Cross-country desert trucks
April 17, 2011 Leave a comment
We’ve been slow finishing up the next post in the series describing last September’s trip to Tunisia. We’re sorry about that, but we’ll be picking up where we left off over the next few weeks.
In the meantime, as you can see we’ve been doing a little spring cleaning. Check back soon for updates.
February 25, 2011 Leave a comment
This is the third post in a series describing our voyage to Tunisia in September 2010.
We woke early in the morning on Saturday to have time to eat breakfast before heading to the ferry. We didn’t have far to go, but we wanted to arrive early in case the boarding area was crowded. The 45-minute drive stretched into an hour or more when we took a wrong turn after exiting the Autoroute and had to backtrack several kilometers.
We followed the Ferry access road to the first entrance where we were told by the attendant that the truck was too big to follow the other cars and we would have to take a separate service road. This was unfortunate since the road he indicated was not well marked. We started off, but after a few minutes it became very clear that we were not headed in the right direction. We had probably missed a poorly marked turn, if it had been marked at all.
February 11, 2011 Leave a comment
We also got something for the Tatra fans last weekend: we made a short recording of the wicked 19-liter V12 engine. Now that’s something to get revved up about (1400 revs to be exact).
February 9, 2011 Leave a comment
When we arrived back at the workshop after making the video of the Gearbox ECU Override Unit, we had the misfortune of breaking the engine stop cable. Those of you who don’t have an TGB30 may not know that you don’t turn off the engine with the key, as you normally do with a car. Instead, you pull a lever that is connected to a cable to shut off the fuel supply to the engine.
So how do you stop the engine when the cable breaks? As you can see in the video, even though it’s less convenient than the cable, a broom handle does the job quite well!
February 6, 2011 1 Comment
Judging by the search terms leading to the blog, as well as the popularity of the post Diagnosing the Transmission Anomaly, many of you are interested in our experiences trouble-shooting the problems we had with the transmission before leaving for Tunisia.
This weekend, we had a chance to take the Scania (EM-1) out for a drive, and we filmed a short sequence demonstrating the switches we installed on the gearbox monitoring unit that enable us to manually force a gear change if the ECU fails to send a command to the gearbox. The switches are mounted in parallel to the ECU, so that we can engage a gear if the ECU fails to do so. However, if the ECU has engaged the gear, then the switch will have no effect.
Since we first encountered the transmission problems only a few weeks before our departure to Tunisia, we did not have time to find a more comprehensive solution before the trip. This unit was designed to be an emergency override to make sure that we would not remain stuck in the desert in case of an ECU failure. Driving for an extended period of time while manually changing gears using the switches would not be easy, but in an emergency, it would be feasible.
We are still working on a more permanent solution and are investigating both repairing the ECU and designing a new micro-controller to replace it. We’ll post an update once we’ve made more progress.
January 29, 2011 3 Comments
During the last few days leading up to our trip to Tunisia we spent our evenings making final checks and preparations. A few days before departure we learned that due to unforeseen circumstances the assistance truck would not be making the trip, so we had to make some last minute rearrangements to carry all the necessary equipment and supplies securely in the truck bed.
Fully loaded truck bed
The bed is 2.5m long and 2.3m wide, but the auxiliary fuel tank, spare tire and refrigerator take up a significant amount of space. We had originally intended to place the refrigerator in the shelter, but it was too bulky to install there without significantly reducing the comfort of the sleeping arrangements. This limitation was not a problem according to our original plan. Even with three 25 liter cans for extra fluids (transmission fluid, engine coolant and oil for the axles), we had room for a quad that we had agreed to transport from France to the edge of the desert for one of the members of our group. There was just enough place in the bed to hold the quad and still have space to move around.
January 20, 2011 Leave a comment
We’re just back from Kopřivnice with the Tatra (Erg Machine RS). The maintenance and painting are finished, and we picked it up at the factory on Monday. It was a 15-hour drive back, but this time the heater was working, so it was not as brutal as when we drove there in November!
The Tatra 815 (Erg Machine RS) at the Tatra Factory in Kopřivnice
The engineers did a thorough job, and the truck is almost like new, especially with the completely new paint design. We were impressed with the attention to detail the truck received, which included changing the Clearance/Marker lights for a more aesthetic look. Read more of this post
January 18, 2011 2 Comments
As the 2011 Dakar Rally winds down after the closing ceremony on Sunday, this seems like a good time to share some of our experiences from our trip to The Grand Erg Oriental in Tunisia last September. It was our first voyage with the Erg Machine, and our first experience in the desert.
We were thoroughly delighted at having chosen Tunisia to make our first trip and are looking forward to returning as soon as it is possible to do so. We found the country’s arid beauty absolutely breathtaking, and with a few exceptions, the people we met were friendly and helpful. We did not spend much time in any of the populated areas, but we noted a stark contrast between the atmosphere in the few towns and villages we visited and the camps and oases of the southern desert regions.
The caravan on the road between Matamata and Ksar Ghilane
December 24, 2010 Leave a comment
It’s busy here for the holidays, and things always seem to take more time than you think they will. We’ll be taking some time off before getting back to work in January to prepare the Erg Machine for another trip to the Sahara! If all goes well, we’re planning to go back in April, but we have a little maintenance to perform in addition to finishing the new microcontroller for the transmission.
We got some good news from the Tatra Factory just in time for Christmas: they’ve completed maintenance on the EM-2, and everything has been put back together! We’ll be going to the Czech Republic in a few weeks to pick it up once they’ve finished repainting it. We’re also putting together a series of posts describing the trip to Tunisia last September.
In the meantime, here’s a picture of the EM-1 and the EM-2 side-by-side in our workshop hangar not long before we took the EM-2 to Kopřivnice. The perspective is a little misleading, the dimensions of both trucks are almost identical.
Wishing everyone a happy holiday!
December 13, 2010 7 Comments
We spent some time this weekend making a micro-controller test platform to develop a new control unit for the EM-1 (Erg Machine 1) transmission. We’ll be reporting on that once we’ve made more progress, but now seems like a good time to describe our diagnosis of the gearbox error and the steps we took to make sure we didn’t have any problems because of the transmission while in Tunisia.
During the road test we experienced an intermittent problem with the transmission; from time to time when accelerating or decelerating the gear would not engage.
One of the nice things about the Scania SBA 111 is its automatic transmission. This makes it a good vehicle for a first big truck experience, since the driver can concentrate on driving and doesn’t have to worry about shifting the gears. It’s also great for dunes (as we learned), since there’s no worry about losing momentum when shifting gears. However, the downside is that the automatic transmission adds complexity to the maintenance and increases the number of potential failures. Read more of this post
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