World's most exclusive used overlanding vehicle?

Of course one could make an argument for John Steinbeck’s Rocinante—but that’s in a museum. You can actually buy Steve McQueen’s 1952 Chevrolet 3800 and camper from the Legendary Motorcar Company. Note that “can” is highly subject to your financial status. The company doesn’t list the price; you have to “enquire.” From their description—which I’ve edited for grammar, ahem:

This special 1952 Chevrolet 3800 Pickup with custom camper was purchased by the legendary Hollywood actor Steve McQueen from a migrant farmer he passed on the side of the road in the late ‘70s when he resided in Trancas Beach, north of Malibu, California. An avid collector of vintage cars, trucks and motorcycles throughout his lifetime he owned more than 60 rare vehicles including a 1951 Hudson Hornet, a 1956 GMC Suburban, a 1931 Lincoln Club Sedan, a 1946 Willys Jeep, and a 1935 Chrysler Airflow Imperial Sedan. This 1952 Forest Green Chevrolet 3800 series is a one-ton step-side long-bed. Powered by the original 235 cu in Loadmaster 6-cylinder engine with a 4-Speed manual transmission.

McQueen understandably used the truck for cross-country camping trips as this Chevrolet pickup truck features a custom camper known as "Dust Tite.” The custom camper was built by Harold Van Hoosen, a sheet metal fabricator from Yreka, California, in October 1952.

Made of galvanized metal and aluminum, the camper includes a double-size bed, storage cabinets, drawers, shelves, and a heavy-duty diamond-plated rear bumper. Inside the famous Chevy 5-Window cab design, complete with sun-visor, the two-tone green bench seat is in wonderful condition. The interior has a pretty high trim level for a truck of this era and has an AM radio and Chevy heater. It also has a platform on top, making it a prime viewing location for auto and motorcycle racing events. Other features of this wonderful truck include five-gallon gas tanks on the running boards, driver's side spotlight and two toolboxes.

In case you’re in the market, LMC is here.

America's own Defender 130 Hi-Cap (minus the high capacity)

The first Defender 130 Hi-Cap (“High-Capacity”) pickup I ever saw in person was in Namibia in 1999, at a camp outside Sossusvlei. I was instantly smitten with the massive, dusty white beast. A Superwinch Husky worm-drive winch (my first in-person look at one of those, too) rode on a stout front bumper, atop which were two Cibie Super Oscar driving lamps. Over the bed arced a tube canopy frame, and the canvas cover was rolled up so the husband and wife owners could unload a shipshape configuration of battered Zarges cases (yet another first in-person look) and Pelicans. From the lot they quickly assembled a spacious, comfortable camp, retrieved beers from the Engel fridge mounted on a frame installed in place of the back seat, and set out chairs to relax. At that moment the 130 Hi-Cap became for me the ne plus ultra of safari vehicles. Its only competition would be an equally awesome and well-sorted Toyota Land Cruiser Troop Carrier I pored over two weeks later.

Flash forward 20 years. I now have my very own Troop Carrier, but a 130 will still turn my head—and in the training area at the 2019 West Expo we had the use of a really nice one, courtesy of the folks at Land Rover Las Vegas, who have supported Expos for a decade. (The LRLV 130, a 2003 model, is a special dealer import and not licensed for street use. Earlier 130s are just now legal for importation under the 25-year exemption.) 

We also had, courtesy Scott Brown at FCA, a brand-new Jeep gladiator pickup, which I had just driven on a media introduction run.

It was an impossible comparison to ignore.

Aside from the identical configuration (four doors plus cargo bed), the two are pretty close in dimensions.

Gladiator

Length: 218”

Width: 74”

Wheelbase: 137”

130 Hi-Cap

Length: 207”

Width: 70”

Wheelbase: 127”

Additionally, they each ride on an increasingly anachronistic separate, fully boxed chassis, and solid front and rear axles supported on coil springs. Even the UK ex-Camel Trophy contingent of our training team agreed that the Gladiator looks the business.

Could it be a worthy successor to the 130?

The 130, of course, has been out of production for four years, and the Gladiator has just entered production. So any comparisons in terms of ergonomics and technology would be unfair to the Defender. Besides that, “our” 2003 130 did not even have the benefit of the latest interior. No matter: I was more interested in the basic integrity of each vehicle, and the potential for the Gladiator to step into the giant shoes of the 130 in terms of its backcountry ability and utility. (I will note here, however, that despite the 130’s traditionally cramped driving position, I found its well-formed bucket seats more comfortable than the Gladiator’s, which are flattened to suit current, more . . . generous . . . body shapes.)

As a firm fan of Jeep’s Wrangler Rubicon Unlimited, I was particularly interested to see what effects the longer wheelbase and chassis had on the Gladiator’s torsional rigidity. So the first thing I did was to take it out to our cross-axle transition hill and get it completely twisted, two diagonal tires stuffed into the wheel wells, a third hanging in the air and the fourth barely in contact with the ground. Then I got out and visually lined up the bed and cab to note the degree of chassis twist.

The Gladiator—a convertible version at that—showing off its rigid chassis.

And . . . there was none. Or, I should say, virtually none. The bed was perhaps a half-inch out of alignment with the cab. On a 137-inch wheelbase, body-on-frame truck, that is beyond impressive. I’d been told that Jeep had not simply lengthened the Wrangler Unlimited’s frame to create the Gladiator but had gone to the expense of engineering a new frame. It showed. Sadly, I never got a chance to put the 130 in the same spot, but I seriously doubt it could have matched that performance. (The 130 chassis has exactly the same dimensions as a 110 chassis except for the 17-inch extension in the middle, and an extra crossmember.)

I found the ride of the two vehicles remarkably close. I’d still give the nod to the Defender for compliance on the road, but the Jeep’s extra tautness lent it better handling, especially in sharp transient maneuvers. How about suspension travel on difficult 4x4 sections? The 130 also had the edge there—that is, until you locked the Gladiator in low range and disconnected the front anti-roll bar, at which point it stepped decisively beyond the Land Rover.

Looking at the rest of each vehicle’s four-wheel-drive capability, there is really no comparison between a “full-time” 4x4 with a locking center diff, no cross-axle diff locks, and a 43:1 crawl ratio, versus a vehicle with part-time four-wheel-drive (and thus an automatically locked transfer case when 4x4 is selected), cross-axle diff locks front and rear, a 77:1 crawl ratio, plus that disconnectible anti-roll bar (the switch for which is still incorrectly and maddeningly labelled “sway bar”). The Rubicon wins this hands down. One could argue that a non-Rubicon Gladiator—that is, minus the anti-roll-bar disconnect, diff locks, and ultra-low crawl ratio, might not be so superior, and that’s a valid point. However, I wanted to compare each in its optimal configuration, and even a last-of-production 130 with electronic traction control would be left behind by the Gladiator in Rubicon form. Easy win to Jeep. 

Approach and departure angles are very similar on both vehicles; however, since the Gladiator is 11 inches longer than the 130, it needs a 10-inch-longer wheelbase to maintain those angles—and that hurts the breakover angle. This was apparent on our “elephant footsteps” track—a diagonally alternating series of deep holes. The Jeep ground out here where the 130 did not, and when I crawled underneath the Gladiator I was stunningly unimpressed with the factory “skid plate” covering the transfer case. It has all the appearance of re-purposed lawn-chair components. I’m sure the aftermarket will address this quickly, but FCA should have done it themselves. So, nod to Land Rover here.

Hmm . . .

Maneuverability? If you think the Jeep’s 44-foot turning circle feels vaguely ocean-linerish, wait ’til you crank the wheel on the 130, which needs a full 50 feet to complete a 180-degree turn, even with its shorter wheelbase. Win to Jeep.

Visibility out of both vehicles is very good and feels like a wash, although in the critical forward direction few competitors can match the Defender’s squared-off corners, which allow confident placement mere inches from boulders or building corners.

So, how about practicality for long-distance travel—for example cargo space in the bed? The Gladiator’s bed is 60 inches long; the 130’s is five inches longer, and almost 10 inches wider, so there is notably more volume; however, they are both fairly compact—Sleeping in either bed is a no-go unless done diagonally and solo. But the square shapes lend themselves to efficient packing.

It’s when calculating just how much one can pack that a stark difference arises.

The Gladiator has a listed curb weight of 5,050 pounds, and a gross vehicle weight rating of 6,250 pounds, giving it a weight-carrying capacity of 1,200 pounds including driver, passengers, and fluids, plus any of those overlandy accessories you want to add, like a roof tent, winch bumper and winch, etc.

The Defender 130 Hi-Cap has a listed curb weight of 4,750 pounds and a GVWR of 7,450 pounds, for an actual capacity of 2,700 pounds—well over twice that of the Jeep. Even factoring in some hyperbole on the part of Land Rover (I’ve always found their claims for towing ability to be laughable in real-world terms, for example), that’s a remarkable disparity. 

Again, one might point out the non-Rubicon spec Gladiator, which ups the capacity to 1,600 pounds (chiefly because its curb weight is roughly that much lower), but there’s still a big difference, and brings to mind one of my only big reservations about the Wrangler Rubicon Unlimited with its paltry 950-pound payload.

However. Consider the following to be under the heading of I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS; YOU COULD DIE, IT MAY VOID YOUR WARRANTY, AND IT WILL INCREASE THE CHANCES OF A DEVASTATING ASTEROID STRIKE ON OUR PLANET.

Nevertheless . . .

The braking system on the Gladiator is far superior to that on the Defender. The Gladiator’s petrol V6 has significantly more horsepower and torque than the 130’s four-cylinder turbodiesel. The Gladiator’s chassis, as we have seen, is at least as rigid as the 130’s and almost certainly more so. Therefore, if I owned a Gladiator (which I wish I did), and I had no concerns about DYING, VOIDING MY WARRANTY, OR PRECIPITATING A DEVASTATING ASTEROID STRIKE, I would have no hesitation installing an uprated set of rear springs and shocks on it, and calculating a reasonable increase in usable GVWR.

Back to my initial question—with the benefit of hindsight now that I’ve seen and sat in the new Defender.

It’s clear there will be no Land Rover descendant of the 130. The Defender is now an entirely different vehicle—it’s highly unlikely there will be a pickup version at all, much less a quad-cab high-capacity version. That means that whether we agree or not, the Gladiator is the successor to the 130. There is no other quad-cab pickup available in the U.S. with a separate, boxed chassis, front and rear solid axles, and all-coil suspension.

Is it worthy? I say absolutely.

New Defender = new life for the Land Cruiser 70 Series?

The old Land Rover Defender is dead. Long live the new Defender. 

Thoroughly, exhaustively, irretrievably modernized, the new Defender appears poised to take on the duties of an upscale recreational 4x4 vehicle—more comfortable, more efficient, even in many ways more capable than its predecessor.

But will the new, unibody, independently suspended, 40-some-microprocessor Defender live as a stalwart conveyance for biologists, explorers, or UN and NGO personnel in developing-world countries? Will it be modified by fundies in Tanzania and Zambia to carry a dozen or more tourists on safaris, day in and day out? Will it be hacked by militants in the Middle East and elsewhere to mount Dushka heavy machine guns? Will it be serially abused by mining and oil companies? Will it be adopted—even by loyal Commonwealth countries—as their basic military personnel transport?

My guess is no.

For how much longer?

The core of the new Defender is a vastly complex aluminum structure that combines chassis and body into one assembly, ensuring a torsionally stiff vehicle—far more so, in fact, than any separate body-on-frame vehicle can match—while maintaining carefully calibrated crush zones for elevated crash protection. However, that structure will not lend itself to shade-tree cutting and welding. I’m willing to bet there will never be a pickup version offered from the factory.

No: The new Defender is going to be an SUV, period. The so-called Commercial version might work for, well, commercial purposes, as well as for those wishing a no-frills platform to modify as an overlanding vehicle, but winch bumpers, roof racks, and the like will probably be the extent of practical alterations.

That leaves the existing pool of original Defenders to soldier on in traditional roles. Yes, they are straightforward to repair, and everything down to that elegant (but rust-prone) separate chassis can be replaced. But sooner or later, sheer attrition from wear and accidents is going to negatively affect the practicality of relying on that pool, particularly for government/military entities, NGOs, and businesses requiring reliable and well-maintained transportation. Where will they turn if their needs cannot be met by the new model?

There is really only one answer: The Toyota Land Cruiser 70 Series. (Well, in some cases, particularly for the U.N., also the 100 Series. But let’s just stick with one line here.)

One could mention Toyota’s under-rated underdog competitor, the Nissan Patrol, and the über Mercedes Gelandewagen, the former never quite matching the Land Cruiser’s reputation for reliability or durability, the latter simply priced out of most utilitarian markets. Neither has a chance of cutting into Toyota’s sales.

Interestingly, Toyota has more than once mulled discontinuing 70-Series production. Sales of the three body styles in the line—Ute (pickup), station wagon, and troop carrier—pale in comparison to the Hilux and other vehicles, and production is archaically labor-intensive. The Australian mining industry—a huge and loyal market for the 70 Series—is largely responsible for the latest updates, especially enhanced safety features such as Vehicle Stability Control (VSC), Electronic Brake-force Distribution, and front and side-curtain air bags for driver and passenger. Increased sophistication also arrived in the form of piezo injectors for the single-turbo, 4.5-liter V8 diesel, and increased luxury for the GXL version in the form of, gasp, electric windows and—into the realm of science fiction here—an electrically retractable antenna.

But the basics of the vehicle remain as if ticked off on a bespoke order form for explorers, guides, professional hunters, scientists, military operatives, and the odd jihadist: massive, separate, fully boxed chassis, mighty beam axles on mighty coil and leaf springs, huge fuel and load capacity, front and rear cross-axle diff locks, raised air intake, and a cargo area in the troop carrier voluminous enough to return echoes. (My wife and I and many other owners have built houses inside these things.)

Land Cruisers at Toyota Gibraltar Stockholdings awaiting far-flung postings.

It’s a completely outdated vehicle in numerous ways, yet utterly perfect for its intended use. It will be interesting to see what becomes of the 70 Series Land Cruiser in the next few years.

High-mileage champions

My first car, at about 110,000 miles.

“As with old Toyotas, nice old Hondas are perpetually rare. People buy the cars and squeeze them of use, then wake one day to find the things spent, not worth enough to rebuild. The curse of ordinary nobility.” Sam Smith, Road and Track

I remember when my first car, a 1971 Toyota Corolla 1600, accumulated 100,000 miles on its odometer. My friends were impressed.

Nearly two decades later, when my FJ40 passed the mark, I started a tradition by pouring a shot of single-malt whiskey into the radiator.

In between those events, much had happened in the automotive world. We’d passed through the dark days of early emissions controls, when Corvettes came with 160 horsepower and everyone thought performance was dead. Then came the magic of electronic fuel injection and ignition, through which a central processing unit (CPU) could precisely control fuel delivery and many other engine parameters—and thus hugely reduce emissions while increasing power. Slowly at first, then rapidly, power began to rise again, and before long we could buy cars that produced more horsepower than we had ever experienced during the so-called glory days of muscle cars. And yet those cars also used far less fuel—it was a win-win-win triumph of technology.

But that wasn’t all. In part due to the cleaner-running internals, and in part due to better machining methods and higher quality control, championed at its best by Japanese makers, engines and transmissions began to last longer and longer as well. Soon, racking up 100,000 miles on a Corolla or Civic was not even worth mentioning, and these days pizza-delivery kids still run clapped-out examples with 200,000 miles and more on engines that have never had the head off. Without doubt, 200,000 is the new 100,000—and yet even now statistics show that only eight tenths of one percent of vehicles reach that mileage.

My FJ40 now has 322,000 miles on it, and a comprehensively rebuilt engine courtesy of my master Toyota mechanic friend Bill Lee. So I wondered how many vehicles reach the 300,000-mile mark—and the answer came through the site iSeeCars.com. Herewith the stars, and the percentage of them that survive to that lofty distance:

Ford Excursion: .2%

Toyota 4Runner: .2%

Toyota Sequoia: .2%

Chevrolet Suburban: .2%

Toyota Tacoma: .2%

Toyota Tundra: .2%

Notice a trend? :-)

Incidentally, the all-model average for reaching that distance is just .1%. Also incidentally, the five longest-lasting sedans/vans (and the percentage of them that attain the 200,000-mile mark) include, in order, the Toyota Avalon (2.5), the Honda Odyssey (2.5), the Honda Accord (1.9), the Toyota Sienna (1.8), and the Toyota Prius (1.7). Note, especially, that last one, all you doubters who claimed the Prius would bankrupt owners with expensive battery replacements at 50,000 miles.

The 10 longest-lasting vehicles by brand look like this:

1. Toyota

2. Honda

3. GMC

4. Chevrolet

5. RAM

6. Ford

7. Accura

8. Subaru

9. Dodge

10. Cadillac

I was surprised to see Nissan in 14th place, below Volvo, Jeep, and Chrysler. I was also surprised to see that Volvo was the only European manufacturer to appear anywhere in these lists.

Of course, as they say, your mileage may vary . . . 

A different Dormobile

Most people reading this are familiar with the iconic Land Rover Dormobile and its clamshell pop-up roof, which converts a long-wheelbase Series II into a stylish camper with full standing headroom. But I didn’t realize that Dormobile modified other vehicles as well, such as this 1961 Bedford CA van. Very practical if you didn’t need the four-wheel-drive of a Land Rover. Read more about it on Silodrome, here.

So, you think your Zarges cases are stylish?

How about an aluminum-clad explorer’s trunk from Louis Vuitton?

Apparently only a few of these trunks were produced in 1892, and of that few only two known examples survive. This one was recently auctioned by Christie’s for the astounding figure of £160,000 ($206,000). For that price you could buy 412 similarly sized Zarges cases.

But they wouldn’t say Luis Vuitton on the label.

Apparently this one spent much of its life in the UK basement of a family who had no idea of its value.

More here.

Classic Kit: The capstan winch

If you’ve ever crewed (or skippered) a sailboat longer than 20 feet or so, you’ve probably used a capstan winch to control lines such as the jib and spinnaker sheets. A basic capstan winch comprises a vertical drum geared so it will only turn one way (always clockwise on a sailboat). When you wrap the line around the drum (again, clockwise) two or three times, you can more easily control the forceful pull of the sail. The friction of the wraps helps prevent the line being pulled away from you. If you need more power to sheet in a sail in a breeze, a a fitting on top of the drum allows you to insert a crank for extra leverage. There are more elaborate capstan winches with two speeds, self-tailing mechanisms—and electrically powered winches that eliminate the need for manual cranking.

For many years, a capstan winch could also be ordered as a factory option on Land Rovers and a few other vehicles. Visually the vehicle-mounted capstan winch was very similar to our sailboat winch; however, it was powered through a gearset from a driveshaft usually connected directly to the vehicle’s crankshaft via a sliding coupler. The worm-drive gearset reduced the 600 or 700 rpm of an idling engine crankshaft to just a dozen or so turns per minute of the drum (which, curiously, rotates counterclockwise on every one I’ve seen).

A capstan winch at LR-Winches. Engagement lever is at upper right. The rope is led under the roller from the anchor or object to be moved.

A capstan winch has an entirely different method of operation from the common, horizontal-drum electric, hydraulic, or even PTO winch with which we’re familiar. You don’t store line on the capstan, and it cannot use steel cable. Instead you carry a separate, low stretch rope—traditionally 3/4-inch manila or an equivalent natural fiber—of whatever length you chose, with a hook on one end.

Let’s say you’re driving your Series II 88 along a forest track and you come across a downed tree blocking the way. Pulling it out of the path would go like this:

Position the vehicle so the winch has a clear route to drag the tree off the path. Leave the engine idling, transmission in neutral (obviously), parking brake on and, if possible, the wheels chocked as well. (If you have a hand throttle you can bump up the engine rpm a bit.) Wrap a strap around the tree and connect your winch rope to it with its hook. Take the free end of the rope back to the vehicle, run it under the roller guide and around the drum three or four times counterclockwise in an ascending spiral, then lay the free end of the rope off to the left of the vehicle as you’re facing the front. With the coils of the rope around the drum still loose, engage the lever to connect the drum to the gearset and the drum will begin turning slowly—but the loose rope will simply slip around it. Now stand back from the vehicle a few feet and pull on the free and of the rope to tighten the wraps around the drum. The drum will grab the rope and begin pulling on the downed tree, as you take in the rope fed you by the winch. You now control the speed and engagement of the winch simply by pulling or slacking off on the rope to tighten or loosen it around the drum. Once the tree is off the path, let the rope go slack, disengage the gearset with the lever, and de-rig. It’s that simple.

Of course you can also connect the rope to a standing tree or another vehicle to free yours if it is bogged; however, since the capstan winch requires someone standing outside the vehicle to operate the winch, it’s nearly mandatory to have a second person in the driver’s seat to steer the vehicle and stop it once it’s free. Solo vehicle recovery with a capstan winch can be a very dicey operation indeed.

Consider the situation pictured below. Tom Sheppard was in Mali in 1978, en route to Timbuktu, driving his Land Rover Velar—that’s right, the original prototype of the Range Rover—and towing a trailer full of fuel and water, when a section of mud proved a bit deeper and stickier than was apparent from the driver’s seat.

Tom’s Range Rover was equipped with a Fairey capstan winch cleverly hidden behind the grille—note the horizontal roller on the bumper. To deploy it one simply unscrewed the center grille section, a matter of a couple of minutes. However, Tom was, as is common with him, traveling solo. Therefore he first unloaded all 21 (!) jerry cans from the trailer, decoupled it from the Range Rover, and recovered the Range Rover with aluminum sand (i.e. mud) ladders. Then he positioned the Range Rover in a spot where he could use the capstan winch to recover the trailer, re-connect it to the Range Rover, reload all 21 jerry cans, and continue on his way.

(Tom’s story made me remember the tour Roseann and I got of the Gaydon Museum, courtesy Land Rover historian extraordinaire, Roger Crathorne. I looked up one of the photos, which shows, in addition to Roger and me, one of the Range Rovers used on the 1971/72 Trans-Americas Expedition—and there was a capstan winch peeking out from behind the grille.)

The capstan winch’s labor-intensive method of operation, combined with its modest power—most were rated for around 3,000 pounds, as was the rope used on them—saw them fade from popularity with the increasing availability of horizontal-drum electric winches of considerably higher rating. Yet the capstan had its advantages. It could work all day without overheating or stressing the vehicle’s electric system, and its line capacity was essentially unlimited—if you needed to rig a 200-foot pull, all you needed was a 220-foot rope. And that labor-intensive method of operation gave the operator instant control over the procedure—let off on the rope tension and the pull stops instantly. The capstan winch, with its leisurely speed, hands-on attitude, and natural-fiber rope, always struck me as, well, the friendly winch compared to the whining, straining, ozone-smelling electric winches of today (hugely capable though they certainly are). Go ahead, laugh.

This is the driveshaft and engagement mechanism that allows the capstan to be powered off the front of the vehicle’s engine.

You can still, very occasionally, spot a vehicle equipped with a capstan winch—virtually always a Series Land Rover. If you own a Series Land Rover and have a hankering for a curious and historical piece of very useful equipment, you can still buy one (or parts for one) through sources such as the experts at LR-Winches (where most of these images originated). You can even buy a synthetic rope suitable for a capstan winch, from LR-Bits.co.

But I’d recommend sticking with the manila rope. It’s just . . . friendlier.

For a . . . curious . . . installation of a capstan winch, see here.

Outback mystery . . . or tragedy?

Here’s something I’ve concluded over three trips to Australia and a cumulative 15,000 kilometers or so of driving: Ninety percent of the time, 90 percent of Australia’s great historic tracks are more or less simply very, very long dirt roads that traverse vast expenses of bush and desert—terrain that can be considered strikingly beautiful or forbiddingly barren, depending on your sense of aesthetics. (Count me firmly in the former group.) 

All that changes when it rains and many of those tracks become simply undriveable, and a few routes (such as driving east to west on the Madigan Line) require skill and frequent four-wheel-drive use even in optimal conditions, but otherwise such legendary routes as the Birdsville Track can easily be driven in a Subaru Outback—or a Corolla. The world-class corrugations (washboard) you’ll find will test the structural integrity of the stoutest chassis, but your Land Cruiser’s dual lockers and low range will go unused.

With that said, one aspect of travel in central and western Australia has never been exaggerated: It is a very, very remote region. Even on the Oodnadatta Track—one of the most popular routes in the Outback—we sometimes drove for hours without seeing another vehicle. On other tracks, such as the Madigan Line, you can go a week not knowing if all other humans on the planet have been raptured away. So while ultimate capability might not be a critical requirement in your outback conveyance, reliability surely is, along with your ability to repair likely problems if you travel solo.

Tales of epic repairs, jury-rigged and otherwise, abound in outback literature—and video: If you’ve seen Bush Mechanics on YouTube you’ve been exposed to the wackier side of this skill, but real, and sometimes desperate, examples abound.

However, I found myself wondering if the owner of the vehicle whose parts I found in the Australian desert had the skills, and the spare components, to recover it. 

We were camped in a wash off Mulga Park Road, actually a renamed section of Australian legend Len Beadell’s Gunbarrel Highway, about 150 kilometers southeast of Uluru (aka Ayers Rock). I was wandering through the scrub with my binoculars in pursuit of a new bird (which, if you’re curious, turned out to be a western bowerbird, a prime find), when I caught a dull glint of metal among the grass. A closer look revealed it to be an ancient single-barrel carburetor—one side of which was melted aluminum slag, the obvious result of a serious engine-compartment fire. The choke plate was locked in place by wrinkled solidified rivulets of non-ferrous metal; where the float bowl had been was an amorphous gray blob. The aluminum base appeared to be fine, leading me to think the fire might have been contained relatively quickly. However, the cast iron throttle plate housing was still attached to the bottom, as was linkage. If my broken-down fellow traveler had access to a spare carburetor I would have thought the ancillary fittings would have been swapped out.

Then the mystery deepened considerably—a few meters away I found an entire rear axle assembly, almost certainly from the same vehicle as the carb, judging by its configuration. Nothing else within a subsequent search circle of 50 meters or more—just an orphaned carburetor and axle from a vehicle at least a half century old, if not much older. 

The carb on its own suggested a straightforward breakdown scenario. The addition of the axle left me scratching my head. I’m afraid this mystery will remain one.