Leaderboard

I'm interested to hear people's thoughts on the state of our rural roading network. is it just me, or do other people die a little inside with every pothole. This weekend, I drove from Auckland to Ohakune and back. On the way down, I went via Te Kuiti and Taumaranui. I really enjoyed the drive - the road surface was good for the most part, and the scenery fantastic. Perhaps the lack of trucks helped preserve the roads? All told, a great drive for the 335i and I arrived thoroughly chuffed with the car. Drives like that make me fall in love the manual gearbox all over again. On the way back however, I drove via Turangi, Taupo, Tokoroa, then Tirau. Almost the entire way back I had fists of rage because of the dismal state of the roads. Potholes, ruts, corrugations, massive surface irregularities, shonky patchwork that seemed 2 inches higher than the rest of the road, dangerous off camber corners etc etc. It was like driving along a metal road with a spattering of tar here and there - in Bhutan. How can one of our major 'highways' be so bad? Other countries with small populations seem to manage just fine, but we seem to be hell bent on persisting with coarse chip and third world roading methods. Rant over. I'm off to buy a Maxima with 205/65 tyres and spongy suspension.

Alex who came for a cruise with us yesterday, Cracked one rim, buckled the other on his E46 Wagon after we all hit a rough patch on S Highway 1 yesterday by Hampton.. Ryan (brother) buckled/warped an entire Audi Rim in Kumeu couple weeks ago - now pursuing that NZTA pay for the damage. My Car - Subframe is so badly cracked due to just my road, which has potholes from here to China, uneven surface, patches every 5m, and this is on the shore, 5 minutes out from Urbanness. Our roads are sh*t. Main motorways seem to be okay, but branch out and it's disgusting. Especially when I call up NZTA 20 times over to fix one pothole and a year later they still can't manage to do it....

Dreadful. built for drainage, and sometimes not even that. The big difference in country roads between here and the UK is when you have an accident. In the UK you go through a hedge and wreck the car, here you will probably not survive. If you want to see proper roads in a country with low population density, go to France - the Autoroutes are superb. And - I watched the M25 being built in the UK - there's about 3m of coarse tarmac before the top seal is put on in some areas. On our SH system we're lucky if we get 1m. Road repairs are like Jason said - cheap. Sometimes there are more bumps after the repair than before. Visitors are amazed at the white painted wooden fences that we use to separate the road from a sheer drop. I've tried to convince them that the white paint makes the fence stronger, but it's a hard ask... (and this is not on rural roads - try SH2 over the Rimutakas) We desperately need a 4 lane divided highway between Wellington and Auckland, with a sensible speed limit, 120/130km/h in rural areas? I guess before that happens, we'll have to teach the driving population to keep left... Rant over. Jo

Compared to the rest of the world i think we do quite well as far as design etc. Good camber and consistant radius corners. Costs will always be high when you consider how much road we have per capita vs most crowded countries. Only gripe i have is they constantly take the lowest bid. They save 10% but need it resealed twice as often because it falls apart. Poor economics but looks better on todays budget. At the expense of next years

Its got a clutch but still a slushbox when it comes to the play in the shifter!! Hahaha

I've tried changing it and it's better, but not good. Bob had a better result (assuming everyone can see that!) Damn. It would have been funny. Honest.

still needs a dyno tune. but starts and runs .

HRE 505's. You'll find them on ebay. Had a 5X120 set on my watchlist 1400+ Euro.. Quite like the 5 bladed/pointed star shape on most of these older cars. Thought these BBS's are pretty tidy looking too. You would want 17's eh?