Using an Euro5 Diesel car for an worldtrip?

The discussion what is better for an Worldtrip is endless. An Petrol car can handle bad fuel much better than modern diesel cars. For many years also mercedes use only their petrol based cars on their Mercedes Experience Tours in Africa and South America.

But today they use also their Common-Rail diesel cars on their Mercedes Experience Tours 



Source: http://www.unep.org/transport/pcfv/

What happens? I think the experience of worldtravellers, the escort cars on the paris dakar has showed, that it is possible to use newer cars. And what it need to use these cars abroad.

It is a fact that modern diesel with Euro5 exhaust emission standard and an managed diesel particulate filter "DPF" can`t handle bad fuel, or the using of the engine in regions 2500m above sea level.

At the following i will show you samples where the people get stranded, but too what you have to do, that you can using modern diesel on worldtrips - without hassle.

There are many well documented samples, where the travellers had breakdowns because of this:

An VW Crafter with Euro5 had many trouble and some expensive repair bills in south america:
http://b-u-globetrotter.de/Crafter.htm

The pensioner caravan through mongolia (many different brands):
 Rentnerkarawane durch die Mongolei

Another VW based story from 2014 from south america:
http://peterundsandra.blog.de/2014/01/16/16-januar-17601441/

Here an Euro5 G-Class PUR Mercedes story, they start an africa roundtrip and had just reach eqypt as they had to remove the Euro5 stuff and to do an downgrade to Euro3 without DPF:
wegaufzeit

Mercedes Sprinter 316 CDI mit Euro5 had too trouble in South America:
http://www.sb-beutel.de/Argentinien-Kolumbien

These sample shows us, that you CAN NOT use an modern Euro5 car in South America, Asia or Africa.

When you study that samples in details you will see that it is possible to avoid these breakdowns. Mercedes has special parameters and upgrades for some of their diesel based cars, all other (also other brands) have to do an downgrade to Euro3/4 and to take out the DPF.

With the older Euro4 Standard the diesel particulate filter "DPF" was not managed, therefore you can use these without much preparation, you can replace the DPF with an pipe.

These samples of travellers shows us too, that you had to do additional filtering of the fuel, to avoid that water or dirt can reach the Injectors, because that will cause too breakdowns and expensive repair bills.



Fuel filtration and water separation helps the injectors

In most of these samples the people had ask the seller and manufacture of the cars before that trip, if they can use the car on their worldtrip without special preparation.

They had say "no problem".. Also if you contact Mercedes, VW and others directly, you will will hear "no problem". Here you can show them, that there is a problem. 

You have to find someone who has experience with that, what is not easy. Maybe you contact one of these travellers who had use your brand and contact them - they will have these contacts of professionals who was able to help them.

4x4 Recovery Goes Seriously Wrong - Part II

The first Part of the Video got much international attention and got above 1 million views. The Video ends with one car stucking deep in the mud, the other one lay on its side. Are both cars are lost? Just one?

Here is part I of the Video: Part 1

I`m shure i`m not the only one who want to see the second part of the video. Since some days it is online:

Here is the link to other Videos: http://www.all4adventure.com/

This Video is a good reminder, that we do dangerous things outside there! What we do can go wrong and often we dont just risk our cars. So take care...

Sleeping inside of the car, Overlanding with comfort

In this article I want to highlight only the possibility to sleep in the SUV, because a bigger focus is beyond the scope of a single article.  There are so many options that it is just to much to write about: there are still the other vehicle formats, vans, pickups, trucks, sleeping in a roof tent, folding roofs, pop-up roofs, caravan fittings, Trailer, simple tents, which vehicle choice as such, and much more...

Even with the off-road-vehicle choice you will define a lot about the available space.

In most makes of the internal height is not sufficient to be able to sit comfortably at a table inside, but there is always a way to at least plenty of storage space and a nice deck area to create a kind of minimal expansion sleeping area. Maybe these samples and links helps you to find a good solution for yourself.

 

Always try to see the advantages and disadvantages of any setup. You have to sort out some of these solutions because there are just too many.

 

Depending on the vehicle length and the square of the front seats must be taken in fitting, ie, the seats must be folded to the front / rear to get a decent sleep platform.

Overlanding on Budget

What options one has, if the budget is very tight? Of course you can put in a tent and a small stove in any vehicle - and start traveling. If you feel comfortable with that - start like that! Nothing is better than a setup where you can change the car without to thinking about!

But there are also vehicles arround who have a good mgp rate, have four-wheel - and are more capable than most would suspect. Who offer a good ride comfort also on bad tracks.

One of the biggest cost of traveling with the vehicle is the fuel consumption. Here, of course  a diesel would be able to change some of the consumption statistics, right?

In the Blog of  Kristian Saile i found wonderful pictures, let me search deeper for people who did overlanding with that kind of cars.. At the Subaru Outback community i found more expo builds and people who travel this way.

For shure here are also guys who start to mod their cars. Some armor, Frontbar, Winch, gear reduction and so on. But i think you leave the idea of using a small budget behind pretty fast this way.

The top 7 overland equipment and gear

What are the 7 most important equipment or gear for an extended overland travel? The answer is not that easy, you have to ask yourself what equipment stuff had been a show-stopper. Or which gear you had really miss if it stop working, because of the comfort it brings with.

These list is extremely individual. It depends on the Area you plan to travel, the weather you will meet, the way how your camp looks like (Ground tent, Rooftop-Tent, Popup Roof, or sleeping inside).

However your overland setup looks like, i guess it may be helpful to see what was important for us, if you don't had that much overland experience. Here is our list in descending order:

Comfortable Sleep

During extended traveling it is important to sleep comfortable, to wake up without any pain in the back. A good mattress, a good bed is important.
You have to test your setup before, or you will end more often in Hotels than calculated.

Camping Gear

You use it daily, you setup and pack you camp often - because of this it is an very important gear.
It had much to do with the amount of comfort you had on the way. It is important that it is lightweight and that it don't use much space when packaged.
The handling has to be easy too, watch space and weight before the brand..

Windows Sox - Mosquito Protection for the Car

If you sleep inside of the car this is very important. It let you open your windows wide, without that it is viewable from outside.

The air can circulate and the Mosquito and other animals will stay outside. Additional it dim`s the outside light a bit more, let others not view inside.

Toyota Diagnostic Software & ODB2 Dongle

For all Toyota Drivers i detect something who might interest you. In Ebay and other platforms, a dongle is available, which provides you the access to the ODB2 interface with USB.

I know today are many dongles available who allows you to connect with wifi or bluetooht, alows to read and reset errors.

The trick is that the MINI VCI dongle is compatible with the Techstream software from Toyota, which is kindly also included.

Now I do not know if this is requested by Toyota so, but for us travelers, it is good if we are able to adjust the settings of the vehicles when we are away on a world trip or abroad.

The Dongle-Driver is compatible to WindowsXP (32 and 64 bit). I had test it with a virtual WindowsXP on my Macbook, running with Paralells.

It works quite well. Here is a Video who shows you the handling of the Software and Dongle:

You can buy the Dongle at sample at Ebay, if you search for "MiniVci" you will find many other sellers on Amazon and so on. I have ordered on Ebay with the link above. The Package had used 8 Days from China.

Like always when you purchase in Ebay you should use Paypal because you get your money back there, if something goes wrong.

Be careful with using this Software, you can also kill something when you set stuff you dont know about.. The use of the Software is pretty easy, but there are many settings we "normal users" have no idea about. But disable the seat belt reminders on the passenger side and other stuff - easy to do.

Bing vs Google vs OVI - satellite view comparison

Since there are Apps like MotionX on the iPad who allows us to add Custom Tile Server for Downloading, it is time to compare the quality of the different Providers like Google, Bing and Here.com

On the iPad it is MotionX GPS and several and other Apps who are able to download satellite images for offline usage, under Android there are Locus Pro and AlpineQuest GPS.

Want to say that we are able now to use offline Satellite Images. But wich provider has the best quality of images? This kind of Navigation is helpful abroad, where you don't have any road gps coverage. Because of this i had select an area in Cameroon in africa as comparison spot.

At first i start with Bing Satellite-Hybrid view, what means with road overlay. Here i could zoom more tham showed here, it allows me to detect Villages and too single Houses.



Bing Maps

As next i try Google. The resolutions is maxed out here - no chance to see single houses.



Google Maps