Well this is a short and sweet update! Just in case you thought we’d frozen into the ice of a Canadian winter, you’ll no doubt be relieved to know that we’ve been enjoying the snow, skiing our socks off for a full season in Big White, British Columbia and we’ve recently acquired a cool new Starlink satellite internet gadget for Cuthbert…
Way back on the Bolivian Altiplano at around 4,000m asl, we had an overnight low of -18°C on our thermometer. Oh, how naïve we were to think that was cold! Here in the Yukon for our corona virus stay-cation, we’ve had temperatures as low as -31°C (without the windchill!). Now that’s nippy. We’re sure there are many out there with far more experience of seriously cold weather overlanding than us. But this real cold has been a new thing for us. By lucky happenstance, we did give cold-weather stuff some consideration when we ordered Cuthbert, so we’re not totally unprepared.
The key to successful overlanding… meticulous planning? Or just getting lucky? Maybe a bit of both. The real answer is ‘flexibility’. You never know what’s around the corner. Maybe a happy-thing, maybe a snagette, but you’re onto a loser if you can’t flex to deal with it. One sunny day in Belize, we suffered a badly cracked windscreen. We knew instantly that we had a bit more than a snagette on our hands. Here… is a ‘bad news – good news – bad news’ story of overlanding flexibility.
We recently received a new set of Michelin XZL tyres for Cuthbert which should hopefully see us overlanding all the way through North America (if we ever get up to USA and Canada that is 😊) We’re still chilling-out in Oaxaca, Mexico waiting for a new windscreen. Marcus decided to waste a bit of time doing a video to answer the many questions he gets about the tyres and the pressure settings. If you’re curious about tyre-stuff, grab some pop-corn and enjoy!
Click here for the rest of our tyre info.
Continue readingLook, look, looook……. a new map of all our favourite bits of South America! Zoom in, scroll around, click on the links! If you’re itching to find out how we came to have such a fab new South America highlights map on our website, and how Cuthbert came to have such beautiful new brakes… read on below 🙂 Continue reading
After a year of operating Cuthbert in Africa we can say (at the risk of inflating his ego 🙂 ) that he really is a great truck and has exceeded our expectations in many respects. But even with Cuthbert’s level of greatness there is always scope for a few ‘technical tweaks’ to add ‘the icing on the cake’. We are now preparing Cuthbert for his next expedition to South America in September. So what’s being done?
Brakes – installing an electro retarder. Like many other Iveco Daily 4×4 users we have spoken to, we have been disappointed with the brakes. The problems are not significant with general driving around flat and low-hilly areas where only minimal braking is required, but the weaknesses become apparent on descents of long, steep mountain roads. So far we have had a couple of ‘hold-your-breath’ moments (in Lichtenstein in the Alps and in Lesotho, Africa), and as we are heading to the Andes later this year, we though we had better get this sorted. If you know or care what an ‘electro-retarder’ is, click here to read more.
Extending the range – extra fuel tank. Cuthbert currently has a total fuel capacity of 240 litres and a range of around 1,600 km/1,000 miles. So far so good. But from our research we’ve discovered two potentially limiting factors in South and Central America: first, between Panama and Mexico there is only very high sulphur diesel available – not good with Cuthbert’s Euro 5 engine. Secondly, due to government bureaucracy, it can be difficult for foreigners to obtain fuel of any quality in Bolivia. With Cuthbert’s new additional fuel tank, he will have a total fuel capacity of 400 litres, giving a range of around 2,630 km/1,630 miles to get us through the ‘trouble spots’ without needing to refuel! Impressive, huh? Click here for the detail on how we squeezed the extra capacity into Cuthbert.
Cooling the fuel. It seems that under certain driving conditions, the diesel in Cuthbert’s tanks can get a bit too toasty. Even the least technical amongst us could hazard a guess that the words ‘over-heating‘ and ‘diesel‘ are an undesirable combination for a vehicle. Click here for the solution sported by the ‘new, improved’ Cuthbert.
Phew! And as if all this isn’t enough excitement… Cuthbert is also sporting a new Multi-voltage Battery Charger (click here for more info) and a Gearbox temperature monitor (click here for a clue as to why…).
Coping with tropical rainy seasons (update April 2018): After finishing South America and heading into our second serious tropical rainy season, we looked back to our 4 months in the Amazon last year and realised that we could have perhaps prepared better for life in Cuthbert in extreme heat, humidty and tropical rainy seasons. Click here for how we upgraded our systems with a new super-roof-fan and a lithium leisure battery upgrade to cope with the impeding rainy season of Central America in 2018.
See Modifications and Repairs for a list of all Cuthbert’s other upgrades that we have fitted.
Readers of the Truck and Kit section of our website will have seen that we carried out some extensive research before choosing our vehicle and embarking on our Africa trip. One of the books that we found most informative and helpful, and which we highly commend to anyone planning overland travel in any kind of vehicle, is Tom Sheppard’s VDEG (‘Vehicle Dependent Expedition Guide’), published by Desert Winds.
Tom is one of the leading explorers and over-landing legends of our time and has accumulated more than 100,000 desert and over-landing miles over the years. His travels such as leading the first coast-to-coast crossing of the Sahara (Atlantic to the Red Sea – for which he gained a Royal Geographical Society award) and his outstanding books on his extensive explorations of Algeria, have both informed us and helped to inspire us for our far less intrepid travels around Africa and beyond.
We are delighted and honoured that Tom has chosen to feature Cuthbert in the new 4th Edition of his VDEG book, together with some extracts from the technical sections of our ‘Tucks’ Truck’ website.
Full details of Tom’s VDEG 4th Edition can be found at: http://www.desertwinds.co.uk/expedition_guide.html