Fixable problems that can temporarily stop your car

hi
interesting story but i think your vehicle was sadly lacking pre-trip maintenance
on each occasion
hope you have beeter luck these days
cheers

Hi Mazcan

I do put a lot of effort into pretrip maintenance but the Queensland trip I had covered over 2500km from Darwin with camper before having a front plate of the rear diff come loose and I would challenge anyone to predict that happening. Further that is not something you can just tighten when doing a precheck.

As for my wifes Rav4 - we had only just purchased it 6months prior and again who would know it was carrying some water in the fuel tank slowly rusting through from the inside.

Be fair - you can't check or even foresee these things happening so I think your comment is a bit harsh.

And further I was prepared with equipment and did fix the issue.

David

'Heading north to Fraser island , coming down a hill into Mackay', methinks you need to invest in a compass and a map !!

Yeah sorry my mistake

Not being very familiar with east coast - that town you turn off to get to inskip point.

Gympie???

It was some years ago and we passed through lots of towns. Is there a Mackay around there somewhere.

After nearly a year of very careful and meticulous preparation of 4 Landcruisers towing 4 equally prepared camper trailers; we left Perth in June 1998 for Wiluna, GBH to Giles then passed Lassiter's Cave, Docker River and onto The Olgas, Uluru, Kings Canyon, Palm Valley, Alice springs and up to Gemtree [Hart's Range] the back to Alice and down the Old Ghan line, to Chambers Pillar then across the NT/SA border to MT Dare through gibber country to Dalhousie springs then Oodnadatta, Marla south through Coober Pedy, Port Augusta, Adelaide and finally working our way westwards back to Perth . This was a long trip over some very hard terrain that caused several unforeseen "mechanical incidences" to occur. There were 4 "interesting" ones that come to mind:-

1/ About half a day east of Carnegie one of the camper trailers with slipper springs on a single axle had one of the slipper springs shear off at the knuckle, causing the axle to move backwards at an unnatural angle, preventing any further progress. The fix was to take off the wheel and remove the offending spring, then securely rope the axle back into place tying it to the draw bar and also to the back of the trailer. Next a coilspring was "donated" by an upturned wrecked ute on the side of the track, this coil spring was cut to length and a hole drilled into the trailer's chassis rail into which the top of the spring was "screwed", the bottom was wired to the axle. The wheel had to be put on "inside out" because it rubbed against the coil spring if fitted the right way round. This repair lasted all the GBH and beyond until we reached Alice Springs, where proper leaf springs were purchased and installed.

2/ The next was a HJ75 burst a radiator core one and a half days northeast of Jackie's Junction.The fix was to remove the radiator , cut and crimp over the damage core and seal the ends with epoxy putty then re-install and refill. This successfully made it all the way to Adelaide.

3/ Coming out of Chambers Pillar, we stopped for a quick toilet break at a fork in the track. Due to a lack of covering vegetation, one of the ladies squatted behind the vehicle and while down there , noticed that the HJ75's rear diff was dripping oil. Dragging a trailer over extremely rough terrain had caused the 10 diff housing bolts to work loose. The fix was an easy re-tightening the bolts and topping up the appropriate oil. A potentially severe problem was averted by a fortuitous observation by one person with other things on their mind.

4/ Finally, I tore a front spring bracket clean off the chassis on my old HJ45 while negotiating the very testing track between Dalhousie springs and Oodnadatta.The fix involved connecting 3 batteries in series with jumper-leads and welding the wayward bracket back in place with several stainless steel welding rods using a pair of vicegrips attached to a jumper-lead as the hand piece. This repair has had no further work done on it and remains sound till this day , some 12 years later.

The 4 above examples show that things happen that no matter how much the amount of thorough preparation could prevent. On this trip were many punctures and other mechanical repairs [including amongst other things; buggered tie-rod ends, partial brake failure, broken axle studs and a gear-box that limped into Adelaide with only 4th gear still working] .
The lessons learnt are:-

A/ Early detection can save a lot of grief later. Make a habit of very time you stop to walk around your rig looking for things that aren't "normal". Feel the temperature of your wheel hubs, rock the wheels to see if there is excessive play.

B/ Don't Panic!! Take time out to think through to the best solution for a given problem, a beverage [either hot or cold] greatly aids the thought process before tackling the job at hand, especially if the area concerned needs to cool down.

C/ Expect things to go wrong, so take plenty of beverage.

D/ Take a small ground tarp, plenty of spares, tools, all required automotive fluids and the original workshop manual for your vehicle.

E/ Don't use slipper type springs on a single axle trailer if you're going into "hard country".

F/ If things go completely pear-shaped, make sure you can communicate with the outside world.

G/ In the bush, cash is king.

H/ These problems that cause swearing at the time become great memories in the future.

Happy Problem Fixing :))

Welldone

PS. Looking forward to "The Gathering" and hearing of similar adventures!

I had a diesel 47series that wouldn't start - eventually it started and we drove it from Innamincka to Adelaide without stopping because we knew it wouldn't start again. That was a fusible link too - the type that hang off the battery pos - the wiring had gradually vibrated on the corrugations until only a couple of strands remained. Lesson was that you need to have both ends of the link supported so they don't fatigue on corrugated roads.

Just to be clear here. The fusible link is not the little black box on the positive side battery cables.
IT IS the positive side battery cables connecting to the little black box.

The little black box is just a connection joining the fusible link to the cable going to the fuse box.

At Mornington off the Gibb River Road, our J bar holding the battery holder had rattled off and was long gone and the top bracket moved across the top of the battery and sparked on the negative post. It caused a small fire, which we found before the damage was too bad; one of the 2 covers was gone as well.

We found another J Bar from broken down cars at a dump near Iminja, placed a large rag over the battery hole and used racing tape to hold that in place, and wire from a wire coat hanger to replace the missing bolts. We made it all the way home to SA like that even taking the short cut home via the Tanamai.

So check you car each day for lose items, after travelling along corrugations, strange thing was I used that battery earlier in the day for the air compressor, and didn’t notice anything wrong.

Add wire, and racing tape to your recovery gear.

Sorry should read broom not Broome.