edddo
10th September 2013, 08:32 PM
Recently got home after a 4 week trek that included 5 days crossing the Simpson via French and WAA lines. What a great trip..I had been wanting to do it for about 20 years and it lived up to expectations :-).
The Disco was fairly loaded up and very well serviced and prepared for the trip. It returned just on 12l/100 km for the 5500 km trip which with roof rack was about what I expected...if a bit over..but still fair bit better than my mate with a 4.5 V8 cruiser ute- he averaged about 14.5. Having said that I was quietly impressed with the figures he got given the load he was carrying and the power/torque he had on tap.
The single thing the Disco did not do well was cope with the constant scalloping in the French line. In a lot of places they were about 3 or 4 metres apart and this cause the disco to pitch...and the shocks ( oldish Billies) could not manage this and I had to go slower than I wanted to to avoid constantly hopping and topping out on the rebound. I also run polyairbags and had them at about 20psi( best by trial and error).
So my question is if I were to do it again, what would be good options for the shocks? My billies have done about 100000k so this is probably the issue - they are worn out and this trip pointed that out...but that is a good life!
I can get billies again quite cheaply from the US..but are there superior or better value options out there for heavy duty/expedition shocks these days?
Lindsay
The Disco was fairly loaded up and very well serviced and prepared for the trip. It returned just on 12l/100 km for the 5500 km trip which with roof rack was about what I expected...if a bit over..but still fair bit better than my mate with a 4.5 V8 cruiser ute- he averaged about 14.5. Having said that I was quietly impressed with the figures he got given the load he was carrying and the power/torque he had on tap.
The single thing the Disco did not do well was cope with the constant scalloping in the French line. In a lot of places they were about 3 or 4 metres apart and this cause the disco to pitch...and the shocks ( oldish Billies) could not manage this and I had to go slower than I wanted to to avoid constantly hopping and topping out on the rebound. I also run polyairbags and had them at about 20psi( best by trial and error).
So my question is if I were to do it again, what would be good options for the shocks? My billies have done about 100000k so this is probably the issue - they are worn out and this trip pointed that out...but that is a good life!
I can get billies again quite cheaply from the US..but are there superior or better value options out there for heavy duty/expedition shocks these days?
Lindsay