[tcbw]

So far, we've planned to head up to the summer cottage on the weekend of 4&5 March for a winter weekend planning session, sauna and traditional walk on the ice. We might be able to rustle up a couple of Countrymans. I'll take the snow blower if there's a lot of snow (once bitten, twice shy).

And we're now planning to head back to Pärnu on Friday 9th June with the Audi Club Finland since they haven't put a new levy on non-Audi's at the track. We even managed to rent the same cottage as last year, but I'll take my own travel Weber so we can eat at a normal time.

I'll pull together a table of dates with the BMW and Mini club days as they emerge.

In the meantime, it seems that both DoubleP and JKo need to put their engines back together and both Micke and DTR need to retrieve their cars from storage and shakedown for the summer season. And I just need to fix my car.

If anyone's in the area, let us know. At the very least we'll find you a Lonkero.

 

[Micke]

DTR is fastest, needs some ”make him slower” mods. I can give him human flesh ballast, 100kg’s

 

[Micke]

As for the current state of the fleet, situation is bad bud stable 😆

 

[JKo]

My engine is not even taken apart yet, so I would not bet on it being put together for this season.

For the Pärnu "let's annoy some uptight Audi drivers" trip I may need to ride shotgun in an R53 that runs. Hopefully there are a few. Or I could drive a service vehicle carrying spare radiators and such. We can plan at the planning session what is needed.

 

[JKo]

As for the current state of the fleet, situation is bad bud stable 😆

 

[tcbw]

DTR is fastest, needs some ”make him slower” mods. I can give him human flesh ballast, 100kg’s

That's just a bit of corner weighting.

 

[tcbw]

For the Pärnu "let's annoy some uptight Audi drivers" trip I may need to ride shotgun in an R53 that runs. Hopefully there are a few. Or I could drive a service vehicle carrying spare radiators and such. We can plan at the planning session what is needed.

JKo:

(i) you can ride shotgun with me, or
(b) I could take the Beetle (we can get a roof rack and strap some spare rads/fuel tanks/spare wheel up there, Safari style?) and you grow some longer legs for the fixed Sparco bucket in RacingBrown? or
(3) we take the Land Rover and find a spare engine; Shirley Micke can find one on the internet, or maybe even in Estonia?

There are plenty of solutions if the Drunken Master isn't shaken down in time!

 

[tcbw]

I know it's my poll but this year, it's especially tricky as it's all open.

 

[DoubleP]

DTR is fastest, needs some ”make him slower” mods. I can give him human flesh ballast, 100kg’s

Apeli just puts a cam on. After that his car ismore on pit as on track. Then it would be easy to not be the slowest car on track. Hmmm on audi event it would be hard to be slower than slowesy quattrrooo

 

[tcbw]

We had a good winter weekend at the summer cottage - highlights included a bit of karting at Ideapark (to no-one's surprise at all, JKo won with a great time until the 11 year olds rocked up and took two seconds off it...). I was juts gald to get below 40 seconds a lap (too much ballast). We also ordered the world's slowest bacon burgers because DTR wanted one: the consensus theory seems to be that they needed to catch the little squealers out back first.

Anyway ... we had a successful time and much was planned. No-one got stuck in the snow, although Micke did manage to almost fall through the ice on our ice-walk to general hilarity and lack of sympathy all round. Sorry about that one wet leg. We were also a bit surprised that some blokes without an exhaust were driving on the ice over in the distance and making a racket. We nearly bought a Audi 1.8T Avant quattro winter shed off the internet sight unseen for 1900eur so we could do ice driving stuff as well. [Volkswagen RATATATATATA ]. I don't know why we didn't wonder over and ask for a go at breaking the gearbox. Complete lack of curiousity. Or was it because Micke's wet leg?

As usual we had a go at a traditional bottle of oddly flavoured Polish vodka (raspberry and cinnamon flav), some emergency sausage, and a good sauna, but no traditional steak dinner. Instead, we had a full-on 5xTP ringstinger chicken satay curry on special request

This year we also had protracted a car-quiz of obscure car trivia (available to Patreons only... ). Most of the answers seemed to be "FIAT 126" or "Dacia with the 1.5T Merc engine". Which I won somehow so I could avoid adding a used fule pump in an old bucket to my stash of gear. Thanks Micke.

Good we had the session, now DoubleP knows we're MT Goes Estonia on Thursday, not Friday.

 

[Micke]

Good summary, it was good to talk bollocks and getting nothing done, typical of these planning weekends 😁
You forgot to mention @DTR ’s magical hole in 1 tube 🤣 I guess none of it has been used during the night.

 

[tcbw]

I wasn't planning to mention DTRs fank of the weekend / hole-in-one assembly lube thing

 

[DTR]

I wasn't planning to mention DTRs fank of the weekend / hole-in-one assembly lube thing

The question is, why it was half empty when I got it from @Micke? 🤔

 

[bknu]

Don't forget Sweden!
MINIclub.se open 2023 with a trackmeet May 18-20. Arlanda Test track 1. Short but sweet. The chosen hotel might not be a castle but every room is booked for the club so will be cosy.
... and it's close to the ferries.

NMCS Sommarträff 2023 - Sigtuna samt Arlanda Test Track 1

MINIvänner, Styrelsen i NMCS är glada att åter kunna presentera en större Sverigeträff som denna gång kommer gå av stapeln i Stockholmstrakten, närmare bestämt med boende i Sigtuna, körning på Arlanda Test Track 1 samt lite andra trevligheter och happenings MINI style. Denna gång kommer...

www.miniclub.se

//Björn Ruotsolainen
finally a paying member of Flying Finns.

 

[tcbw]

Thanks Björn for the heads up; I have mentioned this to the Commander, and it might be a possibility... as I recall the test track is a fun little circuit, and there was also some auto-cross arranged as well.

 

[JKo]

Arlanda test track is very much fun. I melted all four center caps, both front spigot rings, and front left ABS sensor on the last time out there. 😅 Sadly my car is very much off the road atm.

Thanks again to the MTGF guys for the weekend out! It was a blast as usual. About the Pärnu trip; I'm happy with whatever. If Tim wants to take the 4wd VAG coconut (to annoy the Audi ppl even more), I think we can move the BRB bucket seat forward enough for me to reach the pedals. Or...

 

[tcbw]

I think it might be less of a faff to just move the seat forwards...