As many of you have read, Joe broke a valve spring on the Alaska Highway. It's difficult to describe that area but it's a really tough and serious environment. The Alaska Highway is paved but there are gravel sections. We knew this but I imagined a gravel section to be less than 1 mile at a time but it's more like 10 mile long sections and the speed limit is still 100km/h. The challenging part is there's no real civilization up there.
I wanted to share situation of our breakdown and our (mostly Joe's) ingenuity to get back on the road.
To give you an idea, here's where we broke down:
We had driven just shy of 300 miles from Whitehorse that morning and we were traveling on a gravel section up a hill. Joe/Paul came on the radio to report some noise and loss of power. We pulled to the side of the road to evaluate the situation.
I was hoping it was a dirty jet but the noise was too loud to be a fuel related issue. Joe pulled his buggy to the side of the road facing traffic to angle the motor as to not leak oil and proceded to remove the valve cover on the passenger side. I was watching traffic pass by on the dirt road at speed of 100km/h when I heard Joe scream "Oh! woooow!" I figured it was either good or bad but could not tell. I pop over and he tells me it's bad. The intake spring on #2 cylinder was broken. Now what?
We were 4km away from what they call a gas station. On the Alaska Highway, a gas station is nothing more than an above ground 300gal round tank with painted "GAS" on the side and, sometimes, a gift shop. One of these gas station we had stopped, the owner said he was the sheriff! About 5 people live in that 'town'.
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We had to tow Joe's buggy to the gas station where we hopped we would get cell coverage and perhaps query the few people there for help. We considered using Jon's Porsche powered buggy but he did not have any anchor point for the tow rope and his exhaust was in the way. We decided to use our Kick-Out to tow. We wrapped the tow rope around the lower part of the bumper and proceeded to the gas station with Jon holding the rear with his hazards. Still on gravel, we manage to pull Joe's buggy at times hitting speeds of 80km/h+.
Joe's motor did not have stock VW springs and we were hoping we could hopefully salvage springs from an American made motor. As we rolled in the gas station/gift shop, I spotted what looked like an small junk yard. Paul and I decided to go check it out while Joe went inside to chat with the owner. As we get to the back of the building, there was someone chucking wood and cleaning up junk. We approached him to see if he could provide assistance or parts and Paul spots a VW IRS transmission sitting on the ground in front of the man. What are the odds?! Unfortunately, that was the only VW part left and the man was not of any further assistance.
Back inside the gift shop, Joe was on the phone with a tire shop in Watson Lake about 25km east. The people at that shop thought that they may have old motor heads we could take a look at. We re-hooked Joe's buggy behind the Kick-Out and proceeded to Watson Lake hitting speeds of 110km/h at times. Joe managed the brakes from the back and I just stayed focus on the road. At least the road was paved to Watson Lake.
The tire shop was an old wooden building and a mechanic was very busy changing tires. Judging by the amount of work piled up, they change a lot of tires on that highway.
Here's the building
Joe went in to the office and talked with a confused receptionist and got 'permission' to go in the back room of the shop to see if there were parts that may work. There were a few old motor heads on a shelf and using a C-Clamp, we removed a spring.
The 1st spring we took off was not a fit but by luck, the 2nd head we looked at had a very close spring that ended being a match. Now we needed to get the spring back on the head. We had no intentions of dropping the motor or removing the head and I had head of the rope trick before. A few people suggested we use compress air to keep the valve shut. This may have worked but the air supply was being used and we did not have a way to seal the spakplug hole with the air hose. We located a nylon rope on the walls of the tire shop and proceeded to feed it in the the cylinder.
We also located an old prybar and Joe used it to compress the spring.
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We managed to get the keepers back on and re-adjust the valves. By my estimates, we were down 2h from the time we broke down on the gravel road. Not bad for field repairs in the middle of nowhere!
Yes we got very lucky:
- Valve did not bend or break
- Found the tire shop
- Found the spring and the tools needed
But I believe our perseverance played a big role in the success of this repair.