Driving a Tacoma around the world

If you're still looking for advice on this, this is a good YouTube channel for that stuff. Lots of good information from someone who has actually driven around the world.

https://www.youtube.com/c/TheRoadChoseMe

 

Congratulations on 'sticky status'

 

Whoa! Thank you all. I’m surprised and honored. We’re heading out in the camper for a five night test run tomorrow night in central Oregon, either the Ochoco National Forest or off of Century drive in the Cascades.

 

Dan’s my hero! Just show one of his Youtube videos regarding the five things that Overlanders overlook. One of them was installing a hidden kill switch, anyone know of one for a 3rd gen??





I briefly chatted with him at the 2019 Overland Expo West.

 

Nice!! He doesn't have that many subs so I didn't know if you had seen the channel or knew of him otherwise.

And I don't know anything about a hidden kill switch for the 3rd gens, I do know that my dad used to have to do this growing up in East Detroit (now Eastpointe). Definitely not a bad idea.

 

No, i appreciate the thoughts. What I’ve learned at work and even here on Tacomaworld that even if you’re the smartest person in the room, the collective intelligence in the room is far better. There’s amazingly good ideas I’ve picked up here On TW for the truck​

 

Trivia for those interested, not at all technically related.... This language is "lorum ipsum" and is used as a placeholder/ filler for future things. It's vaguely Latin-esque. There are actually lorum ipsum generators out there on the web so you don't have to make it up yourself.

 

Well we finally had our first real wild campsite which was located on the shores of Deer Lake which is near the southwest corner of the Three Sisters Wilderness near Bend, Oregon.


Since we got a late start setting up out truck we arrived to the extremely busy area of Century Drive. Basically all of the campsites in the nearby roughly 50 campgrounds were all full. So we pushed up very rough roads and lucked out with this spot. The road down was very twisty


One full-size made it down to us but then had to do a 10-point turn to get back up; Very happy to be driving a Taco!


Truck is driving fine at 5,000’ in elevation, it’s no speed demon but it handles well on the curves. We’re super happy. The next day we did a great 13 mile gently-sloping loop (Many Lakes trail) hike through the wilderness, we were pooped.

The 100 amp-hour battery was down to 22% after two days of nearly full shade and temps approaching 90.

 

Congrats on the beginning!

What did you having running off the battery?

 

Thanks!

Our consumption is a Dometic 85 liter frig that pulls about 43 watts. We also have led lighting and cell phone charging. I've noticed that the frig runs alot when the temperature is above 85. We have 320 watts of solar but that doesn't do much when cloudy or under trees.

 

Working it backwards since I am an analyst. The battery discharged 78 amp hours or about 1,000 watts over a 2-day period. Since the fridge uses 43 watts, that means the fridge probably ran 20 hours over 2 days with the rest being miscellaneous uses.

 

I probably missed this, but did you re-gear?

 

Oh yeah! 5.29s. and yes it definitely worth it/necessary. It's much better all at all speeds.

 

That doesn't seem all that different than my 50L CFX. It will pull something like 4A initially and then evens out at 3.6A or so on 12V. Yours probably just runs more from the 60%+ more volume and the freeze side.

If you have room, throwing a surplus wool blanket or two over the fridge may help. I tend to do that even on fridges with reflective covers. It is surprising to feel how cool it gets under the blanket after an hour or a few.

Another thing I've done if I'm moving a lot is pre cool a few hours before stopping below my usual target temps, and then set it to nominal when I stop (if I remember lol).

 

Good thoughts, thanks. I’ve heard that the electricity consumption doesn’t change a lot due to frig size.

Unfortunately ours is built into the cabinet. But now I’m wondering what coolness setting its set at.

I forgot that we also are using a Shurflo pump as part of our electrical use, but it shouldn’t be much

 

I pulled mine out and found space down the sides to fill with more insulation. Pulling it out does mean that you have to re tape the reflectex on the backside.

 

Cool. How hard was replacing the reflectex?

 

I think I reused it. You just have to tape it up again. I think you need to caulk the edges too. To protect from water seeping in. The tape I used was foil.

 

Cool! Thanks Stu

 

Hi Andy, website is looking good! Very excited for your journey, your route is off the charts amazing We have purchased a Defender 130 from the Netherlands, should be on a boat shortly. It was from a couple had had started an overland journey but ran into some roadblocks and then the virus came along, they have 2 kids so they decided to have them go back to school and start over again so I was able to buy it with quite a few of the mods I was looking at. I still own the taco so I think I can post here I look forward to following your journey!