2019 Icetrack Meet - Return of the Ditch!

Dr_Grip

Made from concentrate
Joined
Jul 8, 2008
Messages
15,179
Location
HEL
Car(s)
79 Opel Kadett|72 Ford Country Sedan|03 Volvo XC70
We are all back from Pudasjärvi and we had a splendid time!

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Pics go here!
 
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Here is my stuffs:

Starting off at Daboom's:


Midway "Mighty-Bacon Burger" stop at ABC with our group:


Sudden Stop at motorway:


Whiskey:


New outfits for police, model'd by Dahitch:


snowmobiling stop at cabin in da woods:


Our route shown in light green:


early morning panorama at cabin, while waiting for coffee:



Different kind of pizza:


Wizard Daboom:


Mad hatter:


Cracking job luv:


A7 in the sunset:


Panorama of the main track exit:


Panorama of Some of the cars:


The Fin has the knife!!!!



 
My quick edit of gopro timelapse footage from the trip from Daboom's to Pudasjärvi.

 
After taking it carefully last year to get Lucille to Finnmeet and back in one piece, we decided to do the sane thing this year, which of course meant buying a cheap beater and making a run around the Baltic Sea again.

Sadly, we were unable to buy a V6 bugeye Scorpio at a low price to rid the world of this abdomination. Thus, we first settled on a rusted-out 300€ w124 acquired from a friend. Sadly, that car's title got lost in the mail, I had to travel, Karlos had to work, and loose_unit was at the other end of Germany, so suddenly it was a week before departure with no car bought. But at least I had a $60 Chinesium LED bar stocked, so there was no reason to worry.
Driving out to the remote town of Beelitz to visit a cut-rate dealer on a rainy night in the pitch black, we set our sights on a diesel e39. Environmental regs have made old diesels like this very fine 2.5 liter M51 practically worthless, and it was dark and wet, so upon figuring out that the engines and brakes work, we struck a deal without further inspection of the car. At 550€, what was there to lose?

After Karlos removed two vacuum cleaner bags of dirt from the cabin, loose_unit and him treated the car to an oil change and installed the light bar (through a relay trigged by the high beams switch). So only when setting off, we realized that we bought a true gem - the engine had the M51-usual slightly leaky diesel pump, the wipers only worked at a single speed and the Xenon lights auto-leveling was stuck, but apart from that, the thing was mint. Not a lot of rust, surprisingly good winter tires, pulled well, and with a 75 liter diesel tank it got almost 1000kms or range, allowing us to go from Berlin to Warsaw in a tank.


Light bar installed.


Comes in handy with snow.


Far east of Warsaw: First fuel stop.



At sunrise, we were already in Latvia, where we made a detour...


...to beautiful Riga...


...where we had a healthy breakfast...


...before picking up vaping Fairlady.




"Hello, BMW? The e39's roof is too low in the back, it ruins my hair!"



Taking the ferry from Tallinn to Helsinki we did a quick prisoner exchange at McDonalds, trading Fairlady for nicjasno.



Finally arriving at DaBoom's place, we met his cat, and went for maximum Finland: Having a shower in the wood-powered sauna while blasting Wintersun.


Continuing the "maximum Finland" theme, we woke up to see a snow-covered wonderland.


So we headed straight out to wrench on a beater.





The drive up to the cabin was only interrupted by a short traffic jam, which we put to good use...


...as well as a fuel stop, which I used to buy some tunes for the official beater of the meet, a late-90s E-Class.




As the road turned to sheet ice to thick snow and the snowstorm came, the e39's light bar guided the way...


..until the e39 itself lost it's way.


After having some local spirits, I headed out to check the state of the art conference facilities of our cabin:






The next morning...








...was spent snowmobiling...




And taking before/after selfies.



Then, the ditching began.



And the Sauna followed.


Stupidly though, a nightly BMW ditching punctured our e39's oil cooler.




Meaning we spent all of Saturday and most of sunday trying to somehow come up with a bypass for it in a town where there's not even a parts store.




Apart from a loose_unit provoked Seagull attack the drive home was uneventful and we arrived in Berlin on Monday night, a cool 12 hours ahead of schedule.

The plan to buy a crap beater to kill during Icetrackmeet failed, though - the e39 not only did survive, we also formed an emotional bond with it and it will live on as Karlos' daily driver.

Videos will follow in a later post.
 
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Thank you. I enjoyed reading and looking at the pictures. :D
 
I am still in fucking Lapland. Shame I couldn't join you guys!
 
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! :D 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 :D





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! :-D





I got this really great panorama too :-D





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 :D





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!!!
 
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Everybody hates road salt.

Nice to hear different takings on the same trip.
Now I guess we are all waiting for Lauri to post his pics.

I will too at some point, but it will take a very long while as I have a lot of things waiting in the queue.
 
So, this is how everything went from my perspective :)


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 :D
Oh that was the worst ditching by a country mile. I think it took us closer to an hour to get it out. :D
 
While I took awful lot of pictures, I only had the camera out on a few occasions. Most pictures involve the mighty Sierra, Lexus, Panda, Tesla or 130i. I completely missed the E-class, even if it was the car I drove almost as much as the Sierra. I'll make another gallery from phone pics, but for now here's the proper set.

Me, Posambique and Posmo rode in Posmo's Sierra through the thursday night to Pudasjärvi. After few celebratory laps around the cottage we headed to sauna. Obviously.

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We started friday like proper champions: meat pies and sausages. This was pretty okay, but the recipe improved considerably during the meet after we let Posambique do his gastronomic magic.

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Here Posambique seems dead. He wasn't.

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When I headed out to plug the Sierra's block heater, I met mikas on the ditch. First of the day, but only second ditched BMW of the meet (see the post above). Luckily no damage to the very handsome E90.

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A7 provided the undo button for us: quattro traction unditched almost every single car attending the meet at least once. Thanks galantti!

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Visit Finland! It's properly cold!

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Eurofighter. And some jet.

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Aren't cars just great?

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Yeah, EVs are boring and all that. Sure. One more lap, pls?

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Tesla is really effective at moving snow around.

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They see me rubbing, they rolling.

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On the way to enjoy some world famous Finnish hospitality at the coffee/cafeteria near snowmobile place.

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...and then back to drifting. The IS200 was brilliant on track!

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I'm so happy the E39 was fixed and brought you guys home! But we didn't know it at this point.

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I remember how shit this thing used to be. public sold it to Posmo at one very blurry bar night. It was hopeless on track. So much work, no reward (unless you're excited by spinning). It's a different animal now. Few professionally selected mods have transformed the handling, and now it's proper joy to throw around the track. Great car!

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Yeah, fighter jets are better than average background.

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DaBoom's 130i sounds sweet when going sideways.

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Mmm, that handling. (I can probably still here the valvetrain in my eyes :p)

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Can't say I intentionally kept the faces sharp.

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Lights! Camera! Action!

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Kiss the bank. Gently.

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The good life.

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Everybody learnt to act like a proper Finn. Great work people!

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Mxm, should you add drift angle meter?

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It really does go sideways!

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Yes.

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It's the Japanese Mercedes!

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The infamous Sicilian Panda Bandits!

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Lexus again. Amazing how much you can get for so little.

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Glamour.

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More glamour.

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You'd smile too!

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yes, it's surprisingly good!

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Yes, it's really -32°C outside.

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Somebody stole my camera. Sorry.

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Incognito drinking mode: On
 
Great pics and write-ups! I hope one day I'll be able to make it there as well. Maybe even with a beater thingy :unsure:
 
Oh that was the worst ditching by a country mile. I think it took us closer to an hour to get it out. :D

Yep! The harder you push it the harder you hit :D

It was just team building, that's all! Totally intentional
 
Great pics!

i love the A7, in the grey woods looks like b&w photo :D
 
Yep! The harder you push it the harder you hit :D

It was just team building, that's all! Totally intentional

Is "team building" 2019's "target fixation"? ;)

LastSoul's photos are stunning, thanks for sharing.
 
All my photos and videos:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/klkd4ayqoipeup7/AABleT9SJZRh-glygpWCQhria?dl=0


I was picked up at the airport in a small Fiat and brought to the feeding grounds in Helsinki, where a prisoner exchange between the germans and the HappyPandaDriver took place.
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So we headed to Kuovola to @DaBoom 's place. There we had the first sauna. The next morning, me and DaBoom went out to his shed, where attempts to fix some vehicles were made and we changed tires on the e39 and merc, so they would handle the icy roads better.
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Convoy heading out north!
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Mood of the first evening. Karlos has nice legs :p
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Finish car journalists getting the first shots of the day.
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Some driving was done
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The next day when people went snowmobiling, some of us, who were not very keen on that sort of thing explored the finish countryside.
If you want to expirience winter, come to finland. It'll be -32c and you'll love it, they say.
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Then we found an osasis of life in the snowy desert:
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HappyPandaDriver contemplating why drifing the panda is not fun
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The e39 after an unsuccessfull attempt at bypassing the oil cooler that was punctured by the foglight after a ditching
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@LurkerPatrol sent some cookies. They were O.K.
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A @Dr_Grip in a bathrobe preparing garlic for the sauce
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Foodstuffs:
Moose meat, secret ingredient: jalovina
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The sauce and some spaghetti without gluten, wheat or eggs...
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Leftover pasta with fresh sauce the next day:
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Trying to revive the merc after plugging the hole in the radiator. In the end a bucket of hot water brought it back to life.
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Driving south in a cold and beautifull wintery landscape:
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Despite some technical difficulties on the way, the e-class made it back to Kuovola. This was probably its last drive. Considering what we put it through, it is a very good car. The mercedes engineers never tested it as hard as we did. A happy and relieved finish car journalist can't belive he doesn't have to listen to the engine doing 5k rpms in 1st gear at 80km/h anymore.
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Karlos going full Mrs. Robinson!

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All my photos and videos:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/klkd4ayqoipeup7/AABleT9SJZRh-glygpWCQhria?dl=0


I was picked up at the airport in a small Fiat to the feeding grounds in Helsinki, where a prisoner exchange between the germans and the HappyPandaDriver took place.
XsiOiOH.jpg

Wait, this is a McDonald's? It looks way too fancy.
Also, why is @loose_unit eating out of a container?

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Driving south in a cold and beautifull wintery landscape:
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This looks amazing.
 
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Wait, this is a McDonald's? It looks way to fancy.
Also, why is @loose_unit eating out of a container?

This is McDonalds in a civilised country. @loose_unit is on a diet. Healthy and stuff.
 
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