[HN Gopher] Surviving the desert by building a motorcycle from a...
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Surviving the desert by building a motorcycle from a broken car?
(2017)
Author : kenneth
Score : 112 points
Date : 2022-01-03 06:23 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (historygarage.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (historygarage.com)
| thecrumb wrote:
| Didn't Mythbusters do this one already?
| giardini wrote:
| When I read the headline I said to myself "I won't believe this
| unless the car was a 2CV!" Surprise! Another 2CV story. But
| seeing the contraption I _still_ don 't believe it. Nonetheless
| this remains a good yarn and can only add to the 2CV's charisma.
| daveslash wrote:
| This reminds me of the fictional story _The Flight of the
| Phoenix_ , a 1964 novel turned into a 1965 film. The plot is that
| a group of men crash their Fairchild C-82 aircraft in the Libyan
| desert and build a make-shift aircraft out of its pieces to fly
| to rescue. [1] I did not find it to be a very remarkable film in-
| and-of itself ( _personal opinion only_ ), but what I do find
| remarkable ( _and tragic_ ) was that for purposes of the movie, a
| flying, FAA certified, "one off" aircraft was built - the
| Tallmantz Phoenix P-1 [2]. Tragic because one of the stuntmen was
| killed then the aircraft came apart during a practice touch-and-
| go [3].
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flight_of_the_Phoenix_(196...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallmantz_Phoenix_P-1
|
| [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n82nN_lqn58
| zh3 wrote:
| The twist in that film is the guy who designs the escape plane
| turns out to be a model plane designer. Ok, but all the people
| on the wing are going to have a hard time (quite apart from
| messing up the aerodynamics).
|
| Movie stuntmen getting hurt - even dead - has been happening
| long after that movie. Even non-stuntmen can have close shaves
| on-set (I've had three, just as an SFX tech, safety is probably
| much better these days since the '80s); always seemed to be the
| cameramen who ran the highest risks.
| yodon wrote:
| Was it necessary to include the plot spoiler in your comment?
| derekp7 wrote:
| Considering that the film is more than 55 years old, and
| the discussion was advanced by discussing the plot point, I
| don't see a problem with it myself.
| yodon wrote:
| The fact that the film is 55 years old means most
| visitors here have not seen it (this isn't a classic
| films forum and the majority of HN readers were born long
| after the film came out), and the quality of the
| discussion here increases the odds people might be
| interested in seeing it. Why spoiler the film for them by
| needlessly including a detail that's a plot surprise but
| irrelevant to the subject matter of the discussion here?
| troutwine wrote:
| The commenter must have believed -- and I tend to agree
| with them -- that it improved the quality of their
| comment. I'm sympathetic to the notion that one shouldn't
| needlessly spoil twists of movies, books etc when they're
| relatively fresh but at a certain point if we can't
| discuss what is interesting and fresh about a piece of
| culture we'll fail to make new touchstones for the
| culture.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I once went into the woods with a logging crew. The amount of
| unsafe stuff I saw was mind boggling. Then, my turn came. A
| skidder had gotten a tree stuck. Instead of backup they just
| floored it, and predictably a tree trunk came shooting out of
| the bush. If not for some pretty good reflexes (better than I
| thought I had) I'd surely be dead, I dropped to the floor and
| the tree flew over me still attached to the steel cable that
| had tensioned. Very, very scary. After that I did all the
| work myself. Slowly, deliberately and without taking chances,
| not a single issue in more than a years' worth of cleanup.
|
| They say that logging is one of the most dangerous jobs. I am
| not surprised but I think a good factor in that equation is
| the loggers themselves. (And some of the trees, which can be
| downright treacherous.)
|
| In comparison what I've seen on film sets has always been
| pretty mild.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| I think logging in the US is probably much more dangerous
| than in other developed countries. At least that's the
| impression I have from watching a few television programmes
| and YouTube videos.
|
| US loggers seem to take more risks and have less
| sophisticated equipment.
|
| Is my impression correct?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Television isn't real life. It's an entire career's worth
| of shenanigans compressed into one season because nobody
| is going to watch them drive heavy equipment back and
| forth all day with nothing interesting happening.
|
| If it were even close to that eventful people would live-
| stream it. Note the release schedule of all the <insert
| workplace more dangerous than an office> youtubers and
| how little of their content is sketchy stuff.
| marcodiego wrote:
| In the 90's, my father had a Ford Pampa. We lived in Rondonia,
| close the extreme west of the Amazon rainforest. One day, while
| raining and riding through difficult terrain, the car stopped
| just by the top of a slope. My father quickly diagnosed the fuel
| hose had ruptured. By luck and opportunity, he was a physicist,
| the trunk was full of material from experiments and research he
| was running at the time. He got a hose from one of his
| experiments on the trunk, connected it directly to the engine
| fuel inlet, the other point of the hose came directly to the
| cabin inside a bottle we filled with alcohol from the fuel tank.
|
| That was it, the bottle was now our fuel tank. Dangerous, but
| worked perfectly. We had to stop at every gas station we found
| and refill without stopping the engine to prevent air entering
| the hose.
|
| It was a fun day.
| mountainboy wrote:
| alcohol in the fuel tank?
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| Sugar (and hence alcohol fuel) is cheap and plentiful in
| Brazil. It competes with gasoline. So dual fuel vehicles are
| common.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Yes. Cars powered by alcohol were common in Brazil. There was
| a government program with tax incentives, this helped us to
| become less dependent on external prices for petrol helping
| control inflation. Also, on less developed regions, utility
| cars - Pampa was a pickup - also had tax incentives as a way
| to promote development of the region. Of course, there was a
| law that prevented you from selling your utility car to other
| regions of the country.
|
| This made an alcohol powered utility vehicle very attractive
| for the region at the time. It was probably the cheapest
| pickup one could buy.
| progman32 wrote:
| I once ran my car's electrical system from my electric
| skateboard's batteries when my alternator failed, but your
| story wins.
| barrkel wrote:
| I don't believe this. Colour me extremely skeptical; if he had 10
| days worth of water he could have walked to the coast, and he'd
| hit a road sooner or later. Morocco is not that wide.
|
| What are the chances you have enough tools to tear down and
| rebuild a car in a different format like this, _and_ you choose
| to do so instead of hiking? You 'd have to have done it, or
| something like it, before.
| IncRnd wrote:
| I imagine for someone stranded in the desert it would be
| difficult carry ten days of water while aimlessly walking in
| the hopes of finding a road.
| barrkel wrote:
| Let's be clear: he'd be about 40 hours walk from the coast,
| at most, on surface that looks like this:
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@28.03012,-11.1617356,3a,75y,89..
| ..
| plasticchris wrote:
| Walk at night? That's better in the desert and you can use
| the stars to hold course.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Hoofing it with 10 days of water? You realize how much that
| weighs?
|
| And I note no mention of food. 10 days of hoofing it without
| food isn't going to happen. A day of hoofing it with a pack
| burns 4000-5000 calories/day. Your body quickly depletes it's
| ready stores and you're down to fat reserves--and the rate that
| you can use those is limited.
| barrkel wrote:
| He couldn't have been more than 40 hours walk from the coast.
| If the map was accurate, a lot less to a road.
| moron4hire wrote:
| We also didn't have the internet back then for people to
| immediately call bullshit on stories like this, so there was a
| higher chance for it to enter the urban mythology without much
| question. Once it would have hit Reader's Digest, man, it would
| have practically been a fundamental law of nature.
| mysterydip wrote:
| I bust my knuckles up wrenching on my car even when I have all
| the right tools. The pic of him at camp with the bike in the
| background and he's completely clean (not even some grease?)
| makes me skeptical.
| pengaru wrote:
| There are other photos of him still clothed at the camp, and
| the clothes are not clean.
|
| In the nearly nude photo his hands are visibly dirty.
| blueflow wrote:
| Who made the photo?
| Groxx wrote:
| If that map is even remotely accurate, he was only about 10-20
| miles away from Tan-Tan: https://goo.gl/maps/fzJmUz3b2PddDSp17
|
| Seems like a fairly easy walk to me. Uncomfortable and a bit
| long (roughly one day), certainly, but less-so than a dozen
| days in the desert.
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| this part of Morocco is not particularly harsh, either. it's
| the hardpack, pebble strewn surface called "reg" not the
| sandy, treeless desert that doesn't really exist in Morocco
| except in a rather narrow band along the Algerian border.
|
| I agree this was likely a preconceived stunt because locals
| walk that distance, in much more rugged conditions,, all the
| time without making a big deal about it.
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| I am in the same boat as you - you can't even cut an exhaust
| pipe off without specialized tools - getting a wheel on
| something even without any suspension components seem next to
| impossible.
|
| Maybe I am just mad because swapping out shocks and springs
| would take me several weekends with full tools and a jack.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Working on a (relatively modern) Japanese car after only
| having dealt with '60s and 70's British vehicles was a
| revelation. Standardised sizes and parts that actually fitted
| together. So great.
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| That's my experience of going from a German car to a Honda.
| I can take the Honda apart with a screw driver and a 6-19
| wrench set and very little else. I required one hex wrench
| when taking off the whole front of the car.
|
| German cars tend to have a bunch of hex and star wrench
| requirements, in addition to specialized tools for certain
| parts.
|
| On the other hand, older cars did mostly have way more
| space in the engine bay.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| My father used to tell a story of changing a water pump
| in his car when he was wearing a tuxedo--and not messing
| it up. Good luck doing that these days!
| richardfey wrote:
| What car was it?
| cafard wrote:
| Space and Hondas: I took some skin off my right hand and
| fingers the last time I replaced a headlight on one--I
| had to get in behind the gravel shield.
| jpindar wrote:
| That's one reason why I drive a pickup truck, they're
| easier to work on than cars since there's more space
| everywhere, even on the smaller old trucks.
| doubled112 wrote:
| Definitely in older trucks.
|
| Is this true in new trucks? Half the time it seems
| maintenance begins with removing the cab and removing the
| truck from the engine.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Skepticism is definitely warranted, but the car in question
| is a Citroen 2CV which is basically the French equivalent of
| a Volkswagen Beetle. It's pretty much the minimum viable
| product of automobiles and quite amenable to DIY. Honestly,
| all the supply chain shocks of recent times have turned me
| into one of those old greybeards who waxes nostalgic for cars
| like this (except for their safety records).
| jerf wrote:
| If you haven't seen the Mythbusters episode, you may want to
| track it down. IIRC they also limited themselves to a
| reasonable selection of tools on hand, they didn't assume
| they had their full shop.
|
| There are various unusual things about this particular car
| that make it at least hover on the edge of plausibility,
| rather than being a completely absurd idea as it would be for
| most models. As the article said, they did fail, but it's not
| too hard to believe they could have figured something out
| that would have at least been faster than walking if they had
| a bit more time (and by that I mean a few more hours, not a
| few more weeks). The Mythbusters did a lot of interesting
| things but where a normal scientist is driven mercilessly by
| grants, the Mythbusters were always driven mercilessly by TV
| production schedules.
| brudgers wrote:
| Ten days water is twenty liters. 20kg. About a jerrycan
| full...perhaps exactly what he had.
| wikidani wrote:
| Probably a bit more, considering he was prepared for desert
| conditions (and probably) some physical work as well
| lnsru wrote:
| Old cars were serviceable and had decent tool sets inside
| compared to single screwdriver nowadays. So having the tools
| does not look like a problem. Old cars were also much simpler
| to work with. Especially no problems with electrical
| components. Why he choose not to hike is another question.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| It's different world now but my dad with grandpa (his dad) were
| taking our car apart including engine, unscrewing every single
| piece of engine, cleaning it and putting the whole thing back
| together. They were laughing there were always some "redundant
| screws" left at the end. Everything was like that, TV broke, we
| took it to dad's friend garage where he had tons of shit and
| was fixing stuff, taking things out, resoldering etc; you had a
| hole in your clothes? granny would fix it, your shoes were
| broken? you'd try to fix them first, not get new ones etc.
| richardfey wrote:
| Were they doing it for regular maintenance or to fix some
| problem?
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > I don't believe this.
|
| Myth Busters proved this was possible. Not that this story
| actually happened, just that it could have.
| gruez wrote:
| They proved making a motorcycle-like thing is possible, but
| it's basically useless as a vehicle.
| barrkel wrote:
| I believe it's possible to make a motorcycle-like thing out
| of the car, _and_ I think that he did it before he went there
| and went there to create a narrative out of what he already
| knew how to do.
| pengaru wrote:
| Eh, in his situation I would have probably attempted the
| macguyver approach knowing full well if it fails I'm just back
| in the hoofing it situation.
|
| 10 days of water in the desert probably becomes a lot less when
| you're hauling it without a combustion engine assisting. I've
| done a lot of manual labor in the mojave. When rebuilding a
| roof in July I was going through 5-10 gallons a day - and
| that's not dragging heavy shit across the wilderness.
|
| I doubt the motorcycle rode particularly well, it probably more
| resembled a self-powered wheeled sled for precariously carrying
| him and his supplies with less effort than without fire. My
| assumption is it tipped over often and was quite graceless...
| [deleted]
| Tossrock wrote:
| 5 - 10 gallons per day?? Are you including washing and other
| non-drinking usage? Because drinking more than 2 gallons of
| water a day, even in high, dry heat with physical exertion,
| is extremely difficult. I've done a good amount of desert
| labor and a gallon/day is about right for drinking, even at
| 100+ degrees.
| pengaru wrote:
| No, strictly drinking. It's practically all lost to
| perspiration and respiration - I struggled to drink enough
| water to manage a single wee throughout the day.
|
| This was 120F ambient air temps, much hotter surface/roof-
| in-progress temps operating in close proximity to.
|
| Basically every drink break put down 2 Brita pitchers
| worth, refilled from a 5-gallon water cooler bottle.
| Typically I'd have to go down and refill the 5-gallon
| bottle once per day... hence 5-10gals.
| richardfey wrote:
| But if you tip that contraption..fuel is going to spill. And
| pretty fast you're out of fuel, or injured
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| You're assuming he knew where he was. There's a good book
| called _Sahara Unveiled_ that has several stories in it about
| people getting lost in the Sahara and dying of thirst. In many
| cases they were only a mile or two from a place where they
| could have been saved. The problem is the roads aren 't good
| and are often covered by sand, so people get disoriented and
| don't know where they are or where they are trying to go. Plus
| if you leave the shade during the day you will lose water even
| faster. Maybe this story is fake or staged, but many people
| have died of thirst in the Sahara even though they could've
| walked out.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Carrying 10 days worth or water sounds pretty rough, there must
| be a sweet spot where carrying a little less water actually
| gets you further.
| Schweigi wrote:
| With his skills he could have build a sled or a wheelbarrow
| to carry all the water - still easier than a whole motorcycle
| :)
|
| From the article though it didn't sound he drove very far, so
| carry less than 10 days would have been possible too.
| harlanlewis wrote:
| Quick calculations, I'll leave conclusions to the reader. All
| numbers from quick googling.
|
| The standard guidance is 1 gallon (~4 liters) of water per
| day, via all sources (includes food). A gallon weighs a
| little more than 8 pounds, so that's 80+ pounds of water for
| ten days (not counting container, backpack, and whatever else
| you're schlepping). Weight will decrease each day, but that's
| a lot of weight up front. Backpackers usually try to carry
| half that, but 80 isn't out of the question if you're
| conditioned for it (eg US ground military carry 60-100 lbs).
|
| A gallon a day is probably overkill for a short term survival
| situation, though. Having less, especially while you're
| exerting yourself, may cause damage, but the survival goal is
| just to come out the other side.
|
| Some quick googling on actual minimums to survive turned up
| this thread, where someone calculated it to be 1 liter per
| day while resting in a cool environment. So that's 20lbs that
| needs to be adjusted upward for carrying significant weight
| offtrail in potentially hot conditions.
| https://www.backcountrysurvival.co.uk/2016/05/20/minimum-
| amo...
|
| If you split the difference and assume strict rationing,
| you're looking at 50lb start weight and suffering significant
| but not incapacitating dehydration. Brutal, but conceivable.
| Groxx wrote:
| Since it gets lighter as you drink it, I don't think so. Even
| if you could only walk 1 meter while carrying N liters, you
| could drink it until you have M, and then walk as far as you
| could with M. But now you're 1 meter further.
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| If I tried to walk 100 meters with 2000 litres, I might
| fatigue myself so much that I would no longer be able to
| walk any further, no matter how much water I had left.
| gbear605 wrote:
| That's true, but if I had a thousand day supply of water
| (multiple tons), my first step would have to be dumping out
| most of it or I can't walk anywhere.
| derekp7 wrote:
| So basically the rocket equation applied to water.
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| On mentioning Mythbusters failed to recreate this, he concludes
| Emile is amazing, still without doubting any of the story.
|
| "The insanity of this creation couldn't be better expressed than
| in the episode of Mythbusters, where they tried to recreate his
| process."
|
| "Without following a manual, the hosts disassembled a 2CV, which
| they found easy, then set about making their bike. That part was
| not so easy. They failed twice."
|
| "The first, was when they tried to make a better version,
| requiring two to operate it. Fail."
|
| "Then, they tried to recreate Leray's machine from the images
| they'd seen. They couldn't balance it long enough to save their
| lives. Fail again."
|
| "Considering the boys had two good brains, intelligent,
| experienced, and endless time to make something, they failed two-
| times-twice."
| jandrese wrote:
| The original report states that Emile had a lot of trouble
| staying balanced on his bike as well. It is possible the
| Mythbusters version didn't work very well because the design
| was fundamentally flawed. From what I understand he didn't even
| get out of civilization with it, being picked up by the army
| not far from where he built the thing.
| ansible wrote:
| Steering geometry on a motorcycle is very important, and
| getting it slightly wrong will make it hard / impossible to
| balance and steer. Actually, this is true for a bicycle as
| well.
| progman32 wrote:
| My armchair take is that if I really wanted to drive out (as
| opposed to walking - I don't know if I'd be confident enough in
| my walking pace & distances to make the call to abandon the
| vehicle) I'd try to rig the 2CV in car form. Fewer unknowns, I
| think. A broken drive axle (there are 2) could be wedged up to
| restore drive to the other wheel, and a wheel with a broken
| swingarm could be replaced by a makeshift skid made from a
| bumper.
|
| A diagram of the 2CV drive system can be found here:
| http://www.lightauto.com/fwd8.html
|
| I wasn't there of course.
| smm11 wrote:
| Should have walked nights, could have done this easily in two,
| possibly even one.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Where do we have an indication of how far he had to go?
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I notice the article suggests he was 20 miles from a village.
| That sounds walkable in a couple of nights to me, as a fat
| middle aged man. I am pretty sure someone used to the terrain
| and climate could do it in a single leg.
| kbelder wrote:
| I don't know firsthand whether this is true, but this is an old
| family story about my Grandfather.
|
| He was a logger in the Pacific Northwest. At one point he was
| hauling logs up the Oregon Coast, and his truck broke down in the
| middle of nowhere, stranding him. (Probably an old Gary truck,
| which was practically made from cast iron.) I don't remember the
| exact part, but it was something to do with a wheel... the rim,
| or part of the axle or mounting.
|
| He happened to have some ingots in his truck (a soft metal, I
| forget the term). So he built up a large fire, melted the ingots,
| and sand-cast a replacement part using the broken piece as a
| template. Once it cooled and was cleaned up, it worked well
| enough to get him to civilization, or whatever passed for
| civilization in Oregon in the 30s.
|
| Seeing all the logging hacks I've seen when growing up, I
| completely believe this story.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| Honestly that's super impressive. Sand casting can be difficult
| to get right. The metal was likely aluminum? Did he use motor
| oil to wet the sand?
| wikidani wrote:
| I don't think it was aluminum because he mentioned it was
| during the '30s. I believe it wasn't as widespread as it is
| nowadays
| PeterisP wrote:
| For 1930s, I'd assume that lead is much common than aluminum,
| and it's also much easier to melt.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I'd think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot_metal
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Great story and amazing engineering. I got curious and found this
| article which has more details and a bit more sceptical take.
|
| https://sahara-overland.com/tag/emile-leray/
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