More videos than videoezy

It’s been a while since I’ve made a post, but to be honest it feels like a bit of a waste of time. Most things I contribute are just building the car and if I was reading this blog, I’d certainly be sick of hearing about it. As you can see, this post is all videos.

I renewed the bulbar, and installed synthetic rope which is brilliant to use. It’s so lightweight and easy to handle – and should be a lot safer if it was to fail.

This weekend I’ve sold a heap of stuff on eBay and allclassifieds. $400 sold so far and probably another $300 that I’m confident will sell. Another $500 could be made by selling the drawers but I think this is going to be near impossible to sell. To be honest, I wouldn’t be happy, but I would be relieved to see them for go for free. Most this stuff was just occupying space at home and at work, so it’s a pleasure to see it go to someone who will use it. If it doesn’t sell in a month or so, I’ll just sell the drawer runners and cut up the steel.

There has been little development on the visa front. The Mongolian one needs to be ordered within 90 days of arrival. We have our international driving permits… and that’s about it.

Woah – Interesting day

Isn’t it ironic that of my last two 4wd’s, both of them have had problems with reverse lights. The previous one just had a dirty switch, and today when I dived under the car to investigate why our new troopie has recently lost it’s reverse lights, I found it has a broken connector on the switch. In fact, it was a little difficult to find as there was no cable leading to it, just the two bent pins sticking out. To save a couple of words, here is a video. It’s not real relevant or particularly interesting, but I make these videos to help other people. My last reverse light video has helped heaps of people. It’s got over 3200 views, with comments of people saying ‘thanks, I did what you did and my problem is fixed’ which is nice.

So another bit of awesome was the discovery that I appear to have a front diff lock. Normally I wouldn’t care so much, but I did want a front one for a very specific reason. In a previous post, I highlighted concern that Maxtrax work great as long as you can get them in front of a wheel that’s driving. 95% of the times you get stuck in a 4wd is when one rear wheel slips, AND one front wheel slips. A single diff lock (front or rear) eliminates this ‘cross axel’ loss of power. But ideally for us, not only do we not loose this drive, if we do get stuck, we can put the maxtrax in front of the front wheels and know they are both going to drive us out.

Oh, nearly forgot… I picked up our International Driving Permits today! Very exciting. It’s cool to see all the translations in the permit which show authorities how to read it in their language. I can’t help but ponder as to when we will use it. I BET we’ll get it our a minimum of five times. Everything I read suggests that foreigners get pulled over nearly every day. They just stop you out of interest, ask where your from, attempt to extort money out of us and send us on our way. Hopefully the IDP is one less thing they can pick us for.

And a tiny followup to the weekend, here is a picture or two of Wee Jasper and our camp ground. On the way back via Tumit, Gundagahi and Yass, we stopped and ‘smelled the roses’ at every opportunity. We took full advantage of the camper and had a rest outside of Yass rather than driving tired. A great luxury and safety feature I say!

the lost post and chorus

After doing all the lame house work jobs, I looked forward to posting my post from last night and writing one from today… only to find the one I wrote and saved last night cannot be found.
I was writing them in the email application as a draft which I would send when I got home – only to find the drafts cupboard bare. I’ve even since tested what I did last night, and sure enough, when you hit save, it doesn’t do anything – gawdammit! It was such a good post too!

Ok, so I’ll try recreate it from memory. So I had found my way inside our camper at around 9PM – it was dark enough and cold enough to justify departing the outside conversation. I was dying to see the photos I’d taken in the afternoon. Consider it antisocial if you will, but I consider it perhaps too logical or practical to freeze my ass off when there is a perfectly nice comfy couch waiting in our nice dry and warm camper for me to perch on and skim through the day’s photos. The first obvious impression is that the insulated solar screens were working a treat. There was no radiating cold from the windows and now that it’s perfectly private, you don’t feel like your on display, lit up for the world to see. I was loving it. Our cosy little island in an otherwise uncertain world. It had rained on and off the hour or so en route to Wee Jasper so we were expecting to use the shelter more than we had to.

With the photographs, I was somewhat disappointed with how they were capturing throughout the day. They all seemed washed out and a bit blue. Even after a stint with the polarising filter, I was still underwhelmed. On a whim, I changed the white balance setting from automatic to ‘Cloudy 7000K’ well, the difference was staggering. Suddenly skin tones were no longer anaemic and grass was actually green. Here is a before and after shot, same scene, same time:

Left: Automatic White Balance                                Right: Cloudy 7000K

We had pushed hard Saturday morning to get everything ready for the weekend. I’d prepared the bed and Cassie had finished stitching the mattresses. The bed is fixed in place using two ‘lift off’ hinges. This enables us to remove the bed and use it outside the car as a table, but also protects us from it coming crashing forward in the event of an accident (as it only slides off backwards)

Sometimes things just work out. I needed a ~25mm hole to fit the door catch. So I bought a 25mm spade bit and after sanding out the hole it fit perfect. A few days later, someone threw out a wardrobe hanging pole out on the front lawn. Initially annoyed at people littering our lawn, I resolved that this could be handy somehow. A day later, after using the hacksaw to cut into 350mm legs for the bed. In a final coincidence, the pole was a perfect 25mm wide, so the spade bit made create holes for the legs to sit in. All worked perfect…. its nice to win sometimes.

Progress

This post will be fairly dot-point oriented:

- In the interest of our many visa applications, we each got 16 passport photos. Each country wants one or two. Plus we’ll need some spares in case something gets lost.

-Cassie has cut up our camp mattresses into two perfect sized pieces. These will function in the day as the back rest and seat cushion and of a night become a perfect width air mattress. You’ll get a rough idea how they will work as they sit on top of the new cabinet.

 

Last week we ordered the Solar Screen’s. They not only offer excellent privacy, they reduce heat gain by reflecting light/UV during the day, and the insulation keeps the heat in through the night. Other hidden benefits include absorbing sound and reducing condensation. Have a bit more of a read if your interested: http://www.solarscreen.com.au/ With any luck, they’ll arrive before our camping trip this weekend.

All going to plan, we’ll be able save a heap on accommodation as in most towns, as it would be be nearly impossible to sleep in the car without privacy. From what I understand, it’s quite frowned upon to sleep in a car in Paris.

I ordered a spiral bound Mongolian map – cool – can’t wait to get it and start planning a route.

I spent Sunday with my Dad – he helped me build the cabinet. At some point I got a dimension incorrect, which threw out two other measurements. DOH! Oh well, it’s covered pretty well now, and if anything it’s stronger for it.

On Monday, armed with a chisel, hammer and pen I ‘rebated’ the hinges into the cabinet top. From the picture they look rough, but they will look better with some putty around the over-cut.
In case the picture doesn’t describe properly, there are three hinged sections. The two cushions mentioned above will sit on here. One will go nearly up to the black window clasps and the other goes all the way to the edge of the cabinet.

The hinges are deliberately offset from the edge of the cabinet – This will do two things. It allows the lids to stay open on their own to facilitate access and hopefully will also allow the top cushion to stay in place velcro’ed to the side with us only needing to move the bottom cushion to access the box contents.

Thanks again goes out to my dad – couldn’t have done it without his experience and craftsmanship.

Brindabella Valley

So today we had a Picnic lunch with Cassie's brother Jay & his
girlfriend. After much pastrami, potato salad and crispy bread, I'm
now suitably stuffed. So here is a picture. You'll notice GPS
coordinates at the bottom of all posts we submit on the road.

Position: 11-09-25 14:48:55 +1000 +0000
http://maps.google.com/maps?&ll=-35.39553,148.7476&q=-35.39553,148.7476&z=16
#END

Long time no post

So it’s been a while since I’ve written a post, put simply because all I’ve been doing is gradual boring stuff. Nothing of merit to report. It’s so boring writing and reading about work on the car so I’m trying to avoid it.

Today I actually did a heap of stuff which was surprising. I mounted the door to the kitchen unit. Not a hopelessly difficult job, but taxing. The templates and positioning is hard enough, but drilling a 26mm wide hole with nothing but a 10mm drill bit and a chisel was a challenge. Some people might suggest using one of those blade bits, but they would drill a hole through the door face, so I’m not sure how it’s done.

Rather than bore you with a story, at the bottom of the post there is a quick video and some pictures of the progress.

I’ve ordered the ‘Letter of Invitation’ which is required for the type of Russian visa we are sourcing. It’s going to cost $275 each for this letter and looks something like this:

You can see in red the English translations, but the document is most certainly in Russian! Russian visa’s are seriously restrictive – you need to register at each hotel you stay on your itinerary every night. According to all reports every Hotelier’s resents doing this registration and they are never polite or accommodating towards abroad tourists for this reason.

To jump back to the itinerary point, with most Russian Visa’s, you need to give them a day by day itinerary of your trip, prior to the visa been granted. Yes, that is hopeless.

To continue on how restrictive these visa’s are, a ‘tourist’ visa is valid for up to 30 days and are valid for a single entry/exit. We need like 60-90 days.
Private visa’s are for foreigners who have friends or relatives in Russia, is valid for up to three months, but is valid for a single entry/exit.

Consider that we need three entries:
1)  Vladivostok
2) Altay region (coming back in from Mongolia)
3) Between Kazakhstan and Ukraine

We would need to apply each time, whilst on the move – a difficult feat indeed.

We however have one ace up our sleave – We’re registering for a Russian Business visa. We are entering as business people which entitles us to 12 months of travel, with unlimited entries with NO need to provide itinerary or do the lame registration each day. It also means we won’t get ripped for $100/Day for hotels.

Apparently as we have not had a Russian visa before, we are not entitled to the multi-entry. This will result in one of three outcomes:

1) They may issue it anyway because we are nice people ;-)
2) We may only be issued a double entry (which means we miss out on Kazakhstan)
3) We may have to be issued with a single entry visa, only to not use it, which would then entitle us for the multi-entry.

One other epic bugbear is that visas can only be applied for 45 days prior to arrival date. Crazy I know. For this reason, we have specified that our ‘arrival date’ is 1/1/2012 which at a minimum will enable us to not book flights or ship the car without having secured the visa. If we did this any other way, the car would already be en route to Russia with no certainty that we could meet it!

Country	Visa Status	Rough % Complete	Cost $AUD EACH
Russia	One Letter Of Invitation Sent	10%	$476
Mongolia	Visa Application Completed	50%	$100
Kazakhstan	Have not lifted a finger	0%	$109
Ukraine	Have not lifted a finger	0%	$110
EU	Not Required	100%	$0
UK	Not Required	100%	$0

The Mongolian visa was beautifully simple. A single page, who are you, when you coming, are you bringing children… no worries, $100 please. THATS IT.

Ukraine seem to require a ‘valid and prepaid hotel reservation’ to allow processing of the Visa – no biggie, but weird as we will need to provide a date which will be like hitting a target from a million miles away.

I must say, it’s been fantastic to get the ball rolling on some paperwork. As each item gets ticked off, the stress drops substantially.

 

Cut out made with chisel

Repaired bumperett. It’s not perfect, but it is mostly unnoticeable.

Handbrake adjustment

Today I adjusted the handbrake on the camper. It’s not that it’s a difficult job, it’s just time consuming when you have to do it twice. I adjusted each side, but forgot to release the slack in the cable first. I also installed the third roof rack and mounted the hi-lift jack. You can see it all in the video below. I may end up moving the first rail forward a bit, but it will depend on the position of the spare wheel. Because today was the first time I’ve had the wheels off the car, it’s dawned on me quite how heavy they are. Getting one onto, or off the roof rack is going to be an epic feat. I’m not sure if a thinner ‘Telecom tyre’ on a split rim will weigh less than the 275 sunraiser. Driving with the roof rack and hi-lift today was a new experience. I’m not sure if it was just really windy today, but I seemed to be buffeted more than usual. This will probably be much worse with the addition of one of these weatherproof boxes for all the tools, spares, oils and recovery gear on the roof. But the way I see it, our dry and clean internal space is too precious to fill it with this gear, it just means we need to be careful with cornering and side slopes. I plan on buying a case that is narrow enough to fit on the floor of the car for shipping. I think grey will be the colour choice, with the orange maxtrax, I don’t want to look like a lego car.

This video was made after adjusting the handbrake – thank goodness I did. The panel seems to have unclipped. I just need to unbolt the back, and slide it forward into the clip – no harm done.