D3 5000k trip.

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Originally Posted by TerryO

I don't mind admitting your a braver man than me Andrew given your description of where you went with only basic communication equipment and limited fuel and water supplies.

Having said that it sounds like you had a great time and saw lots of very interesting things and places. ... :)

Photo's sound like a very good idea...

cheers,
Terry

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Was fantastic, I admit it was a bit light on in terms of prep, won't do it again without a proper bullbar and at least a good quality UHF with aerial. However I minimized the risks by careful planning around fuel and making sure I had good margins, this did mean a few unwanted detours for fuel when I would have preferred to avoid a few towns but I was never pushing it. I also figured that I could make 20 liters of water last for 4-5 days for 4 of us in winter in an emergency and while some of the roads we went on were very low traffic, we would have been very unlucky to have had no traffic in a week on any of them. There is also a fair amount of water around out there at the moment both on the surface and not too far underground in the watercourses and I had the means to boil it. I also made sure I had good quality up to date HEMA maps which also have all the homesteads marked.

I will do some photos when on a computer, cant do it from the iPad.

Oh also should say the bits I mentioned where there were no roads and we were bush bashing were on private properties with a second vehicle with people with local knowledge and where the property owners knew where we were going (kind of).

Another observation, the bit where we were driving on an overgrown track where the grass in the middle hump had grown to above bonnet height, my D3 when we were finished had sucked tons and tons of grass cut into short lengths through the grille and onto the front of the radiator.

The Prado we were with, no bullbar, had virtually nothing in his radiator, for some reason the D3 seems perfectly designed to cut and suck grass. Anyone else experienced this?

Took me about half an hour to fish it all out along with a dozen or so grasshoppers.

Hi And3rew

Wonder if we were in Winton at the same time??

The grille is very easy to remove and will allow better access to clean the radiator etc. Instructions are in the manual under the part that describes changing a headlight bulb. Just a case of squeeze releasing a few clips.

We hit four 'roos (3 on the road into Charleville, east bound) and will be looking at a bull bar too.

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Originally Posted by dangermousehouse

Hi And3rew

Wonder if we were in Winton at the same time??

The grille is very easy to remove and will allow better access to clean the radiator etc. Instructions are in the manual under the part that describes changing a headlight bulb. Just a case of squeeze releasing a few clips.

We hit four 'roos (3 on the road into Charleville, east bound) and will be looking at a bull bar too.

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We were very lucky, how much damage did they do?

The grille is easy to remove as long as you don't have the full height nudge bar which gets in the way.

We were very lucky as we had minimal damage.

The first roo I think I clipped its tail and he went into the passenger front wheel
The second pushed in the driver side fog light and pushed off the front wheel arch trim
The third and forth ran into the passenger door which is now creased.

I was on the anchors when all of them hit, so probably doing less than 60 kph on the first 2 and less than 40 on the last 2.

I've repaired the front damage, but the door will have to stay as it is.

We also had a tyre let go which took the rear passenger door trim off for us.

Well said regarding minimizing the risk. We travelled very similar to yourselves (regarding water and comms etc) but also phoned ahead to each place we were stopping so they were expecting us. When we left Winton, we also arranged to 'check in' with the Motel owner (we had just departed from) on reaching our destination so he knew we were safe.

Having said that, I will be upgrading our comms.

Cheers

Gotta love travelling. We have just returned from a six week trip in QLD, with our three boys aged 7, 11,& 12. Up the coast, two weeks camping on Hook Island in the Whitsundays, on to Atherton, across the Savannah Way and then down for a couple of days in the Simpson Desert before heading home to South Coast NSW. 7500km.

A great trip and lots of great stops on the way.

Having toured around OZ previously in a 300tdi defender and a TD5 D2, I can say that the D4 2.7 is a fantastic touring car, comfortable, reliable and capable. It is great to have confidence in a vehicle while travelling.

Like previous posts a couple of observations:
- we would have been more comfortable with a bulbar, but we were fortunate not to hit anything
- we travelled with a handheld uhf. Not planning to travel too far off the beaten track we did not fit the codan HF radio that is sitting in the garage. The trip to the Simpson was a decision we made on the trip, not planned before. Some extra comms would have been nice.
- the Cooper ATR's we fitted before the trip were faultless over all surfaces, including sand dunes, very stoney roads and wet dirt.
- homemade storage unit did the job exceptionally well
- the Southern Cross canvas roof bag was brilliant on top of the expedition roof rack, it holds heaps of light stuff and with no occy straps required was easy to use and no need for a trailer
- the trip computer registered 10.5 ltr per 100km overall. I haven't adjusted for slightly taller tyres or checked actual fuel consumption. We relied on the standard fuel tank which was adequate, didn't need any detours and not enough of a pain to justify the $$ for additional tank
- taking out the 6 and 7th seat provided invaluable space for recovery gear, water and other bits and pieces
- I had the GOE rods in the car, but didn't fit them, as we weren't planning hard offroad work. I would have liked them for tackling Big Red in the Simpson though, they would have helped me with the last few metres of the dune. Standard suspension was fine for all other dunes. We travelled from Birdsville to Eyre Creek and camped by the water on our lonesome for a couple of nights - awesome.
- lost a front number plate in the Gulf country, one would think dealers would fix them appropriately
- a snorkel will be one of my next items to fit, for both dust and water. Deepest crossing was 900mm, see photo, which put water over the bonnet.
- the Hillbilly gas fired camp oven is great, as many national parks in QLD prohibit fires. We baked our own sourdough bread throughout the trip.

I will post some more in other threads that I had opened.

Photo from Big Red attached. Plenty of water and wildlife out there.

Love travelling and love the D4.

Cheers

Chris

I hope you guys are going to do trip reports with more pics:D

I want more:D

By the way Chris, where is that water crossing:confused:

Baz.

I fitted the LLams unit to my D3 in between two trips to Moreton and all I can say is brilliant and what a difference. No more bongs at 40k and the inevitable lowering as you run up the beach and it was great not having to remember to hit off road height each time you crossed the fore dune which I might add I often forgot to do.

Baz, the water crossing was north of Lawn Hill National Park, on road from Kingfisher Camp.

Cheers, Chris