Category Archives: Dakar Tough

How do you hold your tool.,,

be prepared !, as the Scouts say. Well in the race cars we carry a Leatherman charge TTI and need it in a handy place, I have always hated the method of using a zip tie on a  standard sheath idea onto the roll cage like this.

Letherman in a holder on arace car for off road

so another quick 5 minutes on the CAD ( days ?? ), 

I had a prototype , then I had a 3D print version , then I tried again, and again.

Letherman plastic mounting that clips in and holds secure, easy removal by squeezing the two tabs

After four attempts, I found the winner.

leatherman charge holders for roll cage in race car
fourth time is a good one

testing on a real roll cage.

leatherman roll cage bracket, storage holder device
prototype #4 testing

Now to get a proper 3D print version in a nice colour.

I will add an update and then add it to the shop on so you can buy it in any colour you fancy.

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3D Printed Titanium tools… drool

The McLaren boat tail sorry SpeedTail has had the American tool manufacturer Snap-On  3D print a tool kit in titanium

super light and super strong, 

maybe next for the desert warrior 4 ?

Titanium tool kit for race car Dakar
I bet they even make standard Snap-on tools look good value.
Titanium car tool kit hidden under carbon cover

What are the chances of someone who owns a McLaren that they will be  fixing it themselves!!, so they will just be a teasing bit of eye candy

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Sealing spare equipment for overland travel.

If you have done any sort of off roading then you have broken things. yes even Toyota’s break,

So you happily go into the back of your vehicle to get out the small item you stowed a couple of years back,  knowing one day you will smile with the knowledge that you always carried that widget you may need.

but horror … that trip a few years back in heavy rain when everything got soaked but dried out the next day in the sun  must have got all the spares get just a little damp and that brand new widget now looks like an ancient relic. 🤦‍♂️

Think spare keys , where do you hide them? will you be able to identify them a keys when you finally need them five years from now?

We have this problem on the Dakar  cars, we fit a huge amount of expensive parts to the car and after the race has beaten the car to submission it  then sits on a ship across the ocean for 3 weeks, all the parts look like scrap.

So what do we do?

how do we seal spare electronics , ball joints  etc?

well old school aerospace/military that’s how.

we coat the parts in hot dip gloop

How to seal stuff for expedition , military style
Looks like a bar of soap , but has a slightly oily feel to it, and a certain smell

but there are a few tricks to it,

First: what is it and where can I get it?

you can buy it from here, Kennedy hot dip coating

hot dip rust restistant peal off coating

Second : Not breaking the bank

So how do you apply it, well industrial hot melting tanks will set you back a few hundred quid ( dollars , euros etc)

we use a slow melting cooker available for tens of pounds.

you can get one here from amazon

How to seal stuff for expedition , military
Dont use the wifes slow cooker 😉

any large domestic type with two temperature settings is good.

Use the low setting which is touch too hot, the workshops will leave it on all day, at this temperature it would probably damage the gloop  but for short runs it works fine, usually takes all night to melt the entire pot to a useable temperature. If you are going to do a lot use the lower temp overnight to melt it and put it on the higher temp when using it

How to seal stuff for expedition , military amber
Looks like this when it cools
How to seal stuff for expedition , military easy peel covering
It Peels off very easily and leaves a slightly oily surface behind

Third: can I reuse it?

Yes. you can reuse it, so if you do it wrong just peel it off and throw it back into the pan . When you peel it off on a trip keep it in a bag and reuse it.

How to seal stuff for expedition , military
resistance is futile, we will assimilate you 🙂

Fourth: fiddly small bits

If you have things with connectors and fiddly items we cover them in cling film then use the dip to make a seal around it all . Anything loose like keys needs a zip tie to gather them together or it will turn out  a messy big lump, you can practise again and again , just peel it off and throw it back in.

How to seal stuff for expedition , military style
This is a Sealed engine ECU, wrapped in cling film first.

Five: it has zero strength

One problem is the gloop is not strong and will not take abuse when stowed away , so we always protect and seal in a plastic back with maybe bubble wrap around it, this ECU is our backup in the camper and if the whole car is flooded this may just save us one day.

How to seal stuff for expedition , military

enjoy 🙂 

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GPS How things move on …..

 But at a slower pace now.

Its time to upgrade the navigation of the Beady world,

Here a brief history of navigation by GPS in the world of Beady and a conclusion for 2017.

  On an off road trip to the recently freed country of Romania early in the 1990’s , we purchased a Magellan NAV 1000 Trailblazer, this was amazing, at last we could pin point ourselves on a map to precision that was almost as accurate as what we had before when we had no map . i.e. useless.

 The Trailblazer was like most tech stuff in its early days, you had to be dedicated to use it, but without early adopters this stuff would struggle to get going.

My First GPS in 1993 we paid a lot for it.

The Magellan was a mean looking bit of kit it , but if you powered it on and didn’t  set the time and location it would take 24 hrs to get a location, on batteries you would never get a fix before they died.

the screen was high res for the day and featured

100 waypoints

1 route

2 data screens

and 1 pointer screen that would show you your track.

Basic location was enough, the Trailblazer UK version also did 10 digit OS coordinates.


the Unit was chunky and you felt you had value for money, there was no base maps just a digit readout, so unless you had good maps to locate yourself it was of little use.

And as for the 10 digit OSGB grid refs well  anyone who can’t plot their location on a OS GB map shouldn’t be allowed outside without  adult supervision.

There where however two good feature of this unit that have stayed on into the modern world the first is the aerial, turn it around and it  detached then using a standard coax cable with BNC connectors it could be relocated to the roof, great for in cars and using the Cig power socket made a very useful unit.


Magellan Trailblazer GPS with external Aerial
The aerial was movable to the roof even on these early versions which helped lots.

The second feature was a NMEA output over RS232, we used this along with a early Aero 33mhz colour laptop to do mapped realtime tracking in our range rover on our race across the desert following the Dakar 1995 from Granada to Senegal, we used a scanner that self powered itself across maps and we where light years ahead of everything else, but things had to move on as it was slow and tedious to use in a moving car.

Then  in 1999 we purchased the amazing Garmin eMap with built in maps, memory cards and a position fix that was incredibly quick for the day.

Garmin eMap with the Dakar 2009 route to the docks, in its car stand.


The screen was 120×160 pixels , waterproof but the MAPS was the features that made it great.

I still have my eMap and it still works perfect although the memory cards @ 128mb do not hold much useful mapping  and I remember waiting ages for Garmin’s software to send the maps to them over RS232 at a whopping 9600bps , oh how the nights just flew by, but still back then it was worth it, when there was no Google earth or any other real mapping available I had world maps from Garmin and a screen with a pointer on it. coupled with the new trick Australian software called Oziexplorer it was a great combo.

The button layout still persists to this day on Garmins and so does the paged menu system.



     The World goes smartphone mad…..


Microsft rule with Wince programmable phone in 2003
Microsoft innovate and the world takes four more years to catch up.



in 2003 I got my first smartphone, way ahead of all of you.  The HTC SPV E100 was the first phone you could program and it used  Windows mobile CE a difficult process but again amazing for its time and way ahead of the rest of the world , I started to write the worlds first vehicle diagnostics on a phone  ( note to self : patent my ideas ), soon on the orange network the faster SPV E200  came out and was perfect for our race cars. It had a serial port and I used it with a gps to do some very early mobile mapping in 2003, but what I wanted was a built in GPS ,  HTC back in the noughties where very innovative before they went boring and Android, remember the amazing HTC diamond ??,  I didn’t have to wait too long until  HTC delivered what is now the familiar form factor of the touch screen smartphone to arrive in the bland but technically great HTC Trinity sold by Orange in the UK, with WiFi and Bluetooth a memory card slot this was the first of what we all take for granted now.

DAKAr race car diagnostics in 2006 .First smart phone with built in GPS
Trinity ( a name to make all nerds horny , think Matrix films ❤  )


From then on it was a yearly upgrade cycle of speed and performance until the HTC mini, when running Oziexplorer you had a formidable GPS mapping tool, full fat internet and WiFi decent storage and a great program to navigate with.

HTC mini and Windows Mobile  professional 6.5, the pinnacle of Windows mobile until WIN10

although this was in 2007  effectively the final consumer version of WinCe, Google Android used the interface and still run it today, which shows just how good microsoft where with the format.

Beady race Dakar waypoint for south america
Oziexplorer WinCe is still updated by Des Newman

If you want to know what Oziexplorer is then look here

for use by drunken australians in thier ute's
Oziexplorer website


It is very powerful software, don’t be fooled by the dated GUI interface it works and as with all powerful software needs some practise but then its very good.

after this version of win mob  Microsoft foolishly tried to emulate Apple with a walled garden ‘you cant mess with the simple features we supply attitude’ and Windows phone slowly died with Win8 and 8.1

but at last the world has overtaken the smartphone era and the moved to the small computer with a phone that is Windows 10 UWP, where all windows applications (apps to the dumb) work on all platforms with Win10, except Oziexplorer ☹ well Des may write it again although I doubt it.

While away off roading in the Dordogne in 2017  I tried Oziexplorer on a WIN10 Surface with a Garmin GLO Bluetooth GPS, the results weren’t great, especially when the Bluetooth connection decided to not connect again and again then not at all.

So what now.

well this showed me after year of using dedicated GPS units with there amazing reliability that there is still a place for them in conjunction with mapping software like Oziexplorer, the internet maps on Oziexplorer are great , the ability to swap between diferent providers of maps and your own at the same location is great.

download your waypoints and routes to the GPS and with the memory that’s huge you can have the maps and even custom maps on the dedicated GPS, with battery back up when all the other systems are crashing the unit will still point the way.

In between I have used most GPS’s on our Rally raid trips, I have made routes and tracked progress with ever better Garmins and better laptops with Oziexplorer.

So which one will I upgrade to, well it has to be only one doesn’t it? 😜 if you know you GPS’s .

The successor to the legendary Garmin 276

beady dakar GArmin 276C
Legendary 276C GPS a big brick of a unit



——  welcome to the 276Cx

2017 Garmin 276Cx

Just need to convince Milly that I need this or I will just get lost.  £700 GBP isn’t soooo bad is it?  😇.







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