Four Days And 2,000 Miles In Dodge's New Sprinter Van-No Top-Secret Clearance Required
Our mission, as we chose to accept it, was to take our spaceship-styled '07 Dodge Sprinter out into the heart of top-secret military activity, both past and present, as well as venture into the unknown world of the Extraterrestrial Highway located near Nevada's famous Area 51. Driven by a thirst for adventure, we packed up our ride with two Diesel Power staffers and three friends who lacked the common sense to turn us down.
Day 1Our crew of merry mischief-makers included Diesel Power Editor David Kennedy, Associate Editor Jason Sands, Jp Magazine Editor John "Center of Attention" Cappa, Diesel Power Web guru Jason Gonderman, and our secretive military tour guide, Warren Ellis, who mumbled something about being in "communications."
German technology new (Sprinter van) and old (F-1 rocket).
There are old-time rumors of Southern California hills shaking-not from earthquakes but from the testing of rocket engines-so our first stop was Rocketdyne, where we checked out the company's old testing facility (or at least got a look at the front gate). We also examined an awesome F-1 rocket engine, which at 20,000 pounds, seemed a little too heavy to power our Sprinter until we learned it made 1,522,000 pounds of thrust. For means of comparison, a 747 jet makes 232,000 pounds from all four engines. We want one.
Our third stop turned out to be the church that was featured in the movie Kill Bill: Vol. 2, which stumbled upon about 20 miles outside of Palmdale, California. We poked around for a while and tried to find Uma Thurman's footprints, but soon continued on.
Looking for Uma Thurman.
Not far away from the church, we spotted Plant 42-which is right outside Lockheed's famous Skunk Works-and saw a couple of SR-71 Blackbirds on display. With a top speed of around Mach 3 (2,100 mph), an SR-71 still holds the coast-to-coast flight record of 68 minutes and 17 seconds. The SR-71s, however, were just a prelude to the main attraction of the day: China Lake, which is famous for its development of the Sidewinder missile and continues to be a test site for various planes and weapons. The entire crew was on explosive-device overload as we got tosee all sorts of awe-inspiring weapons, and Cappa got to fulfill his lifelong dream of hugging an atom bomb. All sorts of heat-seeking, air- and sea-launched missiles were on display along with a few unmanned drones that had us wondering if they could be the reason people often report seeing strange lights in the night sky.
Day 2We were venturing into the unknown, so we decided we should arm ourselves with only the essentials needed to survive, which turned out to be ice, water, drinks, food, magazines, a police scanner, two toy helicopters, and a box kite. After about an hour of fiddling with the scanner and crashing the helicopters into the van (not to mention Cappa's assertion that the van was big enough to fly the kite in), we entered Death Valley, where our troubles started. The Sprinter's outside temperature thermometer had registered an incredible 126 degrees F while the van was parked in the sun and had sent the Sprinter into some sort of limp mode.
After about 20 minutes of climbing hills in Third gear at 27 mph, we stopped to let the van cool off and to hike around a bit. Letting the van rest and the computer reset seemed to work because we were off to the races when we started up again. With our newfound diesel power restored, we found that the Sprinter handled pretty well by blasting around some 25-mph corners.
Turns out we weren't the only ones to have a hard time, as many different carmakers use Death Valley as a testbed because of the extreme temperatures and elevation changes. A Hummer H3 with its hood up was found by the side of the road, and we scrambled around hoping to see a new diesel under the hood. Nope. Plain, old gas. Darn.