New wheels, tyres, custom bumper, custom side steps/rock sliders, spotlights on bumper and roof, roofrack, roof tent, jerrycan carriers, double spare wheels. Needs front suspension levelled.

Close up of the bumper - note the rather nice stencil

Side view of the new bumper with CB aerial fitted

Driver's seat with new CB radio, temp & voltage monitor etc

Auxiliary fuel tank behind rear axle for 60 litres (>300 miles) additional range

The rock sliders aren’t obvious in the first picture, but they are the full length between the wheels, along the sill, and are fully jackable and hit-things-with-able, replacing the original aluminium side runners.

We still need to connect the plumbing for the auxiliary tank (the valve hadn’t arrived by last weekend), replace the bash plate, lower the front suspension which, at some point, has been raised slightly, and replace two slightly dodgy ball joints. All are very minor jobs. Other than that, this truck is ready to roll.

If you’re following the new mini news-feed on the right, you’ll know that Surfing Africa are currently in the middle of an epic 4-day preparation weekend with the de la Hayes in the East of Scotland. Which happens to have coincided with a widespread freak early snow fall in the East of Scotland.

The list of jobs is fairly long: Fit a second fuel tank to each truck; remove the running boards and replace them with sturdy, jackable rock sliders; weld together the parts for a new bumper for the second truck; modify the spare wheel carriers on both trucks to take a second wheel; paint the bumper, rock sliders and wheel carriers; fit jerry cans to the roof of our truck; fit a CB radio, new radio antenna and raised air intake to the second truck and any number of smaller jobs.

Below are some photos of the weekend so far.

As always, click on any image for a bigger version. Thanks to Adrian who took the ones inside the workshop.

We’ve spent a bit of time creating drawings for a truly unique front bumper for our trucks. This should serve several purposes: it should be strong enough to push another vehicle, have good jack points for use with a high lift jack, have tow and recovery points and, of course, look the part.

The CAD drawing below should give an impression of how it’s intended to look:

The first parts have now been cut, including the main attachment brackets and the front skin. Stay tuned for further pictures as it develops.

Last week we had a short holiday in Scotland. The primary aim was to gather as many of the Surfing Africa team together in one place at one time as possible, and go offroading in the Highlands with the two Surfs.

The primary aim was completed without too many problems. A video of the highlights will be along in due course, but suffice to say we drove through some forests with varying levels of roads, cut down some trees to let us through, got stuck a few times, got eaten by midges and came out alive.

On the way back down South however, things weren’t so smooth. Perhaps the largest weakness with the engines in both the Surfs is that, if they overheat, the cylinder head is prone to cracking. Sometimes the crack would immediately disable the engine but other times, as in our case, it would carry one for a while before giving up at a seemingly unrelated place. In our case, the motorway service station outside Stirling, where we had pulled in to drop off a hitch-hiker and fill up on juice.

(All pictures below can be enlarged by clicking on them)

Dad and I removing the cracked cylinder head

Coolant in cylinder 3

Russell helping clean the top of the block

New head with manifolds on bench, old head on ground

Finishing touches with wet & dry paper

New head fitted with initial torque being applied to bolts

Torquing up the exhaust manifold

New cylinder head fully fitted

The crack between the injection port and exhaust valve on cylinder 3

All said and done, cracks of this sort are a result of an engine being allowed to overheat by a poorly maintained cooling system, evident in this particular Surf’s history by the blocked and slightly leaking radiator when we bought it.

As part of our initial planning, we’d agreed to take a long camping holiday in Europe with Ashleigh and Donald, to test both the Surf and our travelling ability. We put some thought into how to pack the vehicle, and decided at that time against any fancy built-in storage systems, opting for 8 or so heavy duty clear plastic containers. These stacked very tidily in the back, allowing easy organisation and location of items. Each container had a name – “The living room,” “The Study,” “The garage,” with appropriate contents.

We were travelling with 2 tents; our compact, secure, easy to pitch 2 man hiking tent and our cavernous, breezy, lumbering 6 man behemoth. Our first stop was the Lake District, where we helped my brother and his family set up the Action Partner’s Campsite, which provides accommodation during the Keswick Convention. Making extensive use of the “Outdoor box,” we spent evenings rock climbing on the famous Lakes cliffs, and offroad driving, accompanied by a V8 Range Rover and a Defender.

Louise emerging from a deep puddle. Moments later the photographer was saturated.

Later, we made tracks through England and the Low Countries into Northern Germany, stopping along the way with family near Antwerp, and in recommended spots through Germany. Donald and Ashleigh, by this time about 8 months pregnant, left us as we passed South of Hamburg and returned home to begin packing to move house to Scotland, while we continued on to Berlin, a day earlier than we’d planned after being rained off the rocks in Ith. Leaving the Surf parked, unloved, on the street for a few days, we based ourselves for a couple of wonderful nights in a friendly, family run hotel just off the most expensive shopping street in the city.

Overall, the trip was a great success. I’ve written much more about it here, here and here, so there’s little point recapping it all. It proved the vehicle’s capability to do a long trip, similar in length to one leg of the Africa journey, without problems. In fact there were problems; the exhaust developed a hole and a universal joint in the prop shaft began to fail, but both developed so slowly, with so much warning, that our confidence in the vehicle was built in leaps and bounds. Our packing system, although it was a long way from perfected, seemed adequate, and is much less hassle, and has less potential for problems, than building a permanent system into the vehicle.

Camping beside, and living out of the back of, the Surf. Note the coffee press on the ground beside the kitchen sink - an absolute essential.

Our living arrangements will be substantially altered (being on the roof, not the ground beside the truck), but since we will still be carrying the tent and chairs, the space inside the truck was about the same as it will be. Although bringing the BBQ was a waste of space, if a nice one!