"Big Foot 45"

 

or

 

Modifications since summer 2008 ...

First of all two photos of the rear fenders made out of rubber. Whilst the last event in Gollhofen they already proved that they are a huge improvement compared to the previous ones out of metal. When the cabin is moving and hits the fenders I was scared with the metal ones that the glass-fibre construction may get damaged.

 

 

I have bought at Winkler a front-cover for the air—horn so that no dirt, snow etc. can get into it.

 

 

To make Big Foot more stylish two adhesives have been fixed, a compass rose on the right:

 

and a desert scenery on the left:

 

 

Furthermore I have painted the storage compartment for the spare toilette reservoirs

 

and built in degassing.

 

The outer part is from the manufacturer SOG, the hoses and T-connectors are available in stores for gardening or tools.

 

Background: The choice to use a big tank or cassettes was depending on the areas where we want to go. As long as you stay in Europe or USA where you have normally sufficient infrastructure to dump the e. g. 100 litre shi… whilst your trip – fine and I would have built in a big tank.

 But as soon as you are going into areas where you don’t have the possibility to dump it in an environmental-friendly way, I don’t want to dig a whole for 100 litres faeces. It is enough to dig a hole for the 15 l of the cassettes, 3 digs with the spade, drain the cassette, earth CAREFULLY back on – not an issue because of SOG it is an organic night soil. J

These holes shouldn’t be in my direct neighbourhood, the cassettes can be easily carried a few meters, where it will not interfere at all.

That’s the reason why I have 3 spare cassettes, although I have to admit that this quantity is the overkill. One spare is from my point of view a must, a second I only had to use once so far because I was reluctant to dig a hole, but the third we will not use even in the foreseeable future.

For people without camping background some input about this shi..-story.  Most people are using in the cassettes chemical additives which decompose with less gassing and even more important prevent smelling -  or should prevent (in hot summer temperatures the smell is getting worse and the increasing pressure in the cassette can expand which may cause splatter of the ingredients when you open the slide after you have used the toilette). The SOG-system has connector for a deflation hose, which gets into an outside cover with active carbon and where the gasses can get out. Once you open the slide an electric switch activates a van which actively exhausts the gas. As a result you nearly don’t have any smell in the toilette room. A clean and environmental-friendly tool without any chemicals – never ever without again.

 

 

Who wasn’t aware so far that I am mad:

 

The only place for cleanex-holder was due to availability of space upwards which caused that the paper rolls off whilst driving. To squeeze the last piece between the roll and the wall worked but wasn’t perfect! A barking system on the outside would have varying pressure due to the diameter of the cleanex-roll. So I applied a spring steel on the centre part which acts as a damping. (The spring steel is made out of a venetian blind holder.)

 

Filling the tank is enjoyable again! Especially since I started to assist local car services to get rid of the fuel from people who selected the wrong fuel. J So I asked local car services (it is quite often that people take by mistake the hose for super-gas instead of super-diesel or vice versa and unfortunately the new engines can react critical to those mixtures). Some rejected my request because some of their employees use it for their e. g. old tractors or they use it for their own fleet of older cars, or they claimed that they need a confirmation how the fuel was disposed. But three were really happy about my request because the companies taking care for their disposals didn’t fancy taking the mixture.

The only problem is, that you don’t know the ratio of the mixture of diesel compared to gas. To measure that ratio of the “soup” you can use an aereometer. Mine is from Thomas who sells them in Ebay (in case of interest please feel free to contact me for contact details).

 

The aerometer I am putting into this cylinder, which I have glued at a folding meter stick. This allows me to get a sample of the soup even out of deep tanks plus I can measure the volume roughly by checking the depth of the tank (filling).

 

The conversion scheme below allows me to find out the relationship of diesel compared to fuel. Up to 20% fuel is no problem for an old style diesel-motor, in the past it was normal to add gas to diesel in winter to improve the flow behaviour! Logic that I have to add regular diesel from time to time to maintain the ratio. 20%is for me the maximum because otherwise the greasing of the diesel for the injection pump may get worse (the diesel is responsible for the greasing of the injection-pump cylinders). By adding 2-stroke oil in a ratio of 1:50 PER GAS-VOLUME I am ensuring that the greasing of the „soup“ will be more then sufficient. This and the ext hint came from a friend, Oliver Neumann from Evotech, who is experienced in tuning motors. He as well warned me to use standard vegetable oil to improve the greasing factor.

Volume of diesel in gas:

00% - 0,720
05% - 0,726
10% - 0,731
15% - 0,737
20% - 0,743
25% - 0,748
30% - 0,754
35% - 0,760
40% - 0,765
45% - 0,771
50% - 0,777
55% - 0,782
60% - 0,788
65% - 0,793
70% - 0,799
75% - 0,805
80% - 0,810
85% - 0,816
90% - 0,822
95% - 0,827
100% - 0,833

To pump the “soup” into the tank of Big Foot I doing with a cheap pump driven by an electric drill, it manages to pump up to 2.000l / h. There is a warning not to use it for gas, but first of all it is not pure but as well diesel which does not light that easily and so far it worked without problems! And if the pump really fails because the sealing or so is worn off, who cares, a new one only costs EUR 10,-.
It seems as if she does not like too much to run without fluid for a longer time (the first one is now damaged after sucking the “soup” from a 1 m lower level) – I will give another one a last chance!

NB: The second quit as well and therefore I now bought one for EUR 40,- from Faie, which is OK for fuel duee to the specs.

 

With a ball valve and a switch at the end of a cable in between a short cable extension I built a kind of tap.

 

This shows the cable, which comes from the end-switch and goes into the cuppling of the electric extension-cable and switches off the power. For operation I put the electric drill into permanent mode, put the end-switch into "on" and open the ball tap. Some of the older jerry cans of the car services are rusty and so I put a funnel with a fine strainer into the truck tank. To be able to stop the filling process or to reduce the volume directly at the tank if the strainer gets stuck I built this construction.

 

The strainer in the funnel didn't work and therefore I bougth this one from Hoppe dieses which can be put directly into the tank nozzle.

 

That’s it for today, next update is already in the pipeline but there are still some minor things missing, so rather then posting now 4/5th and the rest later I prefer to stop here – it’s anyhow a longer update right now.