Coming Trips for the Desertrunner

[Dessertrunner]

Well I have returned from the trip, I can't say it wasn't event full as it was.

We traveled about 13,000k's in 24 days. I will try to post a image of the map at a later time to give you a idea of were we went. As for the car we had two major problems. See picture.



If you are not sure what it is its the trust bearing from the clutch. I was about 300k from Darwin heading to Katherine to vist the gorge when the I lost the clutch. Pedel went to the floor while I was doing 130 k per hour. I drove into vist the gorge with out the clutch. Tried to find the problem but figured the gearbox had to come out. After going on a helicopter ride around the gorge the following day we set out to drive the 300k back to Darwin with no clutch.

So how do you drive a car without a clutch. You turn the engine off and put it in 1st gear and start the engine (make sure the engine is pre warmed up). To state the obvious you can't go in reverse. When you get moving you reduce the engine load then pull it out of gear to netrual, make sure the revs match what they should be for the gear you are trying for and then slip it in. To a degree we cheated by having my wife write on a pice of paper some rev/speed numbers to make it easier to change gear. This was all good except when I got confused in the traffic and missed the change revs.
Anyway ended up driving about 350k's with out a clutch and a number of traffic lights. Got it back to Darwin and found a guy to pull the box out to fix the problem. As you can see this is what the problem was. Had a couple of guys with us that drive trucks and they were reminding me that when we drove trucks with road ranger gear boxs you didn't use the clutch anyway.

Will post about the second problem later.

[Dessertrunner]

Here is a photo of the car and our camp site on the Coonge Creek at Innaminka. This was day 2 and we had travel about 2,000k on dirt by then.


hope you enjoy

[flamestone]

13,000k's in 24 days??

Was it worth it? Were you visiting places you'd already been?

And what about the gears? You going to pull the box down to see if the occasional crunching has done any damage?

[Dessertrunner]

Most of the places were new, hadn't been there before. The gearbox will be good no need to open it up. When you got the revs right you would think that I had used the clutch.

Was a brilliant trip will post a bunch of photos over the coming weeks.
Tony

[flamestone]

Yeah I've done it myself before so know it's possible... but 350km worth of my sometimes "almost but not quite" changes would have taken its toll.

And is that a Ranger in your group? Got one for myself a few weeks back, and I can't help but think it would be more at home there than my SVX!

[Dessertrunner]

For those that are interest the second problem I had was we were out in the middle of WA 100's of k from the nearest help and the time belt iddler failed. Before I went away I installed a new timing belt, water pump and idlers.
Over time we noticed the car was developing a miss that I could not figure out what it was. Pulled the engine codes noting showed, changed the fuel filter and still the problem was there and getting worse.
When we arrived at a national park there was a lot of noise coming from the front of the engine. The long and short was tracked it down to the timing so we pulled it apart. Removed the pulley with out losing the timing, unjamed the pulley and repacked it with grease and then put it back. Then we drove 4,000k's home.





It was one hell of a experiance but we got through.
Tony

[Dessertrunner]

Okay can you guess what this is?
Here some clues, the line at the top of the photo is top of the window on the SVX, and we had to pass it on the highway.
Tony

[oab_au]

Well that looks like about 2 seconds,,

before a farggan big dump loader crushes the SVX, wafer thin, in a single pass.

Harvey.

[Dessertrunner]

Go top the top of the class Harvey, they were moving 2 by 100 tonne dump trucks down the highway and we had to pass them which was a pain. At one point this caravan driver lost control and nearly flipped. And to thing this is the baby dump truck.
We went to a mine and the tour guide told us that they have 10 dump trucks with no drivers. He said the drivers are in a office 2,500k away, pretty mind blowing when you think about these things driving around a mine with no one in then
Tony

[flamestone]

Wow. Lucky you could get that idler sorted.

I recognise all those parts as that's what I've just had replaced in mine... but that was on a shiny workshop floor... don't envy your workshop environment there!