joe 997

In June my wife and I are going to drive from Des Moines Iowa to Fairbanks Alaska in our 2005 Cayenne S. The SUV has 107,000 miles on it. We will make several stops on the way to Fairbanks and end up in Anchorage, driving approximately 5000 miles. We plan to sell the Cayenne in Anchorage on July 3 and fly home. The Cayenne was purchased new, still looks great and has been maintained per Porsche specifications. The coolant pipes were replaced several years ago. I think I am going to replace the carden shaft as a precaution. Do you folks have any thoughts on what else we should do in the line of preventive maintenance. Also, if anyone is familiar with Anchorage are there any dealers you could recommend who might be interested in the Cayenne? .

skl

I'd love to go with you Joe! That will be a fantastic trip. You'll need to post LOTS of pictures along the way. You could try the Alaska region (getting contact info off the PCA.org website) for a lot more timely information. As Kent suggested, see if there is a CARMAX in Anchorage to buy the pepper. Or if it turns out to be so much fun, just drive back home...


(you might try and post it on the off topic forum as well- more traffic there, especially if it's next to the IHI thread...)

joe 997

mikeymikey

Sounds like a great road trip.
For the right price, may be we can make a deal and you can drop it off in Seattle on the way back

ScootCherHienie

You probably know this if you've done any pre-planning, but if you know you're going to be on any unpaved roads up there, bring spare tires! The number of sharp stones just waiting to puncture a tire on those roads is off the charts. But I think if you aren't planning to go farther north than your current plan, you won't have issues unless you are intentionally traveling on unpaved roads along the way.

joe 997

We aren't going any farther north than Fairbanks and we are going to stay on paved roads, I hope. I am going to bring 2 tire plug kits in case of flats. There probably isn't a good supply of tires that fit Cayenne's in northern Canada.

Zakowsky

As someone who takes their CTT into remote parts of the Canadian Rockies quite often, both on and off road, I'd second that tires are the most important thing to consider. Would strongly recommend getting a set of BFG KO2's, 265/65R18s or similar. Going up the main highway is fine, but there will be construction, or floods, or rock slides, or just something that you want to see that will put you onto logging/service roads at one point or another. If you are not going to carry a full sized spare, puncture resistance and super strong sidewalls are really important. And it can snow in any month of the year, depending on your altitude, so ATs are a good choice.

Other things in practice I would suggest is if you are going to put a cage on the top of the roof rack, having some spare gas is a good idea. It's easy to plan your stops on Google Maps, but if you wind up using more than you figured on trying to get out of a muddy ditch, plans can get thrown off. Also spare gas is important if you get stuck or break down and have a 6 hour wait until someone can get there; if the engine is still running you can keep warm.

Other obvious things are consider a proper GPS, like a hand held Garmin unit. It's pretty much a single road up there but again if you have to go off track it is important, and of course you will be without cell signal the majority of the time. Which would make my other suggestion a SAT phone, if you can afford it.

So aside from the doom and gloom, you guys are going to have an incredible trip, and see some of the most amazing landscapes on earth!

dasams

Sounds like a great trip! We towed our 27' Airstream to Fairbanks and Anchorage last summer with our 2006 CS and it was great. Since we were towing, we stayed on paved roads and no issues. Tires were Michelin Tour HP and again, no issues. We started from SF Bay Area and went up the west coast, Vancouver Island, Vancouver, Banff / Lake Louise / Jasper, Dawson Creek for Mile 0 of the Alaska Highway. Then to Tok, AK and south through Glenn Allen to Anchorage. If you have time, drive down the Kenia Penensula and back. Then we hit Denali and Fairbanks on our way back. This was the Alaska loop in a clockwise direction.

For preventative maintenance, we replaced the orig cardan shaft and battery. Nothing else other than an oil change as all other items had already been done such as the coolant pipes.

Have a great trip!

joe 997

I hadn't considered a satellite phone but its probably worth doing. It falls under the old saying "better to have it and not need it than need it and no have it".

skiahh

If you don't need full comm capability, you could just go with a SPOT beacon to send a distress signal. There are even those with texting capability now, too.

Macster

What kind of market would there be for a 112K mile Cayenne up there? Is there a Porsche dealer in Fairbanks?

Years ago I looked into driving to the Arctic Circle first in my Boxster then after I learned more about the drive I changed to looking into driving my VW Golf TDi. After some more research I decided not to drive either of my cars up there.

Some of the road is unpaved, consists of gravel. In the summer dusty. And the other vehicles -- mostly big rigs -- throw up stuff and the windshield would probably have to be replaced by the time I got back. The front of the car would have been badly pitted too. There might be some protective coating one could apply to the car even the windshield but I am not current on these.

There can be water crossings. Bigger vehicles might not have a problem but a smaller vehicle could be at risk of being swept away or at least getting horribly stuck. A tow rig could be a day or two away.

Which reminds me, if you break down out in the boonies and it is all boonies in the summer there are mosquitoes. They can be so bad as to drive humans caught out in the open with no shelter to submerge themselves in the stream water and given how cold that water can be it tells you something about how bad the mosquitoes are.

There are bears around. You have to, or should, carry a suitable firearm and know how to use it just in case. You also have to be prepared to rough it -- with the possibility the car may not serve as a shelter -- until help arrives, which as I touched up above could be hours, a day, or more.

The advice was to take a spare water pump, fuel pump, starter, and alternator. If a diesel maybe spare glow plugs. You need to carry any special tools that might be needed to swap/replace any of the spares. Besides the spares the advice was to carry at least 2 full sized spare tires, and extra fuel. Fuel stops are far apart and fuel may not be there if deliveries are held up. I figured with my TDi and its exceptional fuel mileage (40mpg+ easy) this would give me extra margin against running short of fuel, especially with say 15 or more gallons of diesel fuel on board which is a tank of fuel.

Having to carry all this stuff is why I switched to the Golf. (Well, that and being a hard top and more resistant to a bear getting in. That Boxster canvas top would not have provided much protection in this regard.

The Golf being a diesel as I touched upon above I could carry extra diesel fuel (10, 15, 20 gallons maybe) and I could carry 2 spare tires and other things in the back, with the rear seats folded down. Still though I think I would have ended up getting a roof mounted cargo container to carry smaller stuff.

After I did my research I decided to not drive up there at all. If I was really adventurous I could see myself venturing up as far as the pavement lasts, but even so many of the things I mentioned above apply.

jfort

There is a guy from Alaska who drives his 911 from Alaska to every Porsche Parade. I saw him in Indiana and Vermont. The car arrives covered in painter's tape for protection.

RS-America

Concur with the tire suggestion of BFG KO2's, we have been satisfied with General Grabber AT2s. Tires for our winter trip, very glad we had Nokian Hakkapeliitta 8s. Highly recommend taking a full sized spare, we travel with two. For communications we have a Kenwood 710 HAM and a Midland 75-785. HAM for distance and a CB for truckers, both come in handy. If all else fails we also have an InReach which has since been bought out by Garmin. The current Garmin units use the same technologies as InReach. Three reflective triangles are also very good to have to alert others. Lastly any gear, especially radios, are only as good as ones ability to use them - owners manuals are a good thing to have. To see how we have set up our 2013 diesel, magazine articles, and a video of our Alaska trip check the link below:
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