"The Mini-Trac" - Antarctica's Weirdest Tracked Vehicle

for as long as there has been a human presence on antarctica there has been the need for transport on and around the challenging landscapes and climates of the frozen southern continent primarily the most successful and reliable way to traverse the freezing and snowy landscapes on the ground has been through the use of tracked machinery though that isn't to say there aren't many conventional wheeled vehicles that have been successfully employed in various roles in antarctica through the years either the 1950s and 60s were a fascinating time for the development of transport technology in antarctica as various countries race to establish a presence at the south pole different nations and expeditions approached the problem in different ways from the massive soviet heart of chancas to the more simple plucky ferguson tractors the rules and standards for what worked and what didn't had yet to be set and it was a prime time for developing strange and interesting inventions while it would be a push to call it a success few modes of transport that came out in this time period probably ever came close in terms of quirkiness and style to that of the mini track but how did this bizarre cross between a mini and a tracked snow vehicle get made and where perhaps are they now in the early 1960s the australian national antarctic research expedition began looking into acquiring smaller and cheaper vehicles that could be used alongside the larger more complex heavy-duty machinery being employed for transport around antarctica at the time this photo from new zealand's antarctic service in the 1960s shows the wide variety of vehicles required for both overland expeditions but also the day-to-day logistical needs around the bases and stations on the continent the largest tended to be the more heavy-duty tracked vehicles such as the canadian nodwell 110 seen here or the distinctive tucker snow cats both designed and built for more long distance travel and endurance smaller vehicles such as the swedish snow track or more conventional tractors were also employed the british made ferguson tractors in particular had proved incredibly successful on the continent despite their simple mechanics and relative lack of protection from the elements also visible is a land rover which along with other more conventional wheeled off-road capable trucks were often employed for transport in and around the various bases and airfields to complement their needs for smaller cheaper transport the aussies began to look at what we might consider to be somewhat more unconventional solutions for the vast unforgiving wasteland of antarctica in 1962 and 1963 volkswagen australia actually provided the expeditions with volkswagen beetles creatively named antarctic one and two and in the process provided plenty of pr for the volkswagen marketing teams several of these relatively unmodified beetles were used around the stations to great effect however they were still at the end of the day two-wheel drive vehicles and were limited not so much by their size but the types of terrain they could operate on what was required was a vehicle of around the same size and functionality as the beetle but more off-road capable and preferably smaller than their current snow tracks around the same time australian engineer terry o'hare was operating a motorbody business under the name recar in the melbourne suburb of sunshine terry started the business in 1950s and primarily specialized in building timber bodies on the rear of local cars much like the american woodies that were popular at the time terry and ricardo would later go on to be perhaps most well known for building the world's first jet-powered truck the waltzing matilda which was built by terry and his son steven in 1978 and used an avon mark one engine and was the first truck to exceed 200 miles per hour at this time however terry was in the business of importing the chassis of both swedish-built snow tracks and the larger canadian nodwell tracked vehicles ricar would then build out these chassis with cabins and bodies to the specifications required by the australian research expeditions in antarctica according to terry he was quote building a lot of strange vehicles for people back then including a custom snow vehicle named the hydro track that terry built and employed tracks being driven by hydraulic motors allowing independent forward and reverse control needless to say with terry's mechanical knowledge as well as his experience building to the specifications of the australian expeditions in antarctica he saw the potential for a smaller cheaper tracked vehicle to complement their fleet and thus set out to design and build one planning to use an existing vehicle body to work from terry noticed that most tracked snow vehicles tended to employ front wheel drive so any base vehicle had to be small front wheel drive and most importantly cheap this was quite a specific set of parameters and locally available terry found that there was only really one option the mark one mini he's back here is the revolutionary morris mini the engine is mounted across the car look how much room there is see how easy the morris mini miner is to park the quality first morris mini miner is the perfect family car originally sold as the morris 850 in australia the first generation mini had launched in 1959 and its ingenious design economical size and iconic styling had made it incredibly popular by 1965 the one millionth many had rolled off the production line with the 2 millionth arriving in 1969. small easy to run and affordable it was the perfect candidate for teddy's plan and he intended to use as much of the mini's original components as possible to build what he dubbed the mini track the undeniably quirky first version of terry's mini track rolled out of the workshop to a considerable amount of buzz locally as shown here in this newspaper article from the time this first version was a slightly different design to what would eventually be sent out to antarctica however most notably this version was shorter with the tracks ending in the middle of the engine bay where the front wheels would normally be located to create the track-based running gear the mini's original drive shafts hubs and suspension had all been removed and replaced with drive sprockets fitted to the differential output shaft which in turn provided power via chains to the front track sprockets that were positioned around the same place as the regular mini's front wheels the issue this presented however was that with the engine so far forward it would cause the mini track to lurch quite considerably forwards and backwards during travel therefore to create more balance the design was altered slightly with the front sprockets being extended forward beyond the front of the body of the mini using longer chains to run back towards the drive sprockets and thus centering the engine and giving the distinctive longer design seen in the later models steering was also altered in the final version the first version of the mini track was driven using a conventional steering wheel operated by a set of valves this however was found to be too complex and instead a more simple system using two brake master cylinders one per track was fitted each operated by a lever to turn left the driver simply pulled the left lever towards themselves while the right lever was used to turn right this braking and steering was achieved using the standard mini drum brakes operated hydraulically at the rear set of wheels only with the standard differential then transferring the power to the side of the least resistance the tracks themselves were taken from the snow track st4 which terry and his recar business had experience and access to through his importing and fabrication works these tracks are made from four ply 9.5 millimeter thick conveyor belt type rubber matting with each track consisting of two belts each 180 millimeters wide spaced around 75 millimeters apart and joined together by steel grousers these are bolted horizontally along the belts to provide traction and also to serve as the links for the sprocket drive on top of these grassers on the inside of the tracks are also steel wheel guides that kept the tracks running on the three mini wheels fitted to each side of the vehicle while the steering levers and tracks may have presented quite a daunting appearance operationally the mini track was largely unchanged from its more regular road-going equivalent using the same clutch mechanism accelerator and four-speed gearbox the first gear also acted as a very effective low-range gear due to the gear reduction achieved by the sprocket and chain system the mini's body was also modified somewhat with the wheel arches being filled in to create a neater appearance the lower edge of the door frame was also raised slightly above the track guards shortening the total height of the door by about 100 millimeters this allowed a clearance for the tracks without raising the vehicle too high which would also have raised the center of gravity on the vehicle while it was reported to be able to achieve around 40 miles per hour the mini's original 848 cc engine was found to be a bit underpowered and thus was swapped with this slightly larger 1098 cc engine from the mini's slightly larger counterpart than maurice 1100 giving the mini tracker and 50 brake horsepower and around 60 pound feet of torque this engine itself was relatively unmodified for polar services side room using antarctic rated anti-freeze and a lighter grade sae 10 engine oil to overcome the usual viscosity problems of conventional engine oil at extremely low temperatures for similar reasons baffles were also installed behind the radiator grille to limit the super cold antarctic air from circulating around the engine on the interior the four original seats remained and a heater was also installed in the cabin probably a welcome addition for those operating the vehicle since the average summer temperatures around the stations rarely rose above minus two and then winter could regularly plunge below 25. with the mini track now complete it went through a few trials in australia before being shipped off to antarctica a staff newsletter for the bmc company the company that made the mini reported on snow trials of the mini track at mount balbon victoria and mount kraken back in new south wales where they tentatively described it as quite successful apart from minor problems and claimed it achieved a top speed of around 23 miles per hour with the snow tests now done the little red mini track adorned with the australian antarctic research library was packed up and shipped to antarctica where it arrived for the start of the 1965 season at australia's wilkes base arriving on the supply ship thaladan the mini was lowered onto a raft and carefully transported to shore in the bleak and otherworldly environment of antarctica normally populated by hardy prefabricated bases and tough utilitarian machinery the unmistakable 60's curves and characterful appearance of the mini must have certainly stood out this rare piece of footage perhaps the only of its kind in existence shows the mini track in motion on the snows of antarctica until the arrival of the mini track the smallest of the tracked vehicles used by the australians was the swedish built snow track which was similarly front wheel drive and powered by a larger porsche engine along with the custom cabs also manufactured by o'hare's recar works the mini track was some 300 kilograms lighter than the approximately 1 250 kilogram snow track and slightly shorter and narrower while also being able to still seat four people while the snow track exerted around 0.75 psi in the snow with fuel and driver alone the mini track only exerted around 0.66 psi in the same conditions while only having 76 of the track surface area giving it some benefit over its larger counterparts in any soft powdery snow and off-road conditions while the mini track was undoubtedly unique therein also lay its greatest weakness while the small gains over the snow track may have given it some advantages and the expedition members who drove it described it as capable and relatively smooth to ride mechanical issues with the steering brakes and especially the clutch plagued the mini track however novel and interesting it may have been what was required was reliability and a unique vehicle means both parts and maintenance become a lot more difficult even more so in the remote bases of antarctica in the end suffering from a burnt out clutch the mini track was eventually returned from antarctica before the conclusion of the 1965 season and wouldn't ever return but for a brief moment it became what was probably the smallest and definitely most stylish tracked vehicle in antarctica so what became of the mini track or mini tracks because according to the inventor terry o'hare three mini tracks had in fact been built and completed by recar in the 1960s one was the original shorter wheelbase version that had debuted in the local newspaper one was the mini track sent to antarctica and a third was reportedly built and sent to new zealand the antarctic mini track went on to be successfully employed at the victorian ski fields in 1966. a photo showing it parked at mount hotem was taken in january 1966 and the last reported reference to the vehicle was in 1965 when it was reportedly being used in a failed attempt to recover a skiers body from the mountainside the new zealand mini track seems to have vanished the moment it was built with no record of it being used in either antarctic service or at any ski resorts or snowy parts of new zealand the first mini track however is perhaps the most intriguing recar had a connection to canada through their importing of the nodwell 110 chassis and according to terry this is where that original mini track eventually ended up from there the trail seems to have run cold except for one curious exception in 2009 on the canadian list spack website listed for sale was a very curious yellow tracked mini snowplow many in both its size but also in its style there are a few noticeable differences though between this and the original recar mini track whereas the original had a custom track setup and extra wheels from a mini it seems this version has the mechanical running gear and chassis from a bombardier sidewalk plow as well as alterations to the roof and rear of the body however the model of many is the same the distinctive shortened doors are also clear as are the filled in wheel arches it wouldn't be unlikely that over the years a new more reliable track system had been swapped into the mini and it could be that terry o'hare's original mini track has been employed and operated for all these years somewhere out in a snowy portion of the canadian outback if it is that original invention it perhaps proves that there was something to the design and perhaps whoever owns it now has no idea just how unique a vehicle it really is we'll perhaps never know what became of the mini tracks but luckily we can still remember one of the most distinctive and unusual vehicles ever to be used on the frozen southern continent of antarctica well thank you very much for watching my video on the mini track probably one of the most unusual and unique and probably least successful vehicles to ever grace the antarctic shores but you know who's interested in successful stuff we want the interesting stuff the weird stuff the stuff that most people would have long forgotten by now that's what i found really interesting about the mini track and that's why i kind of suddenly became obsessed with it i hadn't planned on making this video before a couple of weeks ago i just sort of got taken over by the desire to find out more about this kind of strange vehicle this of course is not the main track it's just my old toy car but maybe i'll i'll stick some tracks or something on it at some point um talking of antarctic vehicles i'm sort of standing in front of one now um this is my um ferguson 1955 tef that's the diesel um engine ferguson this is almost identical to what was working out in antarctica and very close to the the tractors that crossed antarctica itself they had some small alterations to the engine uh to run on different kinds of fuel i believe and i think they had i don't know if all of them did but they certainly had those very shoddy prefabricated little huts basically built onto the top of them but really incredible when you think and look at this and realize that a vehicle like this crossed the entirety of antarctica and then of course was invaluable around the bases in the years afterwards um really quite amazing i love this thing i'd like to make a video about this in the future and the the actual tractors that crossed antarctica as well um this has been a really fun video but i will say this couldn't have been made without two people um the bmc experience magazine was an australian magazine that was published for quite a few years i believe it stopped publication a few years ago it's now back as the bmc experience reloaded and they published an article in 2008 on the mini track and i'd heard about it i knew you know scanned bits of information about the mini track but i could see a lot of the references were pointing back to this it looked like it was the only bit of information out there about it i couldn't find copies of it i look i've got loads of search alerts out for different magazines for different projects no luck i managed to track down watto who was the owner and proprietor runner of this magazine um i contacted him and he managed to get back to me and said okay obscure a bit of knowledge asking for an article in 2008 about a strange tracked mini but fair enough he didn't have a copy of the magazine but he sent me the pdf of both the original article and a follow-up that had the extra photos of it arriving some of the black and white photos that i used in the video and without that this video would be nothing that was that that was the key to it all um it was i think it was it was new year's day that he got in contact with me about that and it was just the absolute best way to start the year certainly and the other thing that was ian white ian white was the writer of the article amazing guy um he wrote this researched this he found these photos he talked to the people involved with it if it wasn't for him none of this would have been possible 95 of that information came from that article the last five percent all came from me and in follow-up emails essentially he talked to the people involved he talked to terry who actually built it and he found out information that nobody had known beforehand you know this is the stuff that you know i i'm always so impressed and amazed by and and you know credit to people who are interested in these small niche subjects who go to the trouble of really researching this stuff and really finding the stuff out in this situation i'm really just passing the information that i found along to you guys but i mean he tracked down for example mark forecast the guy who actually recorded that bit of footage now um teddy was or sorry um ian was telling me that uh mark sadly passed away a few years ago and you know without um ian having done that work in 2008 that footage you know might have just been stored in an attic we might never have ever seen it again same with a lot of these scans and a lot of these photos uh talking to these people as time goes on um is so important now so that we can try and document some of the stuff that's happened even these small niche things like attract many you know i mean the grand scheme of thing it's not that important but you know when you actually see what we could have lost this interesting piece of uh history this amazing story terry as well is a really fascinating guy and he built that the 200 mile an hour jet powered truck he's also responsible for building quite a lot of the vehicles that were featured in mad max the original mad max as well and i believe recar his company is still based in melbourne i don't think he owns it anymore but i think it's still around um too so yeah fascinating story really good fun something else you might have noticed in this video i was drawing that picture i wasn't super pleased with the way it turned out but it made for some good footage during the video much like my previous video if you want to get that artwork on a mug on a t-shirt i find out you can get it on a clock if you want on a clock um you can do that you can find the links in the description below all of the references i've used i've linked below if you know what's happened to these maybe you've seen a busted old mini somewhere in new zealand or around mount hotem and victoria or whatever and it's got some worn out tires and tracks on it uh let me know um if you're in canada and you know anything about that video uh or that that small yellow one let me know as well but anyway i'm gonna go start working on this it's probably got something it needs fixed and yeah i'll speak to you later bye

Channel: Calum

Views: 70,506

Rating: 4.9663863 out of 5

Keywords: Antarctica, Snow Cruiser, Antarctic Snow Cruiser, Extreme, Extreme vehicles, Biggest Vehicles, Most Bizzare Vehicles, off-road vehicles, mad max vehicles, Antarctica Documentary, The Snow Cruiser, The Antarctic Snow Cruiser, Antarctic Mystery, Abandoned, Lost Vehicles, Exploration, What happened to the Antarctic Snow Cruiser, Kharkovchanka, russian vehicles, Australia, ANARE, Mini, Mini 850, Mark 1 Mini, Mini Cooper, weirdest vehicles, Australia Antarctica, classic mini cooper

Id: dWWOnRz_xtI

Length: 19min 42sec (1182 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 22 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/rlbmxer27]

THIS..... is the Mini-Trac, and here are some of its quirks and features

[u/LitZippo]

Thanks for sharing this! Had a lot of fun making and researching it- the guy who made it, terry o’ hare, actually made a lot of the original mad Max vehicles!

[u/devieyboy]

That's the cutest little tank ever

[u/NotSoAndre]

I could totally see Clarkson driving this.