Yeah it was in the readers car section. Cheers mate.
Wanted something a little different to what most other people were doing
so decided to go with that.
They are great utes. Cant wait to do more to it.

Great read mate! love the car! almost makes me want to go buy one hahaha.. Ahhh i know about the roads. I live in mackay i done to tyres the other day to pot holes.. suks so bad

wow wat a read , but mate it was great reading , u must be a millionaire i kept reading $$$$lol. p****d myslef wen reading abt dead roo an ur misuss dryreaching lmao, iwould of been in tears watchin that, anyway great readin mate cheers pss u got great lady to , she must be car fan to as to put up with the $$$ goin into ute .

Def not a millionaire mate! I wish...! I Work hard for my money and allocate it a little differently to some people! She is a good girl, yes and puts up with a lot! haha

heres a vid from last weekend...

http://s883.photobucket.com/albums/ac40 ... t=skid.mp4

good vids mate , u keen goin though that water s**t it was deep goin past that truck aye lol.

wow mate you could make a movie outa the xh and the trip you did friggin beautiful ute! bit of motivation to do mine up!

Loving your work mate ! That was a huge drive you did ! I would just reach on about 13,000km driving for the whole year
I have a question, how do you find the Xtron 7" head unit ?? I was looking at one on ebay and wondering if it's worth it. Is yours still working ?

Cheers

Cheers mate! Yeah we did a lot of km's, and looking back now I wish we had a prado. But we both miss the road trip, it was awesome fun

The XTRONS is ok... The GPS is awesome! Thats pretty much the only reason I have kept it, as well as the screen being nice, and HD. On the long drives we just hook up the lappy and play music vids or whateva...

it is s**t for iphod connectivity. you turn your car off it loses where u were, then u load playlist again. very annoying. i usually just connect my ipod via AUX in... I might piss this one of fan throw my old apline back in soon if your interested... :/

Love the photo with the fog over the sugar cane field, feels like something out of a movie. Thanks for the info at least you haven't had any issue with the screen or the fan being as loud as a jet engine. Let us know how ya go with the alpine one

Hi all, well it’s about bloody time I pulled my finger out and did a ‘proper’ update of this thread….Motivation to do so….well keep reading and I will let you all in!!

Firstly, I will jump back in time to my last proper update, which was around Summernats 24 in early 2011. So as you all know, we made it to the show! The missus was well over the trip by this stage as our holiday was ‘revolving’ around a ‘stupid car show’. I convinced her to come for at least one day, and she loved it!!



So we did what we could at the show, without going overboard. Put the ute on the dyno on the Friday morning, and made 278hp. It was the first car at this time of the show that actually ran 3 identical runs on the dyno. The power curves were literally on top of one another. Ol’ ‘Pinky’ was impressed (dyno commentator). I was pretty happy with the result considering what the ute had just been through, and travelling 9,000kms!





We caught up with a heap of mates on the Friday night in Canberra and had a HUGE night out. I must admit my brain was pretty scattered Saturday morning (after getting home at around 4:30am), but we were back at the nats by 8:30am to line up on the oval with the rest of the Proutes crew. We un-enthusiastically tried to clean all the tar and crap of the ute. Was a bit of a half-a** effort but it was enough.






Around lunch time we did the grass events, and the ute was filthy again! It was a bit of fun, and no harm done. As for my driving skill - I blame on the night before!!







We ended up winning 2 trophy’s; ‘longest distance travelled’ and ‘hard luck’.


The missus was intreged to say the least about all the ‘d%%kheads’ down tuff street. I tried to warn her, but she didn’t listen. She had quite an experience! If I get time I’ll u/l a quick vid (she was holding the camera). DID cop plenty of abuse by some certain people… Laughed it off of course, but was a good eye opener!



It was at this stage we started drinking again and I gave my keys to a mate to drive in the Supercruise. We loved it!





Street Machine took our pic and story and ended up putting a bit of an article in the Summernats special.

Basically, after we finished up at the nats, we packed up and left early Monday morning for Melbourne!! (No, we couldn’t drive the ‘short’ way back to Perth!!) We visited the missus’ twin sister for a few nights, and while we were there the ute was due for another oil change – so I did that.

From here, the rain seemed to just keep following us. We cut through the countryside straight to Adelaide. There’s a vid (might be on here already, if not I’ll repost) of us driving through a s**t of water. I don’t know how we got through it. We didn’t want to end up like we did a few weeks earlier so we ran the gauntlet. This destroyed all the clips on my carbra and the force of the water ripped the speedo wires off my gearbox. A bit of water leaked through the passenger side footwell (a missing grommet near ECU). I was thanking god the ECU didn’t s**t itself!! I have since fitted a grommet here!! As soon as we got through the water, the cops sped down to where we were and blocked the road off. They thought I was crazy for going through it!! BTW, a VN commy behind me blew his engine!

So we visited some more rellies in Adelaide, then raced up to Port Augusta to sleep there for the night. It was here we met up with a good mate who was moving to Perth and driving his VY SS across with us.

2 days later we made it home, and had an awesome, trouble free trip home! We didn’t do any night driving at all, just pull up before sunset and camp out (I set up the tent, and missus was in the kitchen….I mean…. Made us dinner!!)







Anyway, enjoy the pics. Will update soon on the next adventure I had, which was in Feb 2011.

This is the epitome of awesomeness - full credit to you and your missus on probably the most epic road trip I've heard of

Love the map of Aus with the photos on it - what an adventure for the ute!

Just managed to u/l a vid of the dyno runs from the Nats in 2011 - having trouble posting embedded video, if anyone can help please advise how!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy6vPA2hPKw

Sometime in January 2011, after our roadtrip, me and Dan (blue SS VY ute) decided to head to the Plex to see what we could run. Although I beat him most runs, I was unhappy with the times (can’t recall exactly, but all in the 14’s). With then numbers the dyno was spitting out, it wasn’t adding up. Very poor 60’ times were killing me.

After chatting to a few other guys with 5.0l’s, I decided to try putting the factory airbox back on and cut the pod filter away. I don’t know if this made any difference at all. IMO it actually felt more sluggish off the line, but it could have been a number of factors.

Before:

After:







The fuel consumption did definitely change, and I proved that on my next road trip. Fuel usage went up ever so slightly (avg 10.1 – 10.4l/100 @ xmas, now about 10.6-11l/100). Of course, weight wind may have played a part in this, but it was what it was.

The road trip was voluntary; I had work commitments in Adelaide for 2 months from Feb-Apr, and I didn’t wish to be without a car (plus got given good coin to drive), so I drove. I had a bit of a (boring) adventure on the way over by myself. Definitely would have been better with someone to talk to!!

I had no problems on the way over. The ute went very well, and loved it over in Adelaide for 2 months. No issues. Luckily, the missus was over for work as I had to leave to drive home. So it was another road trip for us home!! This one was nice; there was no water!!

After our 2nd night camped out on the side of the 90 mile straight, we took off at sunrise. We got 3 minutes down the road and the ute completely ‘conked’ out. This was worrying at the time, in the middle of no-where, no reception etc – but the worst part was a few cars passed us (with the bonnet up) and didn’t even slow down to see if we needed help!!

I had a sneaky suspicion the MSD coil was the cause of fault (car turning over etc, no fire). I pulled out a screwdriver, got Sara to turn car over and looked for spark – none. I checked the coil power with multimeter (yes, I carried many tools and spares!!) and had a nice 12v. SO the longest bit was actually unpacking the entire ute so I could get to the spare bits I had which were under the tray (in spare cavity next to fuel tank). Of course I had a spare coil!! Who doesn’t!!

Swapped the MSD with the factory coil, and we were back on the road!! (After re-packing all our shiit!!) we made some good time getting back, and I think we were home around 6pm!!

Anyway, heres some pics… (I think they’re out of order!!)

Awesome read mate. Thanks.

The ute looks sweet too, unreal how clean it is considering all the driving you do!

Thanks mate!!

Ooops, so I have just re-read what I posted the other day, and noticed I stuffed the IMG link up for the ‘before’ shot of engine bay (before I swapped pod filter over to original airbox) :/

Correct image here:


Forgot to mention it earlier, but while I was in Adelaide my starter solenoid was intermittently playing up. I would have to try an attempt to ‘start’ about 15 times when cold to get the solenoid to kick and starter turn over. I was worried that the cause of the failure was due to the proximity of the driver side headers to the starter casing. It’s so tight there, I could barely squeeze 1 layer of heat wrap in there!!

I spoke to Mal Wood about the issue, as I was having dramas with it intermittently on the road trip around Australia (but never worried me too much), but it progressively got worse. He had absolutely no worries with sending me a new unit. One would think the floods had something to do with the failure, but it was actually playing up before it hit the water. I can only assume it was a once off thing.
New unit – I wrapped the actual starter itself in heat wrap before fitting.


A few weeks after that was fitted I went out with some other guys to a private burnout pad @ Westdale in WA. This was my first skid in the ute, so I was a little nervous about breaking something, but at the same time wanted to ‘break it in’!!

I didn’t go too nuts, but had fun. Tried not to cook the engine, as it was really hot out there. I know a few people went into the wall later in the day and did some fair damage to their cars! Here’s a couple of pics








Vid, excuse camera work!
http://s883.photobucket.com/albums/ac40 ... t=skid.mp4


So in the end, the ute did get very hot and spat coolant everywhere


Didn’t do any damage. Just let it cool off and refilled, then drove home again!! (About 100kms home). To this day though, since changing my starter over, I have not had any problems at all. And have since clocked up around 14,000kms and a few more burnouts. If I get keen when the engine comes out I may consider having the pipe in question re-routed (and wouldn’t mind having the headers ceramic coated)

After inspecting the ute the follwing weekend, I noticed the radiator expansion tank had seen much better days, including the grommet in which the coolant level sensor sits in (which had a very slow leak). I decided to jump on the bandwagon and purchase a new polished ally unit from PWR. Bought a new coolant sensor grommet from FORD for a rip off price of about $15!!

A pic after the change out:


A few pics I took after cleaning the car that day:




So not much happened with my ute for a few months after this….

I had to move from my house at Craigie, and move to a mates while the house we were building was finished off. Luckily he had a spare bay in his lockup garage!! The ute sat here and nothing for a few months. Although one day I got bored, so borrowed his DSLR and took these…