Story Time SaturdaySo being a Saturday night, where I am stuck at work on late shift and finishing at 2 o'clock I thought I would recount the story of my move from Adelaide to Brisbane.
It seems with most things with me, Murphy is always nearby with his bloody "law". And so it was leading up to the move.
I had kind of known it for a while, but my clutch had begun to slip. It was intermittent, but it was there, and as I was just about to tow a 2 tonne boat and trailer 2000kms it was something that needed to be done. What it did mean was that I was able to upgrade to the Exeddy HD Sports Tuff clutch kit!!! Problem no 1, averted.
So the day comes where we are ready to leave, and in Adelaide it's a 45 deg day. Watching the old Ultraguage I see my intake temps up around 100deg and engine temps often sitting around 112deg. I don't know how much this is accurate due to having the egr resistor mod in but either way the cars temp needle was maybe 1 line from red. Performance was down, even towing the boat and I was worried. We had only just left and things were not looking good. The rest of the day saw us hitting 47deg as we drove through Renmark and not much more relief elsewhere.
Over the next day the temps dropped as we drove from Mildura to Dubbo, so performance was intermittent at best. Anyway just outside of Parkes I get a radio call saying that I have a tie down strap loose. So I look in the mirror and pull over...low and behold the tie down for the boat has snapped. I knew it was old so all good. Drove a few more kms up the road to a truck stop where I could tie it down with some rope from the boat and get through into Dubbo. If only I knew.
Get into Dubbo on a Saturday night, was staying a day so we could do the zoo and the idea was to get a strap Monday morning. Monday comes, get a strap after waiting for the shop to open and back to the trailer to hook up and go. And that's when I see it...
An inch of gal steel was all that was stopping my boat from falling off the back or from flying into the back of the car. Great, what to do now. Managed to get booked into a metal fabrication joint for some welding.
Slight delay but we got moving in the end. It also explains why the boat was moving around so much on the trailer. Once that tie down let go it only took a few kilometres to do the damage.
Anyway, hoping that would be the end of it, we journeyed on. Until we were almost on the home stretch. Just outside of Warwick, going up a hill, I changed down into third and put my foot down. Next minute there is this massive hissing noise and no real go. Pull over knowing exactly what was wrong this time I pop the bonnet to find my turbo to intercooler line popped off the rigid ducting. I feared the worst in that I had lost the clamp, but a quick search found it still on that ducting. Out with the tools and a quick tighten up and all is good.
Magically, all of a sudden, the car had no performance issues, engine temps were good, everything was good. Why was this? My thinking is that the turbo to intercooler hose was loose at the intercooler end and leaking hot air into the engine bay. Also, air wasn't being cooled as efficiently and so that was causing all the issues.
But we got here in the end. The love affair with my car continues to be a rocky one, and she certainly can be a temperamental bitch at times...but things may finally all be falling into place (I say that now...but...).
That's enough of me banging on for the moment.
The end.