Terry's Winter Snow Adventure

[Sprintey]

Our petrol, ZF, AWD Territory has had plenty of snow adventures. It has battled bonnet high snow drifts in chains, navigated blind corners in blizzards, overcome slippery ice; and done all this with perfect reliability over 10 years from new.

The design is great really, while not a heavy duty 4x4 it has the handling nous to be safe and then enjoy all alpine corners, can take a full family and is flexible for their gear, has AWD grip constantly available in a 38/62 split, and has a strong simple torquey motor that makes highway travel to and fro effortless and easy.

The most recent trip was memorable for its extremes, and brought home the strengths of the car, and why it will be missed in the future.

The Great Alpine Road at Hotham had a record low over the weekend, News quoted a -10.4 on Sunday night, which is a 43 year record. The 4 day weekend we took began sunny and clear, with enjoyable riding on Friday arvo and Saturday. Terry was busy ferrying 9 people too and fro once on mountain after a comfortable highway drive.

Saturday at dusk, clouds began to roll in, temps dropped, and 5-7cm of snow fell overnight, covering the car. Wipers up, board racks unlocked and open, handbrake off. Sunday was a beautiful day of boarding. In ferry mode, Terry being full time AWD was not required to wear chains while I noticed almost all of the Haldex smaller FWD based AWDs fitting them. The sky cleared up, and then it got really cold, and the diesels started to fail.

Quite a few cars were immobile, and the number of bonnets up, immobile diesels increased. Megane, Mazda dual cab, 200 series TD, 100 Series TD, Captiva, Defender, VW large SUV, 4 Colorados, X3, RRS, Paj, Merv large SUV... that I saw. Mechanics seemed to be using a gas cannister of some kind to free the frozen fuel lines. Perhaps it was a lack of winter diesel? The cold snap certainly will be memorable, for I've never seen this before.

Every time, in contrast, the old Terry started first go. She was loaded up after a relaxed breakky on Monday, and then made her way back down and home at a good pace. The petrol and AWD really is a good combination in the 'Aussie X5' built for 'Falcon bucks' and for my 2c the SYII Petrol AWDs are the pinnacle of the build run.

[Raptor]

Yep, will be missed now that it's gone :(

Only later will we realise how good we had it.

I've only had my AWD petrol in the snow once, wayyyyyyy back in 2005. But it handle the conditions so well it was almost ridiculous

Only photo I've saved;

[fordboi]

Totally agree with you Sprintey.

Here's a snap of mine from last week's trip to Selwyn.
The old girl ran faultlessly !

[fordboi]

Looks like the pic disappeared ... Here it is again !

[Tonz]

whats the idea of wipers up....so they dont freeze to windscreen?

[Sprintey]

Yep totally Tonz, they can ice to the screen. We leave the snowboard racks open for same reason, they can ice together overnight. The racks can even have the keyhole ice itself closed. And I've heard the tale of running cars going nowhere as the handbrake linkages ice over, so parking flat and leaving the transmission in park is the way to go. Also heard the Australian Antarctic survey puts a shallow bed of ethanol under their work hiluxes and thaws them out by lighting it before a day's work!

[Sprintey]

Out of interest I calculated the fuel figures, and loaded to the gills with 2 adults 3 late teens and all their gear, 110+ and don't spare the horses:
Highway to Bright: 11.3L/100km
Ferry service, slow speed, multiple drop offs and waits, icy roads, AWD required:
13.6L/100km. On either 98 or 95 as I could find it, we probably could replace the oxy sensor and get 1/2 a litre better. Was able to get the 11.2 official combined figure from new, but she's out to about 12.6 average as she ages and does more in town work.

[Tonz]

Having travelled through Canada for a few months, all their donks have in built heaters to keep the oils warm(ish) its funny pressing a button and 5 minutes later going out to a warm engine and interior.

[MAGPIE]

Reminds me of this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny2FxUfv63s

[Sprintey]

Magpie that link is epic, favourited. How much fun did the blue Terry have?

[Raptor]

Originally Posted by Sprintey

Magpie that link is epic, favourited. How much fun did the blue Terry have?

That's also hosted on the forum, it the Ford/Bosch (ABS/DSC) engineers doing winter testing/calibration, and having wayyyy too much fun to be called work

Territory Winter Testing (this was all prior to the Territory being released)

http://www.fordforums.com.au/photos/...hp?photo=19183

There is also one from the desert - do a search.




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