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Arctic Adventure in a '47 Dodge


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It was good to read paulrhd29nz's account of their 4,300 mile road trip to pick up the 21 Essexes — and when 1937hd45 Bob showed interest in reading more about this sort of thing I got inspired...

In March my friend Jerry and I drove my '47 Canadian Dodge D25 from Edmonton to Tuktoyaktuk and back — a 4,905 miles round trip. Tuk is in Canada's Northwest Territories and is as far north as you can drive in mainland Canada (some of the high arctic islands have a few roads). The car is original, unrestored and HPOF certified with about 90K miles from new. Our only car problems were a mysterious fuse failure, a defunct generator (we carried a spare) and a broken tire belt (several spares).

The last 108 miles to Tuk were over a seasonal ice road which has since closed until December. There were close to 500 miles of frozen gravel south of the ice road, with one gas station/hotel at the halfway point. We usually drove about 50 mph and passed a grand total of six vehicles during our two weeks on the road.

What a great, great road trip.

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...One question : stock heater?

Two answers : Yes and yes.

The factory heater is in place under the dash and used primarily for defrost. I plumbed in a second factory heater from the parts car which we used for cabin warmth. Most of the time neither heater was on full and we were comfortable wearing just a hoodie or light jacket. The temperature was down in the -30° range for several days.

Other winter preparations included a second layer of glass on the windshields (a la Siberian trucks), frost shields on the front doors and rear window, studded knobby tires, a battery warmer and magnetic oil pan heater (to go along with the existing rad-hose heater) and a winterfront covering the grill.

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