Friday, Jan 18, 2008 at 23:08
G’day Derek,
Happy to give
feedback on what worked and what didn’t for our red centre trip, it may help with your trip prep. Sorry for the long rant. You don’t have to agree with it all but it may give you an idea or two to consider.
The stone guard was made in a bit of a rush (the list of things to do was long and I was running a bit short of time) I didn’t allow enough clearance between the rear door mounted spare tyre and the jerry carrier. The jerry carrier only kissed the spare tyre when the trailer was near to a jack-knife position when reversing.
The stone guard itself, the square tubing on the A-frame is 25mm sq by 3mm thick. The square tube for the shade cloth frame is 16mm tube, which slides inside of the 25mm tube. To attach the 25mm tube to the A-frame I welded 25mm angle iron and used 3/8” (10mm) U-bolts to attached. I picked up the jerry holders from a
camping store at $25each. The shade cloth was 70% rated from bunnings and attached with cable ties.
More generally, on our trip we expected it to be hot (being from Nov to Jan), with lots of dust and stones. As it turned out I underestimated all three. It should be a bit cooler for your trip in June. We found that the fridge in the Jayco couldn’t handle the long periods of heat. At the end of the day of driving after running on 12volt, our fridge would be at best 20C. The best it got down to was 8-10C at night (on gas or 240V). The best setting on the fridge temp dial was between 3 ½ to 4 ½. Ay setting higher than that and it would do worse on cooling ( I believe this is a common problem with the Dometic fridges in very hot weather). We had to stop buying fresh meat and start buying canned ham instead (not much choice of brands in small outback towns, we wished we took a few more of the better quality band tins from
home.
The dust, it will get in. Any towels or clothing that you put under the seats put in good sealing plastic bags. By the end of the Plenty Hwy, our laptop bag (normally black) had a thick cover of a light brown dust, as dide most items under the front
seat storage.
I thought I had done enough with the stone guard and with extending the gal sheet tank guard to protect the tank drain tap, to stop stone damage. The stones took all the gal plating off the Dove chassis wherever they hit. The shockers still work (I think) but the bottom half of the shocker tubes are flat from the stones. The electric brake cable, while it runs behind the 45mm sq axle, was cut to bits by the stones. I will cover my brake wires with plastic tubing. The gal sheet used to protect the tank took a real beating and will need to be replaced but managed to do its job. Make sure that the end of your plastic
water tank is not overhanging the edge of the gal sheet otherwise it may suffer from any stones. I will take some
pic’s tomorrow of the tank guard and shockers and load them up.
With the stone guard deflector width,
mine was not as wide at the trailer width. I thought it would be ok to be a few centimeters less that the trailer. The outside edge of the trailer got a few stones, not many, but enough to dent the Aluminum edging.
With tyres, I fitted the same LT tyres to the Dove that I had on the 4wd. I wasn’t confident with the standard AT tyres that come on the Jayco. IMHO, a higher load rating LT type tyre is worth considering to replace the standard Jayco issue tyres.
I hope some of this long post is of interest. Enjoy the centre, we certainly did.
Cheers Anthony
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