I love the contrast between these 2. The defender would be the obvious choice but the R8 on winters is soooo much fun in the snow.
the snow tour
3000 miles in a Classic 911 has changed my life: Part 1 - Prep
Car looking pretty hilarious in "Dakar" spec up on the lift.
Ok so maybe not quite 3000 miles (2692 to be precise + track driving and detours). It all started with a phonecall from my buddies Team Galag asking if I wanted to join them on The Snow Tour. A drive up through Sweden to Arvidsjaur to do some ice driving. I've done a tonne of miles in the gt3 and wasn't particularly sure winter tyres would be readily available so the idea came into my mind about taking my old backdated 911 (Autofarm 911). To be honest I was massively apprehensive about how the car would hold up in the extreme conditions driving with some significantly newer and more powerful cars. My car is a 1978 SC backdated to 73s looks. Boxster brakes and a bored out engine provide the extra stop and go I'm after.
The Prep:
After talking to Mikey at Autofarm about potential issues and speaking to Richard at Tuthill (Tuthill organise a bunch of ice driving in old Rally Porsches). Turns out the cars are pretty good but there is a potential issue of the carburettors freezing due to the extreme cold. With relatively little time we pulled together a solution to try and blow some hot air over the carbs and warm them up a bit.
Bit of a ghetto mod but worked and easily removable after the fact.
The main requirement for the trip was a set of winter tyres. After looking around at what was available it seems that we had to increase the sidewall dimension by 10mm to get tyres to fit. On the front I we could fit the Continental ContiWinterContact TS850 in 205/60R15 91 H and on the rear the older TS790 in 225/60R15 96 H. I actually think having this bias helped the overall handling of the car as a bit more front end grip is always quite nice on a 911.
Without doubt the most important change was fitting some winter tyres, the grip in dicey conditions really is remarkable.
Modification number 2 was to fit some additional lights on the front as the current headlights aren't particularly amazing. I wanted a unit that was removable so that if i wanted I could restore the car to how it was. These lights you can just pull out the little grill they are attached to and wack the old ones back in, bish, bash, bosh.
The final exterior mod was the latches on the bonnets. In the relatively short amount of time i've had the car i've not quite shut the front twice and with the prospect of additional cold weather and tiredness I figured these would be a nice little addition. Turns out this was an essential modification.
Now it was just the task of driving 3k miles. Onwards!
