Let's talk about Ivy
Why did we buy an old truck?
MOROCCO
Running a decades-old vehicle is, I imagine, like owning an old house or a boat. There’s always something to maintain, fix, or adapt. There’s usually something leaking. And there are plenty of quirks to how things work – like, if you want to lock that door you have to do a handstand then flick it with your big right toe; or this light only works when the moon is in the first quarter; or to know what speed you’re doing you need to stick your head out the window and measure the angle at which your hair is blowing.
Taking on a project like Ivy has at times been intimidating for us. We’ve learned a lot, and we keep trying, but neither of us is naturally very practical with DIY and we know very little about mechanical stuff.
We bought the truck five years ago – just before the pandemic, phew – and have been through all the emotions since. After our experiences with the VW camper, which at times made our life hell with its infuriating blinking dashboard of doom, we felt sure we wanted something old-school and free of electronics that could be more easily repaired. We wanted 4x4 and high clearance, to give us more freedom and opportunities. We wanted to live relatively comfortably but keep the truck below the 3.5-tonne threshold and be small enough to drive through small villages and on narrow roads without fear (Ivy looks chunky but actually fits into a normal car parking space).
We found those things in Ivy and, well, she just looked so cool – but were we up to the job of keeping a (now) 32-year-old truck running and happy? As with many people, the pandemic gave me too much time to over-think things and I did wonder if we’d bitten off more than we could chew. I worried that we weren’t doing it ‘right’.
I’ll never tempt fate with cocky pronouncements, but we can say so far so good. We’ve had a fair amount of mechanical maintenance and upgrades done since 2019 and we try hard to stay vigilant to any things going wrong or needing done. Jeremy has made a lot of effort to learn as much as possible and made contacts with people who can help (shout out to specialist Nico van de Wetering who’s worked on Ivy several times, fellow owner Timmy van Langenhove for his advice on the truck and Belgian vehicle bureaucracy, and many others on the Iveco forums). He has frequently slaved over the 380-page scanned copy of the manual to work out what the parts are and find their numbers or equivalents. As Ivy is a former military vehicle, the VIN number doesn’t exist on any Iveco computer systems so we have to buy them online or go armed with the details a mechanic or parts shop will need.
As for the living area of the camper, we’ve gone for the cobble it together gradually approach – frequently pulling in professionals like carpenters, electricians and handypeople to do the things we can’t do – and that’s continued since we moved in. It was never meant to be a campervan so nothing is a standard size and everything has had to be custom-made or adapted. I’ve often questioned whether it would have been simpler, more relaxing and cost-effective to strip it back and have an expedition vehicle company fit it all out, or make a new camper box entirely. But we did what we did and we have ended up with something unique and cosy, if wonky and sometimes prone to breaking! We love living in it, and some of the things that seemed to matter before we left have faded into insignificance now we’re actually doing this for real. I eventually remembered what I already knew – that there’s no ‘right’ way.
Game-changers
We’ve got plenty wrong and I could have cried with frustration at times (actually you did cry a few times – ed) but we did make some game-changing decisions that we’re very glad about:
1. Having a toilet on board gives us so much more freedom and eliminates that feeling of sob-inducing dread when you wake for a 3am pee. (‘We’ also decided that Jeremy will be the one to empty it, especially if it’s dark and raining.)
2. Investing a chunk of Covid savings on an electrical system of lithium batteries and solar panels has been amazing. We’ve perhaps even over-catered for what we need but the peace of mind is worth every penny. We don’t have to worry about how much we’re charging laptops or devices; we never have to chase around for places with electricity. In 16 months we have never had to plug into an external power source.
3. Putting in a water filtration system has dealt with the water anxiety. The water from our 75L tank pumps through a carbon filter followed by a UV filter and gives us drinkable water from the tap. If we encounter places with questionable water supplies, we’ve also got a second system in the back (as yet un-needed) that we can use to draw water from wells, bore holes, or other sources and pump through four stages of filtration.
4. Ensuring we have a comfy bed was a no-brainer. We spent decent money on a custom-cut 10cm foam mattress with 4cm of memory foam on top. We are old and creaky. Sleep matters. End of. It’s a bummer we don’t have a permanent bed but that’s the sacrifice we made on vehicle size and creating a relatively large convertible seating area to work and relax.
But, sorry, I digress way too much….
It was the never-ending Ivy To Do list that brought us to Zagora in southern Morocco, where we’d arranged for a few jobs to be done. Zagora attracts a lot of overlanders as it has many mechanics who work on 4x4s and rally cars that suffer heavy abuse in the desert and mountain pistes.
Other than a general mechanical health check we didn’t need anything too technical. First thing was to install an on-board air compressor so we can air down the tyres for conditions like sand, soft mud, gravel/rocks etc, and use the engine power to reinflate them. We’d been chewing this over for ages and were crossing our fingers they’d find the space to mount it under the bonnet – bingo!
Next up we had to have the spongy, rotting driving cab floor ripped up and replaced. All the water leaks coming in the windows and doors had wreaked havoc under the vinyl flooring. It was long overdue. Jeremy had been having the cold sweats for a couple of years about us dropping through the floor and hitting the deck at 80km/ph. It was a giant mess under there, but thankfully the metal structure was still sound. Within a few days they applied a thick layer of resin, and some marine-standard wood flooring. A miscommunication about who was choosing the vinyl covering means that it now looks like a Scottish hotel bar circa 1983. But, hey, this can be changed later and it’s the least of our worries.
Ivy also has some bunny ears now, after they created mounts for our two new spare fuel cans. We also have improved security via some new locks, and some much-needed refurbished seatbelts.
While all this was going on, we stayed at a local guesthouse for two weeks, in a small friendly backstreet. I snuck this little video one quiet afternoon on my way back from the market – our place was the door in the final frame [best with volume up].
It was useful in several ways, as I was working flat out on my union magazine and Jeremy was flying to the Balkans for a week, but we do miss being in the camper. It was a family house with rooms around a communal courtyard and a shared guest bathroom. The owners, Brahim and Zahra, were exceptionally welcoming. Most of their guests come for a night or two but I was sticking around and wanted to use the kitchen and have some independence. I can really struggle with the awkwardness of feeling like I am in someone else’s space, but Zahra and I slowly eased into a little routine, speaking utterly crap French to each other and talking a lot about food. I spent a fortnight essentially being kindly force-fed because apparently “Europeans don’t eat enough, and especially not enough bread”. By the measure of a Moroccan, surely no one on this Earth eats enough bread.
It was hot as hell and I sweated through some long work days and airless nights. When Jeremy returned they invited us to have lunch and to watch Zahra make a delicious rfissa. Dozens of thin pancake-style breads were gradually layered and cooked together in the pan, only to be ripped into pieces as the base for the chicken and lentil broth. She also showed us how she makes the yummy Berber bread, a pitta-style flatbread stuffed with grated onion, carrot and pepper.
With only a minor amount of nagging from us, Ivy was ready on time and we packed up to move home again. Zahra pressed a huge jar of homemade lemon and cinnamon honey into our hands as we left. Our stay there was yet another of those special experiences that we’ve gained by accident when our camper has been indisposed. Lovely as it was, though, we’d had enough of being caged.
There was just one last thing to do before we set off. Another issue we’d procrastinated over for too long was the degrading bag that both stores and acts as a mount for our heavy awning. With the bag ripping and the zip failing, it was not only annoying but was becoming a safety issue – if that thing sheared off on the highway we could impale some poor driver behind us. But the awning itself was fine and we were reluctant to spend upwards of €600 on a new one. We asked a local workshop that makes heavy-duty desert tents if they could create an exact copy of our bag and stitch the old awning into it. They said ‘no problem’, and all for €50. Yes please.
Freedom! We left the awning with the shop and spent a few days of glorious wild camping around the mountains and Draa river valley north of Zagora. We headed down rocky tracks and single-track roads. We poked our way through a palm oasis to see what was there and stopped for lunch on soft ground under an acacia tree. We slept completely alone in inky darkness.
It’s these kinds of moments that make us really appreciate this truck. Ivy is incredibly capable and that gives us so much confidence to try things and see where they end up. We can wild camp without being anxious that we get into a place we can’t get out of. She takes us places we would otherwise hesitate to go – and, for us, that’s what this is all about.
As a guy said to us in the desert recently: “That’s a good strong camel you’ve got there.”
You meet the best people travelling. Glad Ivy’s patched up and serving you well x
Great read Paula! I read it out to Mark as we travelled home through France in our renovated ( by Mark), 32 year old Transit. Ivy really is a fantastic camel!