1979 Unimog Camper for sale in Arizona

[Christian P.]

look at this:

www.eddis-page.com

18 years on the road...

:camping:

[XXXpedition]

pretty cool unimog - i love that body style...
but if i'd want a truck like that i'd want to build it myself.
they've been some neat places.damn i'm getting jealous... :-)))))

[Robthebrit]

I now own this! My house is slowly becoming a refuse for old Unimogs.

The truck is mechanically perfect, Eddi is a german mechanical engineer - need I say more? There is some need for body work, its a unimog so thats to be expected.

The camper, not my style, is so well thought out and better than anything I could build. Its a great platform to build from and has some really nice features which you think off by living it it for 18 years.

The camper lifts off as a single unit and will mount on a 1250 or 1300L so there may be an upgrade in its future.

For you unimog folk out there, the 416 truck by itself is a super rare version, it was originally built as a rapid response ambulance and has the ultra fast axles and the fast hubs. It'll do 65mph with small tires (41 inch) and 2800 rpm, if you crank up the RPM to 3150 and use big tires (46 inch) you'll get it up to 80mph (my other 416 only does 62 after the engine tweaks).

I'll post more when I get it

Rob

[Scott Brady]

Congrats Rob!

I would love to meet those folks and buy them dinner. Man, to hear the stories from 18 years on the road.

[Blair G]

I now own this! My house is slowly becoming a refuse for old Unimogs.

The truck is mechanically perfect, Eddi is a german mechanical engineer - need I say more? There is some need for body work, its a unimog so thats to be expected.

The camper, not my style, is so well thought out and better than anything I could build. Its a great platform to build from and has some really nice features which you think off by living it it for 18 years.

The camper lifts off as a single unit and will mount on a 1250 or 1300L so there may be an upgrade in its future.

For you unimog folk out there, the 416 truck by itself is a super rare version, it was originally built as a rapid response ambulance and has the ultra fast axles and the fast hubs. It'll do 65mph with small tires (41 inch) and 2800 rpm, if you crank up the RPM to 3150 and use big tires (46 inch) you'll get it up to 80mph (my other 416 only does 62 after the engine tweaks).

I'll post more when I get it

Rob

Lucky! Now you need to head up the coast for a test spin. First beers on me.
Blair

[Robthebrit]

Scott, you should go and knock on their door, they live in Prescott (what a beautiful place). I spent a whole day with them yesterday, they are great people.

They have the most awesome stories. They had a final drive hub bearing fail in the sahara, he had a spare bearing but step 1 of the instructions was remove the hub, thats a nightmare at the best of times, step 2 put the hub in a 10 ton press to push the bearing out. The solution they came up with was to use the bottle jack upside down on top of the bearing and the whole thing balanced ontop of the spare wheel lying flat in the sand. They then found the CG of the truck an jacked up the truck putting its entire weight on the bearing - fortunately for them 6 tonnes was enough to push the bearing. It took them 3 days to fix it and they knew it would only last a few thousand miles because the hub had lots of sand in in when they were finished. They made it to a Unimog repair shop and had the bearing replaced properly. That is an ingeneous solution that only school of hard knocks can teach you.

That is the only major failure they had in 170,000 miles and was due to water contamination.

Rob

[Robthebrit]

Blair, I'll hold you to that. It'll take a couple of weeks to get it and then the usual issues with a Unimog and the CA DMV.

Rob

[Joaquin Suave]

Congradulations! What a fantastic bearing story.

The second beir is on me!

I will probably have possesion of my Ng L1419 by then. If your so inclined, we'll arrange the central coast meet and greet around your trip north.

[dieselcruiserhead]

awesome.. and congrats Rob, that is killer.. I didn't realize it had the fast gears, very cool. there used ot be a guy around here who daily drove a 4 door Doka 416 version.. I worked at a land cruiser shop that stocked unimogs, both 404 and 406/416 diesel models.. I daily drove one for a week, a French 416 troop carrier, when I was doing the spring over on my land cruiser. Was a lot of fun to roll to the bars in that thing...

[Blair G]

Blair, I'll hold you to that. It'll take a couple of weeks to get it and then the usual issues with a Unimog and the CA DMV.

Rob

Rob,

Did you get the camper yet?
Blair

[Robthebrit]

Not yet :( its paid for but I need to find time to go to Prescott and drive it back. I'll probably do it at the end of next week, fly to Pheonix, get the shuttle to Prescott, stay over a night and then head out early the next morning.

Rob

[Scott Brady]

You have a place to stay in Prescott if you would like.

It would be great to meet up with you again and see the new mog. Maybe snap a few shots too.

[slooowr6]

After reading all the Mog posts, I would like to understand the beast more, is there a good information site that I can read about its history, purpose and engineering information?

[Robthebrit]

The only real info on the web is Eddi's web site which is in the original post in this thread. I have lots of details photos which I need to get uploaded.

The basic premise is Eddi is a German mechanical engineer and he built everything himself and then he and his wife lived in it for 18 years. Improvemens were made along the way as they learnt how to use it, what worked and what didn't. Of those 18 years it spent 6 years in Africa, 2 in Australia and New Zeland and a couple in South America. The camper is extremely well built and is in excellent condition after so much use.

The truck does need new tires and it does check in at near max gross weight when loaded. The fact it had no serious mechanical problems in 250,000 miles offroad stands as testament to the build quality of a unimog (other than the bearing mentioned above).

I do know some of its mechanical history, after the bearing failure all the bearings and hub gears were all upgraded by the factory to 1300 hub gears. The bearing failure went all the way back to MB who wanted to do a real world test by replacing the 416 bearings with 1300 bearings, the only difference is the 1300 bearings have 13mm rollers where the 416 are 9mm. The outer housing is the same but because of the the different width bearing the outer dimension of the driven gear is a different size which makes a slightly different gear ratio which means all 4 hubs have to be replaced. This was all done free of charge at the factory 15 years ago, if you were to pay for this it would cost $20k+. Its been back to the factory a few times in the last 15 years and they report that bearings and hubs are doing fine. The reason the factory got involved was because of a number of 416s, with disk brakes, having bearing problems when at max weight, the problem does not occur with drum brakes. It turns out that the 3 inch flange that is used on the disk brake axle was putting a lot of load on the hub output bearing and in the drum brake version there is no flange. The SSE Unimog used by the US army has this modifcation from the factory.

I replaced an output seal on my other 416 recently and you can see the giant bearing that I am talking about, unfortunately you can't see the gears. http://www.robanddenise.com/mogs/hub

Rob

[Robthebrit]

You have a place to stay in Prescott if you would like.

It would be great to meet up with you again and see the new mog. Maybe snap a few shots too.

Scott, I'll take you up on that. I'll keep you posted on the plans.

Rob

[slooowr6]

Wow, that bearing is massive. 236 ft-lb for the bolts,... :yikes:
Thanks for all the info. Is their a good site to read about mogs in general? It's really an impressive machine. All the stuff on it is so purposefully built.

[Metcalf]

I would love to see some detailed pictures of your new camper along with a writeup of the features!!! You can't get much better than 18 years on the road to prove it all works...

[CodyLX450]

I've seen that rig several times at the Walmarts in Cottonwood, AZ. That truck looked so good, I would have never guessed it was as old as 79.

[Desertdude]

While up on the Dalton Road (in AK) I remember camping at the Arctic Circle That Mog looks very close to the one we saw parked near where we camped. The color and style of the Mog set of a few memory cells.

That is a great machine congratulations on a fine purchase.

[bootzilla]

Wow - Rob, that thing looks awesome! Can't wait to see the pics when you get it.

I gotta get one of those...

[Robthebrit]

While up on the Dalton Road (in AK) I remember camping at the Arctic Circle That Mog looks very close to the one we saw parked near where we camped. The color and style of the Mog set of a few memory cells.

That is a great machine congratulations on a fine purchase.


Maybe it was them, its last real trip was up to Alaska but I am not 100% sure when that was, a year or two ago back? In fact it has a cracked windsheild from the rocks on the Dalton Highway.

Rob

[Desertdude]

All I was thinking to my self was, wow what a great way to travel and be all warm while it was 30 degres F and raining... not to mention shelter from all those special mosquitoes.

Great Mog!

[blupaddler]

Rob congrats!

So what are your plans with the mog?
And not to go too much in-depth, but does the CA DMV really have that much of a problem with Mogs? (sorry, probably a stupid question)

[Robthebrit]

Initial plans are to do some longer (2-3 day) but simple trails around socal to get the hang of how it handles. I'll Probably do a few days death valley and maybe the Mohave road, there is also a trip to pyramid lake NV in the near future (with Adventure Trailers) that I plan on going on. We have plans to take our existing double cab mog around the grand canyon and upto the white rim, we'll probably do that trip in this mog now. In the next year we'll probably head to Alaska as well but ultimately I want to head south.

CA are fine with older mogs, after about 85 you may have problems because the truck will not meet federal regs. Getting them registered is just a hassle, they have no idea what it is and they always give a weight and type classification that you don't want, this usually means you end up paying more. This one should be real easy because its obviously an camper so no arguing with them about is it legally a pickup or not.

Rob

[Robthebrit]

I got the camper home, I left Scotts place in Prescott at 9:15pm last night and arived in Blyth CA just before 12:45. I stayed in a crappy motel because the camper was completely empty. I left Blyth this morning at 9:45 and arrived home in Los angeles at 2:10pm.

402 miles in 8 hours, an average of 50mph, for a mog is pretty good. I used less than a quarter of the on board diesel, about 29 gallons (of 160 total) which works out to about 13.8mpg. I pretty mush drove at 55-60 the entire way other than in the hills coming out of Prescott and a couple of freeway hills which slowed me down. I had to slow down a little going through palm springs because it was hot outside and the engine temp was creeping up. Max speed of the mog is about 63mph but the wheels are not very well balanced so I am not 100% sure. Considering the overall weight, the performance is excellent. Its much faster than my other 416 but it does have 40+ more HP and only slightly worse mileage.

No the real work begins!

Rob

[Blair G]

I got the camper home, I left Scotts place in Prescott at 9:15pm last night and arived in Blyth CA just before 12:45. I stayed in a crappy motel because the camper was completely empty. I left Blyth this morning at 9:45 and arrived home in Los angeles at 2:10pm.

402 miles in 8 hours, an average of 50mph, for a mog is pretty good. I used less than a quarter of the on board diesel, about 29 gallons (of 160 total) which works out to about 13.8mpg. I pretty mush drove at 55-60 the entire way other than in the hills coming out of Prescott and a couple of freeway hills which slowed me down. I had to slow down a little going through palm springs because it was hot outside and the engine temp was creeping up. Max speed of the mog is about 63mph but the wheels are not very well balanced so I am not 100% sure. Considering the overall weight, the performance is excellent. Its much faster than my other 416 but it does have 40+ more HP and only slightly worse mileage.

No the real work begins!

Rob

Exciting Rob! Come North and do a shakedown. Owen and Ewan would have a great time. Got any more pictures?

Blair

[Scott Brady]

It is an awesome truck and it was good to see Robb again.

Here are some fun pictures comparing the EW Taco and the Mog. Not much different except height. The mog also has better overall ground clearance too.

http://www.expeditionswest.com/temp1/IMG_2392.JPG
The mog is actually a few inches longer OAL with the tools box on the back.
The Tacoma wheelbase is longer by at least 6 inches.

http://www.expeditionswest.com/temp1/IMG_2399.JPG

http://www.expeditionswest.com/temp1/IMG_2403.JPG
The mog is several inches wider in the cab and track and with the portal axles has loads of ground clearance

[pwc]

the mog has air horns

[Jonathan Hanson]

I got to play around on and ride in this thing Friday evening. It is a magnificent piece of work, with touches that nothing but years of experience on the road could conceive.

Thanks for the ride, Rob!

[Joaquin Suave]

Congradulations Rob!!
It is always nice to hear about an "uneventful" trip.

[Metcalf]

Could you please post some pics and information on the inside of the camper.

I would love to see what that many years on the road makes you build....

[Kermit]

Could you please post some pics and information on the inside of the camper.

I would love to see what that many years on the road makes you build....
The link is on the 1st page of this thread...

But here ya go...:)

http://www.eddis-page.com/

[KMR]

No kidding!
I am sitting here looking at the Mog section because my wife said we should buy a Mog to live in, and what do I see? a Mog for sale link, cool, click it, and....... I instantly recognize the Mog, we met these folks in Skagway Alaska 2 years ago, I thought it was the neatest Mog, totally would have bought that for $30k.
Congratulations! (you suck)
Here is a photo of your new toy at the small boat harbor in Skagway Alaska, taken while standing on the bumper of our Cruiser.