Under - 35 and the fluid round your eye balls freezes… now that’s a fun day out… it’s the same type of vision you get if you tried to run about with an old vhs video camera… Your eyes are actually fixed to your skull with no movement… Most people get very dizzy and throw up as well…
I was talking to one of the scientists that work at the Antarctic division in Hobart and he was saying it’s just not possible to get an accurate temp reading under -20 as nothing has been invented that can remain accurate under that temp… So what are we talking about then I asked … Oh under - 20 and it can get up to 0.0005 percent out of whack he said… I think that would be accurate enough for me…worst I’ve seen on my ( not accurate ) Volvo was - 42… that wasn’t taking into account wind chill…
We used to get stuff in a tube that looked like tooth paste to squirt into the fuel tanks… that with the fuel line heaters… I can’t say we ever had any serious trouble… Just the odd fuel filter here and there…
Having said that I saw + 46 one day on my way up to Alice Springs…
Speaking of cold we used to keep our wheel changing gear under the bunk where it was reasonably warm, as one of the other crews had a wheel key snap on them cause it got to cold and brittle … We also used to lightly heat the wheel nuts with a blow torch so they wouldn’t snap either, which was another problem we had…
Jelliot:
Under - 35 and the fluid round your eye balls freezes… now that’s a fun day out… it’s the same type of vision you get if you tried to run about with an old vhs video camera… Your eyes are actually fixed to your skull with no movement… Most people get very dizzy and throw up as well…
I was talking to one of the scientists that work at the Antarctic division in Hobart and he was saying it’s just not possible to get an accurate temp reading under -20 as nothing has been invented that can remain accurate under that temp… So what are we talking about then I asked … Oh under - 20 and it can get up to 0.0005 percent out of whack he said… I think that would be accurate enough for me…worst I’ve seen on my ( not accurate ) Volvo was - 42… that wasn’t taking into account wind chill…
We used to get stuff in a tube that looked like tooth paste to squirt into the fuel tanks… that with the fuel line heaters… I can’t say we ever had any serious trouble… Just the odd fuel filter here and there…
Having said that I saw + 46 one day on my way up to Alice Springs…
Speaking of cold we used to keep our wheel changing gear under the bunk where it was reasonably warm, as one of the other crews had a wheel key snap on them… We also used to lightly heat the wheel nuts with a blow torch so they wouldn’t snap either, which was another problem we had…
Jeff…
Sounds like you’re in for some fun if the engine for any reason stalls overnight…
Under -35 around your eye balls freezes…bloody hell mate, now there’s a image I can’t get rid of now…
Some more excellent photo’s Patrick. They must have been taken a while back going by the standard of the shots. The de Lely ones are more recent I would say. That was the problem back in the early days the standard of photo from the old 35 mil cameras. Now, with digital cameras you get much clearer photo’s. And you can see how the shot has come out immediately. With the 35’s you took the pic’ and hoped that it was alright. You did not know, until the photo was developed some time later.
In 1990 I took out the equipment for Kodak to open up 24 hour photo shops in Moscow. I had also taken gear for two in Poland, while waiting to do my first trip to Moscow for Kepstowe. That was while waiting for my Soviet visa to come through, in April 90. And I used to get my photo’s developed in Moscow, because I knew where the shops were.
But, I never had a really good camera, because you ran the risk of having it stolen by the Border Control Staff. I actually lost 3 Zippo lighters due to them. All stolen from the cab during cab controls.
Not sure Mick, but I reckon the De Lely pic’s were taken mid 90s or so, the VD Wal early 90s…?
Aye, got much easier if you want to take a pic now, there are some proper camera’s out now, fitted with a telelens and are not much bigger than your mobile phone…
On the other hand, there was always bit of excitement and relief if you got the photo’s developped and they all turned out alright…
Having such low temperatures must have been challenging in the cab. Could the night heater keep the temperature at a comfortable level?. I guess the lorries could have the engine running for days without stopping. How many layers did you have on yourself?
Johnny
We have to endure those stupid temperatures here in Canada, I’ve got no fuel line heaters or any other gizmos to combat the cold, just a winter front to zip up the grille.
Because of the way they blend winter fuel I’ve never used an additive either and I’ve seen it drop to minus 40c and below.
My rule is to run the truck all night if it’s going to drop below minus 15c and I always carry a butane torch and enough proper winter clothes that I could sleep outside if I had to and still feel cozy.
The chains only come out when it’s hovering around freezing and hilly. At minus 15c or below the snow is like dust and ice isn’t slippery as the film of water that sits on top and makes it slippery is gone, being smooth it’s still more slippery than tarmac, but you’d be surprised how much grip you can get.
We have heater vans for stuff that needs to be kept from freezing, everything else just goes in a normal box van, even things you would think need keeping warm like computers and fancy TVs. When I was on fridges we never bothered running them in the depths of winter with a frozen load, trying to keep it at minus 20c meant that it was blowing hot air into the trailer!
Jelliot:
…Under - 35 and the fluid round your eye balls freezes…
… I am without doubt a hot weather person through and through. If its hot enough to make my eyeballs sweat, that`s fine, cold enough to make my eyeballs freeze!..no thank you!!
newmercman:
These were both taken on the same trip, the cold one is in Canada and the hot one in Houston Texas.
Apologies to Mick for hijacking your thread.
No need to apologise, Newmercman. Those photo’s are great. Doesn’t matter where you have to combat low temperatures like that. It is surviving that is the key. I like the face mask
I once left the Daf running on 1,000 revs for a whole weekend. It was in the grounds of the Krasnaya Presnaya exhibition centre. I went home on the Metro and came back Monday morning.
When I opened the door of the cab I was hit by a blast of hot air. It was like opening the door to a blast furnace. I had left the cab heater fan running flat out all weekend. The outside temperature for the whole weekend got no higher than -25C.
How I did not blow out all of the windows due to the difference between the inside temperature and the outside one I do not know !!!
It’s amazing how the lorries cope with it really, on that trip all I did was pop the winter front on and put Canadian #1 diesel in and it took a 66deg temperature swing on its stride, in the cab I only ever wear a t-shirt too, although you soon find out where any drafts are when it gets really cold.
newmercman:
It’s amazing how the lorries cope with it really, on that trip all I did was pop the winter front on and put Canadian #1 diesel in and it took a 66deg temperature swing on its stride, in the cab I only ever wear a t-shirt too, although you soon find out where any drafts are when it gets really cold.
Yes it is amazing what the trucks will put up with. And the drivers. Opening up a tilt trailer when the tilt sheet is totally stiff due to the frost and the minus temperature. Greasing your air lines so that they do not snap.
I had a header tank from an 85 put onto the back of the cab of the 95 and ran it directly to the night heater. I filled it with everything. White spirit, brake fluid, petrol and of course diesel. It worked most of the time. A bit suspect below -20C
I remember running with a lad, the temperature was -25C and his diesel froze. I opened the cap on his tank and there were pieces of ice floating on the top of the diesel inside the tank. We lit a fire under the tank and thawed it out.
That was a problem about the Soviet diesel. It was so full of water that it would start to wax at -9C. I can remember filling up at Sov’ diesel stops, when the temperature was really low and if any of the juice spilled onto the top of the tank, it would turn to ice straight away.
My first winter in Russia 90 - 91, the truck was not equipped for the cold. However, once I had got through that by mixing petrol with the derv’ I had Thermoline fitted. That was brilliant. It was a rubber hose fitted into the system between the tank and the filter. Through the middle of the hose there was a copper wire that heated up. When you felt the truck spluttering and misfiring because it was waxing you flicked the switch. You spluttered on for another 50 metres and then it roared into action. You then sped along with the truck feeling like silk. It was fantastic.
newmercman:
It’s amazing how the lorries cope with it really, on that trip all I did was pop the winter front on and put Canadian #1 diesel in and it took a 66deg temperature swing on its stride, in the cab I only ever wear a t-shirt too, although you soon find out where any drafts are when it gets really cold.
You made me laugh, Newmercman when you said that you pop the winter front on. I recall seeing trucks come towards me in Russia where they had popped their winter front on. It would either be large sheets of cardboard or black bin liners. The lowest temperature that my gauges recorded was -42C, but that did not take in the wind chill factor. That may have been another -10C on top. Who knows ?
Hey Vodka W C, don’t think you can make such pics today with you truck before the basilic ■■? allowed today ■■?
Think everythink has lots changed since the years before 2010 ■■?
tiptop495:
Hey Vodka W C, don’t think you can make such pics today with you truck before the basilic ■■? allowed today ■■?
Think everythink has lots changed since the years before 2010 ■■?
Eric,
Probably not Eric. I remember them trying to stop it back in about 1992. The nearest that you could get then was a bridge near the Hotel Russia. You parked on that and took the shot. You still got St Basil’s into the photo and the Kremlin, but you were much further away. And you were not allowed on to Red Square at all. Only official vehicles could drive on that.
We told them about the low temps that we were running through so the lads in the Italian work shop made us a tarp that was about 3 meters wide and 4 long… Their idea was that we drove the front wheels onto the back of the tarp and tied the string on the other end round the mirror arms to keep things warmer at night… We tried it once… nuff said… however most of us managed to trade them for assorted more useful items…
We collected a German guy once that had a MAN road house…after running with him for a couple of days the bottom of his radiator managed to freeze while we were driving along… The first thing we knew about it was when he said his fan belts were squealing so we stopped and had a look to find the water pump had frozen… but there was steam belching out the header tank as that was boiling…
Hay Mark ever thought about joining the hansom club… LOL…
I get around in a t shirt in the cab but most of the time I at least ware undies as well.
I hate wearing Hi Viz in the truck especially with tape. When the sun’s low it reflects everywhere, black’s the best colour for various reasons…
Never liked snow chains… we had a set of doubles and singles… the trouble with Russia was the snow was rarely deep enough or compacted right to use them, so it was better to rely on M & S tyres and adapted driving style…
I stopped on the north Kaz step to put the chains on one day cause I was empty and was getting some " proper " side winds. As I was getting them out the tool box the whole truck and trailer got pushed side ways across the road into the ditch… The next day and a half wasn’t very entertaining… then there was a Sov in a Kamaz… A packet of Marlboro. and we run up the Russian border together…
I was collecting tyres from a tyre factory in Romania/ Hungary / Checz… can’t remember cause I’ve done 18 hours today … Eastern bloc tyres… Really cold. to cold to shut the engine down… There’s about 20 trucks parked up for the night all waiting to get loaded the next day… most of us have the engine going all night… There’s a young lad in a long wheel base MAN box van, day cab… top pod on the roof… I don’t know if he shut it down, or it stopped through the night, but in the morning its not running…
You can hardly see across the truck park cause of all the low lying smoke… wasn’t very healthy to breath in either…
So a couple of likely lads are over at this MAN giving their expert opinions… I’ve already eaten a packet of out of date Tesco home brand crisps dipped in Branson pickles while sipping a can of Irn Bru… and I’m contemplating if I should have my last 3 Jaffa cakes or the last 2 half squashed Tunnocks Tea cakes when I notice an old broke pallet being dragged towards the out of luck MAN…
The leader of the pack stomps the pallet in a very manly fashion until it broken into submission then some old news paper gets in on the act as the remnants of the once proud pallet are place in a criss cross style under the fuel tank of the offending MAN. A bit of action from a lighter mixed with a copious amount of Cyrillic profanities are thrown into the mix, and we have a small fire coughing and spluttering to life under the tank…
So I’m thinking ( by the way Jaffa cakes won the race for breakfast of choice ) I thought those little MAN"s had a sort of plastic fuel tank, same sort of material that fuel tanks on trail bikes are made of … With some expert help the fire gets a bit of encouragement and the flames are a bit more noticeable… the young lad’s having a bit of a look at the tank and the leader of the pack’s trying to flatten the battery by churning the engine over and over and over … Obviously the best thing to do is get the fire going as much as you can so under the instruction of the leader some kind of combustible fluid is thrown in it’s general direction of the fire… Well that got it’s attention and now to their great delight you couldn’t deny there was defiantly some kind of fire going under the fuel tank…
Some of the other guys have expressed there luck of enthusiasm for the goings on and are starting to get their trucks away from the immediate vicinity… I’m not to close to the goings on but I have a fairly good view… however I do notice there’s defiantly some kind of sag in the bottom of the fuel tank, but I only notice it for a few seconds before everything goes… WOOOOOSH…Clouds of rapidly emanating billowing flame followed by enormous amounts of black smoke… There were lots of experts, shouting many things in many languages…
Just as I thought… plastic fuel tank…( I was actually feeling quite smug that I knew they had plastic fuel tanks ) However having a truck on fire in quite a close vicinity was a bit of an inconvenience, and I was quite convinced it would somewhat hamper the proceedings and general running of the day… There wasn’t much left of it before the "fire crew " stopped watching it from a fairly safe distance and decided to wander over to have a look… You could make out the basic shape of the engine… most of the body was gone. The cab looked interesting, and it would take a bit more then a can of Mr Sheen to put it right… It was still smouldering when I finished getting loaded that afternoon…
The worst thing is that I was probably going to be out for another couple of weeks and I’ve only had half a packet of mini Aero’s left… so had to buy some European Twix… and I couldn’t even find any Lion bars…Life on the road’s tough…
Hey to all, the best to sleep in with the engine running, was the Daf 2800. You mattress was laying on the floor just about the turbo, so better couldn’t it be.
On the opposite side of that coin Eric, I’m sure Jeff will agree with me on this, the worst lorry to sleep in after a long drive on a hot day was a V8 TurboStar, two turbos right under the bunk made it like a bloody oven.
For me the coldest was a 1632 Merc with no night heater and no thermostats, so running the engine was a waste of time. I only did one trip in it luckily.
