Australia. Sure, why not????

[catalystracing]

OMG look where this nutter and his family are!! That's some serious isolation

http://www.yit.co.nz/yacht/betsie

Woohoo!! Made it to Alice Springs

Mmm Beer you deserve one or three, well done.

[wopass]

http://www.yit.co.nz/yacht/betsie

Woohoo!! Made it to Alice Springs [/quote]

nice trip through the desert bro?
how was the crater??
any left over meteorite parts??

[mercutio]

so how many ks have you travelled so far

[DieselBoy]

This sums up the trip through the Desert:


Traveling east to west over the dunes was hard going, they were quite steep, and spaced about 300 to 500 meters apart. So every couple of minutes it was a change into low 2nd, attack the dune, bump down the other side in low 1st, then a squirt in low 4th before the next dune. Then repeat. For 1100 + dunes

The way down the western slope of the dunes was shocking, a few hundred meters of scalloped out cross axled hollows that pitched the vehicle from side to side to the point you were going from bumps stops back over to the other bump stops.

Repeat that for three days, 7.30am until 5pm with half an hour for lunch, and that's how we did it. Low range at about 10 to 15km/hr for 3 solid days

Well, almost.

We did the third day on the rig road, and it was by far the best part of the trip. Stayed in high range for most The above photo is on the rig road.

Big Red

Wild life

Our Route


This sums up the trip up to the Cape


This sums up the Tele track:

That's a cracked block on a 200 tdi Defender pulled out of Nolan's Brook

Vrilya beach was awesome too. The no swimming thing still gets me.


Archer point has been one of my favorite places:


Road trains are scary!!!


And my fravourite photo, sun set over the Finke River, just outside Finke


We've done 9,998ks so far according to the odo. Lots more to go.

Mechanical issues so far have been:

Front radius arm bushes and panhard rod bushes were shot after the beating they got going up to the cape and back

Transfercase turned the oil dirty so had to replace that

Front bump stops were to short for all the hard hits on the way up to the cape so fitted longer ones

Bleed hose from the thermostat housing looked a bit suspect in the middle of the Desert when I was doing hot check at the end of the day. It had a bit of a bulge in it right by the hose clamp, so next morning when it was cold, cut the suspect part out and refitted. Last thing ya want in the middle of nowhere, a dum arse little bleed hose bursting and spilling ya precious coolant everywhere!!!

Now that we are in Alice, it's going into a workshop tomorrow (feels really odd having someone else work on it) to have the two piece radius arm bushes I fitted on the side of the road replaced for pressed in genuine bushes, and the pan hard bushes swapped for new ones.

Going to keep the two piece bushes as spares again, and I have ordered some two piece panhard bushes incase it shits those again. Lots more roads of endless hundreds of k's of corrugations to come in the next few months...........

Hard to get photos of corrugations.........


These go for hundreds upon hundreds of k's, hour after hour.

If the roads good enough, with your tyres at 25psi you can kind of get up on top of them and skim over the high points at between 80 to 90km/h, but your tyres aren't in contact with the road much so handeling a big heavy 4wd that's skipping accross the road trying to avoid a wash out or pot hole at that speed is not a very safe feeling. At between 40 and 60 it feels like every single bolt holding the vehicle together is at its maximum shear limit, cans of beer still in their box rub through against each other and make a hell of a mess too!!!

About 20 it feels much better. Catch is you don't get very far at 20km/h.

The trick seems to be, smash it at 80, but don't relax, always be on high alert for pot hold and wash outs, which if you do see them, you can move only a wheel width in either direction to avoid them. Any more and you get out of the "racing line" and into the soft and things get interesting. At 80 you almost just have enough time to get rid off all of your speed for the more serious things like washouts and run off channels. If it starts to look the road surface is going to get sandy, drop all your speed BEFORE you hit the sand. There is no point trying to brake and reduce your speed on massive sandy corrugations. If you miss your opportunity to slow down, then keep your foot up it and try and stay up on top untill your through or something falls off, like a door or bonnet etc

I also find being in 4WD high (center diff lock in) helps a lot with handling on the loose surface at speed.

It's a big adventure, and it's every bit as much about the endurance and preservation of our vehicle as it is about going places. The temptation to push the vehicle hard on the rough roads to cover the distance is huge. We have to make a conscious effort take it steady and look after our gear. It's got a long way to go still.............

[kbjj]

... cans of beer still in their box rub through against each other and make a hell of a mess too!!!

The 1st time I came across this was when I turned up to a hut on a motorbike trip, and the guys were unwrapping every 2nd can from news paper, apparently the year before they ran out of beer the first night due to this.

... It's a big adventure, and it's every bit as much about the endurance and preservation of our vehicle as it is about going places. The temptation to push the vehicle hard on the rough roads to cover the distance is huge. We have to make a conscious effort take it steady and look after our gear. It's got a long way to go still.............

Wise words, some to remember, for me anyway. Epic effort

[badnuz]

It so hard to fathom just how big outback aus is!!

[coxsy]

if or when you hit Perth this guy , has offered to help if you needed it ,
from Patrol forum looking at bringing his truck over here for a six month trip


my email address geordieclapin@gmail.com
postal address 41 Porter st, Gwelup WA 6018

Cheers
Geordie

[mercutio]

you might be better off posting a comment on facebook Coxsy

[coxsy]

good point

[DieselBoy]

Cheers Coxy, if we head down that far could be a useful contact to have.


Clocked up 16,800km so far, not bad for 8 weeks cruising

Think we've burned around 1750 litres of Diesel

Ive serviced it 3 times on the trip so far, so fed it 24 litres of engine oil, 3 oil filters, two fuel filters, a k&n recon kit and probably half a cartridge of grease

I only serviced it last week and it's probably going to be due again late net week

[tomsoffroad]

Epic bro This is on my bucket list too
I've got cousin in Darwin, he's got a new 70 series cruiser and reakons that most of the corragations are all good but some, at certain speeds, create a certain frequency that'll rattle every bolt out of your truck.
Happy motoring bro, very envious

[DieselBoy]

Still motoring

The routes starting to look pretty impressive on YIT.co.nz

http://www.yit.co.nz/yacht/betsie?location=2512

We ended up out west and did a bit of the canning stock route and have now just come out of the Gibb River Road and heading to Darwin for a nosey. Gibb River Road was a pretty rough dusty and heavily corrugated 700km, pleased to out of it!!

Hot?? OMFG yes it's hot. It's about 38deg by 10am, and it drops to about 23deg over night up here. On the stretch of road up the coast from Port Headland to Broome it was 43deg into a head wind. The engine was running a good 10deg hotter than normal. The only way I can describe the heat, is if you have a blow dryer kicking round the house, turn that on full and hold it about 100mm from your face. That's what the wind feels like blowing past the drivers window.

We found a spot for the night tonight up on a ridge with a breeze. The bush fires about 10 or 20km from here look amazing, they casta bright orange glow into the night sky, with the orange of the flames reflecting off the smoke. Need a camera with a big fancy lens and a tripod to capture it!!

[DieselBoy]

Been putting together some video summaries of the trip as and when battery power has allowed (inverter seems to hammer the house battery), so thought I would share a little clip out of the Cape York collection.

This is Sam Creek on the Old Telegraph Track. Pretty much the middle of bloody nowhere all by ourselves



Has to reduce the quality heaps to get it to upload from lappy via hot spot on my phone

Just realised I named the clip wrong

[Mattman]

Epic adventure!

[DieselBoy]

28,600km of it so far

[mercutio]

28,600km of it so far

wow awesome

[mike]

28,600km of it so far

That's three years of driving for me, if not more! Unreal!! Is your seat worn out? how are the tyres? same ones?

[DieselBoy]

Yeah, the seat covers are looking pretty hammered

Tyre wise, as we had 6 on board I have rotated them around a fair bit. Four of them are just about throw away and the two on the rear are about 3/4 worn. It's a combination of running at low pressure (25psi front and 30psi rear) on the dirt to soak up the corrugations, which wears the out side edges, and running at high pressures (50psi in the front, 60psi in the rear) on the really hot bitumen roads which evens it out by wearing the center. They reckon 25,000ks is about the limit for those tyres on a Troopy, so the Defender being heaps lighter has preserved them a bit better.

Only a couple of hundred k's back to Burrum Heads, and then 290km to Brisbane, so should be enough tread left to do that

In the 28,000ks in some of the roughest, hottest, harshest conditions around, she's performed very well. The only issues we have had have been:

New Radius arm bushes failing
New clutch master leaking
Dodgy oil cooler hose of unknown origin failing (caused some Turbo bearing damage)

In terms of maintenance, on top of the daily oil, water, brake, clutch and p.s fluid, plus the hot and cold visual checks, every 2500ks I greased the drive shafts and put spanners on the suspension. If it had had a particularly hard or rough day, I would get the spanners out aswell. Usually found something that needed a tweak up, but it was a different thing everytime. Ok, well, the rear bolt on the passengers side front radius arm always takes a tweak, everytime with out fail, so who knows

It's amazing how red dust makes the tiniest oil leak look terrible. One has developed between the transfercase and the gearbox, it's very minor considering the transfercase is about 750ml over full, but the huge build up of gooey red dust makes it look terrible

The EFS shocks have been awesome. I got them from 4WDBits just before we left. They have got so hot that I couldn't touch them quite regularly, but the fade was minimal and came right after they cooled back down. The seals and bushes have taken the abuse. It's a good thing, as my spare shocks are very worn factory shocks

Looking forward to taking the roof rack off and storing it permanently in the shed. I hate roof racks. The weight up high is very noticeable off road when you aren't used to it. The whole pop top conversion has increased the weight of the vehicle by 40kgs, so that won't help either

Next week is the big clean up ready for shipping. We are loading it up on the 3rd November, and it ships out on the 4th.

[mercutio]

29000 ks in 4 months and all in one country epic

[wopass]

just looked at your GPS log...

bro, you missed some bits...

[DieselBoy]

Yeah, saving those bits for next time when you bring your Cruiser over

[DieselBoy]

Here's a little clip of some of the Canning Stock route I slapped together this afternoon. Very hard to convey the sense of distance and isolation through a little video clip

[DieselBoy]

For some perspective, this is where the clip comes from:

http://www.yit.co.nz/yacht/betsie?locat ... age=3#gmap

[mike]

what a cool vid! love the well at the end It actually made me kinda thirsty

[DieselBoy]

Looks like the ship Betsie is on has found its way to NZ, currently docked in Auckland.

Should be in Tauranga in a couple of days time, woohoo

http://www.vesselfinder.com/?mmsi=563267000

[DieselBoy]

Righto, Betsie is back from Austraya in one piece.

29,977km covered in 4.5 months.

Remotest, roughest, hottest 30,000ks imaginable. The like of which you could just never describe to another person. I mean that in a completely non arrogant way. We just literally cannot describe how remote, desolate and isolated you can be in the middle of a Desert, by yourselves, thousands of km from anywhere, following two corrugated wheel tracks at 15km/hr in low range, in 36 degree heat for hundreds of km, days and days on end.

That being said, here's some of the vehicle related stuff for the build thread.

Vehicle problems:

Front Suspension bushes failed
Oil Cooler hose popped off (damaged Turbo bearings)


Extreme conditions issues:
Loose suspension bolts on a regular basis (thousands of km on corrugations)
Blocked fuel tank breather in cap
Blocked fuel filter and lift pump screen through dirty fuel/general dusty shitty conditions
Bonnet bushes worn out from corrugation vibration and spare on bonnet.
Squeaky drive belt
Front drive shaft flange loose
Snorkel worked loose from A pillar

Gross Laden Weight: 3050kg

Fuel used: 3485 litres

Oil Used: 48 litres

Water used: 0 litres

ATF used: 50 ml

Grease used: 1 cartridge

Fuel filters: 4

Oil filters: 5

Air Filter: cleaned 3 times

Tyres: No punctures. Four at 75% worn and two at 50% worn

Belts: 1 Drive Belt

Best things fitted to Betsie that went well on the trip:

EFS shocks from 4wdbits.com. Amazing shocks, how they survived the constant abuse I don't know. Sometimes they were so hot I couldn't put a finger on them! No leaks and the bushes are still good. Carried a complete spare set of shocks and bushes for the whole trip and didn't need them

82 Degree thermostat. If you own a 300Tdi, fit one!!!!

Delphi Lift pump. This pump has a gauze screen in it and catches lots of stuff. One screw to clean filter. Well worth it!!

Pre Cleaner. That caught so much dust, sand and bugs that I hardly had to clean the airfilter!!

If your going on a mission, Dunlop Road Gripper LT are a awesome tyre. They wore well, running for thousands of km at 20psi in the heat and rough conditions. No punctures. Run tubeless. Truck weighed in at 3050kg fully loaded.

The stove, fridge and pop top are awesome too obviously

Everyone wants to know what it cost. We both just work average joe jobs like the rest of you, and the budget would only stretch to 4.5 months with out crippling ourselves financially for the rest of our lives. We both managed to persuade our employers to keep our jobs open for when we got back which was a vital component of the grand scheme.

Shipping:

Carnet (passport for Betsie) $550 (bond required for 13% of vehicles value, plus an additional 10% of that figure, plus GST)

Tauranga to Sydney in Container $2000

Sydney Customs fee, AQUIS and Main Freight admin fees $1000

Brisbane to Tauranga $2000

Tauranga Customs fee, MPI and Main Freight admin fee $900

Marine Insurance Cover from Barley Insurance $270 each way

Full 4WD Insurance cover in Australia and NZ for one year from Barley Insurance $900

There where a couple of surprises in the above. The Sydney fee was a complete Fawking rip, on top of that fee listed above, AQUIS had a problem with some timber packing Main Freight in Tauranga used, so got charged quarantine fees, disposal fees and cleaning fees.

Lessons learnt, I now know how to prep, clean and load a container. I know what the MPI and AQUIS inspectors are looking for in and on the vehicle and the container. The Main Freight crew know how to deal with Customs and the inspectors and make stuff real easy for you, but know how to charge for that service to.

I'm not sure I would dare use roll on roll off in the future, even though the high destination charges on the container threw the budget out a bit. Less risk of vehicle damage in the container. I was hoping shipping would be in around $5000, but no

All up, including the Turbo repairs, shipping, fuel and flights, we were in under the 30k mark. Sounds like a lot of coin, and it is when you think of the shit you could buy with that, but we got 4.5months of wheeling, in our own truck, in another country.

Luckily we both had our jobs to come back to, so time to work hard and rebuild the savings account again. Could take a few years

We are weeding through the 4000 odd photos that are good, and the 500 odd gigs of video, so might do some photo bombing soon

[wjw]

Wow, that shipping was expensive, Total fees to get my caravan here from the UK was only $4.5K

Amazing trip though, would never be able to convince the wife to do something like that... at least not till the kids are gone

[DieselBoy]

Yeah, got pretty shafted at Sydney which blew it all out.

On the invoice, the actual cost of shipping the container is only $600 each way. The rest is the admin, port charges, custom charges, documentation fees, documentation lodgement fees, inspection fees, handling fees and anything else they can come up with!!!!!

Still, you have to be prepared for that sort of thing. Money speaks when your vehicle is sitting locked up in quarantine and the clock is ticking

[3DrDisco]

Looks like an epic trip! It's amazing the distances, wide open spaces and isolation in Australia. There are not many places like that in the world. I think that the 30k this trip cost is well worth the money spent. I've done a few smaller trips in Aus so can't wait to see your photos.

[DieselBoy]

Keen for a real trip report over the next few months???

Might be fitting on the 1 year anniversary of the trip

Was thinking I could do it week by week to make the task manageable, put in all the photos and videos and try and do some kind of route map.

Will be fun to relive the adventure