So on Thursday night we had another session on stitching things up, and I installed the new thermostat, extended the coolant over flow with a temporary solution, installed the AC condenser fan and wired up a relay for the same.
We had and early night and were finished before midnight.
So on Friday we went to the desert for the first real shakedown since all the cooling system was updated.
We had two cruisers, and a 'borrowed' new Landrover Discovery 5 First Edition.
As we were pulling up into the desert a double cab Defender followed us in.
The driver of the Defender is a nice Irish guy who had met my mate in the SWB a few times before. He goes to the desert in this area a lot and walks his dog.
The STTs on 8 PSI were doing their thing :
So the LR only got stuck in the super soft sand once. The silly 21" rims were obviously not helping. A bit of recovery later and were were good to go.
Must have been good samaritan day as we pulled out a stuck Fortuner - guy and missus were sitting for an hour and a half when we came along. Next we found another bunch of people stuck in a sedan in the sand between the split roads for each direction. Tried to take a short cut and sunk.
I decided to tow them out and it felt like a lead balloon on the other end. With a bit of communication my mate was able to get them to switch the engine on and take it out of park. It towed much easier after that
Stopped for a nice cold drink for sunset and got the moon up behind us :
Made it though the whole thing with no overheating which was a first for me. Did get hot right up to the end of the 'white' on the gauge so I still got a few tricks up my sleeve for that. Remembering that we are in peak summer and it is mid forties in the shade, plus the sand is dry so it is very soft. This is pretty much the worst conditions we will get.
The new rear shocks I got were hopeless, feel like no damping at all. So will need to sort those out. They are adjustable Profenders (Thailand?) but when I tried to adjust them the night before the dial just seemed to go round and round. I thought most shocks only had about 9 settings but these went for 30+ clicks either way with no noticeable difference.
On Saturday I picked up a second hand TIG welder, so will be able to mess around with that for the next bits I want to make.
Very happy to be able to drive now without overheating, so will hopefully be getting out each week for a drive as well as keeping on with the repairs and upgrades.
Our new Irish friend is a pretty flash photographer, he gets shots of all the animals we just scare away. This is one of his instagram posts and I left his profile name there if anyone wants to see his shots :
That's it for now...