The start

The start is at 05:00 next morning. Car is now packed up. The box is pretty full, tools, food, clothes, manuals etc. I'd guess it takes one week camping, before all stuff finds their places. Now everything is pretty much just thrown in.

Ready to go

The Sprengisandur road is now open, the lake area is open. Langsjö is still closed and the road from Askja to Sprengisandur, but I guess they'll open soon.

Right now there is some heavy raining in Iceland, but after couple of days it should get better at least in Icelandic standards.

Battle food

I just got the MRE boxes today and it was the last possible day. They costed about 100€ per box with delivery. Both boxes have 12 rations so there is 24 rations total. All rations include chemical heater, so they can be prepared without cooker or fire.

The summer has brought a lot of swallows in my home area. Very fast turns and difficult to have good photos, but here is some of the best ones from this summer.

back light

front light

Packing up

Start will be next saturday. Tho roads are getting open in Iceland, Laki is open, Askja and Kverkfjöll are open as well as Landmannalaugar.

I guess Thorsmörk is open, but the track in north to Katla is still closed, Langsjö is not open and the Lake area Veidivötn is closed. Sprengisandur is also still closed.

I took couple of pictures from the cabin. Here is the laptop with Garmin GPS V and the old Gopro 2 on the dash. Bose headphones with active noise cancellation to listen some music.

Here is the inverter under the dash and the laptop support. A pair of good old Nokia rubber boots in case of wet places...

On the Bed there is a lot of stuff now and there will be some more... I set a white light tarp to make inside a bit less dark.

Tank is filled up with 160l and 2x20l jerrys as spare fuel. Some fuel for the bike too.

One problem, when driving dusty roads the dust gets inside. I guess there is a bit like vacuum insode and the dust gets in through small holes and so on. I had a idea to have a 2" tube in front of the bed to have some air inside so there could be a little overpressure so the dust would not enter. Don't know if it works, but if I'll find some flexible tube I will try it on the road.

Doubts

While changing oil from the differential I found these fellows from the front diff.

These guys had about 10 identical friends in the magnetic drain plug. They look like ball bearing balls with 2mm diameter. I don't know if there is anything inside the diff casing that would have these kind of balls, so I'll just ignore these and carry on the plans. Rear diff had a bit muddy looking oil as well as the right rear hub, but otherwise oil was clear.

Mobicool is installed in it's place, maybe I'll put some vibration damping mat  under it. Also a gas bottle and a cooker are in their place. 6kg fire extinguisher is placed in the outside box and 2kg extinguisher on the bed box

Kjölur road is now opened, but it is a bit like a highway. Roads at north and west  of Vatnajökull are still closed.

While I had a test ride after diff oil change, a moose ran over the road with a spooky timing. If I would have driven at normal speed, it might had been a close call. Luckily there was another moose before this one and I slowed down and was going to reverse to see it more closely.

There was a nice moment in the evening that there was a clear view of the blue moon.

For the travel food I try to get US Military MRE boxes. However it might be too late to get them, because they come from Germany (bundeswher-us-shop). But I'm pretty sure they will be consumed anyway.
mreinfo

the build gets busy

There is still a lot of stuff to do and I can't make it...so I guess I have to finish the build on the way. Main things are ok, so I'll have the bike on board :).

KTM is running again, I had one more surprise there. The swingarm was eroded under the chain slider. Aluminium was gone and there was a hole and very thin area around the hole. I had the swingarm from the spare bike and now I had to use it.

Here is a twisted horizon from the late winter ride. An uncontrolled front flip that was.
A video clip can be found here : Front Flip

And for the record, here is an screen shot of the current road conditions in Iceland. So it is generally a no go in highlands, but I expect roads are open after couple of weeks.

The Mog has fresh oil in the engine. Old oil seemed pretty clear and I guess all fluids were changed just before Bundeswehr handed the Mog away. The plan is to change diff oils + hub oils too.

Committed

Now the Smyril Line ticket is paid, so the commitment for the trip is high. The build gets busy now.

The bike attachment is done. There is a slot for the front tire and metal design to hold bike from the footrests. The bike should stay foot even if there will be a roll over. Some space for stuff is at the right side of the bike. Maybe a small generator, boxes etc.

The laptop+gps run ok now. I changed a shorter RAM-C bar and rubber cushions are now on top of the RAM. Laptop moves a bit when riding over bumps, but the movement is not too big. Gopro works fine as dashcam, I had to add a rubber-lock or whatever in the bracket because it was generating some ticking noise because of the small slack in brackets.

Here is a video from testride with the bike on the bed. There was some spring flooding in the forest tracks. Photos at the end of the video were spotted during this single ride.

Mog testride

I decided to change the rebuilt engine in KTM and had some surprises while doing that. Rubber boots for the carburator were a bit broken in both sides. Fortunately I had spares still left from the spare bike. New chain and sprockets and KTM should be ready to go.

First of May ride

The cabin has now gopro 2 as a dashcam. garmin gps v tolerates 30VDC so it can be powered from the batteryvoltage and act as a gps receiver. GPS display is now in an ancient 12" display laptop, which can be a mp3 player as well. Laptop is powered from an 180W inverter. Gopro is powered through USB cable.

There is now 2x DC AUX terminals on dash and 1 extra terminal in instrument panel.

First live test was not successful, I have to tune up the laptop mount, it was too flexible now. The laptop is on RAM-C mount and I placed rubber cushions in lower mount and now there is a bit too much movement on top of the mount. Also I could not get GPS tracking in laptop, but that was a user error, you have activate tracking every time the Viking software is started in Linux.

I also tested Mavic Pro active tracking, which track target visually. It did not work well in forest, but if there is open plane it seems to be usable with Mogs speed. Video footage is in the link below...

First of May ride

There was some flooding in some places, but it was still a bit moderate. It will get worse when waters get loose...

The bike stand is on the way, here is some preview of the build. You should simply push the bike front wheel into the slot and then strap it from the handlebar. And maybe the rear wheel should be strapped also if the Mog makes a roll :)