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.
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...
This was 120F ambient air temps, much hotter surface/roof-in-progress temps operating in close proximity to.
Basically every drink break put down 2 Brita pitchers worth, refilled from a 5-gallon water cooler bottle. Typically I'd have to go down and refill the 5-gallon bottle once per day... hence 5-10gals.
It sounds like he used the cab as shelter once removed intact. Presumably he hid idly in its shadow during the hottest hours of the project as well...
But yeah at some point if the hack isn't bearing fruit you have to cut your losses and walk.
Edit: This article says: "The nearest village was 20 miles away and Leray didn't want to risk making the trek on foot." http://www.nydailynews.com/autos/photos-man-escapes-african-...
I could even imagine that he did get stranded out there and knew worst case he could just walk back, so why not try to build a motorcycle for the fun of it and then dramatize the story years later.
Is a marathon a huge athletic feat, that the fittest people you know spend months in preparation for, and even then may only do once in their lifetime? Or is it the distance a person of average fitness can walk in a day?
You took off the back cover with the TV on, looked at all the tubes, and found the one whose filament was not glowing. You then turned the TV off, pulled that tube out of its socket, went and bought a replacement, put that in, and that almost always fixed the TV.
You get could the replacement tube at many supermarkets. They would have a self-service kiosk that had a tube tester built in. It had a bunch of sockets covering all the tubes you were likely to find in a home TV or radio. You'd plug yours into the right socket and hit the test button, and the tester would verify that the tube was indeed dead (or tell you were wrong in which case maybe it was something other than a tube that failed so time to call the TV repairman).
There would be a book attached to the kiosk that listed all the tubes likely to be in home TVs or radios. You'd look your tube up in that and it would tell you what equivalent tube available at the kiosk could replace your tube. You'd grab that tube and go pay the cashier.
Last time though, I used tape and labeled every single hose, wire, screw, etc. Unsurprisingly, there were no extra parts afterall :).
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.
I agree this was likely a preconceived stunt because locals walk that distance, in much more rugged conditions,, all the time without making a big deal about it.
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 know something of the terrain and even without looking at a map my first reaction to what he attempted was that it would be impossible even by survival standards. I do not believe the terrain could be traversed even with mountaineering gear. (Too much of it is loose material near the maximum stable angle--it won't bear weight.)
Maybe I am just mad because swapping out shocks and springs would take me several weekends with full tools and a jack.
German cars tend to have a bunch of hex and star wrench requirements, in addition to specialized tools for certain parts.
On the other hand, older cars did mostly have way more space in the engine bay.
Is this true in new trucks? Half the time it seems maintenance begins with removing the cab and removing the truck from the engine.
Realistically it doesn't really matter because it's easier to optimize for not breaking shit or fixing it before is strands you.
There are various unusual things about this particular car that make it at least hover on the edge of plausibility, rather than being a completely absurd idea as it would be for most models. As the article said, they did fail, but it's not too hard to believe they could have figured something out that would have at least been faster than walking if they had a bit more time (and by that I mean a few more hours, not a few more weeks). The Mythbusters did a lot of interesting things but where a normal scientist is driven mercilessly by grants, the Mythbusters were always driven mercilessly by TV production schedules.
As long as you carried some spare wiring harness smoke.
http://www.whereisbobl.com/tiger/smoke.html
"Q: Can I use this device to replace the smoke in my Alfa Spider? Is Brit smoke the same as Italian smoke?
A: Only if it's pre-Bosch."
In the nearly nude photo his hands are visibly dirty.
From the article though it didn’t sound he drove very far, so carry less than 10 days would have been possible too.
Difference is that you can make trips to set up fuel dumps wherever you want.
The standard guidance is 1 gallon (~4 liters) of water per day, via all sources (includes food). A gallon weighs a little more than 8 pounds, so that’s 80+ pounds of water for ten days (not counting container, backpack, and whatever else you’re schlepping). Weight will decrease each day, but that’s a lot of weight up front. Backpackers usually try to carry half that, but 80 isn’t out of the question if you’re conditioned for it (eg US ground military carry 60-100 lbs).
A gallon a day is probably overkill for a short term survival situation, though. Having less, especially while you’re exerting yourself, may cause damage, but the survival goal is just to come out the other side.
Some quick googling on actual minimums to survive turned up this thread, where someone calculated it to be 1 liter per day while resting in a cool environment. So that’s 20lbs that needs to be adjusted upward for carrying significant weight offtrail in potentially hot conditions. https://www.backcountrysurvival.co.uk/2016/05/20/minimum-amo...
If you split the difference and assume strict rationing, you’re looking at 50lb start weight and suffering significant but not incapacitating dehydration. Brutal, but conceivable.
Unless you are in the Italian army, they need more.
Myth Busters proved this was possible. Not that this story actually happened, just that it could have.
1. They build it and it works. That would prove that building a useful MLTFTC (motorcycle-like thing from that car) was possible, but would not prove that Leray had done so.
2. They are unable to find a way to build an MLTFTC. This does not prove it cannot be done, but they are smart and inventive builders and had accounts and photos of Leray's alleged MLTFTC to go on, so if they could not figure it out it would cast very strong doubts on Leray's story.
3. The result they actually got. They are able to build an MLTFTC, but it doesn't work well enough to ride.
That is the least satisfying possible result. It tells us that MLTFTCs are possible, but doesn't tell us if useful ones are possible. That theirs was not useful fails to rule out that others might be useful because two-wheeled vehicles are quite sensitive to geometry. It has not hard to have two such vehicles that look very similar, but one is rideable and one is not due to a few degrees difference in part of the geometry.
https://www.google.com/maps/@28.03012,-11.1617356,3a,75y,89....
I'm probably doing 3 litres a day of pure water (plus water from coffees / food etc.) in 30 degree temps, but spending most of that time inside with air-con. It's probably not enough as I am pissing orange still.
Edit: someone like me wouldn't hike in deserts though, so by survivorship bias people that do it often probably need less water to stay cool. But 2l/day even if walking only dusk/dawn seems tight still.