So i finally got the 42' back from ARB. It was a long time coming and i have mixed feelings about it. They fixed all the problems with the new sub fuel tank and it appears to be working.
They fixed the leaking hose and fuel gauge no dramas but had a to wait a few weeks for Brown and Davis to supply the bits to make the filler work. They ended up using the original Toyota filler which was a bit annoying.
ARB had to cut a piece out of the body work to make the original filler Brown and Davis supplied and now they have gone back to the original Toyota filler there is piece missing. The whole reason i went with Brown and Davis was so no body work needed to be touched. It's more Brown and Davis's fault i suppose for supplying the wrong filler but its pretty frustrating. I'm the only person in the world who will know/see's the missing bit of body work but it annoys me.
So now the 42' is back i decided to take my 80 series off the road for a bit and remove the rear diff so i could fix the air locker leak in it.
I don't want to do any proper 4x4 trips in the 42' till i finish rebuilding the cooling system, but a camping trip that doesn't go proper off road i was confident the car would be fine.
So i packed everything in the back and man it was squishy!! I'm used to having heaps of room in the 80 series, this was like playing a game of Tetris. It finally convinced me to either buy or make some drawers for the back. I was travelling solo and the car was pretty much full, i didn't have any of my misus's stuff, recovery gear or spares.
The plan was to camp at Cobungra and do a pretty big hike i'd been meaning to do for a while at Mt Hotham. It's pretty much a 2 and a bit hour drive from Lakes Entrance to Conbungra so it was a good oportunity to test out the new sub tank and clutch.
Will it definately tested it, and it didn't pass!!
The car was making a funny noise every half hour or so for a few seconds. But i couldn't pin point where it was coming from. I thought it sounded more like it was coming from the front wheels and i was thinking i had done something wrong when i did the front diff overhaul.
So the noise wasn't really getting worse and i kept cruising along. I had just driven out of Omeo and the sound started getting way more consistent. 5 minutes later and the noise was stuck on and i thought 'this is getting bad' so i pulled over and had a look.
I had a look under the car and oil is really pouring out from somewhere near the front of the gearbox!
This is really not good i'm thinking.
I'm only 5 minutes from camp at this stage so i limped it in doing 20kmph. The rate the oil was coming out was pretty concerning, it wasn't just dripping, it was a consistent stream. I hope it only really started leaking when the noise got stuck on, if it was leaking the whole way from Lakes Entrance then i have probably ran the gearbox dry. The undercarriage wasn't completely drowned in oil so hopefully it wasn't too bad.
So i set up camp and drank a million beers trying to work out what to do next. The hike at Mt Hotham was definately not happening anymore, Hotham is a half an hour uphill drive from where i was camped and there is no way my gearbox would last. I really needed to limp it back to Omeo so i could call ARB and let them know they have probably stuffed something up when installing the clutch/replacing the gaskets and they are going to have to organise a tow back to their shop.
It was Saturday and they wouldn't be open Sunday so i thought i might as well stay where i was and make the most of it and limp it back first thing Monday morning.
I woke up late the next day and did a small hike to the Victoria Falls. It was an easy walk, climbing down to the falls themselves was a bit sketchy and i was super wary that the place is probably full of snakes.
Like just about everywhere in the eastern side of Victoria it got really badly burnt during the bush fires last summer. It must have got super hot through here as not many of the tree's have re-sprouted. As there was bugger all vegetation left to hold the ground together, scrambling down the falls was a bit tricky in places.
We've had a lot of rain lately and the falls were pumping. So i stripped off and swam around nude for a bit. No one else would be stupid enough to climb down there so i was pretty safe!
So i wandered back to camp and set everything up and with nothing else to do I had all afternoon to drink and read my book. I haven't had a day like that in ages and it was actually super relaxing and i really enjoyed it. The plan was to drink early and go to bed early so i could get up early the next day to ring ARB as soon as they opened. Of course going to bed early never works and i stayed up way too late and felt pretty ordinary the next morning when my alarm went off at 6.30 AM!
Camping out the back of the 42' went better than i imagined. The whole idea with this car is to get a little bit more back to basics and it went really well.
I was really impressed with the Yeti, i deliberately left it in the sun to see how the ice would hold up and it barely put a dint in it. It wouldn't want to for the price i paid!
But it will get used in the boat as well and should last me forever, it feels indestructible and i'm confident if I cooled the Yeti first and cooled all the beers in the fridge before i packed them I rekon i could easily get 5+ days out of the ice.