LH Front rattle solved!

If you have read this blog previously, you would know I have had an irritating rattle in the left hand front of the vehicle since the speedo ticked over the first 1000 kilometers!  The vehicle has now travelled around 45,000 kilometers and i'm pleased to see that its finally fixed.

I took the guys from Burwin VW in Ferntreegully  for a ride and they heard it and fixed it.  Apparently, the radiator support panel and associated bits were all loose!

Since everything was made tight again, I have been enjoying my nice quiet Rok again!

The self repairing fuel tank

So, after many thousands of kilometers on the blacktop,  I finally went for a decent 4x4 trip in the "RoK".  A mate in his current model hilux and me in the VW,  we traversed the Rubicon trail out the back of Eildon from the south east through to Kendal's camp ground.  It was a good trip, not hard just a bit slow due to the amount of fallen branches and logs on the ground.  In the photo below, you can see the dead trees remembering that one of the worst bushfires ever ripped through this area two years ago, the tall trees have not recovered.  It gave us mixed emotions as it was sad the trees have died but they looked amazing.



The toughest spot we came across was a big boghole. The highlux had a few goes at it as did i but after coming home I spotted this.



The fuel tank straps (front and rear) were completely caked in mud and pushing the fuel tank up to a point where I thought it was doomed!

Front Strap

Rear Strap

cleaned out the mud ....


then waited....



all fixed!  Nice! :)  :)  The fuel tank took a couple of hours to relax back into it's normal shape.  Not sure if I took a bad line through the boghole or I was just unlucky to have this happen.

Fuel tank is fixed but the sill, well ... thats a different story :(

 

Missed the door and the flare, my lucky day!

youtube Amaroks

I seem to always go back to youtube to watch the Amaroks in action.  Here is a few of the good ones i've found.

30,000 km strong!

Not much posting going on over the last few months, but there has been lots happening so i'll try to catch up.

As the title suggests, the Rok is 30,000km old.  Still performing like a champ and i'm still so impressed!  Took it back for the first service and was majorly disappointed with the effort by the VW dealership.

Here is the list of items I asked to be fixed:

• Speedo correction (reads 7 km's too fast) 
• Persistant rattle / squeak in LHS front area
• Dash lights too bright

The dealer said they would:

• Wash the car
• Rotate the tyres
• do the service

As you can probably guess, they said they were not able to resolve the dash light brightness or the speedo issue, they could not hear the rattle either!  The car was not washed and the tyres were not rotated!

I was pretty annoyed at their whole attitude and paid the bill and drove out of the yard.  As soon as I left the drive and hit the first speed hump, I heard the rattle.  Driving on, the vehicle felt terrible, I pulled in to a servo and checked the tyres pressures and they were 50 PSI all round, not even within VW spec!

Needless to say, I complained, got all the excuses but will vote with my feet and never go back to that dealer.

Another Boat!

This time, the Amarok delivery service took a boat from Melbourne to Yarrawonga on the mighty Murray river.



We launched the boat with no issues and the Rok did what it does! Bit of advice from the (ahem) experienced ... if the weir at Yarrawonga is pouring out water and you are spending the night with the boat tied to the bank, be sure there is at least a meter or more of water below the boat. The water rushing out of the weir artificially raises the height of the river which allows big heavy boats to get stuck in the mud overnight as the water subsides!

Many thanks to the very kind locals who spend time and effort getting the boat "unbogged" from the riverbank!

The Boat

It's funny in life these little opportunities come up. A good mate of mine bought a boat from Port maquarie about 1500 km's away. I'd been wanting to try out the Amarok with a bigger tow weight than the camper trailer. Here was my chance!

Here we are filling up the boat in Port Maquarie (didnt really matter since we ran out of fuel on the water anyway!) 

The trip north was uneventful as expected, the Amarok perfomed really well.  Coming back home with the new beast attached we cruised at 110km/h most of the way and averaged 14.5 lp/100km.  

Fuel consumption is one thing but the ride and handling is what blew me away.  There was no sway or pulling, you really didnt know the boat was attached, it really was that good.  It reminded me that although the landcruiser was a great powerful tow vehicle, it is coil sprung and wallowed a bit.  The Amarok with the leaf springs has a superior towing design and that was easy to recognise during this trip.

Hi Flow

Filling up with fuel the other day and thought I'd give the "hiflow" diesel pump a go and it worked well!  Hiflow (if you dont already know) are the pumps trucks use to fill up at the servo.  They have larger diameter hoses and pump fuel in at a great rate of knots. :)  Be sure to watch and listen as the tank fills up and slow down as soon as you hear the gurgling near the top or you will get "splashed" with diesel   I dribbled in the last litre or so and was back on the road in half the time!  Good to know ...