Preparing for Ningaloo

This year has been a bit of a rush, I took the van to Queensland for repairs and on the way back we caught up with friends, visited a brother, visited a sister, and stayed in Adelaide and baby sat our grandsons for three weeks. We got home a week and a half ago and we have not stopped catching up on jobs and preparing for our annual trip to Ningaloo.

The first job tackled was get our Oyster Satellite dish looked at, when we were leaving our daughters home in Adelaide I pushed the button on the remote to lower it down but it didn't budge, after checking everything I could think of I called a couple of installers but all they could do was tell me how to manually lower it down and that it needs attention by a service agent. So that's what I did, AMI Marine is the main office for Smart Sat and an easy half hour drive from home, I arranged a day to take the van in and Ian their technician quickly had it off the roof and on the test bench, I had a few things to do so it wasn't until later in the afternoon I came back to tow it home.

It was disappointing that when I tried putting it up all it did was go around and around, just our luck, a phone call to let AMI know I would bring it back in the morning. With Ian away working on a multi million $ boat it was left to Aaron at AMI to solve the problem, the short story is it was mystifying, we tried our dish on their control box, our control box on their dish, we tried it on the test bench, we tried it in the van, each time we got a different result but not one that worked properly. Aaron suggested leaving the control box and he would do a factory reset and software update and to come back after Easter which is what we did.

Coming back for the 3rd time and hoping that things would be fine didn't go to plan, this time I had Craig doing his best but with another 3-4 hours of checking, testing, dismantling the LNB and installing quality ball bearings instead of the plastic balls, Aaron & Craig finally found the problem was our control box with a intermittent gremlin, he kindly offered us a replacement control box to take away and he would try and fix the problem with ours, if not were up for a new box.

I take from all this that there are still companies out there that try hard to help their customers, the amount of time spent on solving the problem would have cost many hundreds of dollars, apart from the initial service cost for fixing the jammed azimuth gear I was given no bill. If anyone is in need of their Oyster Sat needing attention I can recommend AMI Marine in Cockburn WA.

Whilst the Sat Dish was in being looked at it gave me time to cut and grind off the old chine bars on the caravans draw bar. One had broken and though I welded it up in Adelaide it had broken again by the time we got home. There was nothing else to do but remove the old and fabricate and weld in the new. Luckily I have a good mate who's trade is a Boilermaker Welder and he came and got down and dirty welding on the new bars.

John wearing all the required safety gear

Finished and a lot stronger than the previous round bar

When we were in Adelaide I had new tyres fitted to the Landcruiser, shortly after I saw on a buy and sell group a set of new Landcruiser Sahara wheels and tyres for sale for a bargain price. I had never liked the style of the rims that same with our 200 series and was very pleased to change them over. Of course this meant picking them up from my sons house where they had been delivered to and then finding a tyre shop that didn't want the World to remove and refit and balance the wheels. One company K-Mart Tyres & Mechanical wouldn't even quote, they flatly refused, quoting some ridiculous rule, personally I think it's more to do with them not selling the tyres in the 1st place. Another company wanted $56 per wheel and another wanted $30, needless to say I opted for the $30 per wheel. I am very happy with the look of the new rims and tyres, I had BFG KO2's in 285x65x18 fitted in SA and they have proven to be a good looking, quiet tyre with excellent handling and steering control.

Before and After 

A few minor jobs have been done, replaced a hose for the potable water supply, tensioned a window blind, reattached a water pump that had come lose, with all the jobs completed all we have to do is sort out what we taking away with us again and get it packed. This year we have a Dave and Jo coming up with us and with big changes because they now have a 20' JB Scorpion caravan and Landcruiser 200 series as well.