The Simpson Desert in a D3

Cheers for the report. Its great to hear how others went on the way across.

I am in Alice Springs at the moment. 6 of us crossed the Simpson on a few days ago from East to West. Sitting outside the Birdsville Pub there was a party of 4 new shiny Disco's. And i ran into a few Rangeis and a 90 crossing the desert. Everyone seemed to get over there nice and easy. And as for fuel consumption. I was expecting a whole lot worse. It was only just higher than driving around the city. High 2nd and 3rd the whole way across the desert. TD5 130 this is in.

Great write up and report on your trip, great photos too.

Baz.

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Originally Posted by PTC

Cheers for the report. Its great to hear how others went on the way across.

I am in Alice Springs at the moment. 6 of us crossed the Simpson on a few days ago from East to West. Sitting outside the Birdsville Pub there was a party of 4 new shiny Disco's.

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That would have been us :D

I'll have the pics and writeup on the GOE page in the next week or so.

Cheers,

Gordon

Nice write up and looks like you had fun!

Cheers mate. Appreciate the effort you put into it and explanation of the trip. Pretty confident in the capability of the D3 to do it solo!

Ben.

One question, did you work out why you may have had the suspension issues?

Great write up, thanks for taking the time to do the post.

A mate of mine will be doing a similar trip in a couple of weeks and I was unable to get time off to go. Reading your review has made me pretty sorry that I did not push harder to make time to join him.:( Next time hopefully....

Pat

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Originally Posted by TerryO

One question, did you work out why you may have had the suspension issues?

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Not definitively Terry (where I can say I resolved the issue or read the codes) but Graeme's solution of setting the "fade-out" mode on the LLAMS system is probably on the money. It seemed that the compressor could not keep up with the air demands of the system/vehicle rocking sideways so violently (to the extremes). I have never experienced sand tracks scalloped like that before, and it was only on the first hour of the trip at the Eastern end of the QAA line. I will be interested to read from others (GGHAGGIS) how they found the track conditions some weeks later. Once BOR reads the codes at my next service I will post up the findings. Cheers Matti

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Originally Posted by PKD4

Great write up, thanks for taking the time to do the post.

A mate of mine will be doing a similar trip in a couple of weeks and I was unable to get time off to go. Reading your review has made me pretty sorry that I did not push harder to make time to join him.:( Next time hopefully....

Pat

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Pat - its a beautiful part of the country. You simply must tick this one off your bucket list. I cant wait to go back again one day.

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Originally Posted by matti4556

Not definitively Terry (where I can say I resolved the issue or read the codes) but Graeme's solution of setting the "fade-out" mode on the LLAMS system is probably on the money. It seemed that the compressor could not keep up with the air demands of the system/vehicle rocking sideways so violently (to the extremes). I have never experienced sand tracks scalloped like that before, and it was only on the first hour of the trip at the Eastern end of the QAA line. I will be interested to read from others (GGHAGGIS) how they found the track conditions some weeks later. Once BOR reads the codes at my next service I will post up the findings. Cheers Matti

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TerryO. I have finally had the codes read at my last service and they might make sense to Graeme or yourself.
Ride level control module -
C1A73-1C front right height sensor mechanism ... Circuit voltage out of range.
C1A74-1C rear left height sensor mechanism ... Circuit voltage out of range.
C1A75-1C rear right height sensor mechanism ... Circuit voltage out of range.
C1131-92 air supply ... Performance or incorrect operation.
U0416-86 invalid data received from vehicle dynamics control module ... Signal is invalid.
C1A07-62 cross articulation ... Signal compare failure.
C1130-7A air spring air supply ... Fluid leak or seal failure.
C1130-66 air spring air supply ... Signal has too many transitions / events.

The last fault code is what my brain told me as well, I was so over trying to work it out for myself on the run, so we pulled up off the track and boiled the billy and had a brew. Compressor cooled down and off we went. I am suspecting the continuous rolls and pitching and yaw (sometimes extreme) over the crappiest large dune crossings on the eastern side caused all this. Comments anyone? Cheers Matti