Wow been a while since i have updated this thread
Its Summer , so Sandy has been getting lots of use .
A couple of New additions to the fleet at home .

Landladys New Jimny

Suzuki Service Time
Early December 2013, I had to drive down to the capital (Wellington) for my God Daughters Birthday .
A 1300km Round trip , the weather was good , the Landrover broken again

So Sandy was up for a road trip.
Got some Windows sewn into the softtop to make the trip a bit more enjoyable.
The Plan was to Camp the night ,about half way down to break the trip up and fit in a little wheeling along the way .

Lunch break Day 1, at one of my Favorite road side stopping areas .
Of course I procrastinated , and dordled my way down at about 80km/hr so arrived at camp at dusk . This meant I had to rush around looking for some dry wood to get the fire going . The Fire diddn't want to play and after a couple of hours of trying to get really wet wood to burn I gave up and had a cold dinner .
I was a clear night so i slept out under the stars and was rudely awoken in the middle of the night when the fire decided to relight itself and burn away happily . :pissed:

Camp in the morning .

I spent the morning down by the river relaxing .

Found a great example of our Native Water Spider hiding under a big rock . These spiders can run on water
Then I went and checked out one of the local tracks over to a water level monitoring station.

In the Native Beach Forest .

The River from up on top

Down at the Monitoring station.
Stopped off in Waiouru for some lunch

Leave a girl alone for 5minutes and she chats up a Tank
Made down to Wellington with no dramas , used a little oil , but other wise she ran flawlessly
The Next day I went for a drive on the beach around the south Coast , unfortunately my phone died so only one photo that day .

South Coast looking towards the South Is
Had a fantastic time catching up with Friends and Family but 3 days later it was time for the return trip north to Auckland .

Kapiti Island
Made it back up onto the Central Plateau and decided to stop and have a bit of a play around the mountains in the alpine desert.

Mt Reuepheu

The Road to Mt Doom (Mt Ngauruhoe)
Then I decided to go down and check out another of our camp sites , mainly to see how the access track had faired after all the rain we have had recently.

The Track in to camp , no one had been in and our track maintenance work had done its job well.

Down at the river camp site.

I wanted to stay but is was getting late in the day , so i high tailed it down to Lake Taupo for some dinner .


Trusty co-pilot
Went the fastest i have ever been in a LJ down one of the big hills
Stopped just outside Tokoroa for a break

This is where things started going wrong
Engine suddenly lost power , started missing / back firing .
I put it down to some bad fuel or a bit of crud in the Carb , as the problem was coming and going intermittently.
Stopped to get some more fuel and she wouldn't start again, getting dark now .
Manged to get the engine going , but would only run well at full throttle .
A 100km more and the back firing was getting really bad , I was lighting up the road behind me with the fashes .
A hour on the side of the road , Carb seemed Ok , Plugs looked ok , timing was ok , was started to get frustrated and tired . Working by torch light in the middle of nowhere , i suddenly realised that I had no points gap at all . The screws had come loose and the points were moving around on there own
Set the point gap and I was away again . Had to do it 2 more times before I got home , as the screws wouldn't stay tight .
Arrived home very late and very tired , but very happy .
The next day it literally only took me 10minutes to swap the points dissy a SJ413 electronic Dissy - Should have done that ages ago , what a difference
