4800 Towed by Disco - Is this the ultimate Shame !

At least it wasn't my car - well actually I paid for it but after a huge effort
the kids got our other 4800 Petrol Patrol running by midday Christmas day and while still covered in dirt and grimme, thru everything into the back of the Patrol until it overflowed with camping gear and made Talbotville campsite in Vic high country in time for cold late christmas dinner after only 2 repairs on the 300km drive up.

After being recently detuned to 400kw and a cheap gearbox with close enough ratios out of a 3lt Patrol fitted we thought the car was basically reliable but it was off to a bad start.

The message that big wheels and lots of power may get you up the biggest hill, but won't necessarily get you home again still hasn't got thru but after waking up early at midday they wanted a drive and off they went.

But then the shame began - Soon a call was for help was heard after floundering on a dirt ridge and then embrassment from being snatched out by a hi-lux from another century (at least it had 35 inch wheels- and a V8).

Not deterred we all decided to go on a river run up Bulltown Spur way - at least the 20 odd river crossings would keep the cars temperature under control.

The car got to crossing 8 when it simply died - the worst was assumed (main ECU failure) and out went a call for help.

I answered but by the time I got there a friendly Queenslander in a Disco 4 had hooked them up and was towing them back.

I meet them 1/2 way and the incar cam caught these photos.






Two rescues in one day isn't a good start to a holiday and we were stuck with a dead car in the bush.
We hooked up a laptop to enquire of the car what its problem was but it is fitted with a Haltech ECU and the error codes couldn't be figured out (wheres the manual son?).
Figuring a lengthy problem we began at the basics, it soon became apparent that the ECU power light was on but that no spark or injector pulses could be seen.
It appeared that the ECU was ok but that simply wouldn't fire up the engine despite it cranking freely.
A Toyota driver then noticed that a wire in a loom going to the crank angle sensor was broken - this made sense as to why the ECU was effectivly asleep.

I.E. "The last thing played with was the problem" rule applies Kids.

The wire was twisted together and off again they went before questions could be asked about why the loom was unsupported and also how could you see a broken wire anyway because the loom was supposed to be a loom not a collection of badly soldered mismatched wires.

Still Billy Goat Bluff was done with only the lost of one side mirror and everyone seemed happy enough.

We were espically happy when the youguns and friends decided to have New Years 400km to the N.W. of us and took off.
The babysitting was over for now, so with the 1/2 dozen cars left we all sat back for a relaxed no pressure New Years eve.

Recently a descision was made that hairline fractures and any incident of blood loss less than 20ml doesn't constitute an injury and so it was agreed we had a near perfect week weather wise and near perfect Christmas camp along with a free instructional course on bush repairs of the electrical kind.