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back from trip

Submitted: Sunday, Jul 06, 2003 at 15:54

Member - Martin

Just got back from our 5 week trip from Perth to Alice across the Great Central Highway then up to Darwin, Broome and back to Perth. Had a great time very dissapointed with Kakadu, Litchfield was good but i reckon Gregory National park was great. Had a slight problem with my 3lt Patrol on the second day of travelling the engine light came on and the engine started to miss, according to the manual it is either water in the fuel or an engine malfunction, we drained the filter a few times but it kept coming back on so we drove it to Alice and had Nissan take a look, turned out to be a blocked fuel filter, the car had only done 33000kms and the filter was not due to be replaced untill 40000kms,the Nissan mechanic showed us the filter it was full of black crap he reckons he had never seen anything like it before anyway we replaced it, it stopped missing but the warning light still comes on and off on rough roads, it is now due its 40000km service so i will get Nissan to take another look at it, other than that the only other little problems that we had were the tail lights rattled loose and lost a couple of screws and the rubber trim between the guards and the body worked there way out but all in all no complaints about the car.
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AnswerID: 24327   Submitted: Sunday, Jul 06, 2003 at 16:50

Tuco69 replied:

The 'black crap' is most probably cladisporum - a bacteria that grows in the layer between water (heavy) and the diesel (light) in storage tanks. This bacteria will continue to block your filters and must have got into your system from a bad service station somewhere.
I'm suprised that Nissan at Alice Springs didn't investigate the problem futher. You will need to drain and flush your tank/s, replace your filter again, and get hold of a biocide to add to the tank/s when they are refilled.
Poor housekeeping at many service stations results in cladisporum going undetected in their underground storage.
The bacteria is the scourge of many trawler operators and also has been found in aircraft tanks. It can only grow where water is present. Water usually condenses in all tanks whenever there is temperature change. In aircraft this happens on every flight. Fortunately an important part of the ground proceedure is to drain the water from the tanks. I have known trawler operators with cladisporum in their tanks to have to change 20 fuel filters in 1 nights work!

A good precaution and protection is to add a good diesel additive that contains a biocide to every fuel fill.

For more information on the subject - type 'cladisporum' or 'fuel bug' into your favourite search engine.

Tuco in Cairns
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FollowupID: 16490   Submitted: Wednesday, Jul 09, 2003 at 11:47

GMorison posted:

If you have diesel bug problems - try www.morison.com.au/de-bug.htm
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AnswerID: 24331   Submitted: Sunday, Jul 06, 2003 at 18:07

gunnadoit replied:

What was the great central road like (condition of) I am going to be crossing at the end of the year, i know a lot can change by then but just curious to know.

What was wrong with Kakadu (to many cane toads huh)
Reply 2 of 3
FollowupID: 16379   Submitted: Sunday, Jul 06, 2003 at 20:56

Member - Dave (Pilbara) posted:

Just came over the Great Central a couple of days ago. Rained the other side side of about half way (came from Alice end) That section was very rough for about 200 ks heavy corrigations. The rest was good and this end was like a super highway.
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AnswerID: 24373   Submitted: Monday, Jul 07, 2003 at 01:35

mrdesmo replied:

I tend to agree with your view of Kakadu and Litchfield. I've been to both twice in the last 5 years, and discovered Kakadu very geared for tourists ( I guess we all are guilty), and Litchfield was busing them in by the dozen when we were there unfortunately at the beginning of school holidays towards the end of our trip. We discovered Gregory NP quite by accident, we had stocked up on supplies including fruit and veg in Alice and were heading for GRR when we realized the WA border quarentine was only a day away, so looked at the map to waste a few days (and eat our supplies) and saw Gregory NP...turned out to be one of the highlights of a round Oz trip. We followed the Bullita stock route all the way through from the bottom end and had an absolute ball. Highly recommended detour.
A bugger about your fuel woes...
Cheers
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