So I'm back from the Austrian Alps, stayed at a mates flat in St Anton for the week. Driving down one weekend, having a weeks boarding, then driving back. So blasted my 13 year old 159k 2.2 down & back with a mate.
Started off from a very cold Dover on Saturday 19th..
With reports of "chaos" everywhere, Heathrow having heavy delays and such, I left earlier than planned. Got to Dover way ahead of time, what was all the fuss about?
The plan was to stop about half way down in Luxembourg & explore a bit in the afternoon, as never been there before.
Roads were empty in France & Belgium, while news back home was battern down hatches, snow is going to stop everything
- Snow was just has bad, but all main roads were clear.
At times it was ages before even seeing another car...
I had the car washed before I left, wanted to give my trusty steed a treat, don't know why I bothered really, few hours into trip it was worse than before
Luxembourg was nice, very good prices for food and beer. Brakes felt numb driving around, but I had been -6 all day at fairly high speeds, once I got some heat into them, they started to bite better.
After waking up and going down to the car, I was expecting to defrost it for a few mins, but I was not expecting this...
Sprayed de-icer on it, attempted to scrape, nothing, spray about half the bottle on one window, scrape, still nothing. Solid thick ice, like a glaze all over the car. Took best part of an hour to get it off, most of the time spend just getting the cabin heat hot enough to heat up the glass from within.
This would amuse OmegaMan2.2 as our resident Apple fan boy, I was using my old 3G-S for tunes on the way down, sadly I don't think Californian developers see much ice
Pushed on to fuel up, as Luxembourg had LPG a lot cheaper than Germany. Even after about 90 mins, ice was still all over the car....
LPG was just 60 cents a litre, also got a nice little bag of sweets free after filling up, not sure if thats standard or because I used gas? Also used the adaptor for first time, as they use a screw thread for LPG, must say, I actually prefer it it. Maybe as my filler is so low, sometimes lugs miss-align, if I don't rotate it to right position first, but with screw fitting no probs.
Progress was somewhat slow in Luxembourg though, as it was a Sunday perhaps they don't bother sending out ploughs? Roads were empty but thick slush all over motorway, exits much deeper, but winter tyres gripped very, very well.
After about 2 to 3 hours or so I stopped, as washer jets froze up. Some tit did not put a strong enough anti-freeze mix in
The main feed pipe iced up as did the pump, managed to disconnect it all, take to service station bogs and heat it all up under hot tap. Love this about the Omega, would have been up sh!t creak in a modern car with everything impossible to reach.
One thing I found, 5L of -20 screenwash mix in Luxembourg, 8.99EUR, Germany? 26.99EUR
Wish I stocked up first, had I known the price difference. Luckily only needed 1L in Germany...
Ice still coated the car, headlights only the spot bulb bit actually melted anything. You could "peel" bits of the ice off:
Although at least all the slush kept the alloys clean!