Best Survival Vehicle

[DALE]

My "Bug Out Vehicle" is a Model A Ford similar to this picture...good gas mileage, don't have to worry about someone stealing it as they probably wouldn't know how to start or drive it. Will run on almost any fuel and no electronics to get zapped. About as basic as can be...Drove mine from coast to coast with no problems in 1990 (Other than holding up traffic behind me...50mph top speed!)

 

[snowdriver]

wow,you must be a patient man to drive something so slow coast to coast!!

 

[DALE]

wow,you must be a patient man to drive something so slow coast to coast!!

It was a leisurely tour... as the journey, rather than the destination, was the goal. We took 30 days and would stay over some days. We would travel 200-300 miles per day...backroads only. It's amazing the experiences and things we miss when we blast down the freeway at highway speeds.

 

[snowdriver]

it would be nice to take the time to do that,glad you were able too,for me time is always at a premium,maybe someday!!

 

[Gunner3456]

I live in the mountains of Southern Oregon. If I need to go hide for a while, the steep terrain rules out anything with 4 wheels. A trail bike is good but will run out of gas eventually.

It's a mule. It can live off the land.

What did the pioneers do?

If things went to chit, I'd be emulating the pioneers and the mountain men.

 

[bwells]

Fairly easy to work on, and goes anywhere. There's a guy in Longview that has one. He drives it to some of the local car shows (with rubber tracks).

 

[jdub75]

We all know where its at:

 

[kevlar]

She isnt stock and she gets around everywhere.

 

[raindog]

Back in the day (great survivalist boom of the early 80s), you wanted a car that was pre-76, because EMP from a Soviet strike would knock out your electronic fuel injection ;-)

My BOV is a set of bicycles. Amazing what you can carry if you load them down and push 'em...

 

[Southridge]

My choice is The Chevrolet Avalanche. it has plenty of power it's all wheel drive. full size cab removable rear window and large moon roof, large enough to shoot on the move.
and bed access through the rear seat to reach your gear.
lockable storage compartments on the sides of the box. And with the hard bed covers it offers excellent security for whatever you have in the box

 

[Mr.510]

Here's a couple pics of one of my Unimog 404s. The first one also contains a rare pic of me clean shaven with short hair!

This pic illustrates why these trucks work so well in the woods: 16" under the diffs on stock 37" radials. Portal axles with selectable locking differentials supported by soft coil springs. Drive shafts are enclosed in torque tubes.

If I were going to try to go somewhere after TEOTWAWKI this is what I'd drive. It's got a 7x10 foot drop-side flatbed, weighs less than 6k pounds, and has the same overall dimensions of a fullsize 4x4 pickup. It's only "electronics" are the voltage regulator and condenser and they are shielded to prevent radio interference, which (theoretically) also makes them imune to EMP. I've driven this truck's sister over a 38" diameter fallen tree trunk and I've got pics here somewhere of it going over a Jersey barrier at a 45 degree angle with 2k pounds of cinder blocks on the back. FWIW: It wouldn't go over the Jersey barrier unloaded so I put two pallets of cinder blocks on the deck and gave it another try. These trucks are dirt-simple and literally don't have enough power to break anything. 82hp and 112ft-lbs of torque with the stock gasoline straight six. Top speed on flat ground is 65mph. Happy cruising speed is 55mph @ 12mpg. I commuted 60 miles a day in my NATO Mog for a year. It was a lot of fun but was just too expensive to keep tires under it.

My current daily driver/get home vehicle is an '88 Pathfinder on 33s. My current project is it's replacement, an '87 diesel Blazer on 35s converted to run on VO (vegetable oil) with the Frybrid system.

 

[jdub75]

HOLY CRAP thats sweet! Uni-mog is the deal! Nice rig...

 

[hefftuck]

i second the Unimog, i've worked for Mercedes for a while, had the great fortune to see 5 or 6 of these in really nice shape, even had a co-worker who had one for a while, let me have a little time behind the wheel on his property, if not that, then the Wombat, it's a custom travel vehicle that this retired couple drive all over the world, live out of it. i was in Belize last year walking on a random trail/road when they came bombing down behind me and my friend.

 

[nwg19]

Those mogs are absolutely the best. Very nice Mr. 510!!!!

 

[Mr.510]

Thanks guys! The hardcab in the pics was a Swiss military airport firetruck. The paint on most of the cab is actually a very light pink latex house paint, applied with a brush and roller while their military still had the truck! You don't really notice that it's not just dingy white unless you hold something white up to it. My wife says,"It takes a real man to drive a pink Unimog!"

There's a sort of funny, convoluted, and very long story about how I bought this truck and it's EPIC journey to Seattle. I'm waiting for a simmering pot of Texas Red chili to cook down so I'll tell the story in case anyone is interested. I've also never written this down so it'll be nice to have a written record for myself for when I get old and forgetful.

Ok, for starters, I worked part-time for several years for a major surplus Unimog/Pinzgauer importer. I mostly traded mechanical and fabrication labor for parts/tires/Euro military equipment but pocketed some long green as well. The guy I worked for would fly back and forth between the US and Germany at least monthly to source trucks. He did all the scouting and purchasing and had a team in Germany demilitarizing trucks (when required), packing them in containers, and shipping them to the USA. He offered to hook me up to buy trucks, not just at his cost, but directly from his sources. Needless to say I took him up on the offer! He did the purchasing for me in Germany and Switzerland in exchange for pizza and beer. He introduced me to his shipping and customs brokers and I already knew what everything really costs so I wouldn't get screwed.

The hardcab was the first (and almost last) truck that I brought in myself. Before I tell the story I should probably say "no s__t" or something because by the end nobody is going to believe it anyway. I do have import paperwork that proves all of the truck's international travels but I can't post it to the interweb for obvious reasons.

My employer found the truck behind a warehouse in Switzerland by accident when he made a wrong turn. He knew I wanted a hardcab as I already had a droptop NATO Pritche. At this time surplus hardcabs were extremely rare and generally sold stateside for nearly double what ragtops did. He inquired and it was cheap. It was seriously ugly and the fire-fighting box had been swapped to another truck by the Swiss prior to it being surplussed. I bought it through a Swiss surplus reseller as you cannot buy directly from their military. Shipping was arranged through our broker and it was tranported to Rotterdam Holland on a flatbed as it was not roadworthy.

In Rotterdam it was driven onto a roll-on, roll-off (car hauler) Hapag-Lloyd steam ship and was chained down among endless rows of new German cars bound for New York. Upon arrival in NY, it was driven off the ship and chained down on a top-of-stack-only flatdeck "container" so it could be loaded on a container ship bound for the West Coast via the Panama canal. I don't know what else was on that ship, but it was refused passage through the canal because of it's cargo and had to go around Cape Horn. In Peru the ship was unloaded and the truck sat on it's flatdeck in a customs yard for a few weeks. The ship it was on went back around the Horn to points unknown. So the truck is finally loaded on another container ship which is headed for San Diego to pick up cargo bound for Portland. The ship arrived in San Diego a few days after the start of a longshore union strike and could not be unloaded. It sat at a dock for a couple weeks before Hapag-Lloyd decided they'd better get their ship and crew back to work. They pulled out and headed for the Panama Canal with South Carolina as their destination. Before the ship even left the canal it was re-routed to Egypt! So off my truck went to North Africa. :huh:

The truck was unloaded again but was put back on the same ship. It left Egypt and went South through the Red Sea and landed in Cape Town, South Africa where they took on more cargo. The ship left Cape Town and headed for Brazil. The truck was unloaded in Brazil and transferred to another ship after another week's wait. This ship was headed South around Cape Horn then North to Callao, Peru. The truck was unloaded in Peru where it was to wait for a ship going North to San Diego. The ship that brought it to Peru was headed through the Panama Canal to Charleston, South Carolina. Guess what? The Peruvians screwed up and put it back on the ship it arrived on! It was "lost" for weeks before being "found" in a customs lockup in Charleston. It had arrived from Peru with no paperwork and was seized by US Customs. Hapag-Lloyd got the paperwork straightened out and after another couple of weeks it was loaded on yet another container ship but this one was going North to New York. It landed in New York and was unloaded to wait for a ship headed to the West Coast.

By this time I was absolutely furious and screaming on the phone to anyone that didn't hang up on me. Rather than wait for another ship Hapag-Lloyd put the flatdeck on a rail car and sent it back South to Jacksonville, Florida. From there it went West to New Orleans and then North to Chicago. From Chicago it went to Albuquerque and then on to Los Angeles. From LA it went North by rail to Portland where it was unloaded and put on a semi trailer. It was trucked to the Port of Tacoma where it was finally unloaded from it's flatdeck. It was hauled to the Unimog shop by flatbed tow truck. I changed all the fluids and tuned it up before driving it home to my shop in South Seattle.

In all it took seven months for the truck to get from Switzerland to Seattle. Thankfully shipping charges are based on getting your stuff from point A to B, not miles traveled! The shipping company can get it there any way they want as long as it's not damaged. Unless you are some huge corporation with big contracts there is no guarantee on time of arrival. Rotterdam to Seattle or Tacoma is usually four weeks. The shipping bill was as-quoted: $1164. Boy did they ever lose money on that one!

About a year later I went to our freight broker's office to prepay for shipping a container with three Swiss troop transports to Seattle. They had taken a copy of the routing sheet for my hardcab, blanked out my personal info, framed it, and hung it on the wall! They said it was the most messed up routing any of them had ever seen or heard of.

Well, that's the story. For those that hung in there and read this far down, here's a link to a video of me and one of my friends with our Mogs hooked together by offroad towbar to make an 8x8:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ziw13a7kl4

 

[lefty]

Diesel Chevy 4x4 full size. Pre electronic BS (6.2/6.5 I THINK) Pick up, Blazer, Sub. Pick your people space. Parts will be every where, tough, will run on diesel, JP8, Bio-diesel, cooking oil, gas oil mix, kerosene, what ever you can lay your hands on. Room to haul stuff (no matter what body you choose), and with a non military paint job, will blend in with any urban environment.

I jokingly call my 85 K30 with a diesel a poor man's Hummer. In all seriousness the US Military called them M1008's...

Simple to work on, nearly impossible to kill, parts available virtually everywhere. Very capable in 4wd with the factory limited slip rear axle.

Downside is the beast is freakin heavy (8000lbs) and kinda slow moving with 4.56:1 gearing and a non-overdrive 4spd transmission.

 

[SquatchWorks]

where is the best place to find a unimog? how much do they go for?

 

[bmw2]

Obvious choice.

 

[Mr.510]

where is the best place to find a unimog? how much do they go for?

Craigslist! 404 series Unimogs like I have typically range in price from about $4-15K depending on equipment and condition. A good rule of thumb six or eight years ago was that if a 404 was priced fairly at less than $7k it should be avoided. I paid $6k for my first Mog but had $10k into making it an $8k truck two years later! Transmissions are the weak link and are very involved to replace as the whole truck is basically built around it. 5th gear specifically is almost always the one to fail. If a 404 doesn't shift smoothly into 5th going up from 4th with the valves floating and down from 6th without double clutching move on to another truck unless you like major projects! Last I checked new/rebuilt transmissions were about $1500 and I used to charge $800-1k to R&R one. If I recall correctly flat rate on a 404 transmission & clutch is 38 hours. A typical DIYer would probably spend 60 hours to do it and you need some BIG tools. If you are seriously interested in a Unimog you should check out the Rocky Mountain Moggers website and sign up for the Unimog Mailing List at Texas4x4.com. Just like with guns, learn as much as you can before jumping in with both feet and getting unpleasantly surprised.

 

[orygun]

Wouldn't trade this truck for anyone's anything. Bought it in 91 as a one owner 2wd 6cyl 3 speed F250. It's now on body #3 (hopefully the last) First one rolled, 2nd beat to death wheelin. 351, 5speed, power steerin' and power disc brakes. Dana 60 front and Dana 70 rear (one ton stuff) 4.56 gears,locked in the rear. Took the front posi out when I quit wheelin cuz it steers better on ice and snow that way. Haul a nearly 4000 lb camper that's actually longer than the truck and pulls a 24' flat bed at the same time. One tough SOB. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt and went back for more. Has dash plaques for over 10 years of wheelin. Nothing left to prove. Would hop in it and head to DC or Anchorage tomorrow. (just might cringe a little at the gas bill!)