The
Cook and I left the
Gold Coast early May for a 3 month tour of the N T & WA.
Our plan was to head up to
Rockhampton and then travel via the Capricorn Hwy out through Sapphire,
Barcaldine,
Longreach,
Winton, Mt Isa ect stopping at the mentioned
places for a couple of days re: catching up to people we know and after that head over to the NT.
Now here is where the drama started, while driving between
Longreach and
Winton we received a call on the CB to the fact that the Nissan was blowing heaps of Smoke.
I pulled over at a
rest stop and got the
Cook to rev the motor a bit while I checked for smoke, yep there was lots of black smoke tinged with blue.
We started on our way again and headed to
Winton, the vehicle was still pulling the van okay and there was no indication of any other problems, I thought to my self that I could have picked up some crook fuel some where.
When we got to
Winton I got the
Cook to rev the motor again and I checked for smoke and there was none to be seen, so I thought all was
well, so we stayed there over night and the next day headed to Mt Isa.
On the way to the Isa I noticed that the vehicle seemed to be losing power on slight grades, and the smoke had returned.
Being a Saturday we decided to stop over at
Cloncurry and make a few calls to see if we could get the vehicle looked at re: a Nissan Dealership, the closest one was at Mt Isa, so we made an advanced booking for the following Monday.
When we arrived at the Isa we dropped into the Nissan Dealership, they had a quick look at it, they hooked up there testing eguipment and it showed no problems, the service manager said to bring the vehicle back the following day and they would go right over it.
We hired a car and left our vehicle with them for the day, when we went to pick up the Nissan they told us they checked all the hoses ect they took a fuel sample and had it tested, they did a dyno
test.
The end result was they noticed a slight lack of power and no smoke, they said it looked like crap in the fuel had caused the problem.
They asked me where we were heading and they said it Should Be Okay, the manager said don't forget your vehicle is still under Manufacturers Warranty and you can get Road Side Assistance any where in Australia.
I said can you guarantee that it will be right to carry on with our trip and he said no, the problem could be in the Fuel Injector System or the Common Rail, okay I said get it checked out, Now This Is The Dilemma, the service manager stated that Nissan Australia and Toyota use an independant company to inspect /test/ and repair injector systems.
AND HERE IS THE JOKE, he said 90 percent of the time they say it's not a warranty problem and the average repair or replacement cost is around $13000 to $15000.
So in the mean time we would have had to hang around Mt Isa while this was being done over 2-3 weeks.
In short we headed back
home via the coast and purchased a new 4.8 litre Petrol Nissan Patrol.
My opinion for what it's worth is the 3ltr crd vehicle is To Much Truck For Little Motor, let alone towing a 2500kg van.
PS. The 3 ltr motor had only done 33000 ks and never flogged.
Cheers