All in a good mood now, after our Helicopter flight, the flight was meant to be 48 minutes, we were up in the air for 65 minutes. A little bonus I suppose. So we hit the track heading back to King Edward River Campsite to pick up with Dave and Jan. Bob and John want to stop off at an Aboriginal Art Site on the way through, Debra and I had checked it out a couple of days before. So we decide that we’d regroup at Drysdale River Station, see what time it is and make our next plans from there.
We have quite a few oncoming vehicles today as we are heading away from Mitchell Falls still in the a.m., most people are still heading towards the Falls. We have an encounter with someone travelling towards us, a bit too fast and when they had to correct their line they lost it in front of us. Glad we had installed the sway bars back onto the vehicle after all these years without them. They paid for themselves right then, I reckon, as we swerved to get around a car that we were planning on passing beside but passed side to tail.
We meet up with Dave and Jan at the intersection with the Kalumburu Road, stopped for a cuppa and to tell them about the flight. Hitting the road again, this time we are heading south, we are taking it easier than on the way up as the rear shocks are rattling on the bushes, driving me nuts, the exhaust sounds like a bracket has given way, maybe the one we welded up prior to the trip, maybe not, I’ll look at it at Drysdale.
Dave calls up on the radio, “something’s blown up”, so I’m on the brakes to get ready to turn around. “Maybe a turbo? #%$^&”. I start heading back to meet them, I’m probably a few km’s in front. Before I got back the news had come through, “Only a Shock Absorber”. I’m wondering how it can change so quickly from Blown up – to Turbo – to Shock Absorber. So I wait till we get there and we’ll have a look for ourselves. True it was a shock absorber, front right, but the shock absorber had broken in half, the oil had gone everywhere, including all over the exhaust manifold, engine pipe. So lots of smoke, in the area of the turbo, starts to make sense now. We get some tools out and have the shock out in no time. The shock had gotten so hot, melted boot, discoloured paintwork, I’d suspect seized, and then torn itself apart. The road is extremely corrugated, it doesn’t surprize me this has happened, they have been working fairly hard since Alice Springs, and probably the biggest problem is the front shocks on the IFS 100 are very short, meaning little oil capacity and little surface area for cooling, but this was as bad a section of road as we had been on so far. Nothing else to do but drive slowly, Dave finds 20km/hr pretty hard to maintain so his speed varies between 10 and 20 depending on the road surface at the time. We have about 25 km to go before we reach Drysdale River Station, they do some repairs at the Roadhouse and have a limited amount of spare parts so we’ll check it out when we get there.
No parts that are suitable is the verdict, they suggest Derby as being the only chance of spare parts and give him a phone number of a place there. Out with the Sat phone, yes they have a pair in stock. I’ve offered to drive to Derby, pick up the parts and drive back to meet them. The round trip would be about 940km, drive through the night to get there, back the next day, meet up somewhere on the Gibb River Road, that would shorten the distance by maybe 80km or so. Anyway the place he’s onto asks his whereabouts, and suggests that he can get them on a Taxi Truck leaving first thing in the morning and should be at Mt Barnett Roadhouse about 1pm. The truck only runs once a week, and he has just enough time to get them to the depot this afternoon.
Done deal, a pair of OME Nitrocharger Shocks coming our way. By now I’ve had a bit more of look under my car, the rear shock bushes are completely shagged, and we ring back and ask can they put some rear lower Shock Bushes in with the other delivery. They were unsure what was required so I gave them a part number (trick of the trade being able to pluck part numbers out of thin air so many miles from my computer). All cool, paid for over the phone, shocks were the same price as Rec Retail on the East Coast Capital Cities, even better, only $23.00 for the delivery also. So we set up camp at Drysdale and do a load of washing each in the machines.
We need to do a bit of maintenance on the vehicles. I replace the lower shock bush on the driver’s side, but I’m not carrying the correct part, as I’d changed them prior to leaving Sydney, and figured I’d just carry all the others as spares. The bush doesn’t fit tightly, but it’s heaps better than what came out, I figure I’ll change the other side when we get the new bushes tomorrow. Checked some oil levels, greased the prop shafts, slid from one end of the vehicle to the other underneath just checking tightness of bolts, looking for problems, the exhaust bracket is no big deal, sure it will make it home. John has a noise in the rear diff of his HJ75. It’s still running the original diff at 470,000km, bearings have been replaced once but the CW&P are still original. John has owned this vehicle since new, 1985, and does all his own service work. The car had been off the road for a few years on blocks (deregistered) before a rebuild to start using it again in 2009 for our Drive 4 Life Simpson Desert Trip. We contemplate pulling both diffs out and swapping them end for end but decide to wait and see if the noise gets worse. Bob’s car is ok, fuel tank is hanging in there, nothing else required on his car. Dave’s car, apart from missing one shock, has some noisy fan-belts, his trailer seems all ok.
So it will be a slow trip to Mount Barnett Roadhouse, my rear shocks are making heaps of noise again so we stop to see what’s doing. Lower Bush has fallen out, gone, so I put my other spare bush in place, Dave just catches up as I’m finishing. We make it to Gibb River crossing, the next shock bush has also gone, so I decide to remove the shock absorber from the vehicle, to avoid doing damage to the shock or the mount. Surprisingly the car is driving ok, I’m able to maintain a much better speed than Dave, and we actually end up driving at about 80km/hr most of the way to Mt Barnett as we are back on the better quality Gibb River Road again. We have some lunch whilst we wait for the truck, an ice-cream would be nice, but the shop doesn’t have any until the truck arrives. The truck turns up early afternoon, we get our delivery and head out the back of the roadhouse about 7kms to Manning Gorge Campground. We start work on the vehicles, fit the pair of new shocks to the front end of Dave’s car. Doesn’t take long they are easy to get to. The bushes we got for the rear lower of my car turn out to be front bushes, pin type not eye type, not because they were given a wrong part number either!
Maintenance, showers, happy hour, dinner, in that order. Next day we go for the walk to Manning Falls, first you have to cross the river, you can swim or you can use a small tinnie (boat) that has lines attached so you just pull it across. Bob swims, we take the boat because we are carrying camera stuff. The boat leaks, pretty serious leak too, so it needs draining after each trip. Your boots get wet too. Camera stayed dry, all good now for the walk. You sort of walk up over the mountain and down again, to end up at the same river you just crossed. It’s a fair climb, hot weather again, takes about an hour to get to the falls. There are some other people here, some are swimming so we wait for them to get out of the way so we can have a clear photo. It is a nice place, swimming is good, an easy waterfall to climb onto for a shower, (no soap of course). A bit of Aboriginal Artwork around this gorge also, it’s not signposted but the old memory starts working and eventually I find it. Not as good as some other sites we’d visited. The walk back is easier, although it’s a big climb to start with, the majority of the distance on the way back is downhill. Use the boat again to get back to the campsite. Our next stop is a Galvans Gorge. A great place this one, short walk, good swimming hole if you wish, some Wandjina Art high on the Gorge wall. Unfortunately a couple of backpackers are in swimming and never move away, stopping a clean photo. A Boab tree atop the Gorge looks out of place somehow. We end up setting up camp at Silent Grove, which is about 10km before Bell Gorge.
Manning Gorge - the track in
Manning Gorge
Manning Falls
Manning Gorge Art
Galvans Gorge
Statistics: Posted by toy42r — Tue Aug 28, 2012 11:56 pm