Hey folks,
I'm taking a trip from northeast brazil (Pipa Beach) down to Argentina and then up the panamerican highway to Portland Oregon. I've bought Merv ( http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/members/28355-mervifwdc ) and Sarah's Moglander unimog U1300L truck.
They had a thread here: http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/83934-Moglanders-Travels-So-this-is-South-America and of course posted at moglander.com lots of info on their 2 year journey. The people are changing but the truck continues it's journey.
We've got some posts up on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elmoglander , Twitter https://twitter.com/elmoglander and I'll be setting up a website.
So far the adventure has mostly been the rather fustrating task of failing to take off. The moglander had a right rear hub which was leaking oil. We disassembled it several times trying to fix it, and perhaps the MB shop in Natal fixed it. Perhaps not. I started out picking up the truck around June 1st, and Merv gave me an intense 2 week course in unimog maintenance. Unfortunately the hub kept being a persistent problem and we never made it more than 50km from Pipa beach. The month i'd planned for taking the truck down to Uruguay or Argentina didn't proof to be enough and the truck is still parked about 10 meters from where i bought it.
I'm pretty hopeful that it'll go on a great journey still, we've got a fully rebuilt hub from Atkinson Vos in the UK and also a set of spares (big hub, wear ring, seals, bearings, etc... ) Hopefully this will mean that when hubs fail, we'll be able to fix them and keep going until we get more spare parts. We plan on getting set of fast axles, and replacing the rather worn tires. Hopefully that'll get us from 65kph to maybe even 80kph on a flat highway.
The traveling crew is myself, and my wife both late 30's software developers and our kids, 4 and 7. The kids both like riding in back, although it rocks back like a boat on rough seas. We had my sister join us for a while in brazil and hope to have other friends join us.
Our rough plan is to drive it from Brazil down to Uruguay in September, and then in December travel down to Patagonia, turning north and heading up the panamericana. My wife founded an NGO which works with government transparency, open data, and journalism in Latin America (http://datauy.org). We're looking at arranging workshops or other activities along the way to connect to people.
-evan
I'm taking a trip from northeast brazil (Pipa Beach) down to Argentina and then up the panamerican highway to Portland Oregon. I've bought Merv ( http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/members/28355-mervifwdc ) and Sarah's Moglander unimog U1300L truck.
They had a thread here: http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/83934-Moglanders-Travels-So-this-is-South-America and of course posted at moglander.com lots of info on their 2 year journey. The people are changing but the truck continues it's journey.
We've got some posts up on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elmoglander , Twitter https://twitter.com/elmoglander and I'll be setting up a website.
So far the adventure has mostly been the rather fustrating task of failing to take off. The moglander had a right rear hub which was leaking oil. We disassembled it several times trying to fix it, and perhaps the MB shop in Natal fixed it. Perhaps not. I started out picking up the truck around June 1st, and Merv gave me an intense 2 week course in unimog maintenance. Unfortunately the hub kept being a persistent problem and we never made it more than 50km from Pipa beach. The month i'd planned for taking the truck down to Uruguay or Argentina didn't proof to be enough and the truck is still parked about 10 meters from where i bought it.
I'm pretty hopeful that it'll go on a great journey still, we've got a fully rebuilt hub from Atkinson Vos in the UK and also a set of spares (big hub, wear ring, seals, bearings, etc... ) Hopefully this will mean that when hubs fail, we'll be able to fix them and keep going until we get more spare parts. We plan on getting set of fast axles, and replacing the rather worn tires. Hopefully that'll get us from 65kph to maybe even 80kph on a flat highway.
The traveling crew is myself, and my wife both late 30's software developers and our kids, 4 and 7. The kids both like riding in back, although it rocks back like a boat on rough seas. We had my sister join us for a while in brazil and hope to have other friends join us.
Our rough plan is to drive it from Brazil down to Uruguay in September, and then in December travel down to Patagonia, turning north and heading up the panamericana. My wife founded an NGO which works with government transparency, open data, and journalism in Latin America (http://datauy.org). We're looking at arranging workshops or other activities along the way to connect to people.
-evan