeting with a snack and a few drinks. We are looking for new committee members, so if you think you can spare the first Thursday evening of every month and help out, please contact me. Bernjean59@gmail.com.
Ramblings: Turbos or when they are not
Owning a turbo car used to mean that you owned a powerful car, turbos were predominantly used in sports car. The driving experience of a turbo powered car was always exhilarating. Wind the car up to the power band and feel the kilowatts as you were pushed back into your seat and the car would rocket forward. If you bought a turbo powered car you always knew what you would get. But Alas it’s all changed, for years the car manufactures have been working on reducing the lag, that lag is what I really like about turbos.
So now we have a huge bunch of cars with turbo badges on the back which are only for decoration. Yes, the manufacturers have used the turbo it to drop back the size of the engine and to make up the deficit by adding a turbo. And they have made to the stage where you can drive these cars and not event notice that they are turbo charged. The example is the Honda range, the CRV was a 2.4 Liter engine is now a 1.5 turbo charged engine. The turbo version is rated at 140kW. Against the 2015 CRV which was a non-turbo but was a 2.4 which delivered the same 140kW. So why would you add a turbo badge when you don’t make any more power.
What about the countless Chinese cars which now come out with these small engines and turbos. The latest American trucks are starting to ditch the V8’s for turbo V6’s, the Europeans have already been doing this for some time. A 2006 Mercedes c lass E63 came out with a 6.2 V8 450 kW, by 2022 the E63 was a 4.0V6 biturbo rated the same at 450kW.
So where does that leave turbo powered cars? There are still true sports cars with sports car engines. They don’t wear turbo badges, the new Z is the perfect example and is still a true turbo sports car, hitting the rev band where the turbo does its stuff still gives you a kick in the pants. Thank you, Nissan, for this, and other Manufactures who do the same.
Past Events:
Nikau Caves:
We had two start points for this event. One in the Waikato headed by Peter Crow and one from Auckland headed by myself. As the event was posted on social media pages I had a call from one of the Corvette Club guys asking if they could join in, I am happy to say they joined and came with good numbers from both North and South. I think we had about 20 cars in total. The cruise to the caves for those from Auckland was a nice, pleasant cruise, albeit a bit foggy in places, unfortunately because of road works and closures the guys from the Waikato ended up coming through some wet gravel roads, apologies for that, we do try hard to avoid bad roads but unfortunately our best endeavours don’t always work.
The Auckland guys arrived a little ahead of the Waikato guys. One of the Corvette guys had called ahead, and the Nikau Cave Café had prepared a lunch for all of us which we could enjoy together.
It was good to meet up with some of the Covette guys and hopefully we will have some more collaboration of events in the future. We all left there in our own time and headed back home.
For full set of pictures please check out our gallery zclub.nz/latest-gallery/
Mini Fish and Chip Run:
This was interesting. I didn’t take any pics. We had two Zeds turn up, one Mini Club Member and No Minis. Glad to see that we are not alone with these problems. The Mini Club guy, Gary admitted that he had not advertised it well with his club. Never mind we meet at Bombay at the Coffee Club and had a drive up through Pokeno and through some great driving back roads, I had no idea where we were but ended up at the famous Kaiaua Fish and Chips. We carried on to a toilet stop at Kawakawa Bay and stopped for a coffee together at Clevdon and then departed our own way home. Although the numbers were small it was a great drive and day out.
Targa Tour Event:
It was really good to see some good numbers at this event, there were 15 cars in total. This was certainly one of our better attended events. The winter weather was kind to us and not overly cold and no rain, which was a plus. It was good to see a few daily’s and other brands. Even better to see a variety zed models and a good representation of the S30’s.
We met at Hampton Downs Racetrack Café, where Peter Martian (Targa Managing Director) talked us through what Targa is and at levels it was possible to participate. He handed out Targa pace notes for the day to give us an idea of how Targa sections are navigated.
His intention was to take us through a couple of the Targa closed road sections to give us an idea of what it was like to participate in a Targa event. We were to follow the leader and as he would drive the Targa section at a spirited pace, those unable to keep up could follow the pace notes, if anybody got completely lost, they could just return to Hampton Downs were we would meet again.
At this stage I need to offer a bit of an apology, I was directly behind Peter and his version of spirited driving was indeed that, and not what I expected. The result being that we left far too many cars behind. I do apologise for this and feel that there are lessons to be taken from this event which we will use in the future.
a. Have more than one car heading the follow the leader.
b. Have a bit more control of who follows who with the more confident drivers in the same group.
c. Provide a Map of the route to those participating.
If you were one of those who was left behind and could or would have liked to be up with Peter, you have my sincere apology. We have had spirited cruises in the past but not with so many cars. I would also like to state that we did not break any road rules and Peter was very careful to stay within the speed limits posted on the route.
However, I really enjoyed the Spirited part of the drive, and we went through some really good driving roads, it easy to see why these were chosen for the Targa events. We had a little fog but not nearly as much as we encountered in the Nikau cave event.
At the end of the Event Peter showed us through his shed at Hampton, he had some interesting cars parked up there.
We then had lunch together at the café and departed for home.
There is a full set of pictures from the event posted on our web site. https://zclub.nz/latest-gallery/
A Big Thanks you for being part of the Z Club of NZ.
That’s it from until next time.
Bernie Kant
President Z Club of NZ
