It seems like the entirety of a century has passed since the last update, the world being a very different place now. I wont be petty and go into the doubling of energy prices but for the geopolitical landscape at least looking more and more hostile in Europe for sure needs a mention, especially for those of us with land borders with the Putler.
Anyway, moving on to more pleasant subjects, we have cheated a bit with truck progress and find ourselves skiing and snowboarding as much as possible, I have however found the time to reassemble the Honda motorcycle we bought with all the "upgrades", just waiting on the plastics coming back from paint to match the truck ?to finish that one (not really, I have a whole bunch of other upgrades on the list).
(Thea and Billie ? getting after things in Sogndal), (LED tail lights/tail tidy, Rally Raid rear rack, new bars etc, etc)
On that note, the RUB / -MC carrier design is almost ready for fabrication, hats off to AV for putting up with my incessant changes and adjustments to the design which is as old as the truck project itself. Basically I wanted a design that met the E11 RUB bar requirements (not really required in the 1991 era), could tow upto 3500kgs, upwardly mobile for off-road and can carry upto a 200kg motorcycle in raised positon. Anything fixed to the box or chassis would have been illegal here in Norway unless I reduced the size of the habitat considerably. Not an option really for us. Still more work to go, it will be electrically hydraulically operated with manual backup option. 3 x 2" American style hitch receivers installed, more on that later.
I spent today adjusting the charging profile and making sure everything was OK with the SOC and canbus communications between the batteries and the CerboGX, in short, it isn't and I need to manufacture some custom RJ45 cables to get the GND position in the right place, oww well. This is why we have samples! I will correct that with the next batch!
The truck is Gertrude again, we just kept calling her that so it felt right. If you aint already please do follow our IG account:
https://www.instagram.com/expedition_truck_gertrude/
Here she is halfway through paint, she is back from chassis paint next week, the cab is done! Can anyone guess the colour we choose?