Just got back with our camper from the Northwest Overland Rally in Plain, WA.
It was HOT. I have spent too many years now in western Washington and was not used to baking in the 105 degree heat.
We loaded the motorcycles in the garage pod, tied them down and set off Thursday. I estimate with the gear, water, motorcycles, gen, food, we were around 17,500 pounds. I crawled up to the Hwy 2 pass in the slow lane at around 37mph in 3rd gear. On the return trip I put it in 2nd gear and did the descent at about 22mph LOL. This was my first time doing the pass in this truck and I didn't want to go over the edge (you would not live). I think 3rd gear would have been just fine at 35 to 40mph. It was nice though that I did not have to touch the brake even one time. On my list is some sort of transmission temperature gauge (assume this is something you can add) just to know how things are, but the truck did seem to do fine. 55mph no problem on flats, can go a bit above 65mph if I want to burn a lot of fuel.
They packed us in like sardines at the rally. We had purchased an extra 20x20 foot space, giving us 40x20 feet, but really it would have been nice to have more. I think we are elbow room type campers.
Solar was pretty awesome. When the sun popped above the ridge at 7:30am, we were getting 150 watts, by 10am we were running the air conditioner straight off of our solar. We ran the A/C off of solar from 10am to about 5pm, then I put the Honda 2000 in eco mode and the Magnum MSH4024 did it's shore power assist thing, taking 200 watts from the solar and 500 watts from the gen to power the air conditioner (which seemed to draw around 650 watts, plus we had a small AC fan). The Midnite solar charge controller produced 6200 watt-hours on Friday from our panels, which I thought was most excellent. The little 6000 BTU A/C kept the inside around 79/80 (after we rigged a ghetto awning to keep sun off the window/door) when the outside temp was in the 100s. As a contrast, the garage pod was 108 degrees inside and the cab of the truck was over 120 degrees. We would go outside to rally events then run back to the camper and cool off
We met quite a few people, some from this forum. Lance, Arctic Fox, 4Wheel campers, XPcamper, other cabovers (well, two), tons of rooftop tenters, and a zillion motorcyclists tent camping.
We rode our WR250R to Sugarloaf peak on Saturday and about died in the heat when neither bike would start after we had walked around and took pictures. It seemed the fuel pumps were not coming on. I got mine started after letting it sit for a few minutes but my wife had to coast for 14 miles down the mountain. I then shut mine off to drink water and it would not start but hers did, so I coasted 10 miles, then tried mine again and it started. What I am thinking happened is some form of vapor lock? which caused the fuel pump to be unable to deliver fuel to the engine. It was over 105 degrees, the bikes were probably even hotter, and we have never ridden in those conditions at that altitude. I will have to research this further because wearing full gear and helmet in that heat with a bitchy bike is not fun. The ride up and the view were nice though!
Anyway, here are a few pics:
It was HOT. I have spent too many years now in western Washington and was not used to baking in the 105 degree heat.
We loaded the motorcycles in the garage pod, tied them down and set off Thursday. I estimate with the gear, water, motorcycles, gen, food, we were around 17,500 pounds. I crawled up to the Hwy 2 pass in the slow lane at around 37mph in 3rd gear. On the return trip I put it in 2nd gear and did the descent at about 22mph LOL. This was my first time doing the pass in this truck and I didn't want to go over the edge (you would not live). I think 3rd gear would have been just fine at 35 to 40mph. It was nice though that I did not have to touch the brake even one time. On my list is some sort of transmission temperature gauge (assume this is something you can add) just to know how things are, but the truck did seem to do fine. 55mph no problem on flats, can go a bit above 65mph if I want to burn a lot of fuel.
They packed us in like sardines at the rally. We had purchased an extra 20x20 foot space, giving us 40x20 feet, but really it would have been nice to have more. I think we are elbow room type campers.
Solar was pretty awesome. When the sun popped above the ridge at 7:30am, we were getting 150 watts, by 10am we were running the air conditioner straight off of our solar. We ran the A/C off of solar from 10am to about 5pm, then I put the Honda 2000 in eco mode and the Magnum MSH4024 did it's shore power assist thing, taking 200 watts from the solar and 500 watts from the gen to power the air conditioner (which seemed to draw around 650 watts, plus we had a small AC fan). The Midnite solar charge controller produced 6200 watt-hours on Friday from our panels, which I thought was most excellent. The little 6000 BTU A/C kept the inside around 79/80 (after we rigged a ghetto awning to keep sun off the window/door) when the outside temp was in the 100s. As a contrast, the garage pod was 108 degrees inside and the cab of the truck was over 120 degrees. We would go outside to rally events then run back to the camper and cool off
We met quite a few people, some from this forum. Lance, Arctic Fox, 4Wheel campers, XPcamper, other cabovers (well, two), tons of rooftop tenters, and a zillion motorcyclists tent camping.
We rode our WR250R to Sugarloaf peak on Saturday and about died in the heat when neither bike would start after we had walked around and took pictures. It seemed the fuel pumps were not coming on. I got mine started after letting it sit for a few minutes but my wife had to coast for 14 miles down the mountain. I then shut mine off to drink water and it would not start but hers did, so I coasted 10 miles, then tried mine again and it started. What I am thinking happened is some form of vapor lock? which caused the fuel pump to be unable to deliver fuel to the engine. It was over 105 degrees, the bikes were probably even hotter, and we have never ridden in those conditions at that altitude. I will have to research this further because wearing full gear and helmet in that heat with a bitchy bike is not fun. The ride up and the view were nice though!
Anyway, here are a few pics:
