REMOTE VW BUS RESCUE & RECOVERY MISSION // Hasta Alaska // S05E07

Last time on Asta Alaska I was forced to make a 10,000 mile visa run back to my home island of Jersey in the UK to ask for permission to finish this project. It took six whole months and a bit of a scandal before I was able to convince the US government to let me back into the States but just then we found out that our Kombi had caught fire up in Alaska and our home was destroyed. So this time we're driving up north to see if there's anything left worth rescuing. Having already driven the Alaska Highway once whilst bringing our Kombi up here we can personally vouch for how long this road is. A fact that we did try to impress on Brett, a guy that we'd only just met in person a couple of days earlier. Over winter Brett had flown from his home in the Bay Area of California down to the Rancho workshop near LA and collected our new transmission for the Kombi. Now incredibly he was driving us north at a record-breaking speed with our new custom transmission firmly attached to the roof. There's currently forest fires on both sides of the highway going up past Fort Nelson. That's a pretty big one. We heard about this a few towns back Hopefully there's a way through. Look at the size of this fire. You see that smoke? You see that smoke. Look at this. That's big. There's right overhead, thick black smoke just over there right over the other side of those trees. You can smell it. Let's get out of here. Luckily for us we had just made it past these fires by a few hours before the highway was closed behind us. After five long days of driving we approached the end of the Alaska Highway. We've made it this far. We are at Haynes Junction. Haynes is that way. Alaska is that way. We have a rescue mission to do but after that Alaska is there for exploring. We cannot wait. Bye Leah. Sorry you can't come with us. Unfortunately we had to leave Leah here at Haynes Junction for 11 hours. She couldn't come with us at this point as we wanted to save her US visa time to allow for the upcoming Alaska trip. So she stayed in Canada while Brett and I continued on towards Alaska. The closer we got to Haynes the bigger the knot was grew in my stomach. As we followed the Clark family out to where they used to live I got ready to see the Kombi for the first time in 10 months. Only this time it was going to be very different. This is my house. This is where I live. Sad. Really sad. Smells bad. The smell is, it's hard to be around it for a long period of time. The smell is really strong. It's going to be fun living in it then. That's why I think a lot of it needs to be ripped out. That's when the girls grabbed an old cell phone that we had in the in the van and they started snapping pictures and so when I opened the doors the fire started to reignite. The seat was covered in embers and it looked like the fire just choked itself out and was starving for air. So when I opened the doors it started to reignite and put it out with the fire extinguisher and then had to just start ripping the interior apart to dig down to the source of the fire to make sure that nothing under the seat was still catching. So the neighbor lady thought that somebody was in there cooking dinner. She said she heard the doors rattling, thought she heard pots and pans and saw some smoke but smell it. Nobody was cooking dinner. Kombi had caught fire. Yeah I've got to say though Chad, seriously thank you for putting the fire out. We just wish it never happened. No I know but like if you hadn't been here and to go and come out and put it out there wouldn't be a Kombi left for me to fix up so you know I'm just really grateful for everything you've done for me over winter. Well it's got miles left in it it's just gonna take some work to get them out. Yeah that's the thing with this Kombi it's always taking work it's a bit it's an attention-seeking Volkswagen. It's working. That's great. That's one less thing we have to do. See Capito wants to live. He wants to be back on the road. Haynes is a beautiful place and Chad and Stacey had offered to help us in any way that they could but the town was just too remote. If we were going to bring this Kombi back to expedition readiness we'd need access to resources that we just couldn't find in this part of Alaska. I feel so much better that that started and I was actually able to drive it onto here. Honestly what a morale booster. Now let's get on with fixing it up and back on the road. So the plan was to get the Kombi back to the nearest large town which was Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory. The hardest part was definitely still ahead of us but given everything that had happened over the past 10 months it sure did feel like a huge triumph just to get this far. We were fortunate enough to locate a VW specialist mechanic called John's Auto which was just south of Whitehorse. They kindly allowed us to set up camp to begin the grueling Kombi restoration. Oh my god. It was worse than I thought man. It's right up to fire. It's all... ----. Oh it stinks too. Oh my god. Shit Ben this is going to be a big job. Yeah I think. It is. Ben this is going to take forever to clean. Everything in this Kombi has just been destroyed. Like everything inside of it has either melted or it's got smoke damage. It's a lot worse than I thought. Yeah it's not just that we've got to do a lot of cleaning and the bed's completely destroyed and the solar system and everything's ruined. Everything like all the cooking gear and everything is gonna need to be replaced. Like this is more of an undertaking than we were expecting. Still not exactly sure why this fire started. The battery is clearly burnt up and this was the source of the fire. We're not sure whether it's because the battery froze over winter and charged from the solar panel. There was something in the design which stopped the battery from being overcharged but whether that component failed or the battery itself had a short or even if a rodent got in and chewed through the wires and created a short. We're not sure what happened. All we know is this is the result. Pretty devastating really. This battery worked for two years and has been absolutely brilliant and has helped us work off-grid and you know produce all of these YouTube videos from some awesome locations but in the end I don't know this is what's happened. It's not so bad. A little bit of soap, scrubbing, some wax polish. Good as new. Yeah basically we're going through all of our stuff and trying to salvage as much of it as possible. Everything has smoke damage. A lot of things have burned beyond recognition and yeah we're just trying to save as much stuff as possible but unfortunately we're gonna lose probably like I don't know like 40-50% of our possessions. More than that. That's all we have left. Yeah okay mate, maybe more than that. Off-grid. We have to take it off because it smells so bad. It's disgusting. The stench. I don't think we're ever going to get the smell out to be honest. When we say we've got to clean everything we mean it. We've literally got to take absolutely everything out, repaint it all, re-varnish it all just to lock the smell in, clean it as best that we can. I mean even the headliner I'm having to rip out. It's unbelievable. Smoke damage is unbelievable. Still to come on this nightmare rescue mission we begin the arduous task of restoring our Kombi where we'll be scouring Whitehorse to salvage parts and returning our Kombi back into a livable tiny home. We'll also be looking at the Kombi's overall health before the upcoming challenge of Alaska's back country roads where we discover Capito is far from ready. Doesn't look good guys. But for that you'll have to wait until next time.