Well, well. Surprisingly, this post isn’t all about grease, opposed to the prior ones…
Quite a view, huh? What’s not in the picture is the horrible heat making you sweat with every step between the van and the door. And now, imagine hurling 14 door-sized packages up some climatised stairs only to find out that there isn’t any place in the living room, so assembly had to be done on the balcony with a breeze comparable to a hot air dryer. Anyway, I shouldn’t complain, this job is way better than the average fruitpicking jobs everyone else seems to be content with. With the sun burning all the way through the weekend I decided to do something dumb…
I’m usually hanging around south of maroochy river. One particularily boring and sunny sunday I decided to swim from the southern tip to the northern tip. Doesn’t look like much, does it? Well, with rising or falling tide there is quite a drift pushing through…
My adventure kit: Small Backpack packed with booze, sunscreen and bodyboard to keep my back(pack) dry. Not to mention my phone, I wouldn’t really need to keep the cans dry…
This is on the island in the middle of the river. Most of the way is actually only knee deep (at the right time), but the deep parts have a current that tears you in half when you try and cross it outside of the highest and lowest tide times. Which I did, wo would’ve thought.
Welcome to North Shore. Wholesome silence. While the south shore is a bustling town, the north end is much more tranquil and forested. Wading along the shore, I stumbled upon a small birthday party hidden away in a small bay, and before I knew what was going on I had a shot glass in one hand and a cig in the other – not the way i expected my adventure to end, but certainly a welcome one.
You’ve probably considererd yourself safe from any car-fixing content by now, but surprise! What would a weekend be without me trying to fix stuff? So much to do, so much to see! So what’s wrong with fixing the backdoor? The central locking is acting up, and this is the motor not willing to move anymore. Instead of checking first if any power is coming through (aaarrrgh)…
I took it apart. That’s what I always do. Not that it helps much. No burn marks, no disconnected cable inside…
So I finally got to the real problem. All the cables were hanging over my head, somehow I had to keep an eye on the voltage, connect two contacts and push the remote control and CONFIRM I was having contact when measuring zero volts. Well. But in the end I was sure. The upper two connectors are the only ones connected inside the motor housing, the other ones were negative leads not attached to anything. Soo, if I attach the upper red wire and replace the broken black one with one of the lower earth wires..?
Safety pin to the rescue. I felt like fucking McGyver that moment. Turns out, I’m not McGyver. Following thing happened: The motor unlocked without problems, but nothing the other way round. Unplugged and checked: Opening: 12V peak. Closing: 0V. Dumb me. Voltage is reversed to turn the motor the other way. So when closing, red wire is the same as earth. Eh. And with all my testing I somehow fried the fuse for the windscreen wipers. Magic
Hmm, wiring diagrams. While the Manual itself is english, the digital contents section is in russian. And the whole document is read-only, so no renaming the topics :/ But it was free, so who am I to moan?
Piecing together the whole central locking system diagram from 2 pages. While wiring diagrams look scary at first, applying logic to it helps sorting it out a little. What do we know from real world? All locks are working except one. So all lines needed by the other motors are fine.
So, I boiled it down to one page. Every connector plug has its own code, so plug ‘J-06’ can be deciphered as plug number 6 in the tailgate section. And the number next to my drawn line is the excact contact in said plug. So, in the end I spent a whole afternoon learning russian and deciphering connector codes only to walk up to the car with my super-duper-cheatsheet, check the cable leading out of the tailgate aaand it’s broken. Naturally, the only point where the cable ever moves (and subsequentially breaks) is at the hinge, with a little bit of thinking I could have thought of that myself.
It will be living hell to push a new cable through while the original wiring harness is still in there. But no hell for me today. That’s gotta wait.
Hmm, closed down shop…
Hmmm, thrown out office stuff…
Oh, look, free replacement cable! I probably won’t replace that anytime soon, but the next weekend when I’ve got nothing to do… I’ve got something to do.
In the end, a nonfunctional tailgate lock is irrellevant compared to an oily engine and a suspiciously squeaky front left brake.
Oh, look, Silas is back!
Okay, not much to see here, but this brake pad doesn’t brake. Somehow, this causes the other brake pad to sqeak. However, both will be exchanged as the whole caliper is broken judging by the fact that the brake pad doesn’t wanna cuddle with the disc when told to. Calipers seem to cost 100£+. But the ‘£’ scares me. This means that this part will be shipped around the world, probably taking a month and another 100£ in postage. Better go and see if there’s a scrapper who’s still got a Delica laying around…
Greasy Gremlin about to get soaked by another QUICK THUNDERSTORM INTERMISSION. No car-fixup-session is complete without it 🙂
This weekend, we finally got back to our trusted bush mechanic and his incredible collection of Delicas. Finally figuring out where our engine bay fire came from…
Master, Blaster, aaand me.
This is the harmonic balancer pulley, and to the left you can see a thick black trail of oil. That was the trace we were looking for.
In the end, it wasn’t just the seal, the balancer pulley in front of it was scuffed too. Rubbing against the front engine cover and shaved away almost a millimeter of metal. Oil, friction, hot metal? Yummy. So, in the end it seems we didn’t bust up our car on Fraser Island that bad, it was just comedically perfect timing. Oh, and I did get a slap on the wrist. Turns out I screwed the new oil filter on too tight, which damaged the thread and made it leak just like the one we bent on Fraser. That might be a embarrassing beginners mistake, but I’m not mad about it. That’s a lesson learned for life now.
V-Belts. Already worn away, corroded by oil. We replaced those in Pt. 1…
After ~80km of driving home: Dry Filter, dry sump, dry everything. Yass Baybe.
Just an overview of where we’ve been so far. There’s still a whole lot in front of us, but the current faults can’t stop us from driving. We’re still holding on to our plan to stay in Sunshine Coast until Christmas, then we’ll see if we head north or west.
Mmhh, nice plane. Not that I’d need one right now, because I’ve got a working 4×4 Campervan, thats almost as good as flying 🙂