Last thursday, the phone rang in the workshop, and it got handed to me: "They want to speak to the guy with the truck".
Asked wheter I felt like joining a weekend of offroading in Germany... departure within the next 12 hours....
With the thought in mind that it's a 400mile roundtrip to another country, but I've never driven the truck more than 80miles around the area so far.... well... sure, why not!
Quickly called a mate to be co-pilot, put the bows and tarp on, get some basic supplies and clean clothes, a lot of extra engine oil, 2 full tanks of diesel, a short night of shuteye, and go!
We already missed the main convoy, they left earlier that morning, so we were driving alone. I rolled her onto the highway, pointed the fuzzy dice in the direction of Germany, and put the hand-throttle somewhere around a steady 50mph. Apart from a little traffic jam, and ofcourse the insane amount of rubbernecking, the trip was perfectly uneventful, and to everyone's amazement we rolled into the german military base without incidents.
Spent the entire saturday driving around the massive offroad park. Every now and then some people would come to find me telling "we found a mudhole/hill/obstacle you will never pass!", I would follow them, drive through it no problem, and drive off again
It's completely rediculous what these trucks will go through.
At one point, in the middle of a very bumpy mudhole, I suddenly lost all power to the wheels. This got a cheer from all the spectators, believing I was either stuck or broken down. A quick system check in the cab quickly reveiled my water-bottle had dropped onto the neutral-switch on the dashboard
So with literally a flick of the switch, I got the truck going again and drove out no problems, again
Sunday morning we would do another quick drive around the premises, and then head off for home. Almost immediately I was challenged by an insane set of muddy hills and holes, which, seeing as there were spectators, we just had to drive through. All went fine till all the tire tread filled up with mud, and we lost traction
I need new tires, really. Took me 5 minutes and a lot of steering, but even that we managed to drive out of, be it with mud almost up to the windscreen. The completely amazed look on all the spectator's faces made the weekend complete 
Spent well over 2 hours getting the truck cleaned after that, had to remove the mud from the air filters, battery compartment, steering compartment, etcetera... then steered onto the road again, and rolled back home. Murphy was not to be found
A lot of this trip was filmed and photographed, but currently I only have my own material. The videos need to be editted, but theres at least 3 hours of footage. Needless to say, the weekend was completely perfect. The weather was awesome, and we met a lot of good people on the way.
Asked wheter I felt like joining a weekend of offroading in Germany... departure within the next 12 hours....
With the thought in mind that it's a 400mile roundtrip to another country, but I've never driven the truck more than 80miles around the area so far.... well... sure, why not!
Quickly called a mate to be co-pilot, put the bows and tarp on, get some basic supplies and clean clothes, a lot of extra engine oil, 2 full tanks of diesel, a short night of shuteye, and go!
We already missed the main convoy, they left earlier that morning, so we were driving alone. I rolled her onto the highway, pointed the fuzzy dice in the direction of Germany, and put the hand-throttle somewhere around a steady 50mph. Apart from a little traffic jam, and ofcourse the insane amount of rubbernecking, the trip was perfectly uneventful, and to everyone's amazement we rolled into the german military base without incidents.
Spent the entire saturday driving around the massive offroad park. Every now and then some people would come to find me telling "we found a mudhole/hill/obstacle you will never pass!", I would follow them, drive through it no problem, and drive off again
It's completely rediculous what these trucks will go through.At one point, in the middle of a very bumpy mudhole, I suddenly lost all power to the wheels. This got a cheer from all the spectators, believing I was either stuck or broken down. A quick system check in the cab quickly reveiled my water-bottle had dropped onto the neutral-switch on the dashboard
So with literally a flick of the switch, I got the truck going again and drove out no problems, again Sunday morning we would do another quick drive around the premises, and then head off for home. Almost immediately I was challenged by an insane set of muddy hills and holes, which, seeing as there were spectators, we just had to drive through. All went fine till all the tire tread filled up with mud, and we lost traction
I need new tires, really. Took me 5 minutes and a lot of steering, but even that we managed to drive out of, be it with mud almost up to the windscreen. The completely amazed look on all the spectator's faces made the weekend complete Spent well over 2 hours getting the truck cleaned after that, had to remove the mud from the air filters, battery compartment, steering compartment, etcetera... then steered onto the road again, and rolled back home. Murphy was not to be found
A lot of this trip was filmed and photographed, but currently I only have my own material. The videos need to be editted, but theres at least 3 hours of footage. Needless to say, the weekend was completely perfect. The weather was awesome, and we met a lot of good people on the way.
now what.
