A few people have asked for more technical information about our vehicle and how it’s set up, so here goes. Let’s talk electrons. 

I have to tell myself it’s important to not loose sight of the ball. The whole idea here is to, a) have an actual fridge instead of a cooler. This avoids having to buy ice all the time and dig the butter out of a pool of tepid water in the bottom of a cooler and keeps the beer cold; and b) to charge the various electrical doo-dads that most of us now travel with, cameras, laptops and the rest. None of this discussion has anything to do with the regular start battery and alternator. We have left this untouched and stock to preserve reliability and serviceability.

I used to obsess quite a bit about the battery, charging, fridge status and that sort of thing. Typically this means one of my very first activities of the day is to check the battery level, to see how badly we’d depleted it through the night. Then when Jenny gets up, bleary eyed and totally uninterested, I give her a detailed battery report. She tolerates this to a point, but when I’d get too far down the rabbit hole she asks me to perhaps delay my enthusiastic report on battery chemistry or solar panel voltage until after she’s finished her tea.

Now I’ve got Jenny interested in the battery status, but not for the reasons I hoped. Sometimes she beats me to it and checks the battery level before me. I know this isn’t really her thing and told her she doesn’t have to worry about it, and she responded, “Oh I’m not worried about the battery voltage, I check it to see what kind of mood you’re going to be in.” She later elaborated that the voltage correlates to how much electrically related anxiety I’ll have on a given day.

The Cruiser electrical system has evolved since we owned it. Here is the timeline, problems and solutions so far:

In the beginning (c. 2017):

Supply side:

• Standard starting battery, sealed lead acid (SLA)
• Auxiliary battery, 102 amp hour (Ah) SLA, mounted in the engine bay. The 1HZ 79 Cruiser is sold with two starting batteries in cold weather markets. Here in Africa two batteries are not necessary, so this leaves the second battery spot available for an auxiliary battery. The problem with auxiliary batteries in the engine bay is batteries do not like heat, more on this later.
• Charging of the auxiliary battery was by the alternator via a National Luna Intelligent Solenoid.

Load side:

• A 40 liter Engel fridge that came with the vehicle when we bought it.
• A 15 liter IndelB fridge we installed between the front seats. This is a ludicrous luxury, but we like it.
• 3x two color (red and white) LED lights in the canopy.

That’s pretty much it. We have various USB rechargeable items that we charge in the cab via the 12v plug while we’re driving. The copilot is responsible for swapping through all the headlamps and flashlights and whatnot to keep us charged up. We use a cheap ($25 USD) 200w square wave inverter (this one) to charge things that require 110 or 220v charging, for us this is a laptop and camera batteries. This works totally fine for us, we’ve never found the need for a proper pure sine wave inverter

This is the setup we drove to Kenya and back 2018. It worked fine, mostly. Everything was fused with inline fuses, but we did have a short in the system when we chafed through some wiring on very corrugated roads, leading to a teeny electrical fire. 

Fortunately no serious damage was done, but I suspect this short did shorten the life of the battery, as it never held up through the night quite as well after that. 

Pros with this system: It is cheap and simple and easy to work on. If you drive most days it is adequate for almost anyone’s needs. Also at the push of a button you can parallel the batteries to allow for jump starting the car off the auxiliary battery if the start battery is dead. We have actually used this once, but this is a luxury, since really we have jumper cables and can do this manually if needed.  

Side note: the 4.2 Land Cruiser actually push starts beautifully in 2nd gear, provided you can actually get the great beast rolling. The mass of the vehicle carries enough momentum to start the engine easily. We have done this for a fellow Land Cruiser at Third Bridge campsite in Botswana. Never push start in reverse, the teeth are ramped and you can damage the gears. 

Flaws with this system: You can’t stand for more than two nights without driving, the battery gets depleted.

When we did want to stay somewhere longer there was usually at least some errand to run or game drive that topped up the battery somewhat, but for purely sitting we had no method of charging. Anytime we planned on sitting for more than one night, or if it was very hot and I knew the fridge was going to work hard, we’d turn off the 15 liter fridge for the night. This fridge is only used for drinks, so no food was at risk. 

Another flaw, perhaps not true with all vehicles, is that the auxiliary battery never gets a true full charge. This is because to fully 100% charge a lead acid battery you need to generate over 14 volts during the charging cycle. The alternator on the 70 series cruiser, as I understand it, only generates 13.7v. Add in minor voltage losses through cabling and you never quite get a 100% charge. Normally this isn’t an issue, 98% is fine, but over time the battery needs to at least on occasion get fully charged. Without shore power or being put on a standard charger every once in a while this degrades battery capacity and battery life.

Electrical Upgrade, c. 2019:

Back home, away from Africa and the Cruiser I spent too much time spent on the internet and therefore too much time pondering upgrading our electrical system. Enter, the upgrade.

Supply side:

• We ditched the solenoid charging and got a National Luna 25A DC-DC charger. Utilizing Ohm’s law, DC to DC chargers drop the charging amperage to increase the charging voltage, thus enabling the battery to get a true full charge. The trade off is it takes longer to achieve the full charge, as it only charges at 25A instead of whatever the surplus from the alternator was. We drive long distances often, so this usually isn’t a problem. Note: National Luna has a few excellent blog posts on this topic here. Given that we have a 102Ah battery, and hopefully we are not depleting it more than 50% (to preserve longevity), we should only ever have to replace roughly 50 Ah. You’d think that a 25A charger would manage this in 2 hours, but that is not the case, because of the charging profile. Batteries don’t accept charge in a linear fashion, so the charger must top off the final stages of capacity more slowly. Regardless we’ve never had an issue achieving a full charge.
• The DC to DC charger has a solar MPPT charge controller built in. This means in one box we can charge from the alternator when driving and from solar when parked. 
• Added a 120v flex solar panel from 4x4direct in Cape Town. This is also the same time we got the Alu-Cab roof top tent. The hard shell tent provided an easy location to mount a 120w flex solar panel. We were assured by the fitment center that they install these all the time and how great this whole setup works (except when it doesn’t).
• Added “shore power”. Now we can plug in to 220v power if we’re in a place that offers power at campsites. This is pretty common in Southern Africa, but very unusual in East Africa. The shore power is simply a 15A Victron battery charger hardwired to the auxiliary battery. We have a ~10m power cord, plug in, and presto, the aux battery is always getting charged and all 12v things can run as normal. Cold beer with no battery stress!

Load side:

• The new tent has a LED light built in, as well as two USB ports and a 12v socket in the tent. This is convenient to charge things via USB when we’re parked. This load is minimal.
• We hardwired our GPS, leaving the 12v socket in the cab always free. I highly recommend this small modification, we did it ourselves for free and it appreciated every day we drive (i.e. a lot of days). This is very luxurious and now involves less juggling of cables for the copilot. Also the GPS power cord no longer dangles around in the cab, very nice to have this cleaned up. Actual load increase is also minimal, since this load is only realized when driving.

Pros with this system:

• Now we can plug into shore power, super. Very nice when you stop for a few days and want to torture the fridge to clean it out or load a lot of new warm things and you don’t have to worry about your grocery trip depleting the battery.
• Solar! In good sunlight we generated 6 A, but usually less. This is not really enough to power us indefinitely, but is enough to keep us going for a few days with careful fridge use and little to no driving. 
• The DC to DC charger is charging the battery fully, which should promote battery longevity. 

Flaws with this system:

• The National Luna DC-DC 25A charger does not have the ability to charge both the aux and main batteries via solar. Some DC-DC/MPPT chargers do have this feature.
• The shore power also does not charge both aux and main batteries. This is an issue because we leave the vehicle parked for long periods of time. Batteries do not like to sit, and self discharge over time. We’d love to tell the storage place that they can just plug us in and top us off, but because the shore power doesn’t do both batteries it’s not that simple.
• Solar. The MPPT charger seems to kick on when the panel reaches around 18v. This doesn’t happen as early in the day as I’d like, and kicks off earlier in the afternoon than I’d prefer too. This is when the angle of incidence of the sun is too low.  
  • The panel is fixed on the tent. This is a trade off. Many elect for portable panels that you store in the vehicle, pull out, unfold, plug in, and then move around through the day. This enables parking in the shade and ideal panel placement, avoiding the issues I just described above. The downside of that is you need a place to pack the panels, it’s another thing to fuss with in camp, and they don’t work when you’re parked at, say a water hole or grocery store or whatever. If you are the type of camper that often spends four or five days in one spot often then I think portable panels are the way to go. For those that move a lot, like us, I think fixed on the roof is more practical. Pick your poison.
• Heat. This is a big one. The National Luna DC-DC charger has an optional temperature sensor on the aux battery. Once the battery reaches 60°C it stops charging to protect the battery. This is all well and good in theory, except when you travel in Southern Africa in November or December, where ambient temperatures run into the 40°s before you’ve even turned on the vehicle. Once we drive for a few hours at any sort of speed the engine bay is over 60°C, and then the DCDC charger will not allow charging. Since we might drive like this all day, that means our battery never gets charged. Kind of a big problem. My solution, I took off the temperature sensor. Hey, look, now it charges all the time, ta-da! Is this good for battery life? No. And for a higher amperage charger or a different type of battery it is also not safe. We just accept that we’ll have shorter battery life. 
• Heat, again. Because we keep the aux battery in the engine bay we are essentially excluded from going to a lithium battery or even AGM. No battery likes this much heat, but those batteries are expensive and would fail much sooner. Note there are a few very interesting Youtube videos of some Australians testing lithium batteries in the engine bay, but this requires some very specific batteries and very specific charging systems. The whole idea here is to go camping with cold beer and good food, not spend all day every day obsessing over electrons while going broke, so we skipped that option.

Electrical Update, c. 2021

We made two trips on the 2019 iteration of the electrical system. It worked great, barring the heat issue. Then we returned in 2021, assuming that after over a year of sitting that we’d have to replace both batteries and we’d be pretty much good to go. After we got the vehicle out of storage we noticed right away that the solar panel was not working. After some basic troubleshooting we confirmed, yes, broken.

I fired off emails to National Luna and 4x4direct, both well known to offer excellent support. National Luna offered some troubleshooting advice that confirmed what we already suspected, it was the panel and not the charger. 4x4direct said that if the panel was confirmed to have failed to bring it in and they would replace it. Since they were over 1000km away that wasn’t all that convenient, but a generous offer.

A fitment center in Windhoek said they quit carrying the flex panels due to high rates of failure.

Also apparently a frequent cause of panel failure is a diode on the panel. These can be replaced for a few dollars, but on the flex panels the box that holds the diode is a sealed unit and cannot be repaired. 

The fitment center offered to replace our 120w panel with glass panels, but the only ones they had in stock were 90w. We pulled the trigger on two 90w glass panels, 180w total, mounted on the tent. 

Note that since fixed panels have an air gap under them, which keeps them a little cooler. Cooler panels are more efficient, delivering more electrons to the battery. 

To summarize where we are now:

Supply Side: 

Load Side:

• 40 liter Engel fridge
• 15 liter IndelB fridge between the seats in the cab
• 3x red/white LED lights in the canopy
• GPS hardwired to the 12v socket in the cab. Only powered when driving
• 200w square wave inverter, only used via 12v socket in the cab when driving
• We now use a fancy 12v socket USB outlet to charge our laptops via USB-C, capable of 3.0A 45W charging of a laptop with various circuit protections built in. It’s this one: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08CVR9FYC?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share. Now the only thing we use the inverter for is my camera batteries. Why convert DC power from the vehicle to AC in the inverter and back to DC in the laptop power supply? Now we can direct USB charge a laptop with less cables.
• 12v Caframo SEEKR fan. The tent has a 12v socket and this fan is a lifesaver on those sweltering nights. Only draws 0.18A on low speed. This thing is worth it’s weight in gold.

Pros with this system:

It works! The beers are cold, we have cool water to drink on hot days, cheese and other luxuries can be kept for long periods of time. We have achieved camping electrical nirvana, or near enough anyway.

Several times we’ve managed stays of five days without shore power in partially shaded camps or with some rain. This is long enough that I would consider it “indefinite”, as after five days we usually need to go provision, get more water or something. The only caveat is sometimes I close the tent during the day so the solar panels are flat, to optimize sun exposure. 

Over the three months we’ve now been on this trip I spend less and less time thinking about the battery. What more evidence need there be that this system works well? 

Flaws with this system:

As I said, we do need to close the tent in some camps to maximize sun exposure on the panels. Because of the more efficient panels we see them kick on sooner in the morning and stay on longer into the afternoon. Midday we our record output is 13A. In shade or heavy cloud cover, maybe just 2A. A lot of time it is somewhere in the middle. 

Battery capacity is an issue. I think to run two fridges or bigger fridges you really need to have more amp hours. We can just get by with careful management and turning off the little fridge sometimes. If we went lithium this would get us there, but that is expensive, and would require moving the battery to the back somewhere. Where? We’ve just decided not to go down this rabbit hole. Maybe someday.

The little fridge, the Indel B, is not a very good fridge. I have a clamp on amp meter, so we’ve seen it draws the same amps as the back fridge when it’s running, but due to the lower quality insulation and smaller thermal mass of the contents this fridge runs more often than the back, and therefore uses more power. Both fridges use 2.4A when running, but how often they kick on is the difference.

Right now all of the loads are wired directly to the battery. This is an embarrassing setup, where we have a three studs leading off the auxiliary battery with wires stacked up on the studs. Each load has an inline fuse somewhere along the line. This is stupid. Soon we plan to run a single wire from the aux. battery to a fuse block, and then all loads from the fuse block. This will be much tidier, easier to troubleshoot, be less susceptible to chafe, etc. 

Also the DC-DC charger is mounted in the engine bay. I don’t really recommend this setup. If we had a better packing system in the back I’d be inclined to put this near the perspective fuse block.

I also plan to install a Victron battery monitor with a shunt for real time load senseing [edit: This is now done! It’s much better. I will update the post soon[, to get a better idea of what exactly is using power, when and how much. This will inform any future changes to our battery, either chemistry or capacity.

Credit Cards

By far the easiest way to handle payments is a credit card, but this does come with some pretty significant caveats.  First off, and this is imperative, you need a card that has no foreign transaction fees.  

There are numerous no foreign transaction fee cards available on the market, we use a Chase travel card. Some of the Chase cards have high annual fees, but these are offset if you take advantages of the benefits those cards offer. This is something of a game for banks, some customers getting more than the annual fee value from their cards, and, the bank hopes, some customers not getting the full value, and thus profit for the bank. Make sure you are in the former category and not the latter.

Many expenses on the road qualify as “travel” expenses, and thus the Chase cards pay 2 or 3 points to the dollar spent on lots of things, which can be a way to pay for plane tickets or just claim those points as cash back. The world of gaming cards for rewards is deep (learn more here) and fraught with peril for those that aren’t both organized and patient. If that is not you then look for a card with no foreign transaction fees that pays 1-2% cash back. I hope it goes without saying, but never carry a balance on your credit card, that will steal valuable dollars away from your travel purse and totally negate any benefit you’re getting from the credit card perks.

Credit cards are widely accepted in South Africa, but less and less accepted the further north you go, though that is changing rapidly. 

Credit card fraud is high, and you’ll notice that no one in Africa will ever take your card out of your sight, they’ll bring the machine to you. In the US we are comfortable with, for example, servers at a restaurant taking our card away to be run at a central machine, but this is highly unusual in Africa.  If someone takes your card from your sight you should be on high alert that something is up.

Funny enough, I was in Kasane, Botswana when I got a fraud alert from Chase on my phone, but the fraud was being conducted in Ohio. I had to explain to Chase that I wasn’t in Ohio, but Botswana, and no, that wasn’t near Ohio. They cancelled the card. So, I say fraud is common in Africa, but it’s never been a problem for us. This does bring up the importance of having more than one card.  Our experience is that Visa is widely accepted, and Mastercard slightly less so.  We each have one of each kind of card (Visa or Mastercard) to cover our bases of what is accepted, and also in case we lose a card or have to cancel one.

In South Africa many businesses will not accept credit cards over the phone to order items ahead of time, as is common in the States.  This brings us to the various forms of electronic transfers…

Sending money electronically – should be easy, right?

Our experience is that South African banking is more sophisticated than in the United States.  Chiefly noticeable in the use of EFTs (Electronic Funds Transfer) for direct electronic payments via phone app.  IMPORTANT: EFTs ARE NOT WIRE TRANSFERS (aka SWIFT transfer) OR ACH.  Each one of those is it’s own type of financial transaction, and though similar the are not the same.  I offer you this guide:

• EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer): easily done from your handy phone app.  Just enter the payee’s banking details, enter the amount, hit send, and PRESTO!  Done.  Note that banking details are shared more freely than seems appropriate, but as these are payments only this information can’t be used to “pull” money, only for deposits, and is thus safe. Payments are effectively instantaneous, and free.  What’s the catch?  Can only be done from a South African (or perhaps other SADC country?) bank account.
• Wire/Swift Transfer (Whats the difference – not much): Wire transfers can be used as payment fairly widely in Southern Africa and many businesses will be prepared to offer the relevant banking details.  After sending a wire it typically takes a couple days to be received.  Also they tend to be expensive, and many banks require you to come into the branch in person to send them.  My experience is that banks do not send a lot of wires, and get confused when the information doesn’t perfectly match their computer system’s formatting.  The process in branch always seems to take forever and be painful.  Chase Checking accounts (and I think Bank of America, though unverified), allow you to send wires via their website or mobile app. We use the least expensive Chase checking account: Chase Total Checking. With Chase, some countries (including South Africa) you are allowed to send in local currency, reducing the fee to just $5 USD for transfers under $5000, and for free if over $5000.  What’s the catch?  The whole thing is the catch, nothing is easy, fast or cheap about wire transfers.  Avoid if possible.
• ACH: This is not really an option, I only mention for clarification.  This is when you provide a bank or financial institution your routing number and bank details and they send you one of those deposits for .26 cents and then two days later pulls out .10 and .16 cents and has you verify what they did.  This sets up a link between the two accounts for future debits or credits. You will not be able, nor would you want, to do this in Africa.  

When ordering something, say vehicle parts, ahead of time, or making bookings for campsites, many times payment will be requested by EFT. Which is impossible if you do not have a South African bank account.

The Non-Resident Bank Account (once thought impossible, but it isn’t)

We have had countless circular conversations with vendors, us asking if we could pay by credit card, as we had no way to EFT, only to be told that it would be much easier if we could just pay by EFT. Sigh. A few times we even had to resort to sending a wire, and paying the significant wire fee, just to pay for a low value item. We resolved to see if we could find a way to get a South African bank account.  

This was a saga that spanned more than one of our African trips. We had resigned ourselves to one last try when we spent a couple weeks with friends in Cape Town in March of 2020. After a couple false starts we made a friend from Holland who had successfully opened a checking account. He tipped us off to the “Non-resident cheque account” at FNB. FNB (First National Bank) branches are all over southern Africa, so this seemed promising. We went into our local FNB bank at the Sun Valley Mall, asked for a Non-resident account and a few days later were the proud owners of a local bank account. It sounds trivial, but we were super stoked.  

A few notes on this. We funded the account out of our stash of cash USD that we always keep squirreled away. After initial funding of your sweet new non-resident bank account you can add funds via wire transfer. As wire transfers are a hassle I suggest trying to do a single significant transfer instead of smaller ones. There are some rules that I do not understand on non residents holding foreign currency in South Africa, so when you transfer the money to your new checking account either transfer in rand, or convert to rand upon receipt. You also have to declare what the money is for, but there is a generic category for “general use or expenses” or something like that, I forget what it is specifically. I think if you got into large sums of money, such as for property or new vehicle purchase, this would get flagged, so proceed carefully. There is a modest monthly fee for the account.

Now that we have a funded South African bank account we can EFT from our app, sweet!  

Also know that two factor authentication is required on this account, and they really want you to use a South African mobile number for this, ostensibly for better security than email. The problem for us is that since we come and go, our mobile numbers expire after 90 days of inactivity. This means we end up with a new South African sim card and mobile number on each visit. This also means our two factor authentication doesn’t work. With a lot of patience on the phone and against the urges of FNB we were able to change this to two factor authentication via email. Though they discourage this, it is possible.

You must have the patience of a zen master to get through the phone calls to set this up, you will be put on hold multiple times, transferred to the wrong department, and you’ll need to explain 47 times that you don’t have a South African ID number or mobile number, but it will work.

According to the FNB website you can set up the non-resident account prior to even arriving in the country, but I am skeptical.  If try that and strike out, try again in person.

Note that there are some banks that have “foreign bank accounts” which is not what you want.  Those are for either FOREX traders or for South African’s living and working overseas.  

Vehicle Insurance

One of the big drivers to get a local bank account was so that we could pay for our vehicle insurance, which is only allowed to be paid by EFT. I have read reports of people managing to pay premiums via credit card, but we have never managed, and believe me, we have tried A LOT. In the interim we had a South African friend pay our insurance and we paid them. Now we are able to pay ourselves via EFT, hooray for small victories.

We found that some insurance companies needed a South African ID number to provide insurance, and thus could not issue insurance coverage to foreigners. As this isn’t the case with all insurers I believe this is more an issue with their computer systems rather than a legal requirement. We use Tuffstuff for our insurance and have found them very easy to work with.

What about cash?

Even if you are a dedicated credit card user, you will need cash in local currency. The further north you go on the continent, the more this is true. It will only take one or two fuel stops where no card is accepted to clean you out of local currency. Keep an eye out though, you’re not the only one handing over a fist full of dollars/kwacha/shillings to pay for fuel, so frequently if you have to pay for fuel in cash there are ATMs near by.

But what about ATM fees, don’t those add up? I’m glad you asked. They do. Unless you have an account that doesn’t doesn’t charge ATM fees, or reimburses ATM fees, which we do. My research has found only two of these accounts available in the USA, and one is expensive, making it not worth it in our case, the other takes one extra step to set up than a normal checking account but is otherwise easy.  

For those with lots of money: Chase Sapphire Banking.  No ATM fees, foreign transaction fees, non-Chase ATM fees reimbursed word wide and no wire fees. Sounds great, right? The catch, requires either $75,000 to be held to avoid the $25/dollar a month fee. Too rich for our blood, so unless you have a lot of cash sitting around, probably not the way to go.  

For the rest of us: A Charles Schwab Checking account. Retail banking is not Schwab’s primary business, so when you sign up for a Schwab checking account it comes with a Schwab investment account, whether you want it or not. The good part is that if you don’t want a Schwab investment account you don’t have to fund this, it can just sit at $0 dollars, and there is no fee. Schwab has no foreign transaction fees and unlimited ATM fee reimbursement worldwide. Other than the cadillac Chase account above, I do not know of any other ATM card that offers this, so for us it was worth the extra step of having an unused investment account (we do have an investment account, but I am a Vanguard loyalist). We linked our Schwab and Chase account (via ACH, remember that?) and fund it from Chase checking. Transfers to the Schwab account take 2-4 days, so plan at least a little ahead.  

Other Money Stuff

Very common in South Africa is the use of mobile apps like Zapper and Snapscan. You link these apps to your credit card. Then, when you go to a vendor that will usually have one or the other (I think Snapscan is a little more popular) they’ll have a QR code at the register, but may not take a credit card.  You scan the QR code with your app, type in the amount owed, hit send, and your done. 

Also occasionally you’ll run across “Payfast”. This is kind of like Paypal in the US and is a legitimate website. You can fund a Payfast account from a South African bank account or a credit card, and send payments from their website.  

Another mobile system is Mpesa  Kenya pioneered mobile branchless banking perhaps earlier, faster and better than any country in the world. I worked in Kenya in 2008 and Mpesa was already widely in use. This system does not require a smart phone, which is great as it makes it accessible to many more people, unlike Paypal, Snapscan and all the rest. Vendors have a unique ID number and you can pay for goods and services from your Mpesa credit from any cell phone. You can also covert Mpesa credit to cash at any of the numerous Mpesa stalls found all over Kenya and seven other countries, and similar systems exist in other African nations. When you get to a new country ask around and almost anyone will be able to tell you the ins and outs of whatever the local mobile banking system is.  

Our experience is that navigating the ins and outs of handling money, paying for insurance and all the rest is part what differentiates long term travel from a couple week trip. The mundane actions of opening a bank account and standing in line with everyone else bring us a tiny bit closer to reality of regular residents less from the high perch aloft that tourists often find themselves in. It’s all part of the experience.

Disclaimer: The links for Chase and Schwab checking are referral links. If you use them I’ll get a commission, but no pressure. If I knew how to add one for the credit card I’d add them too, but I don’t. There are lots of other good travel cards out there, Chase is certainly not the only one. 

The 4.2 liter diesel engine remains largely unchanged since it was brought into service in 1990.  The inline 6 generates an underwhelming 129 hp, it has no computers under the hood, it’s under powered, slow, and it’s been said that it’s shudder on shutdown will register on the Richter scale.  But it is also dirt simple, faithfully reliable, parts are widely available and mechanics the across the continent are familiar with it.

It’s unimpressive speed is hardly an issue when on dirt roads, as one can’t drive that fast anyway, and even on tarmac many of the roads in Africa don’t allow for much speed either due to poor road condition, steep inclines and or optimistically sharp corners.  Particularly when loaded one must plan overtaking far ahead of time, and you can forget about passing someone while going uphill, it’s just not going to happen.

To illustrate, on a particularly empty stretch of pretty flat road in South Africa we thought we’d test our 0-60mph time.  So Jenny stopped in the middle of the road, I got the stop watch ready and on the “3, 2, 1, Mark!” she was off…slowly.  The manual says 0-60mph in 30 seconds.  Not much to write home about to begin with, and that is unloaded.  We were in full overland configuration and at 30 seconds I was starting to laugh as the Cruiser gently trundled faster every so slowly gaining speed.  Jenny wound up the revs, mashed through the gears and at 60 seconds I was starting to lose it, marveling at our spectacular slowness.  We made it up to the big 60mph in….90 seconds.  I was laughing so hard I couldn’t tell Jenny how bad it was.  But to the Cruiser’s credit I think there might have been a slight incline, and it’s also possible that Jenny could’ve been more aggressive on the revs and the gear changes, but it’s hard to thrash your new to you engine.  Or maybe it was the altitude?  Yeah…that’s it.  The altitude.

The 70 series is made in many configurations.  We have the 79 double cab pickup.  4 wheel drive, low range gear box, front and rear diff locks, long range (130 liter) fuel tank.  It’s also fitted with a snorkel, not just for those more-daring-than-we-should-be water crossings but also to move the air intake higher off the road, which reduces the amount of dust being sucked into the air filter.  An awning to provide shade in the sun and keep us a bit dryer in rain.  2 full size spare wheels, high lift jack, spade, air compressor, tool kit, first aid kit, 12v fridge, recovery kit, gas cooker and many more accouterments.

The goal of all these numerous extras is to turn the vehicle from a capable 4×4 into something that we will also want to live out of for the duration of our trip.  More details about the vehicle setup in future posts.

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