moose Posted June 3, 2014 Share Posted June 3, 2014 Paul, we have seen your mixed fortunes of the event, thanks to the excellent filming features. Would you care to tell us more about the exact failure modes you encountered and how they happened? Daan Sorry Didn't see this reply, Well a quick summary of my event.... Being my second year I thought that it would be easier but in the end this year we ended up in 19th place compared to our 11th place year before. First problem was that we bent the truck so badly last year that it need a ton of work to get where i wanted it for this year and time ran out on us. I just finished the truck by 5pm to only just make the 11pm ferry. So no testing time on the truck... which as i now know was a big mistake. The engine was very down on power it had had a new injector pump, injectors and we tried every thing we could think of to get the power back, I should have packed the old pump but didn't. Since getting back the problem was track down to the wrong banjo bolt being fitted to the back of the pump. More gutting is we had the correct bolt with us and 1min job and it would have been back to full power.... First road book day out due to the truck sitting over winter I had a sticky solenoid on my over boost 12-24v system so it was not pushing 24volts at the winches only 12 (I only have single motor winches) and on the first tough winch bit I stalled out the front which. I didn't know at the time but I had melted a brush and it was only just still connected. We sorted the over volt system but the next problem which finished our first day was the water depth. This year the rivers and swamps were very deep due to the rain, quite often winching through bonnet depth water was required. Having a 200tdi I am still on V belts and they don't work so well under the water. Only 3K (ish) from the end of a 50k road book both alternator V belts had melted away and the spares were back at camp.... (for the rest of the week we carried spares) Next day was trophy day which was fine no problems (apart from the constant lack of power) and that evening its was the night stage. The organizer at the briefing asked the teams if they really wanted to go out as the weather was that bad. In my class at least half didn't go we did and it was sketchy the tracks were incredibly slippery and more than once we had to winch just to get back on the tack after we had slid off it. But it was the big winch climb of the night where the motor damage became apparent by it stopping half way up a good 400ft hill under tension. we managed to recover our selves getting back to camp at 4am (started at 11pm). Sunday was circuit day which we missed to strip the front winch plus it would have been hard work with no power. Only road book days left and we could make up lost places on these. Monday was the big road book day a 70k one. Starting 29th off the line we were going good up to 7th or 8th on the road and only 1k from the end when the engine just stopped. checking round the truck its was soon clear what the problem was. A tree branch had ripped off the fuel tank outlet and we were now out of diesel. We got the support guys to come out and get us, lucky we were some where accessible by road going 4x4. Back at camp we also found we had collapsed a front bottom swivel bearing and a potential show stopper which was a broken front winch end plate, I had not packed a spare..... We fixed every thing that night apart from the winch when at breakfast Philon said he had spare 3+ wide drum winch and why didn't we borrow that. So Tuesday was spent fitting and making it work with one motor as we had destroyed our spare and the motors on it were 24volt. Wednesday road was fine but tough deep water, long swamps and in some places I was having to double line the winch even using 24volt (which i don't normal have to do) But 5 km from the end of the road book I clipped a tree with the drivers side front wheel. The impact was enough spin the truck 180, snap the bottom swivel pin and shear open the caliper. Managed to complete the next 5k with no brakes and the front wheel half off. We started 30th off the line crossed the line 11th place. Adie (one of my support guys) that night amazingly managed to make a new complete swivel out of bits from round camp using an angry grinder as a machine tool. The Thursday was last day of the comp and it went ok, only having 3 brakes made things a bit more tricky but we finished..... We got to 19th out of 33 by completing only 2 days. Living conditions were very tough this year, by the last day people were having to winch just to get their comp trucks across camp. how we didn't get trench foot I don't know Lots of images on our Facebook page... and some new video of the event very soon... Paul Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bowie69 Posted June 3, 2014 Share Posted June 3, 2014 Cheers for the write-up Paul, you up at Seven Sisters in a couple of months? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
finnarne Posted June 5, 2014 Share Posted June 5, 2014 Don't find anything about this on the website, what I find is: You mentioned a registration form that maybe is removed now that the registration (and race) is over for this year. Do you have a copy of it ? Anyone have more info about the Roll Cage requirement, as what I find on CT website only says that a Roll Cage is mandatory, not that it needs to be serial production. Thinking of preparing my Discovery top do this event, nut sure yet if it will end up as a flat bed or a pickup, but plan is definitly to shorten the rear (bobtail it. ) Not sure if it's possible to find a serial production for a Discovery pickup Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daan Posted June 5, 2014 Author Share Posted June 5, 2014 That is quite a comprehensive list of breakages Paul, I am sure you have plans to update the truck, following this event? Daan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moose Posted June 20, 2014 Share Posted June 20, 2014 That is quite a comprehensive list of breakages Paul, I am sure you have plans to update the truck, following this event? Daan Not to much too change on the truck as quite a few of the breakages were from me driving into stuff and I cant really do any thing about that..... Just thought i would round this thread off with our overview/highlights edit of racing action. The almost head on crash is not because anyone was lost. The road book did warn of 'two way traffic' but only for the guys coming the other way!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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