NewWorldOverland.ca

Yesterday I received a special delivery at work; a used Sigma 10-22mm from Edmonton. A big thanks goes out to my bro-in-law Jason for buying it in Edm. and my buddy Neil G. for smuggling it in his car back to Kamloops. Jason, the check’s in the mail, literally.

I have always been a skeptic of 3rd party lenses like Sigma and Tamron, and I always planned to invest my $$ in Canon L lenses. But when I finally got to the point were I was going to start spending money, I realized that for what we’re doing, it may be overkill (and possibly dangerous) to be toting around a bag full ‘o professional lenses. Not to say Sigmas aren’t nice, its just, you know, the Ls are so very nice. Someday I will start building an L collection, or maybe I’ll just buy a Nikon, hah.

Anyways, this is a great example of this lens, sharp focus, good contrast. One thing I do notice is the color balance of this lens is very different from my 50mm 1.8 Canon. With the 50mm I usually end up setting the WB to shade (you can see in most of my pictures, a very warm tint) but the Sigma is perfectly content in Auto WB mode, and delivers the warmth that I prefer with no fiddling around.

10mm is ridiculous. Almost a fisheye, there is definetly some distortion so you would need to do some editing for architectural work. But for the sheer pleasure of stuffing everything you see into one frame, this can’t be beat!

The 20mm end of the lens is about equivalent to 30mm on a cropped digital, which is wide enough to capture a scene, but with little distortion.

You can take a look at the sample pictures in the park here.

As promised, we have some pictures and more info on the truck mods we have been working so hard on.

You can check all the pictures out in the toyota gallery.

The Tank

First off is the big piece, the Long Range Automotive subtank. This is an auxiliary diesel tank that mounts in the factory subtank location, which is where the spare tire is on most suvs. This tank adds 160L of diesel to the existing 90L from the factory tank, for a total of 250L of diesel at our disposal! So, if you average 14L/100km that equates to a total range of over 1785km between fillups. I should also note that 14L/100km is a worst-case scenario (high altitude mountain passes). We have recorded closer to 10L/100km on the Island and coast, which is where we will be spending alot of our time on our trip. So, it is possible we could get up to 2500km on one fill-up! Of course this comes at a price; especially with diesel at well over $1.30/L. Oh, and did I mention the cost of shipping a tank from Australia to Canada?

But it was and is worth every penny. The tank itself is completely sealed and painted, the brackets bolt into existing cage nuts in the frame, and the kit has everthing you need to install. I have been burned many a time with ‘kits’ that have about 25% of the parts you need to install the thing. This is definitely not the case with LRA. The one, solitary thing I had to go pick up during the install process was some teflon tape. That’s it, $2.00 worth of tape.

The kit is also very important because it contains the sought after factory-style dual filler neck, allowing you to fill both tanks with only one filler. It’s easy; fill your main tank, pull the knob out and fill the subtank. Don’t forget to check your bank account before you do this.

Install time was about 6 hours, most of which was fiddling to get the dual-filler neck in and adjusted. The kit also comes with a transfer pump and wiring. This pump pulls diesel from the pickup tube in the subtank, and dumps it in the vent tube for the main tank. The transfer switch is actually quite nice, and even includes a fuel level indicator. The transfer does take some time, i’d say about 15 minutes to fill 1/2 tank.

Another advantage to this setup is on the road, we can fill the subtank, then transfer. This allows us to pre-filter the diesel before it goes into the main tank, hopefully avoiding contaminating the main tank. Also, both tanks have drain plugs in case we get some real bad diesel.

The Drawers

My nightime project for the past 3 months. The drawer system is built with the purpose of having 2 15″x36″ slide out drawers, and a flat mounting surface above for the fridge, cases, bags, etc. The frame is built with 3/4″ ply, and the drawers with 1/2″ ply. Very heavy and very sturdy. The frame mounts to the body via the factory 3rd row seat mounts, so no extra holes in the floor. I have painted the frame with epoxy paint, and as we speak the drawers are out and drying.

You will also notice that the right drawer has a notch cut in the side and the face folds down. This is for the camping stove, which will ‘float’ in the notch, allowing for storage below and behind the stove. This ‘floating’ mount is in pieces in the basement right now, awaiting a new stove since I destroyed our old one last night trying to take it apart. The idea is that when the drawer is fully extended, you can just flip up the stove and start cooking.

The left drawer will contain most of our tools, recovery gear etc. The idea is that when you need the tools, you don’t need the stove, and vice versa.

Both the drawers are locking, mainly to make sure they don’t pop open, but also so nobody can nick our kit.

The top of the frame is 2 pieces, covered in carpet and trimmed with aluminum ‘C’ channel. The fridge mounts are in place, and I may put more mounts in as we go if needed.

The front of the drawer system has the electrical for the transfer pump, and 2 aux. 12V outlets, one for the fridge, and one for the inverter, air compressor, etc. There is also a stash compartment in this area where we will be mounting a strong box to hold some of our valuables.

The Fridge

Worth every penny! This fridge is similar to the Engel 45, only the ARB version has a digital temperature display and, um, some ARB stickers on it. This thing reeks of quality (well, actually it reeks of new plastic right now but we’ll take care of that). We have had the fridge in the truck, at 0.0 degrees C for a week and a half, and no dead battery, no dead fridge, just ice cold water (and beer). It has a 43 quart capacity, or 60 cans of Dude Beer.