deepmud
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Hi Erik, and any other Alaskan members. We are taking a family holiday in Alaska in late August/early September. Its one of those bucket list things/trip of a lifetime (Unfortunately not in a Landy).
The party is me, Lady Studmuffin, Daughter, her husband, Son and his girlfriend.
We are going from Anchorage by train and doing a tour of Denali Park then back on the train to Anchorage to pick up 2 Motor homes for 2 and a half weeks touring. Obviously no where near enough time but that's all the time we can get off work.
We are busy looking at our route planning. Any do-able suggestions or tips gratefully received.
Cheers
Barry
What time of year? Do you plan to fish? Are you into renting kayaks and such or taking sight seeing tours on bigger boats to see wildlife? The Denali Park could be amazing. Lots of Critters. Will the RV rentals allow you on the Denali Highway (not needed to see Denali - it used be - it's not paved, it's beautiful but has a rough reputation). Will you be headed south to from the RV rental? Or north? Our roads are limited - you might have to back-track to get to Homer then back to Fairbanks .... or you could go to Fairbanks, and back to Anchorage by a differnt route - or back with a side trip thru Denali Highway if they allow -
or you can spend 2 weeks in the Homer/Kenai/Seward area - it's all beautiful country, I'll brainstorm some ideas with the wife this evening -
Well yeah - it's more the details that are not obvious to those who don't spend their lives in minus-lots, like do we have to lag and/or heat the water tank, how much insulation is enough, which bits are prone to freezing solid unexpectedly... all the stuff it's far easier to do during the build than afterwards.
Got an eberspacher & cavity walls but that's not a complete solution!
And - how long/how often camp in cold? how cold is cold? 0C? -40C? Lots of locals just winterize every fall (drain water/heater/add ant-freeze) and "rough it" when they use the RV in winter - bottled water - just insulate/heat the poop-tank enough to be able to use it. Most the mistakes that can't be fixed are in the water and waste systems
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I don't want to derail the thread but as we're quite fancying taking the campbulance to a few cold places, are there any tips (or good websites) on vehicle/camper design/prep for proper cold places?
Sorry to be tongue in cheek there - yes - I think there was a LOT of good details in one of the Turtle Expedition campers - I have the actual paper magazine but maybe I can find an article online about it. If not I'll get the paper version up for you
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I always get c r a p when I post that picture, lol - it's chained to the hoist. I don't have a handy forklift so there you go. I have done one attempt at a competition ramp - I got about a 700 rti score. Not bad. Wheelbase is 104" so that would be about ....25 inches up a 20degree ramp? I'm sure I could make it go higher that that was good enough. It behaves nicely offroad. I've had it all twisted up in a steep uphill ravine and it was very well behaved.
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Hmm. I disagree.
Especially - compare the studded tire(tyre) at 2nd or 3rd year of use. The first season - I'm surprised you are saying "they are okay" - they are becoming the tire of choice for my friends and I, and we've gone to them on our company cars, year round. They dont' get a lot of miles and the costs of swapping every spring and fall plus tire storage make the quick-wear of the blizzaks (year round) about a wash - we get about 3 winters out of a set.
I would love some real-world, back to back comparisons of exact-same model vehicle, one with blizzaks, the other with a good studded tire like a hakkapeliitta . I can only say my own experience says I'd give the edge to the studs only the first season or less.
I can add one more thin----- I think the blizzaks are LESS grippy on dry pavement - I'm so much happier with them on ice/slush and snow I put up with it but I bet they give up 20% of stopping distance on pavement.
Something to consider.
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No one likes Blizzaks? I love them - I'm in the "6 months of ice" category - I think for 6 days I'd just chain up and go slow. I like Blizzaks better than studs. Studs work somewhat better on water-on-ice, but not drasticly so. On wet slush or fresh wet snow, I give the advantage to Blizzaks. Blizzaks perform at 100% effective until the "magic layer" wears off. Studs begin to be less effective by the 2nd year - by year 3, you don't want to toss them but you maybe should anyway. I've gotten 6 years on one set of Blizzaks on a Suzuki Sidekick. I got 3 years on my fullsize Ford Expedition - but I didn't swap them out the summber after year 2 - I maybe could have gotten 4 years if I had been careful.
I tell people "Blizzaks tires mean check your 6!!!" - look behind you when braking - you may not realize how bad the conditions are for everyone behind you - you want to avoid being rear-ended. My co-worker talked his mother into a set - she's not a great driver - she did a "brake check" on a slick hill and caused several cars behind her to have to dive into the ditch. They really are a great snow/ice tire.
Erik
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Stunning pictures.
Thank you for posting.
Thanks! These are all my own images - I've been in some cool places in the last 30 years or so (geeze I'm getting old
) and luckily I've been using a digital camera since about the time they became "affordable" - my first 2.1 megapixel Olympus was over 700 dollars in 1990. My UZ 2100 was only about 500, and still only 2.1 megapixel, but it has an awesome image stabilization and a 10x optical zoom - It's been a great "Alaska" camera - pictures of eagles are not "white dots in trees". Then it was a $1200 E-10 - 4 megapixels, 4 optical zoom - my first "pro-sumer" camera - really, I bought it for the wife but she let me use it, lol. Then I got her a Canon 10D and a 28-135 IS lens ($2000!!!) - that camera is 12 years old now - we have a 3 of that vintage because the used market for them is terrible - the 2nd and 3rd were only 200 bucks, used. Still a great camera - 6.3 megapixels are hard to tell apart from decent film images. My newest toy is a Sony rx100 - 21 megapixels! And fantastic low light function - and it fits in my pocket. I've gotten some nice aurora with it - and it's great to have a GOOD camera that is easy to pack along.Aurora with the Sony - I was working at 2am in Whittier, Alaska . The Aurora were gone again in 15 minutes.
Denali last week - I was working on fiber on the road system - this is Trapper Creek, Alaska
the old Canon 10D last year (Denali from the north side)
Tuckers: They have been a common snow rig for Alyeska Pipeline, who operate the Alaska Pipeline for the oil companies (like BP). They aren't the BEST snow cat (they can get stuck in relatively shallow snow - requiring rescue via Caterpiller tractors) , but are transportable on public roads with a slide-back flatbed truck(big lorry
) - they weigh about 10k pounds, and are less than 8 feet wide. In Alaska, past 8 foot 6 inches and it needs a special permit, special driver license, and a chase truck. My company bought a $200k Bombardier Snow Cat - but at about 10 and half feet wide, it was hugely expensive to transport up and down the highway.I think the chief advantage for a Tucker in a "corporate environment" is they steer like a truck - they don't need a decent driver - about any idiot can drive one (hence the getting stuck lol). I think Alyeska could learn a lot from Icelandic 4x4's - but they won't. Instead, they use suuuuper narrow, hard tires on heavy diesel trucks (like 8 or 9000 pounds of truck) that make for some not so good 4x4's when the snow pack is soft - or the ground is soft - in the spring.
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It's bad enough I'm already working out how much insulation to put in the ambulance-camper build "just in case"
Do it like this guy lol -
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yeah - the ptarmigan in winter are usually not seen until they explode out of snow under your feet - gives you quite a start when you aren't expecting it
One more for fun - Grizzly at Brooks River, Katmai Lake. I was able to spend three days at Agulawak Lodge about 7 years back - talk about WOW! what a place.
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I made my one links panhards mount the same front and rear. Captain Slow is right. It has to match the front tie rod or it would jack the front up and down when steering. Hyrdaulic steering means it doesnt matter but ram-assist still needs to match :-)
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Are beadlocks legal in the UK?
Another option is bead sealant on the rim - I've run much lower than 10, a lot, without beadlocks or bead sealant.
Poor man's beadlock is putting in screws - either right into the rubber like drag racers do - no my favorite - or running through the rim just inside the bead, to keep it in place. There's a long thread on this on Pirate4x4 somewhere.........I might still have a link....
bead sealant thread
http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/general-4x4-discussion/583584-tech-bead-sealer-****.html
ah! found the "diy beadlock" thread - screws
http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/general-4x4-discussion/340906-diy-beadlocks.html
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in 2002 I got to work on a project on a fiber optic system that is along the Alaska Pipeline - a 4 foot diameter steel pipe that goes from the top of Alaska in Prudhoe Bay. It was a long bit of work - our crew put 10,000 miles on each of 6 Ford Excursions over a 3 month period - 7 days a week - 12 to sometimes 20-plus hours a day. I had purchased an Olympus UZ-2100 digital camera as I was heading out - I took over 2000 pictures - with a modern camera I would have taken a lot more - memory cards were pretty limited back then.
(Mile 0, at Pump Station 1)
- The Pipeline is about 800 miles of "Middle of Nowhere" - you haven't been "Nowhere" till you've been this spot:
( about halfway from Atigun Pass to Prudhoe Bay - about a 100 miles of fllllaaaaaat flaaaaatt flat flaaaattt land.............
Somewhere in the middle of the state......................
Pump Station 4 - north of Atigun Pass
Lynx....I forget where
Steeep hill to access a Remote Gate Valve - where we have fiber optic nodes.
Ptarmigan (the state bird, and tasty
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Remote Gate Valve mechanism
The RGV hut where the huge battery rack and the Fiber Optics (and old radio gear, etc) are located:
Somewhere in Atigun Pass, Brooks Range
Mountains near Valdez (mis-spoken by local Alaskans as "Val-Deeeez"
and we like it that way, lol )
Helicopter view, just north of Valdez
Valdez harbor - it snows a LOT there.
That enough for now ?
I have more lol -
the UK is high up on MY list of return trips! The wife is now in love with Italy as of this past summer however, lol . It's been about 15 years since I took my camping/motorcycle trip that included England/Wales and bit of Scotland - I want to go again.
I think it would be worth the risk at 200 quid
or so to get a good TDI-engineered manually operated injection pump that "should" work for me. It would at least be a good rebuildable core - which I don't have now anyway. Keep in mind that it won't be running in a daily commuter so a hundred hours might last me a couple years or more.More teasers:
Short video - Floating on Wasilla Lake, with Pioneer Peak (6398ft) visible over the trees. The water is so smooth it looks "fake" .
http://s85.photobucket.com/user/deepmud/media/random%20junk/20141014_185241.mp4.html
I sold these old tracks off last week - seems the musher who bought them will be training his dogs from the comfort of his Jeep
More from hunting - my friend Stephen scoping for caribou.
Bear print
Deep interior Alaska, deep in winter.
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hunting Caribou, Denali Highway, fall 2014
Cheers!
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way down southeast, in Petersburg - I'm a fiber guy, we have undersea fiber through here so I got in a work trip
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My view out the window at work
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There is a guy name Giles in Canada - he's the man for building a VW Bosch pump to TDI-M specs - nobody who buys one complains about how it runs - little non-turbo 1.6 Rabbit owners gush about power and economy gains (both! really!) - but it would be in the area of 1200 to 1500 U.S. (Plus shipping, lol - oh, and this is if I provide a 1.9 AAZ pump and a 1.9 TDI pump to build a hybrid from the two ) - while a LR 200TDI pump, is built for TDI-M and has the performance I'm looking for (120hp-ish hp @ 4000-ish rpm) and even with obscene shipping it's less than 500 U.S.
pics? sure
I play on the local lakes in my kayak or on my inflatable stand up paddle board, or I have some good ones from hunting caribou...somewhere...
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I haven't driven it in a year
I wasn't happy with the power - it's like I have a non-turbo diesel - I think my CZ motor with "TDI-M Pump" is really just a pump from a VW 1.9td Non-TDI motor - which isn't up to the task of fueling the TDI motor) - and I made it worse, lol . I went looking for a 300TDI Landy injection pump - found one on Ebay UK
Shipping is 50% as much as the pump! Wonder if you guys know if there is a less spendy way I might get this
Could I Paypal someone over there to buy it for me (seller says free shipping in UK) who could ship it to me via some slower, cheapah' method.Erik
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Lurk mode off:
I've been very tempted to try Evans - and I still might. The deal isn't that it will run your engine cooler - it's that it can run hotter and yet not have hot spots, where the normal coolant might vaporize in layer of superheated steam. Once a spot like this starts, it tends to run away, getting hotter and hotter, as steam is as NOT GOOD as a coolant as water IS GOOD.
The theory, at least for me, would be that my VW Turbo Direct Injection diesel would be over-tuned, running high boost/high load above and beyond design limits, and I'd rather run high-temp evenly distributed than certain sections being treated to run-away thermal overload. My theory would be that a the head will be less likely to warp at 300F with Evans than it will with normal coolant at 275 - because there would be some spots in both situations that are being pushed to 3-350 - and Evans will stay as a fluid to nearly 400F.
That being said - it might not be the way to go for someone running normal to high loads on a standard configuration. I have heard it will help at high altitude - coolant boiling point being much effected by pressure - but again, you'll likely run hotter than you would with water, possibly even with a bigger radiator you might still run hotter, since Evans cannot remove heat from the motor as well as normal water/anti-freeze will.
your mileage may vary - and I haven't actually DONE this so it's still just a guy behind a keyboard here, not the voice of wisdom....
And...hello from Alaska again
Darn it's cold here and no snow to speak of yet......so weird..... -
All true
my new favorite Alaska fact - Alaska is 2.5 times the size of Texas - except when the tide is out . Then it's 3 times the size of Texas.That Rover buggy isn't road legal, even here
- we also have insurance required by law - but I think it was like 20 years ago that was enacted. I suppose there could be some percentage of uninsured drivers driving around. We never had a MOT, and it shows When I was a teenager, I drove a totally rusted out 1975 Toyota pickup with one fender held on with some coat hanger wire, and no muffler, bad brakes, blown shocks. Luckily the newer old cars tend to stay together better.My rig actually could, maybe, if you stand back and squint, be made to be "legal" again. However. I would need smaller tires, say 35-38(to help get the frame down to 22" or so - state law is based on the GVW of the vehicle, and the Zuk is in the lowest category - but I'd be betting they don't spot my 2" sub-frame welded on the bottom of the stock frame) and some lights and mudflaps out back. But I might be pulled over a lot, depending on the officer's mood - or it might look soooo weird they wouldn't know what it started out as, and not realize it shouldn't be so tall and oversize. If I had started with say, a Toyota pickup, and kept the frame below 24" from the ground, and the tires covered, it would pass just fine with as much as 40 or 44" tires. Kind of like Iceland, but without careful engineering
. Funny thing is my Suzuki is actually very stable as it currently sits, with very little body-roll in off-camber driving, and the brakes are effective in spite of the monster tires. 
Still being crazy, from last summer. I actually got stopped by this obstacle - too long of a wheelbase. Usually I just idle over the stuff they put up as obstacles.....
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thanks. It's a critter built for a specific task in a specific environment - it would do well in most of the Taiga, here in Alaska or Russia or Canada.
Waay down on power - I'm going to have to learn the insides of the Bosch pump
No comments on the rover moose-buggy thingy?.....I thought you (the lot of you
)would be horrified But then maybe it's like cutting up the suburban that donated the chassis - no big deal since there are lots of them over there. -
whoops sorry about the massive pic. fixed.
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you guys ready for winter? We've had our first snow.
Land Rover Content - but oh, the horror....
http://anchorage.craigslist.org/rvs/3339040056.html
I've modded the "camper". Ready for a real adventure this winter. All the way to the glacier for sure.
or you can spend 2 weeks in the Homer/Kenai/Seward area - it's all beautiful country, I'll brainstorm some ideas with the wife this evening 
I wasn't happy with the power - it's like I have a non-turbo diesel - I think my CZ motor with "TDI-M Pump" is really just a pump from a VW 1.9td Non-TDI motor - which isn't up to the task of fueling the TDI motor) - and I made it worse, lol . 
Deepmud in Alaska - update/trip report/howdy again
in International Forum
Posted
ugh...computer crashed before my post got up......in the meantime, while I rebuild my long-winded post...
....some more pics - I work on the 11th floor of a office building in Anchorage, Ak - some cool views yesterday morning....if you look close you can see the Fata Morgana stretching some the mountains.....these are cropped/digitally zoomed photos 'cause it's pretty far off 
Fata Morgana and Mt. Foraker
Mt. McKinley - or Denali
View to the east - the Alaska Range - lots closer than Denali - these would be foothills around Denali. Funny - you often can't see much of Denali when you go there.
Too many big mountains when you get close.