This time, I’m just back from the 2nd Overland Expo. What a great event! Even though I was involved in the 1st Expo and was asked at that event to present and do some driver training this year (by Graham Jackson of Overland Training), it wasn’t until I rolled into the event that I fully understood the scale. It eclipsed last years event in many ways, many more vendors, better training facilities, much better rooms for AV presentations, a knockout team of staff, instructors and presenters and finally a fantastic audience of folks who love to travel. I couldn’t believe how many great vehicles were parked in the car park.

It’s not really about the vehicles though. I know a great many of us enjoy building them, tinkering with them and driving them, but really they are just another companion on the journey. A great many of the vendors realize this (and they realize we spoil them), and are on-hand to help us do this. My personal favorite piece of vehicle kit was the Kaiser / Nekarth Differential Locker, a much simpler and more elegant approach to locking differentials than the Detroit and ARB solutions. I saw this demo at the Expeditioneers booth.

The Expo is not just about the vehicles (and they ranged from pedal-bikes, through motorbikes, regular 4×4 vehicles to huge ex-military and custom built behemoths) and their parts and accessories. Other vendors offered medical equipment and training (and Remote Medical International staged some great demos), guiding services (notably No Limit Expeditions offering adventures in Belize and the rest of Central America and Safari Drive based in various African locations), clothing (including one of my favorites, Mountain Khakis – recommended!), tents (roof-top and otherwise), all sorts of camping/expedition gear (including Bug Out Bagz), the list is long and distinguished.

Seminars and presentations are a key part of the Expo, and if you just attend one or two of them you would realize that “overlanding” isn’t just 4×4 driving – and very different from what usually pops into peoples minds when the outdoors and 4×4 drivers meet… I talked about staying online and in touch while on an international overland trip, and driving through the Sahara in a VW Golf! Other presentations and panels discussed medical responses, overlanding with dogs, solo overlanding, cooking demos (very popular I understand), and some great overland movies courtesy of Austin Vince and the Adventure Travel Film Festival.

Groups and clubs are also prominent at the Expo. It’s always great to see the Disabled Explorers and their WAVE Sportsmobile, really giving folks the opportunity to get out and explore who normally may not have the chance to. I love the ideas behind both the Carbon Neutral Expedition and the Vanishing America Project (Overland Society’s Expedition Flag ambassador for 2009), and again, the Muskoka Foundation is making a difference around the world.

My favorite part is the opportunity to see old friends and meet new ones. One moment sticks in my mind, during a basic vehicle overview session I was one of the instructors. After the other instructors had said their piece, I was my turn to add something. Trouble was, three of the instructors were Tom Collins, Duncan Barbour and Jim West, 3 Camel Trophy luminaries, and a hard act to follow! Having the opportunity to talk to people like this is wonderful – and the chance is there for everyone who attends, especially at the ever-popular happy hours each evening! I particularly enjoy spreading the word, or “preaching the gospel of travel”, as a friend once told me. I think retelling great stories and sharing experiences really gets people fired up for that first trip. Helping them over the “well, it’s a dream I’ve always had, but I just can’t get the time off work” is usually the first part, and not that difficult in the environment the Expo creates.

Once people have traveled off the beaten track they come back home with new eyes, none more so than Americans (not a dig, just an observation). Through their new eyes they see people, politics and the Earth in a different light. A more tolerant, understanding and sympathetic light. An ability to put themselves in the other persons shoes and see that there are many more sides to national and international issues than you’ll ever see on the typical “never mind the quality, just look at the quantity” news channel (which is why I refuse to watch television news – that’s another story). Anything which opens peoples minds and makes for a more tolerant and understanding society clearly should be encouraged; I’ve always advocated international travel for this purpose and the Overland Expo is the ideal platform to encourage people to embrace this.

wiki.http://nickt.com will become the place where I store all the information about my vehicles, for example I’ve added my 300 TDi D90s specifications to start the ball rolling. I’m keeping this closed to contributions as it’s just a convenient place to store my personal data. Anyone can read it though.

The codex exerro will contain more general overland vehicle information and as it’s not a personal thing, it’ll be open.

I’m running MediaWiki and hosting them at Media Temple.

Anyway, I’ve tried all sorts of engine oils. I agree with the advantages of using synthetic oils on more modern engines, and in those cases it’s worth the extra outlay. I’ve tried them in petrol and diesel Land Rover engines (3.9, 4.0 V8 and 2.5 300 TDi) and don’t think it’s worth the extra money.

Recently, I’ve settled on Shell Rotella T for both my petrol and diesel engines. Specifically the 15W-40 Multigrade.

Even though Rotella was developed as an engine oil for heavy duty diesel trucks, it works very well in larger (and older) petrol engines, and meets the appropriate specs [PDF], API Service Classes SH, SL and SJ for gas engines and API CI-4 PLUS, CI-4, CH-4, CG-4, CF-4 and CF for diesels.

For me, this means I can use the same engine oil, year round and for every vehicle, from the Dodge Ram to my F650 motorcycle, except in the Infiniti FX35, but the dealer still does the service for that so I don’t change the oil anyway. And yes, it’s ok to use it in motorcycles, mostly!

The Engine Oil Bible is a great reference source for all things oily!

Shell Rotella T 15W-40. Recommended.

It didn’t sell on ebay, so I contacted the guy and made an offer, which he accepted.

Happily, it’s the 2.6l inline 6 engine. It’s also right-hand drive, which is, of course, no problem for me – one of my US-based Defenders is right-hand drive too.

Now, any vehicle that’s almost my age will need some work, but this truck had the good fortune of being an export model, and left Blighty soon after manufacture for South Africa. I don’t yet know much of its history, but I know it spent some time on the East Coast (of the US) before ending up in Reno, NV, where I’ll be heading out in a week or so to pick it up. As the vehicle hasn’t spend time on UK roads, it hasn’t suffered from the corrosive sea-air or salted-roads. In fact, it seems there is just some superficial rust on the bulkhead and a bit more rust on the rear cross-member, which is easy and cheap to replace, should it need it.

The other good news is the Dormobile company in the UK has a lot of the spares I may be needing. I know the roof-vent is broken and the table is missing, and I’m glad these parts are available off the shelf. I spoke to Tim there, he’s a really helpful chap – and pleased to know that “another one had been rescued”!

I’m looking forward to picking it up, doing some maintenance and getting it out into the hills as quickly as possible for some RV’ing, ’70s style!

Now if only I can find a decent Carawagon…

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Some links
Dormobile Owners Club
Land Rover FAQ – Dormobile
Teriann Wakemans Dormobile Page

It’s a cool looking car, though I drive a square box aka a Defender, so I’m not one to judge.

It’s also over 19ft long which poses a problem for our 17ft long garage…

I decided to keep the factory amp and speakers, the amps is fine and I’ll replace the speakers this summer. That meant connecting the new head-unit to the existing wiring. Now, I’m not going to hack a factory wiring-harness unless I have to so I managed to get a harness that was close enough to work.

As the 1997 D90 was the only year with this configuration, I had to figure out what each on the pins on the factory harness was for. There was some documentation on the web (1, 2, and a useful 3), but I also had to add connectors to the custom harness so it would work with the factory harness. The Alpine unit came with its own unterminated harness, and good documentation (PDF link), it was easy to connect to my wiring.

The pinouts look like this: (click though for large version)

The pinouts for the 10-way connector are for the speakers and self-explainatory. The pinouts for the 8-way connector are as follows:

(Pin 1 is the top left, above the keyed part of the connector, pin 2 is below pin 1, pin 3 is to the right of pin 1, etc.)

1. Phone Mute – not used
2. Amp Trigger
3. Remote – not used
4. 12V+
5. Remote antenna – not used (power for an electric antenna)
6. Illumination
7. ACC – 12V+ switched
8. Ground

Once I had my wiring adaptor cabled, it connected to the factory harness and the x100 works like a dream! Highly recommended.

From Crutchfield, I ordered the following components:
Alpine iDA-X100 Head-unit
Alpine KCE-422i high-speed cable for iPod/iPhone
Receiver Wiring Adaptor for Land Rover
Antenna Adapter