Win some, loose some

Ok, well, it was all win, with the exception of the passenger side indicator now no longer works, but it is now too dark to diagnose any further.

Although it’s taken the best part of the day, I’ve finally cleared out all the junk that occupied the engine bay. I had plans of mounting the compressor as well today, but the light faded too quickly.

Had to remove the batteries to get all around the engine bay.

There were four connectors earthed on this one screw. These were for the fog lights and the driving lights. It true bodgy installer fashion, this was hijacked off the park light. And, the driving light circuit was hijacked off the +ve of the headlight globe. I suppose this is fine, it’s just messy.

These were all the connectors, just on one battery.

The big 6 gauge wires have been run to the back of the car, and are about to be terminated above.

 

One of the cables terminated and ‘heatshrunk’. This is the water proof fuse panel I’ve been waiting to fit. It was somewhat bigger than I expected and struggled to find somewhere to install it.

This is the factory ‘power distribution’ block. Above as pictured is the winch wired live all the time, and the second connector on the ACC+ is the dual battery isolator.

After having to drill out the stubborn screw, they are now both correctly setup on the ignition circuit.

Woo hoo, by earthing the lamp circuit, it’s now nice and bright – much better. And it now indicates the out/in perfectly. Can’t wait to test this properly tomorrow. I now have a box of cables and fuses which I’m sure will get reused, but it’s much less weight on my mind now knowing it’s pretty much back to factory.

Occasionally (once for Cassie, and twice for me) when starting the car it takes a few turns and has a large enough to be visible puff of black soot/smoke once it starts. Not really sure what it could be, maybe the glow plugs are not working?

I’ll explain my thinking to help with the diagnostic process. The presence of soot/smoke sounds to me like it IS getting diesel, and when it does start, all this isn’t properly burnt and appears as soot/smoke. It does run rough for about one/two seconds after this incident.

It never hesitates to start if you restart it, or if it’s warm – welcome any ideas.

Isn’t it amazing…

…how solutions come to you in a flash. Whilst filling our hot water bottles I had one of those brilliant ‘light bulb’ moments. It is way to painful to call it a light bulb moment as I’m describing why I think the indicator light bulbs on the winch switch are dim.

This picture is the closest I can come to describing how the lights on the switch are not real bright. It’s difficult as if I take the photo with the flash, it’ll appear dim, if I take it without the flash, it will appear bright.

Here is the wiring diagram. Pin 2 is the common positive, and the switch positions switch current to PIN 1 in up position, and PIN 2 in the down position.

 

When testing the pins on the switch today at work with my makeshift multimeter, I was confused as to why when I monitored pins 1,2 & 3, they would all show continuity wether the switch was in the up OR down position.

This was most confusing… until I suspected that the current was feeding back through the lights, as they are both connected for either position.

Anyway, I suspect, as I have not connected PIN 7 to earth, the only way the current could have got through, is as part of the circuit. Now welcome to year 7 science, if you hook up two bulbs in series, they each get half the voltage (not half the current)… soooo the voltage for each bulb is 6V, not the normal 12V it was designed for.

The proof will be if I earth PIN7 tomorrow, we should get a better result.

In-cab winch controller

As mentioned in a previous post,  I mentioned that I intended to install an in-cab winch controller.
Here is some thinking behind the idea:
-It is invariably pissing with rain when you need to recover yourself or somebody else.  The plan is to quickly attach to the anchor, lock the winch in gear, return to the warmth of the cab and patiently wait for the recovery. If it’s not you that’s stuck, there is no reason you should get wet, even if it is your winch they want to use. Leave it to the person that misjudged the obstacle to hook themselves up.
-The hand controller cable is so stiff and difficult to route through the drivers window so you can operate it from the drivers seat. It’s stupid when you need to get in and out of the cab as you trip over it, or jam it in the door. The warn controller cable is much more silicone, this is like steel.
-The hand controller is quick to get wet or muddy and when it comes time to put it back in the cabin, you have to find somewhere for it that won’t dirty any thing else.
These might sound fairly weak reasons to perform this modification, but I think it’s going to be awesome.
This feature doesn’t rule out use of the hand controller, it can still be attached and used outside the car for when it’s appropriate (such as winding the cable on tidy again)
Ok – lets get going. Captions are beneath the pictures.

Finally bought one of those wire stripper plier things. They are unreal. Bought some nice grade crimp connectors, no more rubbish ones for me.

Here is the hand controller socket (beneath the silver flap). Notice the route of the existing black wire and cable tie.

Here is where the switch will go. It currently has some immobiliser LED, which does nothing. I had initially planned to put it on the other side of the console to occupy the more damaged black plate, but decided on this side at the last minute as it would facilitate operating the winch from outside the car without leaning over unrestrained.

Here is the factory rubber boot that goes through the firewall. It had a little nipple on the end of it which when cut off, made the perfect water proof cable entry. It’s almost like it was designed for it (probably was actually)

Here the cable came through the firewall…

… and very easily routed up to the dash. A few days earlier after struggling to find ‘3 core 12V cable’ it dawned on me that an equally suitable cable would be 10AMP, 240V cable. I have hundreds of them at work.. I grabbed one and simply cut the ends off… voila!

Would you believe that this is one of two random cables that no doubt were for sirens, fog lights, flashing lights and driving lights.  It is somehow comforting to remove an old cable that has just been cut off and taped up.

Here is the other end of ONE of the cables.

Re-crimped some terminals. These are mated with the hand controller socket wires, and my new cable.


Taped it all up (white tape was all I had) Notice how the power cable is routed beneath the body unlike before. The power cable is securely cable tied to the hydraulic line (not visible in these pictures)

Tucked it up above the solenoids, completely out of sight and weather.

Terminated the wires and tested great. I deliberately didn’t wire up the lights for the test as they complicate the whole thing. After it all tested ok, I wired them up. They are no where near as bright as the ARB compressor switch lights, but oh well. However, not knowing why does annoy me.

Here it is installed. You wouldn’t believe that it’s the perfect size. Not a MM wrong. Slots straight in. I’ll either install a blank to the right or find another switch ;-) I had thought I would need to cut and file the factory blank plate to fit, but turns out, it’s not needed at all!
The switch when pressed does rub a tiny bit on the dash above it when winching out. No great problem, but it could get stuck unless I file some of the top of the switch off.
I discovered that the winch is supplied with power all the time. It’s no great problem, but I think I would prefer it was only supplied with power with the ignition running. It also doesn’t seem to be fused, so I might look into that on the weekend.

Money for old rope

I can remember the first time I heard that expression. Thanks to Adam's dad for the trip down memory lane.

I sold most the eBay items today for a nice $463 profit. The only things left is some weird nearly unique Ethernet over phone line thing, and a weird laptop with a broken battery. Almost can't be bothered though.

Updates with regards to shipping.

Some positive ‘wet concrete’ responses to our request for quotes
Although we need to finalise shipping dates in 2012, currently sailings from Sydney occur every Tuesday.
Sailing takes approximately 22-28 days
It takes 14 days to pack the container and deliver it to the wharf - 5 days it may be sitting dockside.

Costs
A$800 for packing (includes lashing into container)
A$70 Australian Customs clearance
A$500 Marine cargo insurance (A year ago we were advised 2.5% of the cargo value so I assume it's still around that mark)
A$413 Sydney port charges

US$2180 for a 20" container from Sydney to Vladivostok
US$600 Bunker surcharge… cmonnnn guys. Apparently this is to do with the price of oil and does fluctuate.

US$173 Russian handling charge
US$256 Russian customs charge
US$408 Russian unpacking costs
US$11 Russian delivery costs
US$ UNKNOWN Russian bribes.
US$ UNKNOWN Storage fees – depending on how long it takes us to pick it up, first 7 days are free, each day for the following week is US$82/Day

So, like 6 grand… one way. It’s hard to remain positive when you feel your getting reamed by every crook in the book.

I love how dot point 6 ‘Other Costs’ really represents bribing your way into regaining possession of your own property.
It’s like tipping in the united states, I get it, but I don’t have to like it.

My attitude towards this is somewhat foul – Perhaps in part to Cassie’s unsympathetic attitude towards my privately painful expense of like $10-12 grand!

Woah... on a much more amazing point, I have NEVER typed or written the word wharf. I had no idea it was spelt like that! It's hard to believe that you could go through life without using a word on paper.

Another day another dollar

Thinking of the caption for the post is usually the hardest bit. In fact I often just say a point then try to back it up in the post below. Today’s caption is silly because I seem to every day find another thing to spend dollars on without earning any more.

Steven (Cassie’s dad) and I went to go get firewood on Saturday morning. As it was a bit of a damp and frosty morning, I decided to go ahead of our meet up time, primarily to give me a chance to rewind on the winch cable from the other night, but secondarily to serve as a backup in case Steven’s car couldn’t pull the firewood up the slippery hills.

Ironic that the tree trunk protector was used to ‘skull drag’ the tree trunks out of the bush to their eventual demise.

 

One tonne of firewood. Made accelerating difficult. Once at speed, it was great, but taking off from a tee intersection up hill is a little bit embarrassing. There is no point flogging it, you just need to be patient. It did confirm our need to be very weight conscious with our fit out. I’m trying to budget for no more than 200KG of fit out and belongings. This includes the 60KG of water and fridge.

The only partial exception to this will be the items on the roof. This will include the rack itself, spare tyre, jack, shovel, spares, tools, straps etc. but we do want to keep an eye on it - especially on the roof.

We went and purchased some insulation for the back of the car. The secondary reason for purchasing it today was to take off the interior panels to see if it would be easy to pop the dent back out. The visibility of the dent on the car is much more pronounced due to the way the mud misses it.

Turns out it was not that easy, the steel panels are TOUGH! I’m inclined to get a quote for it’s removal, but I can’t help but carry a degree of arrogance that it shouldn’t cost more then $100 cash to repair but I can see the crooks trying to rip me off.

The insulation will go behind the panels to stop some heat loss and reduce cabin noise. We got a polyester one so it shouldn't rot if it ever gets wet.

Today we fixed the drivers seat, it seemed that one or two of the springs on the left hand side had broken which had resulted in the sagging and eventual tear of the seam. This tear did facilitate the installation of two new springs which now make it indefinably better.

I’m selling a few items on eBay that were thrown out from a client’s site. I’d say I’ll get nearly $400 in proceeds which will go well towards our adventure. Not bad for ‘rubbish’

When we consider the expense and effort we’re going to for this trip, we sometimes get a smack in the face which urges us along. Watching ‘Grand Design’s’ on ABC tonight, a 30-40 year old couple were preparing the final stages of their house plans. For those unfamiliar with the Grand Design’s show, is the presenter follows a project from concept, through planning, build and ultimately the finished product. They even come back a few years later to follow up.

Tonight’s show was interviewing the husband as he was describing the project, he admitted that he had an illness and was going in for ‘investigative surgery' the very next day.

Switch to a few nice sunset scenes as the presenter advises that husband died 6 months later with stomach cancer. How quick we can demise. He was an IT consultant with his own business so naturally the story is instantly relatable. With less than 6 months to live, he still wouldn’t have got to do the trip that we want to do. As you can imagine, the speed at which life can change really means we MUST do things we want to. I suggest you read the very first twomagadan blog post to see the motivation and eternal struggle between investing for the future and living for now.

I even commented that upon news of the gentleman’s illness that in all the episodes we have watched, there has never been any great tragedy like death or a break up. Well, I certainly ate my words once it was revealed that he died.

Fuel Economy

Ugh, what a boring topic. I thought I would just post my findings and be done with it.

Manufacturers claim is 13L/100KM. I suspected it would be more like 15L/100KM with wider tyres, additional weight, full of fuel and a trip down and up the Clyde mountain.

It took 40L to do 300KM or 13.3L/100KM

BUT

The more exciting thing is that it does 300KM to half a tank. Which is a super easy number to work with when it comes to estimating our range. 300KM per half tank means 1200KM total range.

With fuel in some of the countries we are going to, you need to prepay for fuel, so been able to estimate how much fuel we need in each tank will save us from expensive messy mistakes.

Quick run to the snow

Today I went to the snow to give the car a bit of a test and see how the dual battery isolator works. With the aid of my new dual battery monitor (pictured below), I was able to see how it all works. I did a crude ‘wrap it round the terminals’ job as it’s certainly not going to be wired up in this position. Bodgy yes, funny… yes.

Redarc make a ‘smart start’ isolator which works like this:

-When you start the car, it only starts off the main battery unless you ‘override’ and link the batteries.
-The alternator only charges the starting battery until it’s full, and only then will it switch over and charge the auxiliary battery.

My setup is not as smart, but through it’s simplicity may just do the job. Some pros and cons:

-As soon as the ignition is on, the batteries are linked and effectively charging and discharging together.
-When you turn the key off, the auxiliary battery disconnects preventing auxiliary loads like a fridge, inverters, chargers and interior lighting from draining the starting battery.

I can see this being a problem if the following is true. Say you discharge the auxiliary battery to 25%. Assuming that the starting battery is 100%, when you turn the ignition on, the batteries are linked and would result in the auxiliary battery ‘equalising’ with the starting battery. I suspect this would mean with the rush of charge going to the low battery, not much current would be left to start the engine (requiring say 50-70% of the starting batteries cranking capacity)
One advantage of this, is that say you leave the lights on and your cranking battery is at 25%, without doing anything, you’ll be able to successfully start the car. You may however need to leave it a little while to equalise, but I’m not sure. It’s got that degree of idiot-proof which may save us one day.

Also got a chance to test the winch. When I played with it the other day, unaware, I was using the high speed, rope retrieval mode. I thought it was the winching mode however I quickly learnt when it wouldn’t move my car on this more demanding occasion.

In the spirit of messing around, I challenged the truck by driving around this stump. The first time took some effort to get through. So, I did what I always seem to end up doing, is trying something until something stops working.  Here are some pictures of the position. I propose I could have just driven out with some more right pedal, but I didn’t want to risk scratching the car in the bushes.

So after setting up Nick’s car back up the hill, we proceeded to winch… and winch… and winch.
Oh my it’s slow. strong, but slow. I’m becoming more convinced for the need of an in-cab winch switch. I managed to pull Nick half way down the hill towards me. I’d say it’s half the speed of an electric winch, but because it’s silent, you have no idea if it’s working at all. I’ve highlighted another reason for disliking the bullbar. There is no where near enough room for the cable on the drum. It needs to be on perfectly straight or it doesn’t fit. It means you run the risk of having to stop the recovery, run the cable back out, then put half it back on by hand and try to resume the recovery. That or you may end up unknowingly bind it up meaning not only is the winch jammed, but you can no longer use it to get you out!

Prior to all this fun, here are some pics of the snow:

I find the incessant need to take pictures with the car in it… no idea why, but here is another:

Would welcome some feedback as to the size of the pictures. I suspect most readers don’t realise they can click on the small thumbnails, so I usually stick with these larger sizes to get the story across to all.

Unproductive day

So with heard from the previous owner last night, he had some paperwork for the truck and the tow bar!
Sweeeeet I thought. Well, the towbar is the wrong one and the only document I was after was the engineers certificate - which was not in the pack received this afternoon. It contained every registration slip for the past 5 years, some information on an imoboliser (ugh), a trailer brake controller (ugh), the manual for the factory tape player, the current CD player,  the winch (good), and a Toyota recall notice which I can only assume has been ignored.
So the excitement of the documents and tow bar has been nothing but a disappointment.
I do intend to have a bit of a look under the hood of the car tomorrow but with the weather so cold and miserable, I suspect that will be a useless pursuit.

Productive day

Today didn’t start so well, with a surprise call from the RTA. At first I thought it was a joke, but they were indeed serious. They wanted to see the car to make sure it was indeed roadworthy, as a complaint had been made about the workshop which had recently passed it. Naturally thinking the worst was my first reaction, but after a casual drive back from Gungahlin it had sunk in that:

A) If it wasn’t road worthy I would want to know
B) If it was stolen or something, I would also want to know.

Sure enough, the RTA gentleman was waiting at my car when I arrived and was initially fairly abrupt, but like all RTA employees, they have had their personalities disabled. This guy was alright after all. I stupidly pointed out on the registration slip that there was an engineers certificate for the modified front seats. I don’t have the certificate and he insisted that it should be with the vehicle - but after looking at it he said I wouldn’t need one anyway as it used existing bolt holes etc. Thanks Peter.

I spent most the day removing tint out the front of work as it was a fairly quiet day. It’s much brighter in there now - not so dingy. Oh, and heaps easier to drive. It night it was near impossible.

We’ve retained the tint on the front two windows as it wasn’t as dark. On our last trip, we struggled with untinted windows under the gruelling sun. I was contemplating leaving the tint on the window immediately behind the drivers seat where the fridge is to help keeps it’s temperature down, but meh, it’s not really worth looking stupid for a practical reason that may make no difference.

So, the call from the RTA prompted me to change over the registration, which I did this afternoon. The RTA lady was again, initially cold and completely inconvenienced by my presence and proceeded to think of every possible reason why she couldn’t process my seemingly simple request of changing over the registered owner. The fragile dance we must partake in to nurse these ‘'people’ through doing their job is unbelievable.

She did prompt that for the transfer it was ok to not have the engineers certificate, but when it comes time to renew the registration, I must have it. This could be true, but I have no idea how I will recover the original engineers certificate. It may be easier to just have them drop it off the registration as Peter did say, I didn’t need it for these seats.

I asked about how we would go changing the renewal date because the registration is due for renewal while we’ll be in Mongolia. Her instant RTA response (condescending & pessimistic) was we’ll have to cancel it, remove the plates and re-register it (the whole time pointing out how inconvenient it would be). I did suspect there would be no way they could get their head around my request but after talking it through (more dancing) she positively put forward that you can process the renewal up to three months in advance. This may just save us. I’ll need to do the final numbers, but we might skim in if we don’t have any problems.

$539 dollars later ($29 dollars for the pleasure of the dance and $510 in stamp duty) the car is finally registered in my name.

So the truck has had it’s first big fill. Both tanks to the brim. It was a fantastic green colour which  can only assume is to differentiate between alpine diesel and regular diesel. Silly I know, but it felt great to know that I have 1300KM of range. By my calculations, that’s from here to Brisbane or here to Adelaide.
That was one of the big let downs on our last car, the range was so limited. We could only do 400KM on a best case scenario – it was more like 300-350. But we worked on the basis that if we had to turn around at the destination because they had no fuel, we could make it back. On our last trip, we were very much limited to stretches no longer than 200KM.

At new BP fuel station in Queanbeyan, they had maybe 4 diesel pumps, 3 of which were ‘Hi-Flow’ and ONE was a regular bowser. I couldn’t believe it. How many diesel cars must be getting around now, to only have one pump?! I must be going mad, or they are! For the record, it will not take a ‘Hi-Flow’ nozzle.

In my last post, I forgot to upload a picture of testing the winch controller to see how I could wire up the switch.

As suspected, only three of the pins in the plug are connected, which makes it simple for wiring.
But the confusing thing is, there is only a tiny bump on the connector to show you the correct way round when you plug it in. Wouldn’t you just make the plug with only three pins to make it easier and less prone to damage through error?

Light 'er up

Because it's winter, I get about a fifteen minute window to work on the car before it is too dark to be useful.
A fact not helped by the missing interior globe. I picked up two old fashion incandescent globes to buy me some time and help me confirm the type before I replaced it with some LED ones.

You can see the yellow of the traditional incandescent globe which does offer a warm light, but not a great deal of it.
Also notice the effect of removing most of the tint from one of the rear windows.
On the second roof support visible in the above picture, I plan to install a proper LED cabin light, running off the axiliary battery like the one below. It's weird, because there are two tiny holes beside the existing lamp, that look to be the exact measurements of this light... which makes me suspect maybe I'm not the first person to need more light in there.

What is surprising is that the LED light above, puts out I would estimate 3-4 times more light than a single festoon style interior light... but uses only a quarter of the power.

So, that's the thinking with lighting so far, but the next cool project I'm considering is implementing an in-cab winch controller. This is a momentary switch, meaning you need to hold it to make it do something and then when you let go, it goes off again. This will be in addition to the external winch controller which I have nearly run over twice already. I was thinking about how I would implement an isolation switch to prevent accidental use, but really, it'll only work while the engine is running, so the risk is minimal.



I've not yet had a chance to figure out how the dual batteries are configured. I don't know if there is an isolator somewhere or if they are just hooked up in parallel. For most automatic isolators, you have the option of temporarily connecting the batteries together to facilitate starting if the main battery is low or for heavy loads such as electric winching (whoo hooo, no risk of flattening the battery with my winch).
Again, I'm choosing a momentary switch for this task so that we can't accidentally run the main battery flat by someone leaving the batteries linked. I also plan to use the indicator light as a diagnostic output of the state of the isolator which will be very bling.

Cleaning day

Spent most of today and a bit of yesterday cleaning out the back of the car. It's taken all day and I've only done half.

These next few pictures will be the layers that have needed to come out:

Day 2

One upside of this cleaning process is that I've collected enough screws, dynabolts, electrical connectors and cable ties to build the international space station.

Cleaning and drying in the sun

Ahh, some resemblance of order and cleanliness

Clean side

Dirty side

As it was getting dark, we tried removing some of the tint. We managed to get most of one panel off. Experts seem to use steam, but we had a hair dryer. We might find us borrowing someone's steam machine to do the rest.