Gone but not forgotten

Well, its all over .... the Amarok is officially gone!  Got a call from the panel beater to say the car was getting transferred to them and they even gave me a fix date!

30 minutes later, got a call from insurance company to say the car was a writeoff and would not be fixed!  Gotta wonder if the right hand knows what the left hand is doing!

Those pictures show 18K worth of panel damage to my car and that's without any mechanical work which would be another several thousand.

Final Thoughts

The Amarok was a great car, in fact I often referred to it as the best car I have ever owned.  I can divide that into a few other statements.
- It was the best tow vehicle I have ever driven (better than my 100 series V8 landcruiser)
- It ran a close second to the most capable 4x4 (just edged out by my twin locked 80 series)
- Fuel consumption was unbelievable 850km's to every tank even around town
- comfort was excellent although not as good as the 100 series

I would definitely get another one but at the moment, it's not going to happen.  I am not traveling as much as I used to and having a 50K vehicle sitting around is not the best use of funds.

If you are considering buying one, I say go for it!

Bad Day / sad day / lucky us

Ok so my daughter and I were driving back from shopping 2 days ago when we got stuck in the middle of a 5 car stack.

The white ute hit the Patrol and then they both hit us.  We got rammed straight into the back of a Triton trayback which surprisingly didn't look too bad, the guy was able to drive away after all the commotion was over.  His car just touched the Audi in front, no damage.

The CFA inspecting the Rok for safety issues

The rear held up well considering it had the full force of a Ranger 2x4 and a Patrol 4x4 up it's butt!
Yellow tape to warn people the airbags haven't deployed.

 A bit of a close up, yep my daughter was driving and we were both ok, a few sore bones and bruises so we were lucky.

Under the bonnet, looks pretty bad, not sure if she's fixable.

So in a couple of days i'll find out whether she gets fixed or goes to the auctions.

It's all a bit sad, I really liked this car and at 80,000 km, I had no intentions of getting rid of it.

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!