Q: What’s new?

A: Not a whole lot ;-)
I guess you could call it practice. Deliberately getting bogged to practice self recovery:

I am so thankful for the front diff lock, without it, using the Maxtrax never quite works like the advertisements. They are fine, but used on a vehicle with open differentials, you end up only able to use one at the front, and one at the back. But even then, once those wheels have traction on the Maxtrax, the drive disappears out to the wheels with less traction.

Today I changed the transfer case oil and rear diff oil and greased everything. The transfer case oil needed changing because of the below video. The right hand side is a sample from the transfer case, the left hand side is a clean sample from the gearbox.

Four wheel driving is an expensive hobby.One of the reasons I resisted buying a car before we left is so that I could avoid costly damage. Ok, the above is a minor cost, but the damage can get expensive. I have discovered that over the course of my ownership, I have inadvertently dinted both diesel tanks. No biggies, but enough to see that they are not perfectly straight. dammit! Probably lost 5L in capacity all up, but the question begs, is there any weakness developed now? To try and limit the risk associated with a tank rupture and loss of fuel, we will be switching between tanks every couple of hundred KM’s. This way we only risk loosing 'half’ our fuel if one tank fails and we don’t notice the leak. if you buy into the superstition, Murphy's law would suggest it will invariably be the full tank that fails… but I don’t really buy into that. I do believe in mitigating risks however ;-)

Oh! something that is new is this: (Obscure shot builds suspense). Don’t mind the string, I’m still learning to trust the suction mount.

It’s a low price, brilliant quality HD video camera. Key features include 1080p HD video, 11MP stills, 170 degree field of view, water proof to 60M. They are an ugly little bastard but very versatile. The versatility is demonstrated in the accessories which are very well priced. From additional ‘bolt on’ batteries, anti-fog inserts, wi-fi remote and even a red floaty to help you find it in water.
To demonstrate it’s versatility, here is another video shot entirely with these cameras:

Shot entirely with GoPro HD Hero 2’s

We’ve taken probably two hours of footage with it so far, and it has been very impressive. Not quite as awesome as the footage above, but cool none the less.

One of my roof boxes leak. I have no idea where or how, but after some significant rain the other night, there was about 5mm of water lining the bottom. A bit annoying considering they are meant to be weatherproof… evidently not.