elmostan wrote:
Has anybody overloaded their bus and gone over the Seattle mountain passes and lived to tell the tale?
I haven't done it in a Mini Bluebird, but I've been traveling those mountains between Seattle and BRC (man we have a tough road to the playa!) in various heavily loaded rigs including three different Chevy one-ton trucks and a motorhome with a Chevy chassis, towing a 9500-pound trailer.
Things have gone wrong, most notably the motorhome I lost somewhere on a mountain pass in Oregon in 2008.
I'm usually at around 12,000 on the truck and 9500 on the trailer.
The chassis you have will take the 15000 pounds, but you should go out and read the tire weight ratings on the sidewalls. The important thing is to not overload your tires. You need to put your rig on a scale so you have a good idea of how much is on the front and how much is on the back.
The best way around it if you're just too heavy is to pull a trailer... then you get more tires to carry more weight, and another set of brakes.
Next big priority for traveling heavy over the mountains is the transmission, which I'm assuming is an automatic. They make a lot of heat and you need to get rid of it. Buy a large (not medium or small, get a big one) transmission cooler. They aren't super expensive and are pretty easy to install.
Engine heat can be an issue too. I've been on the side of the road on this trip more than once because of it... it's not exactly free, but if the rig is new-to-you, I wouldn't head over the hills heavy without either a new radiator or taking the existing one to a radiator shop to get redone.
Big, powerful electric fans are good too. The problem is, you end up working the hell out of the engine powering up those mountains, making tons of heat, but you're going slow and not getting very much breeze through the radiator to cool it. Big electric fans are expensive - unless you go to the junkyard! Most are set up as "puller" fans that sit behind the radiator, but you want "pusher" fans that go in front of it. I found that Volvos at wrecking yards have excellent pusher fans that are easy to mount wherever you want. You'll need heavy gauge wiring, they're pretty heavy-duty.
Driving style is a big variable. DON'T just leave it in "Drive" and floor it up the mountains. That's when you blow it up. Shift down and ease up, go a little slower than you could go, don't kill the thing. If you're in a hurry, leave earlier. It's WAY more important to arrive on the playa at all!