On the Road to Inuvik: Dispatches

Don Kane, August 12^th

At Frenchman's lake, less than a week into the trip, the van wouldn't start. The night before I had removed the air cleaner, which entails removing the airflow box, to clean it out, as the whole two previous days had been spent on unpaved roads eating a lot of dust. I also put in a new O2 sensor. It started fine after doing this, but next morning, no start. The starter was fine, lots of cranking power, plenty of fuel after the filters and fuel pump, spark at the plugs, but nothing but a tiny spurt of fuel from the injectors, not enough to start. My wife says she got a picture of about 6 of us with our heads stuck in the engine, but we couldn't get it to start. Since I had worked on it a little the night before, my first suspicion was related to that, and I put the old O2 sensor back on. Made no difference.

We were sharing a campsite with Tobin and Christa which was about 100 yards down a bad road from the rest of the group, and I got a tow out and to the top of the road from a 4wd ford F350 in the area. At the top of the road I tried starting it again, and after about 15 seconds of cranking it started. For the rest of that day into Dawson it would usually start reluctantly when warm, and not at all when cold. I suspected the temp sensor, which is a thermistor that sends info the the fuel injection to tell it if it's a cold start or a warm start. But I was also experiencing wierd electrical problems, no lowbeams, radio coming on for a second with the key and then turning off.

In Dawson that night we stayed at a motel, the El Dorado, and it was like Heaven. Our 3 year old was being difficult about wearing clothes to protect him from the mosquitos, and was suffering from the bites. To his credit, he hardly complained about them at all, but he had lots of them and needed a bath. The water was so hot at the El Dorado, that I created a steam room in about 2 minutes, and the water pressure was so high that it just blasted the dirt off. I think we all took about 4 showers each during the 12 or so hours we were there.

Still no progress on my starting problem, but since the van ran fine once it was started, i figured i could keep going and push start when necessary. Jack and Dennis were both having to push start occasionally, and it didn't seem an overwhelming problem.

The next night we stayed at the campground, and in the morning headed up the Dempster toward Inuvik. About 30 kilometers up the Dempster, my alternator light went on and the temp started to climb. I found a safe turnoff almost immediately and had the belt changed before all of the group had even caught up, as they had been held up getting Sue back on the road after her mishap. To visualize the Dempster, keep in mind that it's built on Permafrost. On a typical road, they dig down into the earth and built the road so that it's more or less at the same level as the surrounding land. The Dempster is built up from the ground level, and in many places is as much as 10 feet or more above the land next to it. Sue was really lucky to go off the road where she did and get back unscathed. The insane family that passed us like bats out of hell didn't fair so well. They flipped their car going down the embankment. So I was also lucky to find a turnoff right away to change my belt.

After about another 20 k I started noticing a loss of power, and the person behind me told me on the CB that I was leaking coolant. I pulled over again and checked it, and I had a leak in my expansion tank. Bob Hoover pulled up behind me and used his 12 volt welder to melt the plastic in the tank, shaving off some small strips from the edge of the tank to fill in. On my way again with no more leaks, I still had the power loss problem, missing at high RPM, and the gas gauge told me I was eating up gas.

I ran out of gas after 161 miles, meaning i was getting about 10 mpg. 5 gallons from my extra can, and 6 from Eddie's got me to Eagle Plains. It was raining there, and very muddy, so I decided to leave the van there and go on to Inuvik with others. I called Kyle at Volks Cafe and asked him to send me a coolant tank, a temp sensor, an airflow box if he had it, and a couple other things. I had it sent to Dawson, planning to nurse my van back there after Inuvik.

I rode with Jack Stafford along with Casey, my Australian Shepard. My wife Bess and our son Alan rode with Denis, and our Daughter Vivian went up with Neil and back with Tobin and Christa.

Inuvik was great, and we stayed the first night in the vans we rode up in, and got a hotel the next night. It was the eve of Bess's 40th Birthday, so we had a party at the hotel before the flight up to Tuk. Bess put together a couple of Fruit tarts with stuff purchased at the Northern Store in Inuvik (surprisingly good fresh produce available), and Christa provided some tequila, with a nice bottle of Austrailian wine from Jack.

The next day we headed back to Eagle Plains and my van. After having read the Bentley and the Bosch fuel injection book on the ride up to Inuvik and back, I was pretty sure it was the temp sensor, which can affect cold starts as well as mixture when running warm, and i knew how to check it with the multimeter. Much to my dismay, it checked out fine, and the van was running worse than ever. The Hall sensor connected to the distributor had become brittle and was broken, causing all sorts of rough running and stalling. I used duct tape and bailing wire to get it back where it belonged. Gary Millang and I had a discussion about the starting problem and decided it might be the ignition switch. The instruments on the dash would go out when the key was in the start position, and that plus the radio problems suggested the ignition switch. Bob Hoover had also suggested it as a possibility. Gary hotwired it, and it started perfectly. The only problem left was the power loss and missing.

Eagle Plains is a pit, and several people had decided not to stay the night there, pushing on for Dawson, even though it was almost 400 kilometers and already close to midnight. Not that midnight means as much in the land of the midnight sun. My wife was dying to get out of there, not wanting to spend her birthday night in the mud, with more rain on the way. Tobin said he'd tow me if it came to that, let's just get out of Eagle Plains. So off we went. Imagine knowing at best you're going to get 10 mpg, leaving Eagle Plains down the Dempster highway at midnight, and seeing a sign saying "Next services 367 Kilometers".

Tobin and I fortified ourselves with some of Christa's Tequila, and we were off. It was a beautiful drive in the twilight of 2 and 3 in the morning, with the mountains around us. Tobin and I both got pretty tired after a while and parked at a turnoff to sleep. It was far more pleasant and quiet than the Eagle Plains Hotel, and free to boot. We didn't wake up till late morning, and looked around at the nearby mountains that had been snowed on during the night not to far above us. We filled my car up with from our extra cans, and made it the rest of the way to Dawson.

Don Kane

[End of Part One]