The day I got the car:
Went on a midnight adventure with a new friend that "knew" the area. I'm no stranger to offroading in the iX, but this time I was in over my head. Quite literally. Misread the tides, instead of a slack we got the opposite. I drove out onto the sand bar and got stuck turning around. By the time I had dug the wheels free, lowered the tire pressure, and got turned around there was a 20 foot section of 3inch deep water separating me from the beach. Went to blast across, and the engine stalled out 5 feet from dry sand. At this point I was loosing my shit. Screaming, cursing, sloshing around in the tide I popped the trunk and got the spark plug socket tool, removed all the spark plugs, tried to crank. The starter was partially submerged in salt water and was boiling and smoking like crazy, engine still wouldn't turn. Screaming, cursing, sloshing around I managed to grab my Helly Hansen rain coat, a backpack, and the Glock 20. That's where I snapped the next pic. The homie kept his two 6 packs above water the whole time, which ended up saving our lives later. Keep in mind this is SE Alaska, 50 degrees and raining, 3 miles from a road and 15 miles from cell reception, midnight on a weekday. There is NOBODY out here, we've both been sloshing around in the ocean while being rained on, and he's wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. It was the perfect storm for hypothermia. We got to the beach and assesed the situation. He decided to pound two beers, I decided I was going to hike back to cell reception and GTFO. I seperated the dry cardboard from the six packs into a dry pocket in the backpack, then started hiking back through the bear infested trail, Glock in hand.
We got back to the road and started making our way to Eagle Beach, which was where we would get cell reception but hopefully see a car before that. About 5 miles down the road my friends condition started to deteriorate. I don't think the beers helped him that much. He was stumbling around, murmuring nonsense, and kept saying he wanted to go to sleep. So as we're walking I found a really nice semi dry dead branch that had gotten stuck up in the branches. Lots of little twigs on it and about a 2" main stem, 6 ft long. I found a good spot under the canopy of the forest next to a spruce.
I don't know if any of you have tried starting a fire in the rain, but it's not very easy. I'll give him credit though, as I was staging my upside down fire, he managed to put together a "California fire" which was just your basic stack of twigs and some tinder. Doesn't work that great when it's raining though. It burst into flames, and at that point my friend shut down, he didn't wake up until we were rescued. His little fire burned for about 20 seconds before smoldering itself out. My upside down fire worked perfectly, and in about 15 minutes I had self sustaining fire going so I could go hunt for more fire wood.
The homie had passed out a couple feet from where I built the fire, so I rolled him over until he was about a foot from the flames. I made a decent pile of dry-ish wood, and was finally able to settle down for a minute. I was pretty angry at him and myself at this point, but also worried about him being hypothermic and whatnot. A piece of wood exploded from the moisture and a flaming chunk landed on his chest. Part of me wanted him to wake up, and the other part wanted him to burn a little for convincing me to go out and sink my car. I let it burn through his sweatshirt, and he didn't even flinch. LOL. We were both steaming like crazy so I wasn't too worried about hime freezing to death. I started thinking of Bear Grilles and what he would do (lol again) so I went around and found some bedding material to chill on.
2 hours later the first car drove down the road. My friends wife noticed we didn't make it back so she sent his friends out looking for us. Just imagine some lanky looking white guy jumping out of the woods and waving you down in the middle of the forest at 3am... Luckily they knew who I was.
I went home, took a hot shower, slept for an hour then got the recovery effort going so I could retrieve the car at the next low tide. Headed back out to the sand bar with a Land Cruiser and straps. To my amazement, a tractor owned by a Christian camp a mile away had already started to tug my car out. After thanking him 100000 times I got behind the soggy wheel and he dragged me back to the parking lot. The rest as they say, is history. My friend recovered, said he didn't get feeling back in his toes until noon the next day.
I found another iX owner that had a parts car in his backyard. He needed the trans for his car, so I got the car for free as long as I pulled the trans for him. Crack free dash/moonroof time!!!!!
So a couple months later and a whole lotta hustle, I have secured funds for a rebuild. Now the insanity begins. $5000 to start rebuilding a M20, and now that I have the funds I'm having the hardest time deciding which direction to go. Stock rotating assembly? Forged pistons? M54B30 rotating assembly with the pistons machined to match squish/ achieve 11.5:1? I can't decide. So for now I will concentrate on the head and go from there. Current plans are to build a flow bench, use my AMC head and raise/ fill the ports, +2.5mm intake valves from RHD, bigger valve seats, change the valve guide angle to center the valve in the seat/ better curtain area/ rocker ratio (definately not stealing other peoples ideas here, haha) CAT cams, possibly their billet rockers if I can find a source.. I have full access to a CNC machine shop, and a engine machine shop across the street. I'm hoping this time with a little cash backing me up, I can graduate from bench racing/hopes and dreams to reality.
Went on a midnight adventure with a new friend that "knew" the area. I'm no stranger to offroading in the iX, but this time I was in over my head. Quite literally. Misread the tides, instead of a slack we got the opposite. I drove out onto the sand bar and got stuck turning around. By the time I had dug the wheels free, lowered the tire pressure, and got turned around there was a 20 foot section of 3inch deep water separating me from the beach. Went to blast across, and the engine stalled out 5 feet from dry sand. At this point I was loosing my shit. Screaming, cursing, sloshing around in the tide I popped the trunk and got the spark plug socket tool, removed all the spark plugs, tried to crank. The starter was partially submerged in salt water and was boiling and smoking like crazy, engine still wouldn't turn. Screaming, cursing, sloshing around I managed to grab my Helly Hansen rain coat, a backpack, and the Glock 20. That's where I snapped the next pic. The homie kept his two 6 packs above water the whole time, which ended up saving our lives later. Keep in mind this is SE Alaska, 50 degrees and raining, 3 miles from a road and 15 miles from cell reception, midnight on a weekday. There is NOBODY out here, we've both been sloshing around in the ocean while being rained on, and he's wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. It was the perfect storm for hypothermia. We got to the beach and assesed the situation. He decided to pound two beers, I decided I was going to hike back to cell reception and GTFO. I seperated the dry cardboard from the six packs into a dry pocket in the backpack, then started hiking back through the bear infested trail, Glock in hand.
We got back to the road and started making our way to Eagle Beach, which was where we would get cell reception but hopefully see a car before that. About 5 miles down the road my friends condition started to deteriorate. I don't think the beers helped him that much. He was stumbling around, murmuring nonsense, and kept saying he wanted to go to sleep. So as we're walking I found a really nice semi dry dead branch that had gotten stuck up in the branches. Lots of little twigs on it and about a 2" main stem, 6 ft long. I found a good spot under the canopy of the forest next to a spruce.
I don't know if any of you have tried starting a fire in the rain, but it's not very easy. I'll give him credit though, as I was staging my upside down fire, he managed to put together a "California fire" which was just your basic stack of twigs and some tinder. Doesn't work that great when it's raining though. It burst into flames, and at that point my friend shut down, he didn't wake up until we were rescued. His little fire burned for about 20 seconds before smoldering itself out. My upside down fire worked perfectly, and in about 15 minutes I had self sustaining fire going so I could go hunt for more fire wood.
The homie had passed out a couple feet from where I built the fire, so I rolled him over until he was about a foot from the flames. I made a decent pile of dry-ish wood, and was finally able to settle down for a minute. I was pretty angry at him and myself at this point, but also worried about him being hypothermic and whatnot. A piece of wood exploded from the moisture and a flaming chunk landed on his chest. Part of me wanted him to wake up, and the other part wanted him to burn a little for convincing me to go out and sink my car. I let it burn through his sweatshirt, and he didn't even flinch. LOL. We were both steaming like crazy so I wasn't too worried about hime freezing to death. I started thinking of Bear Grilles and what he would do (lol again) so I went around and found some bedding material to chill on.
2 hours later the first car drove down the road. My friends wife noticed we didn't make it back so she sent his friends out looking for us. Just imagine some lanky looking white guy jumping out of the woods and waving you down in the middle of the forest at 3am... Luckily they knew who I was.
I went home, took a hot shower, slept for an hour then got the recovery effort going so I could retrieve the car at the next low tide. Headed back out to the sand bar with a Land Cruiser and straps. To my amazement, a tractor owned by a Christian camp a mile away had already started to tug my car out. After thanking him 100000 times I got behind the soggy wheel and he dragged me back to the parking lot. The rest as they say, is history. My friend recovered, said he didn't get feeling back in his toes until noon the next day.
I found another iX owner that had a parts car in his backyard. He needed the trans for his car, so I got the car for free as long as I pulled the trans for him. Crack free dash/moonroof time!!!!!
So a couple months later and a whole lotta hustle, I have secured funds for a rebuild. Now the insanity begins. $5000 to start rebuilding a M20, and now that I have the funds I'm having the hardest time deciding which direction to go. Stock rotating assembly? Forged pistons? M54B30 rotating assembly with the pistons machined to match squish/ achieve 11.5:1? I can't decide. So for now I will concentrate on the head and go from there. Current plans are to build a flow bench, use my AMC head and raise/ fill the ports, +2.5mm intake valves from RHD, bigger valve seats, change the valve guide angle to center the valve in the seat/ better curtain area/ rocker ratio (definately not stealing other peoples ideas here, haha) CAT cams, possibly their billet rockers if I can find a source.. I have full access to a CNC machine shop, and a engine machine shop across the street. I'm hoping this time with a little cash backing me up, I can graduate from bench racing/hopes and dreams to reality.
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