so first of, as is often true, life is stranger than fiction. a pretty amazing story in and of itself.
the car raises a lot of questions for me. not anything that would question the validity of the story, just some things that are interesting that i noticed....
if you look at the hatch window, they said they replaced it with steel. i don't know what thickness steel they used, but they did a damn fine job matching the unique contour of the original glass. that can't be easy to do. typically in a gritty, field-dress military environment i would have expected they just rivet plates over top of the opening instead of carefully contouring it to the inside of the glass opening.
what in the world is that intake doing? that belongs on a blower, and yet the car only makes 220hp which leads me to think it just had an upgraded carb and maybe some pipes. assuming its even functional, and i don't think it is, i can't imagine why you'd want an exposed intake in a wartime, rural, dusty area that likely provides no actual performance benefit. but then again you can win hearts and minds a lot easier when people can see your throttle butterflies because that's awesome.
i had no idea they had runflats in the early 90's.
i wonder what they did to the suspension. stock weight was 3600 lbs. between the armor, radio/surveillance equipment, and up to nearly 900 lbs of humanitarian supply cargo, that thing had to come in at 5000lbs loaded, easy. maybe 5500. no way the stock springs could take that while being hustled on 3rd world roads.
i'm sure there's a lot of legend shrouding the actual truth that we'll never know, but i'm sure it did happen and its pretty freakin cool.
the car raises a lot of questions for me. not anything that would question the validity of the story, just some things that are interesting that i noticed....
if you look at the hatch window, they said they replaced it with steel. i don't know what thickness steel they used, but they did a damn fine job matching the unique contour of the original glass. that can't be easy to do. typically in a gritty, field-dress military environment i would have expected they just rivet plates over top of the opening instead of carefully contouring it to the inside of the glass opening.
what in the world is that intake doing? that belongs on a blower, and yet the car only makes 220hp which leads me to think it just had an upgraded carb and maybe some pipes. assuming its even functional, and i don't think it is, i can't imagine why you'd want an exposed intake in a wartime, rural, dusty area that likely provides no actual performance benefit. but then again you can win hearts and minds a lot easier when people can see your throttle butterflies because that's awesome.
i had no idea they had runflats in the early 90's.
i wonder what they did to the suspension. stock weight was 3600 lbs. between the armor, radio/surveillance equipment, and up to nearly 900 lbs of humanitarian supply cargo, that thing had to come in at 5000lbs loaded, easy. maybe 5500. no way the stock springs could take that while being hustled on 3rd world roads.
i'm sure there's a lot of legend shrouding the actual truth that we'll never know, but i'm sure it did happen and its pretty freakin cool.
2010 Civic Si
2019 4Runner TRD Off-Road
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Past: 03 Xterra SE 4x4 | 05 Impreza 2.5RS | 99.5 A4 Quattro 1.8T | 01 Accord EX | 90 Maxima GXE | 96 Explorer XLT
2019 4Runner TRD Off-Road
--------------------------
Past: 03 Xterra SE 4x4 | 05 Impreza 2.5RS | 99.5 A4 Quattro 1.8T | 01 Accord EX | 90 Maxima GXE | 96 Explorer XLT