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Comment by codeduck | Hacker News Reader

An old truck is a vastly more practical vehicle in Africa than a landrover - LRs need a lot of maintenance, whereas trucks generally just keep going.

The only major mechanical issue they had was caused by dirty diesel, and if they'd had some sort of pre-filtration setup they could have probably avoided this.

Their major issues were simply down to the weight of the vehicle and poor route selection.

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> An old truck is a vastly more practical vehicle in Africa than a landrover - LRs need a lot of maintenance, whereas trucks generally just keep going.

This sounds like received wisdom. Is there any evidence to support it? Why would one believe that a land rover's engine requires more maintenance than the average engine found in all the aggregate "old trucks"?

There isn't much direct evidence, no. Publications like https://www.rgs.org/NR/rdonlyres/7A814B01-5B83-4C27-A1F9-8B0... stress types of vehicle which are recommended / not recommended.

The reason I made my original statement is that old, frequently ex-military trucks and old busses form the backbone of a lot of central and northern africa's transport networks, and the local mechanics are incredibly ingenious and experienced at performing "bush repairs" or fabricating spares to keep them going.

I would add that old vehicles aren't built to the same tight tolerances as newer vehicles. This makes it a lot easier to bodge together repairs for them, which makes them more maintainable by said bush mechanics.

They are the backbone, because they are cheap leftovers. They are very resourceful people for what they have access to. I'm guessing if they had modern trucks, and modern roads, for the same costs of the old hand me downs. They would probably use those instead. Cuba I'm sure is also ready to give up those old cars they've been keeping alive by now.

Top Gear is not by any means a reliable source of motoring journalism, but they do have a series of videos [1] which make a 1988 Toyota Hilux look very durable. At least if you have a mechanic with a "basic set of tools" on hand.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnWKz7Cthkk

I've traveled a bit in Africa and in my experience the Land Rovers are temperamental and the well off locals all drive Toyotas, often Land Cruisers.

Beyond Top Gear, the hilux is the standard light cav for irregular armies around the world.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_War

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_(vehicle)

http://www.newsweek.com/why-rebel-groups-love-toyota-hilux-7...

I can supply some anecdotally. I own two vehicles with reputations for running after neglected or minimal maintenance: a 1966 VW Beetle and a Land Rover.

The more correct way of characterising both would be that they will continue to run and function without ongoing maintenance (the proper level of which is way above a modern vehicle) until they break in a spectacular and often terminal way.

To attempt to answer your question, I think the general implication is that "old trucks" are designed for high maintenance intervals whereas Land Rovers, especially as used by the military, are designed to perform a function for short intervals with the long-term aid of a logistics chain.

> "old trucks" are designed for high maintenance intervals

I find this fascinating. To a layperson like me all combustion engines seem like they must be uniform. Thanks.

Nope. Not even close.

I have a 2001 Nissan Xterra that's been sitting in my driveway for almost 4 years with a blown head gasket because of the combination of lack of spare time, other available vehicles that I could drive, and the complexity of disassembling the engine to remove the heads. The seats and hatch area are now full of engine parts and I still have to finish taking off the passenger side head.

Contrast that with my 1987 Toyota pickup: I would have had the entire job done in a weekend with time to spare.

think notepad vs ms word. imagine if you had to debug one of them...

> until they break in a spectacular and often terminal way

One bloke had his Citroen die in such a way in Africa... and had to rebuild it into a motorcycle to get out of where he was

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2168061/French-elect...

https://m.thevintagenews.com/2016/05/18/emile-leray-built-wo...

While I agree that more evidence on the claim that LRs are needy, the truck they bought wasn't an average one.

>Their major issues were simply down to the weight of the vehicle and poor route selection.

Which could have been solved by using a landrover instead.

The large variety and number of Land Rovers in daily use all over Africa would directly contradict you.

So all of those national geographic shows I see, where they are tearing through the jungle in land rover type vehicles, they should trade it in for a giant military diesel?

Well I am not sure how comfortable they would be to live in for 19 months...

I'm willing to bet that those shows have logistics teams, tooling and engineers on site.

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