The Robbo Clan Wagon

[robbo0001]

Gday fellow Patrol owners,
a few quick pics of the new Family bush-basher. Picked it up last week, a 99 2.8TD GU, 200 thou on the clock.

Ripped the factory front bumper off and whacked a second hand, airbag compliant winch bar on it on Friday. Needed some heating to straighten some dings, and some paint, but came up well.


Got some 285/75/16 Maxxis muddies going on tomorrow...

Looking at a winch and plasma, a nice legal 2 inch lift and a Scotts Rods 3 inch exhaust in not to distant future.
Pyro/ bost guages and pillar pod housing being sorted out at the moment.

Love the car, will carry all our 4 kids well....can't wait to get it reasonably sorted, and hit the tracks again with the whole family, and not have to leave half the Clan at home.

The old Xtrail, catch ya later.

Home sweet home.

Front off


Bar on and wired.

Lots more to come, barring financial difficulties from the Missus....I love mucking around with cars, its a great excuse to have a beer, and entertain the kids outside in the shed.

Cheers

[DX grunt]

Nice pics.

Take care out there.

Rossco

[growler2058]

Well done mate good job

[AB]

Very nice mate, well done!

Look forward to seeing her grow!!!

[Bigrig]

Nice clean slate mate!!! Now the fun begins making it individually your own!!!

[Sir Roofy]

nice job mate well done on the bar

[Maxhead]

Looks like a neat and tidy truck mate, very nice

[Mazodude]

very nice truck mate. Hope to see you out there

[robbo0001]

Heres a precautionary tale....one of WOE, that got a lot better.
Had some spare time at work, so pulled the intake pipework off the intercooler to the intake manifold. Bloody hell, the whole intake plenum was about 80 percent reduced with crud...turns out the EGR wasn't blocked, as a thought it was.
"No drama" I figure....long screwdriver, brake clean and a heap of rags got it as clean as i could without comppletely removing it. Took about an hour.
Go to start the car...CLUNK.
"Uhoh"......try again...Clunk, BANG, tappity, tappity, tap...kill it immediately.
"WTF?"...goo and gunk should compress, not harm anything, I reckon.
Next minor debacle...snap the bloody overflow off the radiator.

Right, thats it...get it flatbedded to a workshop, recommended to me by a mate.
Get it there....and it starts and runs perfectly. The flatbed ride must have dislodged whatever was oinging around, inside the cylinder.
Ten thousand tonnes of crud spewing out of the exhaust (which is what I expected...not the CLUNK)

So I figure "its here now...fix the radiator, drain and replace coolant, get a new fan and replace the viscous hub. While your at it, remove and retorque the crank bolt with new loctite"

The result....?
Original Viscous hub was stuffed, fan blades had small cracks and would have let go at some stage, the top radiator hose connection had already been snapped off by a previous owner, and the clamp was tensioned with a zip tie (didn't know this)
New coolant added, new radiator top tank, new hub and fan.
Crank bolt was removed, cleaned, loctited and re-torqued..so thats all good.

Car runs perfectly, Temp Guage about 10mm to the left of original position.

Glad it happened at work, not up in the hills with the kids, or on a beach below the high tide mark.
A cooked donk and 4 screaming kids (and a screaming Missus) would be my idea of hell.

EGR is NOW blocked, intercooler butterfly removed, intake cleaned, EGT and boost gauges plumbed...just have to wire them up.
Had 4 hours at Glasshouse today in some mud and some hill climbs...car runs perfectly.
Love it.

[robbo0001]

Just some photos of some new additions.
The Maxxis Bighorn 285/75/16


1 x purchased recovery hook, and 1 x made by myself out of 12mm steel plate.


I NEVER want to snap that radiator overflow pipe again, so I have covered it with some 1 mm chequer plate. It will bend if I lean on it, but better than snapping that pipe again.



Apologies for the photo quality, they are off my steam powered mobile.