{"id":279,"date":"2019-10-05T02:32:37","date_gmt":"2019-10-05T02:32:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jandmf.com\/?p=279"},"modified":"2019-11-27T04:24:07","modified_gmt":"2019-11-27T04:24:07","slug":"hamilton-downs-the-preparation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jandmf.com\/index.php\/2019\/10\/05\/hamilton-downs-the-preparation\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamilton Downs – the preparation and the trip up."},"content":{"rendered":"

Having successfully applied for a Caretakers position at the Hamilton Downs Youth Camp<\/a> it was time to start preparing the car and camper and getting everything needed together. At around this time, about a month before we were due to leave, the car started to do something quite alarming. The oil level started to rise. A bit of research indicated that there was fuel leaking into the oil and that there were two likely causes. A dodgy injector o-ring or a cracked head around an injector well. It was with much trepidation that I booked the car in for the local dealer to investigate. I was hoping it’d just be an o-ring that had reached its use by date. No such luck, the head was cracked and a great saga of incompetence started.<\/p>\n

Getting a new head from Turner Engineering in the UK was quick and painless. When I got the head delivered I took the car and new head off to the local dealer. Two days they said. Phooey – what a load of garbage. It took nearly four weeks to get the car into a trustworthy condition.<\/p>\n

After three days they called me to tell me that the car was ready so off I toddled to get it. It ran like a pig with no power, terrible thumping on start up. It needed quite a few revs to get off the line. In short it was almost undriveable. Worse. By the time I got home, around 15km’s, the oil level had risen by about half a litre. Problem not solved. Called the dealer and explained the situation and took it back.<\/p>\n

In short it took five more trips to the dealer to get it to the stage where it still isn’t quite right. They replaced the injector o-rings and flame washers five times before they got it right. They also replaced the fuel pump at a cost of over $1,000 without asking. The fuel pump had absolutely nothing to do with the problem so I disputed that, and other charges, and it appears that they’ve given up trying to get the money. Of course sending them a Consumer Affairs case number from when I reported the whole palava may have concentrated their mind a little.<\/p>\n

After the car was finally in a condition to make a 2,500km trek we were about a week behind when we were supposed to leave. The end result was that rather than doing a bit of sight seeing between Moe (Victoria) and Alice Springs (NT) we ended up just doing a mad dash to Hamilton Downs driving six and seven hundred kilometre days to get there in time for our job.<\/p>\n

By the time we got there we were buggered but at least we were there with no more breakdowns.<\/p>\n

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Having successfully applied for a Caretakers position at the Hamilton Downs Youth Camp it was time to start preparing the car and camper and getting everything needed together. At around this time, about a month before we were due to leave, the car started to do something quite alarming. The oil level started to rise. … Continue reading “Hamilton Downs – the preparation and the trip up.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-getting-there"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jandmf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jandmf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jandmf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jandmf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jandmf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jandmf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282,"href":"https:\/\/jandmf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions\/282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jandmf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jandmf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jandmf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}