On February 29th as part of a splinter group from the 2012 ALCAN 5000 Winter Road Rally I reached Tuk via the ice road from Inuvik, which goes over the frozen Mackenzie River and the Arctic Ocean in the Northwest Territories. I don't think anyone else has ever driven a MINI on the Arctic Ocean from the North American side, and this is the place to ask. FYI the temperature was -35f, -37c. On the way back to Eagle Plains on the Dempster Highway the temperature dropped to -40 with light snowfall.

Tuktoyaktuk is a long way from New England and I like to thank Autohaus Vick in Bellevue, Wa for quickly replacing a front hub when I arrived in the Seattle area and Crowfoot MINI in Calgary for changing my oil and getting me on my way back east an hour after I showed up without an appointment.

 

Wow, good for you!!! What a trip.

 

One word: EPIC

 

That's awesome, you're rocking the R53 in the far north. We had an icy winter here in Northern Vermont, nothing like that though, totally Kewl! Last winter we saw -27 below for a few days during the week.

What tires did you run? (I run Hankook Winter iPike 409s with studs)

How was your heater, did you need to block off the radiator to get the engine hot and keep it up to temperature?

What about the gearbox, was it ok?

The only issue I've noticed when it is -10 below or even lower, is on initial startup my R53 makes a funny noise but usually dissipates quickly.

Thanks for posting up the photo and your report!

 

I just checked out the entry list for the Alcan you ran. WOW, three MINI Cooper S's !!! We're they all R53s?

I figured David Rose entered the rally... He has a thing for frozen beards and convertible MINIs.

http://www.alcan5000.com/2012entr.htm

 

Thats Awesome! Any plans for the next rally?

 

Tires: Hakka 7s. It turns out that everyone in the splinter group used them. I also had 2 of them as mounted spares. If you run into a hole or protruding pressure ridge in the ocean ice you are likely to ruin two tires and rims at the same time.

Radiators & Heater: I had a piece of cardboard, waterproofed with Krylon clear acrylic, that I put in front of the radiator behind the grill. It stayed in place without needing to be fastened to anything. The heater was able to keep up. I have the manual heat controls, I don't know if the automatic system would be better or worse.

Gearbox: Performed fine. I had sprayed the linkage over the gearbox with Boeshield T9 to ensure that the linkage would work, but sometimes it was a bit stiff. There was no discernable pattern to this. Maybe some snow blowing snow melted, froze up, then sublimated?

Starting: I had a battery heater and oil pan heater going on the -22 to -40 degree nights. This was a learning experience. The oil pan heater didn't seem to do much and with the skid plate, it was impossible to verify that it was still attached. I found that the car was best when started every 5 hours and brought to normal operating temperature. I also added a 75 watt work light under the hood. When I went 7 hours the belt would be stiff and let out a horrible shriek. Nothing like getting up at 2 am to go out when its -36f and start up the car. The LCD display on the stereo would be lethargic, but the CD player still worked fine. The other fun thing is that the alleged extreme cold extension cords are not that supple at that temperature. I had to drag them inside and let them warm up a bit before they could be coiled up.

 

I have the only R53 that was entered. David had a new MCS. Had is the operable word here. He made it to TUK a day after us in a rental pickup truck.

The other entry, a was a clubman. Gary Webb and Mark Goldfarb were the overall winners of the Alcan in it!

 

No plans. This was a very long and costly adventure, over 12,000 miles in less than a month.

 

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