Mini Update

Hello All
I hope you all had a great Christmas and even better New Year.
Welcome back for this years adventures..........

I have been quiet for about a month now, staying clear of the holiday season madness. That doesn't mean I have had my feet up and relaxing. I have been catching up on a few projects I wanted to do while parked up in my sister's paddock.
First project was to sort out issues I was having with my solar set up.

before

I had a 200w folding solar panel set, I was finding that in the heat up north, that unless they were out a great percentage of the day my battery was going backwards. I am running a 3 way fridge plus a Waeco freezer.
Even while driving, and the vehicle charging, I would arrive at my destination with less battery power than what I started with.
First step was to get rid of the fairly basic solar controller. By updating to a 3 stage adjustable solar controller my battery not only charged a lot faster but to a higher voltage.
OK this was a definate improvement, but doesn't help on days I am travelling and can only put the panels out for a short part of the day.
After chatting to the ever helpful Tanya, Kevin and Rob at PalominoRVAustralia I decided to pull my panels apart and mount them on the roof.

2 x 100w panels now roof mounted

after

3 stage programmable solar controller

I tested the system out today, on a 32c humid day I turned off the 240v power and left the 3 way fridge on 12v and the Waeco freezer running. The solar controller was in float mode (trickle charging), after 10 minutes it switched to bulk charge mode and bought the battery voltage back up nearly 1 volt with both fridge and freezer pulling off it.
This exercise simulated, maybe stopping to do some shopping or stopping at a lookout and it held it's own.
Camped up with the fridge running on gas I should now have adequate power reserves with the added bonus, of now having 200 watts of solar pumping into my battery while I am driving along. I should now be able to head off to Western Australia in the next week or so with confidence the solar will now do the job.
While travelling I get quite a few people inquiring about that strange blue bag in front of my camper, so I though I would revisit that here.

strange blue bag

 It is a custom made Diesel fuel bladder (second fuel tank) made to my specifications by Fleximake in Dandenong. When I run low in the main tank, I place the bladder hose in the fuel filler of the Ute, and gravity does the rest. This gives me approximately 1200km between fills, Fleximake told me the capacity was about 60 litres, I have had 70 litres in it, and there was room for a little more, but the last 20 or so litres are very slow to fill because of frothing of the diesel.
The other project I had was to modify the rear door vent, the original vent was plated tin and painted white. It had gone rusty and the paint was flaking off. After one attempt at repainting I decided to fit the issue once and for all. The vent fitted in the USA where the camper is made is a bastard size too, so to overcome this I covered the hole both sides with 5mm poly sheet. On the outside I fitted a readily available aluminium vent size from Bunnings.

outside

On the inside I decided to go down a different route, fitting a house ducted heating vent with open/shut functions.

inside

With this setup I can now close the door vent when travelling on dusty roads to stop dust being sucked in.....problem solved. 
While I was in Hervey Bay I had a Satellite Navigation 7 inch touch screen fitted in the dash.  The standard Great Wall sound system makes an excellent paperweight.

before

As I have previously said......everything can be improved. Whilst the new sound and navigation system has been excellent I was still using my Hema Navigator on the windscreen for country areas. 
I aquired an SD card incorporating both Hema and IGO mapping. After quite a bit of rehashing I now have IGO8 street mapping and Hema off road mapping in the 7 inch touch screen in the dash.

after

IGO8 mapping

Hema mapping

I am house and dog sitting for a couple of days, then pland to do a couple of nights up in the High Country to road test the solar setup.
One for all the Great Wall knockers out there..............after almost 40,000k (this trip) of heat, dust and corrugations with up to 850kg on the back, all with standard suspension, I crawled under to Ute and had a good look around and not so much as a weeping shocker.....nothing......a good robust Ute that gets a bad wrap a lot of the time.
After that it off into the sunset towards Western Australia. I plan to head towards the Murray River for a few days before heading across the Nullabour Plain. With floods emptying water into Lake Eyre I am very tempted to do a detour to see that but looking at the weather maps, they are getting 45-46c days which doesn't impress me much.
I will keep an eye of the temperatures as I get closer. 
Bye for now.........