I wanted to share with you guys the crazy project I’ve been working on for the past 10 months or so! On June 12, along with my buddy Dave, I will leave Vancouver and drive to Halifax along all of the best and worst back roads Canada has to offer. Of course I’ll be doing it in my 1967 Volvo Amazon.
Why you ask? I got the idea after reading about the legendary Shell 4000 Rally, which ran across Canada in the 1960s. It was an FIA-sanctioned rally that brought professional drivers from across the world right here to Canada to drive across the country. (You can read more about it at shell-4000-rally.org if you’re interested). The rally usually ran from Vancouver to Montreal or vice versa and one year it ran from Calgary to Halifax. I’ve decided to splice a bunch of the routes together and follow the original routes from Vancouver to Halifax over 10 days of actual driving, with a pit stop at Mosport to take in the Canadian Historic Grand Prix.
My co-driver Dave has a personal connection to Alzheimer’s as his mom has the disease, so we’ve decided to make the entire trip a massive fundraiser for Alzheimer’s. You can donate online on our website at http://www.canada5000.ca and you can also read more about exactly what we are doing there. You can choose your province and all donations will stay local.
Of course it wouldn’t be a true car build without an insane timeline to get the car done. We started building the car in early March and we’ve got 29 days until the rally actually starts now. We’ve got the front suspension/brakes all done, the rear suspension/brakes almost done and the engine is ALMOST ready to drop in the car. I sheared off an alternator bolt in the block though, so we need to extract that before it goes in! Then we need to finish the body work and put the whole thing back together! And for those wondering, I chose the Volvo Amazon as they won the rally twice and are known for being super reliable.
Here’s the car as of yesterday:
I know a lot of people have driven across Canada before, but this is no ordinary trip. If you were to follow the Trans-Canada from Vancouver to Halifax it would look like this:
- 70ish hours of driving
- 30 turns
- 3000ish miles
Our trip will be:
- 144 hours of driving
- 700ish turns
- 5000ish miles
We’ll be taking logging roads, off road trails that aren’t even considered public roadways anymore and we’ve even convinced a pipeline company to open up one of its closed-to-the-public roads for us as it was on the original route. We’ve also been in contact with a certain Canadian Forces Base, as the original route went along its tank range. We’re crossing our fingers for permission to use that!
So please check out our website and donate if you can! You’ll also be able to follow us along as we go on the rally on our website, as we’ll have a live GPS tracking device with us.
www.canada5000.ca
Us posing with the car, looking like idiots before the teardown:
