I don't know firsthand whether this is true, but this is an old family story about my Grandfather.
He was a logger in the Pacific Northwest. At one point he was hauling logs up the Oregon Coast, and his truck broke down in the middle of nowhere, stranding him. (Probably an old Gary truck, which was practically made from cast iron.) I don't remember the exact part, but it was something to do with a wheel... the rim, or part of the axle or mounting.
He happened to have some ingots in his truck (a soft metal, I forget the term).
So he built up a large fire, melted the ingots, and sand-cast a replacement part using the broken piece as a template. Once it cooled and was cleaned up, it worked well enough to get him to civilization, or whatever passed for civilization in Oregon in the 30s.
Seeing all the logging hacks I've seen when growing up, I completely believe this story.
I don't believe this. Colour me extremely skeptical; if he had 10 days worth of water he could have walked to the coast, and he'd hit a road sooner or later. Morocco is not that wide.
What are the chances you have enough tools to tear down and rebuild a car in a different format like this, and you choose to do so instead of hiking? You'd have to have done it, or something like it, before.
Eh, in his situation I would have probably attempted the macguyver approach knowing full well if it fails I'm just back in the hoofing it situation.
10 days of water in the desert probably becomes a lot less when you're hauling it without a combustion engine assisting. I've done a lot of manual labor in the mojave. When rebuilding a roof in July I was going through 5-10 gallons a day - and that's not dragging heavy shit across the wilderness.
I doubt the motorcycle rode particularly well, it probably more resembled a self-powered wheeled sled for precariously carrying him and his supplies with less effort than without fire. My assumption is it tipped over often and was quite graceless...
It's different world now but my dad with grandpa (his dad) were taking our car apart including engine, unscrewing every single piece of engine, cleaning it and putting the whole thing back together. They were laughing there were always some "redundant screws" left at the end. Everything was like that, TV broke, we took it to dad's friend garage where he had tons of shit and was fixing stuff, taking things out, resoldering etc; you had a hole in your clothes? granny would fix it, your shoes were broken? you'd try to fix them first, not get new ones etc.
You're assuming he knew where he was. There's a good book called Sahara Unveiled that has several stories in it about people getting lost in the Sahara and dying of thirst. In many cases they were only a mile or two from a place where they could have been saved. The problem is the roads aren't good and are often covered by sand, so people get disoriented and don't know where they are or where they are trying to go. Plus if you leave the shade during the day you will lose water even faster. Maybe this story is fake or staged, but many people have died of thirst in the Sahara even though they could've walked out.
Hoofing it with 10 days of water? You realize how much that weighs?
And I note no mention of food. 10 days of hoofing it without food isn't going to happen. A day of hoofing it with a pack burns 4000-5000 calories/day. Your body quickly depletes it's ready stores and you're down to fat reserves--and the rate that you can use those is limited.
I am in the same boat as you - you can't even cut an exhaust pipe off without specialized tools - getting a wheel on something even without any suspension components seem next to impossible.
Maybe I am just mad because swapping out shocks and springs would take me several weekends with full tools and a jack.
Old cars were serviceable and had decent tool sets inside compared to single screwdriver nowadays. So having the tools does not look like a problem. Old cars were also much simpler to work with. Especially no problems with electrical components. Why he choose not to hike is another question.
We also didn't have the internet back then for people to immediately call bullshit on stories like this, so there was a higher chance for it to enter the urban mythology without much question. Once it would have hit Reader's Digest, man, it would have practically been a fundamental law of nature.
I bust my knuckles up wrenching on my car even when I have all the right tools. The pic of him at camp with the bike in the background and he's completely clean (not even some grease?) makes me skeptical.
This reminds me of the fictional story The Flight of the Phoenix, a 1964 novel turned into a 1965 film. The plot is that a group of men crash their Fairchild C-82 aircraft in the Libyan desert and build a make-shift aircraft out of its pieces to fly to rescue. [1] I did not find it to be a very remarkable film in-and-of itself (personal opinion only), but what I do find remarkable (and tragic) was that for purposes of the movie, a flying, FAA certified, "one off" aircraft was built - the Tallmantz Phoenix P-1 [2]. Tragic because one of the stuntmen was killed then the aircraft came apart during a practice touch-and-go [3].
I instantly thought of the same film. I do rather enjoy the movie although it's a bit long. It's pure drama and there are some well known actors and very good acting. Highly recommended for a Saturday or Sunday afternoon when weather forces you to stay indoors.
No way that thing was "FAA certified". Just checked the TCDS list; nothing there under "Tallmantz". Sounds like Experimental category, with the pilot killed before it finished the initial 40 hours of flight-testing.
The twist in that film is the guy who designs the escape plane turns out to be a model plane designer. Ok, but all the people on the wing are going to have a hard time (quite apart from messing up the aerodynamics).
Movie stuntmen getting hurt - even dead - has been happening long after that movie. Even non-stuntmen can have close shaves on-set (I've had three, just as an SFX tech, safety is probably much better these days since the '80s); always seemed to be the cameramen who ran the highest risks.
> I believe the 2CV bike was indeed built in the desert, much as Leray claims, but he set out from France with the explicit intention of performing this task. Otherwise he’d have walked out like any normal person in a similar situation.
> His claimed unease about leaving his stricken car doesn’t ring true, let alone the spontaneous idea of making it into a two-wheeler. Tellingly, in 2006 Leray went on to build a ‘2CV boat’ in Mali. He clearly likes mucking about with 2CVs. Fair play to him!
In the 90's, my father had a Ford Pampa. We lived in Rondônia, close the extreme west of the Amazon rainforest. One day, while raining and riding through difficult terrain, the car stopped just by the top of a slope. My father quickly diagnosed the fuel hose had ruptured. By luck and opportunity, he was a physicist, the trunk was full of material from experiments and research he was running at the time. He got a hose from one of his experiments on the trunk, connected it directly to the engine fuel inlet, the other point of the hose came directly to the cabin inside a bottle we filled with alcohol from the fuel tank.
That was it, the bottle was now our fuel tank. Dangerous, but worked perfectly. We had to stop at every gas station we found and refill without stopping the engine to prevent air entering the hose.
Done this with my dad's Lada. Fuel hose ruptured (rusted through?) in the middle of nowhere and I installed a hose directly from engine inlet (the car had fuel pump mounted on the side of engine powered by crankshaft) running through the firewall right to the small fuel container sitting just on the floor under my legs. It worked and got me home.
Please never ever try to repeat it.
My armchair take is that if I really wanted to drive out (as opposed to walking - I don't know if I'd be confident enough in my walking pace & distances to make the call to abandon the vehicle) I'd try to rig the 2CV in car form. Fewer unknowns, I think. A broken drive axle (there are 2) could be wedged up to restore drive to the other wheel, and a wheel with a broken swingarm could be replaced by a makeshift skid made from a bumper.
My dad one time got stranded in the desert with 2 friends a long way from civilization. He had a blown tire but had a spare. When he went to put the spare on it was an incorrect rim for the car and he didn’t know that since he bought it used and never had to use it. He tried to ride the bare rim but was spinning out and getting stuck. His solution he took the spare tire and his 30-06 gun and shot a hole in the rim which allowed it to barely fit on the car. It did not ride smooth and was a lumpy ride but he drove slow and got to a service station. The guy working was very impressed how it got it to work. Another time he got stuck in the desert he overheated and had no water to fill the radiator. There was a tiny leak somewhere causing it to run out and overheat. His solution this time was to get himself and his friends to Lee into the radiation filling it up enough to keep the engine cool. He again pulled into a service station but this time the guy working there was not impressed because it was now still leaking but this time the pee was burning off the hot engine and the guy could smell and wanted it nowhere near his shop.
The overheating stories always start with "in the desert" because people who live where you run coolant that doesn't freeze don't tend to run cooling systems that leak out something that costs $5-$10/gal.
On mentioning Mythbusters failed to recreate this, he concludes Emile is amazing, still without doubting any of the story.
"The insanity of this creation couldn’t be better expressed than in the episode of Mythbusters, where they tried to recreate his process."
"Without following a manual, the hosts disassembled a 2CV, which they found easy, then set about making their bike. That part was not so easy. They failed twice."
"The first, was when they tried to make a better version, requiring two to operate it. Fail."
"Then, they tried to recreate Leray’s machine from the images they’d seen. They couldn’t balance it long enough to save their lives. Fail again."
"Considering the boys had two good brains, intelligent, experienced, and endless time to make something, they failed two-times-twice."
The original report states that Emile had a lot of trouble staying balanced on his bike as well. It is possible the Mythbusters version didn't work very well because the design was fundamentally flawed. From what I understand he didn't even get out of civilization with it, being picked up by the army not far from where he built the thing.
When I read the headline I said to myself "I won't believe this unless the car was a 2CV!" Surprise! Another 2CV story. But seeing the contraption I still don't believe it. Nonetheless this remains a good yarn and can only add to the 2CV's charisma.
[+] [-] kbelder|4 years ago|reply
He was a logger in the Pacific Northwest. At one point he was hauling logs up the Oregon Coast, and his truck broke down in the middle of nowhere, stranding him. (Probably an old Gary truck, which was practically made from cast iron.) I don't remember the exact part, but it was something to do with a wheel... the rim, or part of the axle or mounting.
He happened to have some ingots in his truck (a soft metal, I forget the term). So he built up a large fire, melted the ingots, and sand-cast a replacement part using the broken piece as a template. Once it cooled and was cleaned up, it worked well enough to get him to civilization, or whatever passed for civilization in Oregon in the 30s.
Seeing all the logging hacks I've seen when growing up, I completely believe this story.
[+] [-] winrid|4 years ago|reply
I particularly like how the base trim provides splash based oil lubrication only.
[0] https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/mycompanies/images/f/ff/Ga...
[+] [-] netizen-936824|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barrkel|4 years ago|reply
What are the chances you have enough tools to tear down and rebuild a car in a different format like this, and you choose to do so instead of hiking? You'd have to have done it, or something like it, before.
[+] [-] pengaru|4 years ago|reply
10 days of water in the desert probably becomes a lot less when you're hauling it without a combustion engine assisting. I've done a lot of manual labor in the mojave. When rebuilding a roof in July I was going through 5-10 gallons a day - and that's not dragging heavy shit across the wilderness.
I doubt the motorcycle rode particularly well, it probably more resembled a self-powered wheeled sled for precariously carrying him and his supplies with less effort than without fire. My assumption is it tipped over often and was quite graceless...
[+] [-] mirekrusin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeffreyrogers|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Groxx|4 years ago|reply
Seems like a fairly easy walk to me. Uncomfortable and a bit long (roughly one day), certainly, but less-so than a dozen days in the desert.
[+] [-] LorenPechtel|4 years ago|reply
And I note no mention of food. 10 days of hoofing it without food isn't going to happen. A day of hoofing it with a pack burns 4000-5000 calories/day. Your body quickly depletes it's ready stores and you're down to fat reserves--and the rate that you can use those is limited.
[+] [-] throw1234651234|4 years ago|reply
Maybe I am just mad because swapping out shocks and springs would take me several weekends with full tools and a jack.
[+] [-] lnsru|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moron4hire|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mysterydip|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lostlogin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stronglikedan|4 years ago|reply
Myth Busters proved this was possible. Not that this story actually happened, just that it could have.
[+] [-] YeGoblynQueenne|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IncRnd|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LargoLasskhyfv|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brudgers|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daveslash|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flight_of_the_Phoenix_(196...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallmantz_Phoenix_P-1
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n82nN_lqn58
[+] [-] neverartful|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Stevvo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zh3|4 years ago|reply
Movie stuntmen getting hurt - even dead - has been happening long after that movie. Even non-stuntmen can have close shaves on-set (I've had three, just as an SFX tech, safety is probably much better these days since the '80s); always seemed to be the cameramen who ran the highest risks.
[+] [-] s1artibartfast|4 years ago|reply
https://sahara-overland.com/tag/emile-leray/
[+] [-] s_gourichon|4 years ago|reply
Source: my father owned several cars of the 2CV family and we rode in them for years.
Did he actually build it in the desert? Without tools it seems rather difficult.
Here's the central point of https://sahara-overland.com/tag/emile-leray/
> I believe the 2CV bike was indeed built in the desert, much as Leray claims, but he set out from France with the explicit intention of performing this task. Otherwise he’d have walked out like any normal person in a similar situation.
> His claimed unease about leaving his stricken car doesn’t ring true, let alone the spontaneous idea of making it into a two-wheeler. Tellingly, in 2006 Leray went on to build a ‘2CV boat’ in Mali. He clearly likes mucking about with 2CVs. Fair play to him!
[+] [-] marcodiego|4 years ago|reply
That was it, the bottle was now our fuel tank. Dangerous, but worked perfectly. We had to stop at every gas station we found and refill without stopping the engine to prevent air entering the hose.
It was a fun day.
[+] [-] progman32|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aivisol|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lsferreira42|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mountainboy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] progman32|4 years ago|reply
A diagram of the 2CV drive system can be found here: http://www.lightauto.com/fwd8.html
I wasn't there of course.
[+] [-] dntrkv|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 14|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway0a5e|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CapitalistCartr|4 years ago|reply
"The insanity of this creation couldn’t be better expressed than in the episode of Mythbusters, where they tried to recreate his process."
"Without following a manual, the hosts disassembled a 2CV, which they found easy, then set about making their bike. That part was not so easy. They failed twice."
"The first, was when they tried to make a better version, requiring two to operate it. Fail."
"Then, they tried to recreate Leray’s machine from the images they’d seen. They couldn’t balance it long enough to save their lives. Fail again."
"Considering the boys had two good brains, intelligent, experienced, and endless time to make something, they failed two-times-twice."
[+] [-] jandrese|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andai|4 years ago|reply
(3 min) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFMWgSgB4sg
(20 min) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_m_a4iRZIk
[+] [-] Muromec|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giardini|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smm11|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LorenPechtel|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thecrumb|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acrump|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ncmncm|4 years ago|reply