Comment: Canning Stock Route

Yes,

A good quality shade cloth stretched across the bull bar and seured underneath to cover the underside of the radiator mounting area. I also use the cheap car washing sponges (Usually $1 or $2 for a pack of four) to seal up any gaps around the bullbar mounts and engine bay lining. The shade cloth is best stretched across the top of the bullbar to cover the gap between the top of the bar and the bonnet. The bonnet is closed on top of the cloth providing that extra protection.




Canning Stock Route


Cheers Mick

One of the key things of a spinefex fire is that it burns in fuel that gets built up and thickens until it ignites.

This means that your means of puttting it out needs to be sustained.

I.E. Using a 1kg fire extinguisher may seem to put it out but it re-ignites.

Our solution is to carry our a 5lt garden sprayer which holds our daily water.

We enlarged the nozzle slightly until it produced a steady stream of water.

THis arrangement is supplemented by normal extinguisher and gives a sustained steady stream.

We get water for morning tea etc from this sprayer and this means we automatically pump up the units air pressure when we stop - and as a good seal lasts for a couple of hours the unit is always ready to go in those vital first few seconds.

Our experience is that the grass build up likely to catch fire occurs under the car around the exhaust/suspension components - and stopping to check and pull out grass every break is very important.
To make this happen you need to additional items - a pair of ready gloves and a ground mat.

The ground mat is important as overgrown tracks tend to cover the ground in prickly bits and unless one takes this seriously you tend to put off getting under the car which leads to bigger grass build up.



Survival hint - the further back you are in a group of cars the less the issue.

The couple of times I've been on the CSR at that time of the year, there has been no spinifex on the track due to the amount of vehicles already been up or down.

For that reason I just use fly mesh and change it if it collects a lot of seeds. Pre cut to size before I leave for the trip.

Travelled the CSR in early June this year....had no problem with seeds in the radiator core and did not use a screen but carried one. Also an occasional small build-up of grass under the car in front of the spare wheel (Hilux) which a hook pulled out fairly easily.
As per the above posts, a water sprayer is a must and also of course fire extinguishers.
Take care when moving off the track for passing vehicles that you do not stop for too long on top of undergrowth if you have no other choices.
Tony

Yep, all good advice that has been posted already. We did the trip in 1998 about that same time of year and although we tied a shade cloth screen to the 'roo bar it really wasn't necessary, as has been said, by then most of the grass in the track itself has already been mowed down. Do you have a petrol or diesel. The catalytic converters on the newer cars run very hot and as has also been said, don't park on clumps of spinifex for long.

Enjoy

Cheers
Pop

When we travelled the CSR in 09, we had a Super Soaker, (water pistol) and a fire extinguisher, and a hook wire, and thankfully never had to use them.
One thing we did do was to check the "Poootrol" every hr, or so, and definately every time we pulled up.

Somebody on the forum has since recomended that some detergent in the water, will increase the "wetting power" of the water. Good point !
Cheers
Bucky