Cooking Experiences
When we bought Brave Dodo it was equipped with a diesel stove Wallas 95. It is great when it works well, but also complicated and therefore susceptible to failure. Advantages are that it has a ceramic plate below which the heating occurs, so that you do not get flames and moisture in the car, and that it uses regular diesel, so you never have to chase behind fuel. It is ignited by an glow plug which is fed from the home battery. Disadvantages are that when the glow plug is too old or if the voltage of the home batteries is too low the stove will not start. Starting is more difficult at higher altitudes (above 2000 m), although we still got it going at 3300 m under favorable conditions. We have a spare glow plug and other spare parts. We are going to build a circuit with a push button to connect the starter batteries and home batteries during starting of the stove. An alternative diesel stove is the Webasto X100; we have heard mixed reports about it. As a backup, we had two small kerosene stoves.
Here you find how we tried to keep the diesel stove up and running. However, in the long term it was too unreliable, not only because of its sensitivity to environmental conditions, but also because components started to fail. Therefore we eventually decided to replace the diesel stove with gas, despite the challenges to source gas in certain countries.
Here you find how we tried to keep the diesel stove up and running. However, in the long term it was too unreliable, not only because of its sensitivity to environmental conditions, but also because components started to fail. Therefore we eventually decided to replace the diesel stove with gas, despite the challenges to source gas in certain countries.
Gas Stove
The gas stove installation consists of a Dometic MO917 R and two ALVA 3 kg LPG cylinders. One cylinder is sufficient for four to six weeks. By using two smaller cylinders we always have about a month to replenish gas before we run out. In Southern Africa it was easy to refill, because refilling is done in the store and bottle connection is standardized, in South America it proves to be more difficult.
For filling we have collected an extensive adapter set. Most of the adapters we bought in the Netherlands, but in Argentina and Brazil we had to buy some extra pieces. The 1/4" RH adapter is used as a kind of "common interface". A few adapters we have twice to support gravity filling.
For filling we have collected an extensive adapter set. Most of the adapters we bought in the Netherlands, but in Argentina and Brazil we had to buy some extra pieces. The 1/4" RH adapter is used as a kind of "common interface". A few adapters we have twice to support gravity filling.
Other Cooking Tools
In addition to the diesel or gas stove for normal cooking we used additional equipment such as a Dutch Oven (see some recipes here), a Coleman Stove Oven, a bio burner, a clay oven and small petrol stoves.