D-Max fuel filters, Enginesafe EMS 550 and Sensatyre pressure monitors.

Thursday, Nov 14, 2013 at 10:19

Kanga1




Where to fit all this stuff? Both of the readout monitors needed wiring, one an antenna and a suitable location for them both to be permanently installed. The dashboard itself has nowhere in particular that suited any kind of accessory at all really.
The car does have two glove boxes on the passenger side though, the top one being quite shallow not much good for anything really, but the place of choice to mount these two items. Both units have audible alarms which meant that they didn't need to be directly in the line of sight for the driver. Mrs Kanga is a bit of a Geek anyway and always does the fiddling with buttons on anything that has one. Plus it would give her something to look at instead of a Margaret Fulton cookbook while we drive around.
So the plan is, to sacrifice the top glove box and Fab up a bracket of sorts, to fix the two gadgets to, inside it. The D-Max owners manual suggests not driving with the top glove box door open as it may interfere with the Airbag, so we will take the door off when out bush, there are only two phillips screws that attach it. Fitting these gadgets in there has the bonus that they are out of sight when the car is parked in crime likely areas, we can put the glove box door back on and close it!

Firstly the Enginesafe.
We had returned the Unit bought in Melbourne to Tzar and it had been upgraded to an EMS 550 this meant that the additional feature of the engine block temperature sensor pick up (which is how our Engine Watchdog fitted to the Troopy worked) could be used as well, I'm thinking of bolting it to the Transfer case for a try initially to see if it is worth keeping an eye on. These audible Alarms for Desert driving have given us piece of mind knowing that something is looking out for really important things while the driver concentrates on missing Thorny Devils, tyre stakes and Rabbit holes (like the one we fell into travelling the Anne Beadell a few years ago).
We hadn't actually got the D-Max when we bought the EngineSafe at the Show in Melbourne so I wasn't sure which would be the best way to mount the Low Coolant/Temperature Sensor. There are two options, one goes over the lip in the top Radiator hose inlet under the radiator hose, the other is an option that requires cutting the top hose to allow fitting the Sensor in a specially made jigger designed for that purpose, so we got that too so I could figure out which way to go when we got the car.
The Unit was easy enough to wire up and when in use demonstrated the " Sweet Spot" in the original factory temperature guage which can be showing a normal (halfway) reading and yet the actual coolant temperature can be anywhere anywhere between 63 and 87 Celcius indicated by the EngineSafe, I had noticed a similar thing in the Troopy with the Engine Watchdog. Frinstance going uphill more fuel burnt- engine gets hotter. Going downhill lots less fuel burnt- engine gets cooler, and yet the factory fitted temp guage just shows normal going up and down hill!!

Spare hoses are pretty much a given for outback travel, particularly now I'd just cut one in half! They didn't have any hoses for a D-Max in stock at Isuzu Hobart, and in fact had never sold any at all. When I gave him the VIN number he said "but you've only had the car three weeks, it's covered under warranty" I explained to him why I didn't think it would be. :-)

The EMS 550 is able to monitor two battery voltages, low coolant warning, coolant and block temperatures with manually adjustable audible warnings for all the things it is watching.





Pretty impressed with the EngineSafe unit, nicely put together, with some valuable features.











Sensatyre TPMS.

We've been lucky over the years with punctures. It is possible to get an idea that a tyre is going slack by aiming for a tree root and thinking hard as the front and then rear tyres go over it. Same with potholes ripple strips. Did it sway a bit more than last time when cornering? Anyhow, more than once we have caught punctured tyres well before they have gone flat enough to be destroyed, without any gadget doing it for us. When we stop every hour or so, I always walk around the vehicle with an infra red temperature gun zapping the tyres and wheel hubs. We use the temp gun for camp oven cooking too, handy bit of kit.
Friends in WA have had nothing but trouble with the valve cap type of sensors for one reason or another when off road. These things may be good for black top use only, but I thought if we were ever going to get a TPMS it would be the internal sensor type. Google is all our friends, there were a few systems that seemed pretty good but in the end a valued opinion from Mick O and a chat to Peter Spowart from Hannibal Safari Equipment the dealer for Sensatyre, had us get the 6 internal sensors kit.

The sensors are fitted inside the rim with a massive radiator hose type clamp, there is an arrow on the sensor that needs to be pointing to where the valve stem comes into the rim, and fitted as close as possible to the valve stem. I wanted to fit these sensors myself so that meant getting the tyres off the rims, (good enough excuse to play with the R and R bead breaker I bought years ago).
Getting the tyres back on is easy enough, but I wanted to make sure that the last bit of tyre to go on was where the sensor is to avoid any chance of damaging it with the tyre bead or a lever, these units are around $70 each I'm told. We had all six wheels balanced and that was that bit.
The read out for these sensors is really easy to use, particularly when altering a tyre sensors position on the car and having the read out show the new position for that sensor.
The wiring for the booster antenna was run to inside the centre console out of harms way from flying rocks under the car, plus I had to get in there anyway to run wires for the UHF and an accessory 12 volt outlet.

We are going to continue with the 693 Bridgestone Duellers in 245/70R16 that came with the car, the Dealer managed to get us the sixth tyre to match the other five despite them being superseded by the 697 tread pattern. They are not a particularly tough tyre being only 111 load rating or 1090 kg per tyre, they do drive well on the blacktop and with the pressure monitors in the rims, hopefully we can catch them early enough when we pick up a puncture. It will be interesting to see how the TPMS works out on this years trip, from the Strezlecki, through the Simpson, the red centre, bottom half of the CSR, Australasian Safari, and then home via the best part of the ABH. A good variety of torturous conditions to try them out on.




Next thing will be to fit these gizmos into the glove box, hmm, Blue tac or velcro? :-)













Fuel Manager secondary fuel filter.

The D-Max was booked in for its' 3,000 km check over and I thought this would be the ideal opportunity to have them install the fuel filter into the car, (I am a bit hesitant about messing around with the fuel system by myself with this new car, particularly as this is a secondary 2 micron filter that goes in line after the factory fitted one).
There are differing opinions as to where to fit an additional filter and water trap into any Common Rail diesel system before or after the factory fitted filter, and compelling arguments for both opinions. In the end thinking that as a last line of defence, should any water particles or impurities get through the factory filter and the engine warning light indicates the problem we would still have another even finer filter and water trap to catch anything that may get past the OEM filter. There may be some logic in there somewhere!























Because I had already fitted the filter mounting bracket to fit some fuses and relays on some time prior to Jackson Motor Company getting the car for the check up and filter fitting, I had noticed that as all the mounting bolts on it were almost in a straight line on the inner guard, allowing the bracket to vibrate a bit. When the filter was fitted, with more weight it became more of an issue, so some kind of stabilizing bracket will be made before we get into this years trip.Miles of corrugations with that amount of movement will have consequences.




Sorry it is a bit over exposed (my first crack at videoing with a stills camera!) But I think you can see what I mean about vibrations, so it will either be brace it forwards to the battery clamp or back to the firewall.

More to come when the install is finished off. Cheers, Kanga.
Tempus Fugit

Kanga.
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