Interviewed by Expedition Extreme

November 22, 2016December 19, 2016 Tim Ansell

Having returned from Germany in the early hours of Friday last weekend, by mid afternoon I was heading off in my Series II Discovery towards Sweihan, to meet up with the Land Rover Owners Club of the U.A.E. for their first camp out of the year. Whilst there I met up with my friend Shaun Meyer, himself an extremely experienced off road driver & overlander from South Africa, who recently created his YouTube channel; Expedition Extreme. We had a chat about my truck, which can be seen below.

As you can see, we’re seasoned pros who got the whole thing done first time in a single take.
Just a minute, my phone’s ringing….it might be Hollywood. Got to go…….

Cabin Fever

October 21, 2016December 18, 2016 Tim Ansell

After a few delays, some minor, some not so minor, my cabin was transported from KrugXP to Hellgeth Engineering in Germany just over a week ago. It has arrived there safely and we are now waiting until the work is finished on my chassis and fuel tank, before the cabin and chassis will be joined in glorious matrimony. Having given them a respectful couple of weeks to get to know each other, I plan on visiting Hellgeth on November 16^th to sign off the project as “complete”. Almost 11 months after I ordered the chassis, it will be a red letter day for me.

Then the complete truck will be shipped from Bremerhaven by Deugro, with whom I was put in contact by my good friend Henrique Pimental of Daimler Commercial Vehicles. Deugro work with Mercedes, Oberaigner and Hellgeth, transporting their vehicles around the world, so I could not be in safer hands when it comes to the shipping and clearing arrangements here in Dubai.

Busy, busy

I’ve kept myself busy finding a company who can fit additional soundproofing to my truck once it’s here, whilst also planning the fitting of the additional lights, GPS antennae, front recovery points etc. And continuing to learn German. S L O W L Y. I had a meeting with a radio station last week to discuss the possibility of sending in monthly reports about life on the road, and have started selling off a few of my personal possessions in order to liquidate some funds to be spent on equipment for the truck. So if you are in the market for a set of Tannoy 611 speakers with Adcom power and pre-amp, Pearl Vision (Birch) drum kit, Canon 300mm L IS lens or Series 1 Land Rover Discovery, let me know….

Discovery 1 For Sale — My Discovery 1 is for sale. Please give generously…

My second visit to KrugXP; checking the cabin build.

September 10, 2016September 14, 2016 Tim Ansell

I returned to KrugXP’s factory in Cherkassy to see how my cabin build was progressing and to discuss the details and formalities of the export process with the guys at KrugXP. Although there had been rather less progress than I’d been hoping for, I already knew that the necessity to redesign the A/C storage unit to give better service access had caused a delay, and I’ve now agreed to travel to Germany at the end of October to check over the finished, completed vehicle, before it is shipped to Dubai.

Whilst there I was able to confirm a couple of things with Joerg Eden, Krug’s chief design consultant and my main contact, about the location of the rear brake light, rear ‘scene illumination’ light, and rear view camera, plus the installation of the additional reversing lights I’ll be adding in Dubai. KrugXP agreed to run the wires for these through the roof rails, allowing me to operate them from a separate switch in the cab.

Orders from around the world

I continue to be impressed by Krug’s attention to detail and quality of installation, and am happy I made the right choice of cabin builder. Clearly I’m not the only one who feels this way – Krug are now incredibly busy building cabins destined for delivery to the Middle East, Russia, Europe, even the U.S., so I reckon I did quite well to ‘get in early’. German chassis manufacturer Excap, whose Steyr truck chassis rebuilds are widely regarded as excellent large truck bases for overland vehicles, had just delivered a chassis to KrugXP, to be fitted with a demo cabin which Steyr will use to promote sales of their chassis. However such is the demand for their trucks (there’s a two year waiting list I believe) that I can imagine the demo truck will be sold long before it’s finished – and Krug will soon be busy building them another.

Truck For Sale

If you want to get hold of a finished vehicle right now, outside in Krug’s yard was a finished MAN based vehicle which sleeps 4 or 5 comfortably and which is available for sale immediately. I believe the asking price is around EUR 275K. Tell them Tim sent you and who knows, maybe I’ll get a discount on my own cabin! Also at the premises was a Swiss owned MAN truck just back from a South American expedition and in for some refurbishment, plus a Sprinter Van based mobile home into which new furniture was being installed. So busy times for KrugXP, and it was good to be able to turn up and put some pressure on to get my own cabin finished ASAP.