I'm posting this just to give Pesty and Muddy and Lucy a bit of a chuckle!!!!!
As some you are aware, we recently did a crossing of the Simpson, east to west, towing the camper trailer.
Okay.....so I had a few hiccups.....all of my own making!!! The product Nissan sold me 5 years ago, performed flawlessly. However, aftermarket products (AGAIN!!!!!) let me down, but this probably says more about the poor excuse for a mechanic that I use. But what can I say.....he IS very cheap and a damned nice bloke!!! hahahaha
(1).
The nut fell of the end of my 4-Ways RTC steering damper....this was near the end of the trip at
William Creek.
(2). On at least 2 occasions I had a leaking bottom radiator hose. This was was that I'd cobbled together myself using a few inches of the original hose at the motor end, then a 90 degree poece of stainless steel pipe with 2 clamps at each end (this is where it was leaking) and a piece of reinforced multi-purpose hose from there to the radiator. This has now been set aside and a standard Nissan hose has been re-fitted since returning to
home.
(3). This one is complicated to explain...but I added 1+1+1 and got 5!!!! One morning in the Simpson I noticed a small amount of oil leaking from the area at the back of the motor just below the vicinity of the oil filters. I had recently removed the rear filter and installed a AMSOIL by-pass system and assumed my own "handiwork" was faulty and had led to the leak. It was only a few drops so I didn't worry too much....just pretended I owned a Landrover!! When we stopped for morning tea at
the junction of the Colson Track (we were travelling the French Line), I decided to reverse a small distance after initially
parking close to a vehicle in front of me. All hell broke lose in the cab!!! The buzzer I'd fitted to warn me of low oil pressure was blaring away, so I shut the motor off immediately, believing the small oil leak had gotten worse. I spent the next half hour gerry-rigging the filtration system back to original as a
check of the dipstick showed very little oil at all. I put an extra half litre of oil in and all seemed okay until I re-started the motor. None of the "idiot" lights were working on the dash. Checked to find a blown fuse. Replaced fuse and all okay again. I figured the fuse blew because of the buzzer going off. All of my assumptions with this problem were WRONG!!!!
(a). The oil filtration was NOT leaking, the oil I saw everywhere was coming from the ARB front diff-locker solenoid which is just above the brake master cylinder (in turn just above the oil filters).
(b). I was NOT low on oil....I was parked on a slight slope and the dipstick was not reading accurately.
(c). The fuse did NOT blow because of the buzzer. The buzzer came on as a result of the fuse blowing....an additional fail-safe feature I unwittingly included when i insalled it. The fuse blew for a different reason.....you're gunna LOVE this one....read on dear reader.....
I had installed a pair of spot lights on the back of the roof rack some time ago. I decided to wire these using a on/on switch. In it's normal position, the switch draws power from the reversing light set-up at the back bumper wired to the reversing beeper. The red wire was routed along the top of the chassis, right over the top of the rear coil spring bracket....between it and the body. I hate to say it but it looks like the small gap between the bracket and the body has reduced by a few mm to the point whereby the wire shorted out on the body. The reversing light does not have it's own fuse; it seems to operate off the same fuse that controls the idiot lights. So, select reverse at morning tea stop and blow fuse, causing buzzer to go off and me to automatically assume (wrongly so) that I had lost oil and pressure. What a kock-up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anyway, all is
well again. We all had a ball and the weather was perfect.
Not sure if anybody reading this was returning south from Maree to
Lyndhurst on 10/7.......we passed a lot of vehicles heading south after the road between those 2 towns had re-opened. The roads north and west of Maree had still been kept closed, so those blokes were happy to take the only way back out before more rain came (which never eventuated anyway). As we talked amongst ourselves on the UHF, we said that the people heading south probably think we are mad for heading north. Somebody travelling south came back and said "We do think you're mad".
Well, if you're reading this.....please be aware that we got through to Maree without any dramas, the
Birdsville Track was opened after we had lunch and we continued onwards; only stopping to extract a Landcruiser from a bog and also to stop for a chat with Willem and Judith. The roads kept being opened as we needed them to be opened.....the desert tracks were initially closed when we got to
Birdsville....but we wanted to stop there for 2 nights anyway and the track re-opened when we ready to leave.
It was very boggy and water-logged and BIG holes in the track just west of Purnie
Bore; but the 2 nights at
Dalhousie Springs made it all worthwhile.
Just to dispell any misconceptions...... we had a couple of vehicles in the convoy which were bog-stock standard, even down to the tyres. These were a Navara 3 litre diesel and a Hi-lux; both dual cabs. The 4 Patrols (3 x 3 litre and my old banger 4.2) all had some
suspension work; 3 had Goodyear MT/R the other BFG All Terrains.
Mine plus one of the 3 litre Patrols towed camper trailers without any dramas and we did NOT cause any additional damage to the desert tracks as we used sensible tyre pressures.
Cheers
Roachie