Photos Unboxed: Ice Drifting in Sweden - Juiceboxforyou

It’s nice to finally get the photo features going on the website again. I’ve been pretty strapped for time over the last year with the Vlogs and trying to get work done on the AE86. When the website went under and the old hosting service basically held the site hostage, I didn’t have the time or patience to sit down and sort it all out and basically neglected it. A few weeks ago I had some free time over Christmas and decided to make it happen. Juicebox has over nine years worth of Blog content so it took a considerable amount of time to move everything over to a new server but its all working pretty decent now. I’ll kick things off with our trip to Sweden almost ten months ago. As many have you have seen the vlog we did, I’m going keep things pretty short under the photos and give a rough explanation as to what’s going on and maybe some insightful info that might not have been shared in the videos. This “Photos Unboxed” series will be a behind the scenes photo features accompanying the vlog series. In an age where reading and looking at websites is slowly dying,  I hope you enjoy the slower pace of these.

The first night was a little chaotic, we landed late in Karlstad after a collection of flights. Karl which is somewhat in the lower centre of Sweden surrounded by a vast amount of lakes. After getting settled in the house, we had some beers and woke the next day, with fuzzy heads and got ourselves together and made our way out to Patrik and his friend’s Garage on the outskirts of the city. They basically have a similar setup to us back in Ireland but these guys are much more professional with their pastime. Their shed is an old military base with heated flooring, a lot fancier than what we have back home. I guess you need that sort of setup in a subzero winter climate.

Patrik is a genius when it comes to metal work, he’s made quite a name for himself for building some incredible Volvos and this was his current build, a project which had been put on pause for the minute due to lack of motivation. Reuben meeting Patrik was the main reason we were even in Sweden, a drunken encounter at Gatebil let to us this madness. These guys are all about Ice drifting in the winter and this was a chance for us to see how it goes down, a trip of a lifetime.

BMWs are the go-to drift machine in Europe. Being a somewhat reliable plentiful FR chassis, most of the cars you encounter especially as you head north in Europe are either BMW’s or Volvos pushing mental Horsepower. Thes guys can extract some serious power out of the German 6 cylinders around these parts. This is Alex Granlund’s competition vehicle, Alex is a well-known drifter from Sweden and one of the main guys building the ice track we would see the next day. His drift car is usually melting tyres at Gatebil but retires when the snow falls. When its white outside he’s usually found on the Ice in his winter E36 snow beater.

Loving this display over Patriks’s bench.

It’s mad just how evolved drift cars are these days, I bet this photo would look pretty weird to someone whos not accustomed to seeing over fenders and whats been shaved away underneath on the usual competition car.

A quick lurk around the shed shows a very diverse group of friends. The Swedes have basically re-engineered the single cam Volvo engines and can extract colossal power from what was basically a rather tame A to B engine. Everything has been custom made. From what I gathered when we last spoke, there is a custom crank, custom pistons, rods, camshaft you name it, nothing is readily available off of the shelf for this kind of thing so its total custom territory. I’ll be the first to say I’m completely out of my debt talking about this as its foreign territory, when we head back to Sweden this year, ill try to get a full rundown on this build. Be sure to check out Robban_e on Instagram to see more of this madness.

The contrast between the cars these guys are building is awesome, for every four BMW’s you’ll get something Jap thrown in the mix. This Stagea is another wild build, these guys are all aiming for crazy HP and its normal for them to be shooting for anything above the 700-800 mark. Sweden is on another level when it comes to this stuff.

Tucked away in the corner was this time warp JZA80. The Supra has basically been claimed by Scandinavian countries, there are more here than anywhere else I have seen. Take a trip to Gatebil and you will know what I mean.  They command megabucks if they are turbo and even bigger money if they are LHD. This Japanese import looked like it rolled right out of the ’90s.

Another shot of this mental engine, I wish I took notes on what exactly is going on here. Their builds always look like something from a professional shop, the attention to detail, especially amongst these guys is second to none. This Roberts ongoing personal build, this is his what he does in his spare time but after looking at these photos you would be easily mistaken into thinking this is a professional race car build with a top-notch budget.

Same goes for Patricks Volvo wagon, he’s quite comfortable working with metal and his work is more or less flawless.

This was the main reason we were here, these tyres are everything for ice drifting, the guys purchase these from WRC drivers after the Rally of Sweden and they are the perfect match for a frozen lake, without these, drifting on the lake would be a waste of time.

Patrik had these freshly fitted to some space savers and we were loading them up before getting an early nights sleep. Bright and early the next morning we were heading up north to some frozen lakes which were about three hours away from Karlstad.

I took another look around, another quick lap of the shed to absorb the goodness. If you want to see some of the nuttiest BMW builds in the world, I highly suggest checking out Gatebil this year. Cars like this wild E30 are commonplace machines in the drift community up here.

That’s a big old lump sitting snug in there. Check how clean that engine bay is!

The guys at the shed call themselves No coast racing, check out their website and facebook if you want to see more of their shenanigans. It’s always nice to get a glimpse into a somewhat parallel group of friends somewhere else on the planet and see how they do things. I think the reason we get on so well with these guys is that they have an insatiable appetite for drinking beer and enjoy getting up to similar immature shenanigans, something we did a lot of over the weekend.

And there we were, bright and early on a frozen lake. I’m not going to lie, driving down onto the lake was pretty intimidating, id been on a few in Canada, but it’s always a little dodgy to the Irish man. We get very little intensely cold weather in the winter and if it does freeze we rarely see more than a few centimetres of ice on a lake and just arent use to this type of weather. This will always be hardwired into our brains, the best way for me to not think about floating on a big body of water was to pretend I was still on land.

That’s a pretty easy thing to do as long as it’s covered in a layer of snow. Every once in a while you realise what’s really going on but its best to just think about something else.

Alexander lives pretty close to these lakes so he’s out here checking them every few days for the last couple of months. They ensure everything is perfect and make sure the lake is just the right depth before they organise anything like this.

They build the tracks with these quads fitted with ploughs and make sure its well maintained throughout the winter. The less snow on the track the better and it keeps the ice solid. The snow apparently insulates the ice and causes it to heat up. So much planning goes into this that I was a little taken back by the organisation.

It’s hard to believe this is is a photo of a bunch of cars being jacked up on a frozen body of water! Even jacking the car had me nervous. After a while I started to calm down, I had highly underestimated the thickness and strength of the ice here as all I had ever been used to was something that resembles a pane of glass over a pond back home. It took a while to calm the nerves.

Driving on the lake with normal tyres is completely pointless so before we went any further a quick pitstop is made to switch to the WRC tyres we headed out to the track.

As we made our way up to the track we were kindly greeted by Asabo and Granlund going head to head in their Ice beaters.

This inanely spec’d 2JZ drift s14 was almost lost on the Ice. Freddie and the guys were running sub 250HP machines which are much more ideal for this type of skidding. The tyres are so incredibly grippy that there really is no need for wild HP here.

Freddies Supra, which at the time of writing this has recieved a fresh makeover is NA and pretty stock. The simpler the better as the Ice is quite hard on the cars.

Most guys up here were running a NA setup or a simple turbo setup in a rough BMW or Volvo or mercedes.

A lot of the cars were more or less stock with a welded differential and some Spiked tyres.

Its hard to get a more Swedish picture than this! An Square Ovlov on ice.

The scenery was like something from a film. Asides from all the Ice madness, it was just pretty damn cool to be somewhere in scandanavia on a frozen lake!

The cars were an added bonus. I tried to shoot as many snaps as I could in between cursing at my Video camera for dying in the cold weather.

That drum and bass song is liteterally playing my head as I look at these photos. I hope we captured the intensity of this stuff with that video.

I love this shot, two very different cars, with such an incredible backdrop. On a side note, imagine this was 1999, who would have ever thought these two companies would have built the new supra for 2019. I bet no one from back then would have saw that coming. 

Freddie was non stop all day, apparently, the NA JZA80 supra is the ultimate Ice machine.

This is a photo of Reuben right after he urinated. Lovely. 

I still can’t get over just how organized this day out was. They even ploughed a pit area for everyone and we had a BBQ on the shore. 

The 90’s Bavarian FR appears to be a cheap reliable weapon for this type of stuff. I wonder what everyone will be using in another ten to fifteen years.

I liked the “Mad Max” look to this thing.

He actually left it ticking over in this spot for about 25 minutes and it started melting the ice, a quick reminder that we were actually on a frozen lake. I was slightly worried about it falling through the ice.

Apparently, Asabo bought this from an old guy in the UK and it was mint! and told me this gets him a little hate from the purists on social media. I think this car has had a more enjoyable time in the past few years than it ever had in the UK. It may look a little tatty on the outside but it gets well used and Freddie is quite fond of this thing.

Check this stunning 2jz setup under the hood of the 14, no doubt this thing is up near the 1000 HP range, better suited to a tarmac track.

Freddie brought the Supra down with his Artic Hilux, these things are badass.

I should have gotten more shots of Patrik’s Volvo wagon, this is running an M52 engine and gearbox setup. A subtle sleeper.

This was one of the funniest parts of the adventure and im happy I cauight this on camera. That chassis leg area is like the achilles heel of the E36

I still can’t get over the fact this random Irish Dublin reg’d Business machine was converted to an Ice drifter, apparently, it was driven up this way for work and sold on the super cheap as it was Right had drive. I bet the original owner would be blown away if he has seen what it does now. We did a lot of laughing at this. Maybe a little too much.

Cant believe we got the front end back together on this E36 and it managed to drive home…

It looked compeltely fucked here!

When the cars go off course, nine times out of ten they need to be towed out of the snow, at speed, it compacts like concrete under the wheels and causes significant damage to the underbody. Something I was not expecting. Snow is soft right? Yeah, I thought so too.

I think everyone has a towing strap in the boot or on the back seat, you are never too far away from someone stuck in that white delight.

Good as new! Nothing a few cable ties cant fix.

Living in this type of weather for almost a year, I started to get sick of it after a few months in The Brutal Alberta in winters in Canada. Ireland rarely ever gets this type of snow ( you might have seen how excited we got in a recent video) but to be honest after seeing what these guys get up to in Sweden with their version of weather, part of me is incredibly jealous of their snowy, icy activities.

Somedays I’m content with the fact it rains for most of the Irish winter but others times id happily trade places with these guys. There is a certain beauty to this type of winter that I miss since moving home. When we flew home from Sweden it felt like we brought this weather with our very own taste of the “beast from the east” freak weather snow storm we had. We did a few laps of Patrick’s town before we hit the bed, it was an early flight the next morning. There’s a lot of photos I forgot to shoot, mainly because we were drunk, a lot of the time. After all this was a holiday so we made the most of our trip to the World Rally Championship and the lake.

Hopefully, we can get back to Sweden again this winter. It’s not that too far away on a plane, one of the many benefits we tank for granted living in Europe. This was one of the best weekends of my life, an incredibly alien experience that I hope to relive again. It’s nuts to think that I’m writing this, a part of the world is completely covered in snow and will be for the next few months. It’s something you easily forget about suffering the wet Irish winter. The only benefit to our wet winters having an RWD machine for those damp nights. I wonder if thats we have some many decent drifters? The wet nights do come in handy for night time activities. Either way, I’m rambling now so I’ll wrap this up.

I’ll leave you with this picture of a snowy runway. When snow like this falls back in Ireland or the UK the entire country comes to a halt. To the Scandinavians, it’s just another day at the office. Hope you enjoyed this photo set, I have an absolute stack of stuff to add to the site over the coming months. Stay tuned!