So, this is how everything went from my perspective
After work on Monday I headed to Berlin (No pics) and I stayed the night at Dr Grip's place, the following day I "worked from home" until it was time to get moving.
First stop, get an oil change at the drive-through oil change place:
We also stopped off and grabbed a few supplies, AKA Beer and Vodka, after that we got to work fixing a few things... Like for example the hanging radiator, which was fixed using Zip Ties:
And more zip ties for the mounting of the relay for the light bar:
The light bar was also mounted and we were underway!
Some more zip ties to adjust the headlights, the whole adjustment mechanism is broken, I had the same issue on
Sumo.
Using my legs as a height guide:
We hit quite a lot of snow in Poland:
And then the first ditching of the meet happened!
Courtesy of Dr Grip
Beached!
Totally:
Thankfully a few helpful people stopped and we managed to get pulled out (At the next service station I bought a rope - Something I had been missing)
Time for a beer:
And a bit of a nap - Next minute I woke up to this awesome view in Lithuania:
And in Estonia to collect a passenger, we stopped off at Rudolf Hesburger ... Never again:
Karlos was doing a burnout in front of Liga's office...
Then, onwards! We swapped passengers and uneventfully, we arrived at DaBoom's place!
Karlos doing more burnouts, making a hole in the ice:
I don't remember why, but last year I constantly mentioned buying a bluetooth speaker ... This year I just bought one
It was useful in the car as a Blitzer.de and navigation speaker, until it smashed me right in the metal in my knee...
Lightbar, engage!
I don't have a picture, but Karlos managed to ditch the car on the second to last corner before we arrived at the cabin ...
Some celebratory lightbar drifting after arriving:
The next day though, Mikas was at it!
I got this really great panorama too
So cool:
On the way back from the snowmobile place there was a really awesome sunset, I did a piss-poor job of capturing it:
People got a bit anxious to go drifting on Friday night ... So, the Merc was pulled out and then ditched and then pulled out again and then ditched and so on...
This was after the car was pulled out of the worst ditching of the meet. (Yes, I did it) It only took basically everyone and an A7 to pull it out ... DaHitch pictured being happy (Like all of us) that we managed to get it out
Last round of drifting and there was a slight tap against a snow bank and a fog-light fell out (And probably this was the cause of the oil leak and issues that we will see later:
The likeness is uncanny:
So in the morning the track opened - I warmed up the car before everyone was awake and headed out on track for a quick run - I came back to the cabin to see what I thought at first was missing paint but turned out to be oil. Sadly there was an oil cooler behind the fog light (This is the only model E39 with an oil cooler in this location ... Nice...)
Meanwhile drifting was going on:
A bypass was organised with a garden hose and some hose clamps - The first attempt and the hose popped off, the next attempt and it held - But the hose was balooning ... So the decision was made to wrap the hose in duct tape and then zip ties to reinforce it:
lol:
That seemed to hold reasonably well and was left until the next day.
The next day I was able to jump into DaBoom's 130i and have a play - My favourite car of this Finnmeet
Also I had a ride in Mikas's 330D doing some 360's:
Our mighty steed:
Sadly the zip-tie and duct tape did not work - A metal fitting was used in combination with epoxy, hose clamps and some of the garden hose to make a seriously improved version of the bypass. This version held all the way back to Germany with only a few drops of oil coming out:
On our way back, we made it to Sweden and the first stop ... Max Burger!
I just happened to be playing around with a way of recording with some stability from my phone when we had a poop comes out moment! It doesn't look like much on the video, but you can see we moved over half a lane and Dr Grip who was asleep in the back got quite a shocking wake up:
Suddenly Lunar eclipse! Terrible photo, but really a cool thing to see:
Quite some snow in Sweden:
We were held up by a pair of snow ploughs that nobody would overtake
We managed to, though:
Look at the mess!
While sitting waiting for the ferry, I decided it would be fun to feed the seagulls ... Mission accomplished!
Back in on Monday night, I spent the night once again at Dr Grip's - And on Tuesday in the afternoon I headed home, there was a reasonable traffic jam leaving Berlin, I found the cause:
But from there on I had a pretty good run:
But I really hate salt:
What an awesome week!
Until next time!!!