Maximum fuel load for Sahara?
 

I'm crossing in a 1600cc and wondered what the most fuel you'd want to carry at one time would be inc built in fuel tank?

It's a jerry can calculation thing!

Burnsy.

Depends on the engines consumption, not the size. Size does affect it but you can get small engines which use lots of fuel. Also is it diesel or petrol.

Reasons for carrying extra fuel normally are 1) self sufficient range due to lack of fuel availability for long distance 2) choice of fuel (eg if you carry more then you have a greater range meaning you can be more selective on which fuel you buy, either because of price or quality.

Key elements are, the more fuel you carry the more weight you are hauling which means the engine works harder and uses more fuel. Also more weight so potentially more likely to get stuck. You do not want to go over you maximum pay load because it will damage the vehicle. Landrover ran an expedition in Aus a few years back where they are reported to have damaged the vehicles due to the excessive amounts of fuel that they had to carry because they opted to be more self sufficent rather than arranging fuel drops.

So if your doing it because of reason 2, then it can end up costing more in fuel tanks, jerry cans, etc than the higher price of fuel. If its because of reason 1 then depends on your route and therefore how long you need before the next available fuel.

Sorry its not a clear cut answer but you need to work out your fuel consumption, look at your route and likely distance between fuel stops, etc.

In my 110 (2494 cc tdi diesel) I used to carry six jerry cans on the brownchurch full length expedition roof rack (up front) and then I had another 100 litres in a the fuel tank. Total 220 litres.

What range that provides you with will depends upon the terain and also your vehicle weight (as mentioned by previous post) but worst case I reckoned that gave me about 1750 kms.

In actual fact the need to carry large amounts of fuel is fairly rare. I once used the whole lot up driving from Gao to Tamanrasset but have a look at your route and work out what the longest legs are. From memory Tom sheppards Book Vehicle Dependent expeditions and Chris Scotts book have some nice calculations as to what margin or error you should allow. Tom sheppard will also have you using dip sticks and keeping detailed logs of fuel consumption if you follow him to the letter!

As the previous post mentions if you overload you will stress your vehicle so dont carry the whole lot around for the sake of it. When doing a long leg drive very carefully whilst you are fully laden and you can then relax a little once you have burned some of the weight.

Finding yourself halfway through the leg and with less fuel than you'd like is stressful though and takes away the pleasure so I always err on the side of caution.

fuel calculation
 

The system I used was to take the road mpg of my vehicle, look at the route length in km and calculated the fuel amount as though that distance was in miles, so on a 540km piste (nouadhibou to atar) I calculated for enough fuel to carry me 540 miles at 20 mpg (worst case senario on road fully loaded), I then put on about 20% extra for getting lost! That seemed to give me plenty. for this run each vehicle had 60 litres in cans and 80 litres in the tank.

A lot depends on how certain you are of getting fuel at your destination and how easy the route is to follow, i.e. how lost you might get, that uses up a staggering amount of fuel, as does getting stuck! with 2 vehicles we also avoided putting all the spare fuel in at once, keeping 2 cans back in case we got a bit thin on fuel, then we could fuel one vehicle up to send forward to fill the cans and come back. always overestimate, never think, "hmm, I reckon that will just a bout do it"

On the atlantic route (about 450km)a couple of years back in a suzuki sj413 we used the tank of 40 litres plus 60 litres in cans, although that involved a lot of messing about towing out the 2wd cars that were with us

don't forget your water, we had 5 litres per person per day, with a 20 litre emergency supply. thats a minimum, in summer 10 litres a day if your digging or working hard is possible.

Andy
landy 101 ambie/camper
TLC H60
1968 Morris minor taveller
www.plymouth-dakar.com

and calculated that