Day 6

Day six saw us heading off through the Pitz Valley for the Weiss-see-glacier. More superb roads travelling alongside another enormous lake that leads into a dam. The road tracked the lake and gradually stated to climb. The road wasn’t a pass but a scenic route to the summit of the Glacier. The corners where less severe than the Stelvio pass but still very steep albeit a little wider.

This meant we could exploit the quattro wet handlng charactoristic to the max with many four wheel drifts and at last second gear was an option!

When we reached the summit lunch was the first priority and on completion we back tracked the route we had just come up. By this time it was raining quite hard and the mist was swirling with much ice visible around the periphery of the road. I thought it prudent to put the centre diff on as my quattro being one of the early ones did not have ABS.

Down we swept with Pete leading. Its probably a good job the mist  was hiding the sheer drops at the side of the road as we started to push on a bit. The lack of any on coming traffic meant we where able to go wide and cut across the apex with a bit of sliding here and there.

Near the bottom on a long right hand off-camber bend, Pete’s quattro started a big slide and from my position right behind him I could see he had lost control and was fighting to get it back. I was on a different line but carrying too much speed as I saw Pete in a slow motion slide my quattro let go and I found myself fighting to stay on the road with a full opposite lock to catch the ‘oversteer’ . I managed to catch the back end but I had to use both sides of the road. Thankfully the rear wheel found some grip at the edge of the road allowing me to gather it all up and regain control.

Tim meanwhile had the perfect view behind us watching a synchronised sliding quattro display!! Needless to say with no damage done we had a good laugh about it later! (Slowly sideways group eat your hearts out).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Day 7 - INGOLSTADT

Time to go to Ingolstadt, we packed, paid our bills and left the hotel to fetch our cars. Pete started his WR and reversed out of the parking space, on the ground was a big puddle and the tarmac was dissolving!. Petrol all over the place!

Bit of a problem, a fuel leak! Luckily we came prepared with overalls and tools so we jacked up his quattro to investigate. Sure enough the problem was obvious. A steel fuel line had corroded with a pin prick of fuel squirting near the fuel pump.

As luck would have it I had the forethought to bring spare hoses and clips. We still needed to make a quick visit to a local garage for a pipe connector though.

Luckily Tim’s schoolboy German enabled him to converse with the very helpful man in the garage, who happened to speak very good English!!   We cut off the rusty pipe and re-fitted with new hose, clips and the pipe joiner.

So later than scheduled we set off to Ingolstadt via Neuswanstein Castle which we had planned to visit however the traffic queue was enormous so we skirted around the castle and pressed on.

We arrived at the hotel in Ingolstadt and  unloaded the cars leaving the girls in the bar so we could head off to the car wash to clean the quattro’s. At the car wash we met a Sport from France and the main man from the Bavarian quattro Owners Club. After we had cleaned off a good few miles of grime we had a long chat and discussed the merets of joining the ACI.

It was a lovely warm sunny evening and on returning to the hotel we passed quite a few quattro’s and secured our cars for the night in the hotels underground car park.

In the hotel bar we met an English film crew filming a quattro documentary so hopefully the event may be televised. A few beers later and after good meal we went off to bed for a well deserved rest.

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