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?