M109A4 Sub-Zero Oil Field

[DHennon]

My worth. I admire your sense of adventure and wish you all the best. I skimmed over the other posts and a few additional items as food for thought.......
Heated socks!
Tire chains,
CB radio,
Hand head radio,
Weather radio.
Would nitrogen in the tires be a consideration even with CTIS?
Noise cancelling earphones, like those used by shooters and hunters.
2000 miles in a deuce without hearing protection= a set of beltone hearing aids!
A wireless laptop or smartphone.
Is your truck equipped with a winch? (a nice option)
Tow bar and a chain.
A really, really big gun if you are in bear country!

I am sure there is much more you could add to your list, but money and space limit the length and quanity of the items on the list.

Good Luck and remember,

 

[FireFighterHill]

I like the boat heater. With the Water Loop you could use it to heat a radiant floor setup and heat the engine coolant system, or provide hot water for a shower.

 

[plym49]

HOMASOTE

A really great product. I did not know about its insulating properties. There's a video of how it is made.

I put it under the sheet rock on all the exterior walls and ceilings of my house. Sheet rock over that. Added a good bit of R value (was already maxed out in the stud bays) and made the house tighter and quieter. The incremental cost was negligible.

 

[jmoneysmithmas]

I like the boat heater. With the Water Loop you could use it to heat a radiant floor setup and heat the engine coolant system, or provide hot water for a shower.

THAT is a great idea... particularly the radiant floor (i don't shower much. haha).

 

[davey8943]

Epic thread!

And it will only get better!

I noticed your travel route, and I am a few miles south of Indianapolis... I will shoot you a PM with my cell number just in case anything happens close to Indy.

Good Luck and God Bless!

Dave

 

[covert]

as a back up engine heater i use a 20# propane tank with a weedburner, and a 6" piece of round duct with a 90 on the end. Just slide the duct under the oil pan, lay the weedburner flame into the duct and the heat blows right on the oil pan. get one more and heat the batts. too

 

[Welder Sam]

the box windows and other little panels on mine dont seal for nothing! lots of small openings for big big drafts

 

[roady]

UPDATE

Jason and his copilot made it from PA to my place in MD and picked up the spare tires and just got on the road towards Montana. Looks like he has everything lined up and is well prepared. Sent him off with some homemade Christmas cookies to keep them energized overnight.

He forgot his GPS tracker so you wont be able to access his progress. He will be headed across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and then towards Hagerstown MD.

 

[Danger Ranger]

Keep us updated if you can then. Or if he doesn't. Good luck Jason!

 

[Maverick1701]

glad to hear his trip is going well so far!

I hope he takes lots of pics

 

[srodocker]

subscribed!

 

[T815-8x8]

I am Rig Mover up here and I will be using Tatra 6x6 as heavy hauler, I been working up here for several years.
Wabesto or Espar coolant heater, so it will start and be warm + reduce engine wear.
Lizard Skin coating, thermal / acoustic coating inside cab, check out www.heco.com for acoustic materials for HD vehicles
Alcohol evap' sniffer for air system

I'll read other posts and see if anything important has been left out

 

[salvorone@aol.com]

looks like you recieved some good advice , including the bend over part , great adventure ,have fun , now this is the stuff good memories are made of ! i think the most important part is the steel soldiers web address , and dont forget the camera for our less adventurous members

 

[shotgunner]

Onwards & Upwards

I'm the copilot dropping you all an update. We're just about to Indiana fightin rain / sleet / snow. "Gladys" is running good, we've been making steady progress at about 46 MPH, covered about 700 miles so far.

Biggest nuisance has been a bad wiper motor. It cycles about 10 times before overheating and stopping, in the rain and sleet we've just got in the habit of manually triggering a wipe every minute or so and squinting through the blurry windshield the rest of the time. This seems to keep the motor cool and "on-demand" with the custom duty cycle.

Rain infiltration is minimal. We're sitting high and dry with just minor rain sneaking in at the bottom of the windshields and a bit at the bottom of the doors. With the heater on defrost on high and a few strategically placed paper towels we've kept the H2O at bay.

Biggest problem Gladys appears to have is an oil leak at the front of the motor. We noticed the front differential had a nice slick coat at our first fuel stop and climbed around in the engine compartment to identify a small oil pool on the cast iron guard under the harmonic dampener. There's a larger pool of oil accrued in the U-shaped crossmember just underneath the pulley and radiator. We checked her oil level and found it high on the dipstick by about 2 inches. 600 miles later we find it high by only 1/4". It has been hard to diagnose with the inclimate weather but we're carrying 8 quarts of 15W-40 and a gallon of Purple Power oil eater. When we get to dryer pastures we're gonna give her a douche and track the leak. We are thinking it is probably the front main seal but are hoping when we track it to find something simpler. If any of you out there have insight, we'd love it.

Smaller problem has been the tachometer starts dancing and stops working about half the time. There's no seemingly rhyme or reason to it but we've got a handle of what speeds are what RPM and guesstimate on sound and speed when the tach is "resting" until the next time Gladys bestowes upon us tach operability.

We have the auto tire fill system disabled to prevent it from providing random tire pressures. We're monitoring about 60 psi in the front and 45 psi in the rear. We've got a little wobbliness but definately drivable.

We've haulin a M101 trailer with the spare tires in it and driving a lot at night. We slept in the cab last night which was pretty cold but we had warm sleeping bags. These fancy air ride seats have really saved our a%ses and been great.

We want to really thank Roady for the help, hospitality, and cookies. We appreciate it and owe you one!

-Seth the "shotgunner"

 

[roady]

Good to hear from you guys on your progress. I hope someone will chime in soon to give you some suggestions about your oil leak and wiper motor. There should be somebody close to you in Steel Soldier network that may be able to lend a hand with some parts or knowledge of what you need to keep you moving forward.

I sorry to say but I dont have no experience when it comes to the A4 version of the Deuce.

Are the wipers electric or air operated? I have a air operated motor and a tach from my project truck you could use but I am a little far from you all now. You guys are certainly moving quicker than the mail so that option is out.

If the Cat is similar to the Multifuel make sure to check the oil within a minute of shutdown or at least at the same time every time.

You guys dont owe me nothing it was my pleasure to help you all out. If you really need any help be sure to start a new thread telling us where you are at and what is wrong. If you post it here it may not get read soon enough. You can always call me no matter what time it is and I can post it for you all.

 

[swbradley1]

Seth/Jason, I hope you guys are doing better today. You are probably well past me at this point. Yesterday was a crappy weather day in Ohio when you were coming through.

Good luck and keep an eye on the oil.

 

[BadMastard]

Glad to hear its going at least ok! Ok, try disconnecting the passenger side wiper, and see if it reduces the drag enough to keep it running. If you can, remove the rod inside the cab to it I case that's the sticky part. If that doesn't help, you're pretty much stuck with what you got, though maybe some rainx will get you through.

Oil. Mine does that too. If you're lucky, it's just the oil pan, but what I noticed on mine is that it only happens when on hills, typically downhill. Leads me to think it's oil level in something. If it only loses a bit, and your pressure is good, likely you are ok for now. Keep an eye on it.

Oh, I wish I had air ride seats!

 

[alohajeff]

Screw the wipers... get some rain-x and get to rubbing. Did that on the XJ a number of times. Works better than you might expect.

Aloha

 

[jmoneysmithmas]

Travel Update: We're in Columbia, MO. We've been watching the oil, and it seems to be leaking more and more. We decided to stop, used some super purple de-greaser, and washed out our engine compartment. We picked up some engine oil tracer and a blacklight from NAPA and dumped the tracer into the oil supply. We also decided to change the Haldex air dryer (had a new kit with me) here as well, since i've been seeing a lot of water when blowing my tanks. I'm writing this now, as we sit in a pizza joint waiting for dark, to help us track the leak with the small blacklight.

We rain-x'd the windows a couple days ago; which helped a lot, and we were considering removing the passenger wiper blade too. Thanks for all the suggestions and advice everyone.

So... at this point, we're going to find the source of our oil leak... and take it from there. If we can't find the source, or determine its too big of a fix for road-side repairs, we'll stock up on oil and continue westward. We're losing about a quart every 150 miles at this point.

Thanks again... we'll try to get some photos (and my co-pilot is making a video) soon.

 

[Bob H]