Well, I took the truck for a good run over the weekend. From Cairns out through Herberton to Stanary Hills and then to Chillagoe for the night before a relaxing run back to Cairns this morning. Did a bit of 4wd work in both Low and High range at Stanary Hills and I'm happy with the 43% reduction gears with the auto. I think it is just right in Low Range now and my car was a lot better to drive than the other standard 3ltr Patrol Auto that was with me, so that part has been a success. and I'd highly recommend it for anyone else opting for an Auto conversion.

I got a bit of a fright at one point when the throttle jammed on at full revs when I was overtaking. It seemed to get stuck when I floored it and I had to tap the accelerator pedal several times before it eventually released. I'm still not sure what caused this to happen so if anyone has any suggestions, I'm keen to hear them.

The temps are also a bit of a concern and I might need to make some changes to the setup. Going up the Kuranda Range it got to 101 C then dropped back to 93*C during the run to Mareeba. The run up to Atherton didn't see much temp changes really. It hovered between 93 - 97 Celsius, then up to 101 Celsius on the range up to Herberton.

The dirt road work also saw the transmission working fairly hard at speeds between 50kph - 70kph and temps around that same 101 celsius mark. Bush 4wdriving hovered between 101 celsius up to 103 celsius, with no real opportunity to cool down due to minimal airflow through the coolers.

The nice flat easy run back from Chillagoe to Cairns this morning was much easier and only saw temps in the vicinity of 82-83C.

I'm now keen to re-locate one of the ATF coolers and am thinking of adding a thermo-fan to help with temps in the slow bush driving.

I need to sort the TCU programming at Highway speeds too. The TCC doesn't really want to lock up much at the moment, and also tends to jump out of locked at the least amount of throttle. I used the manual switch quite a lot to overcome that tendency but might re-calibrate the TPS as well.

I am noticing that the turbo seems to be working harder at Highway speeds, and the boost figures seem a bit different now too with boost figures of between 5.5 - 6.6Psi when sitting on 100kph. Several times the alarm went off on the boost gauge as the turbo went over 10 or 12psi. The truck isn't quite as willing to overtake as it was when it still had the manual box either, and the turbo quickly reaches high Psi figures without really much gain in pace. Revs however are nicely lower when cruising and sit just above 1700rpm with the TCC locked. At idle, the boost now seems to sit at 1.1psi for some reason too, whereas before it was zero.

EGT's are also a bit higher and approach 400 celsius if going up the slightest hill. With the manual box they were generally always under 300 unless I was giving it some or it was under load in a high gear. At highway speeds it was generally sitting around the mid-300 mark or would drop to around 300 C if cruising with no load or power on.

So I have a couple of things to fix/adjust or work on, and I still need to get more familiar with driving an Auto 4wd but so far I am really enjoying the improved drive-ability of the 6.5TD engine.