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No flow was caused by an airlock in the horizontally mounted WTA coils I have on the roofrack. I stuffed around with all sorts of analysis and theories and in the end grabbed the garden hose and push water thru the circuit which totally took the air out but sent a pile of green coolant down the drain. Anyway, pump is circulating at 9LPM at a pressure of circa 5-6psi system resistance. At ambient radiation in the driveway the coils shed around 5 deg, and circa 14 degC with the 4 fans running. The aeroflow pump is rated at 40LPM open flow, so this will give an indication of the actual performance you can get in reality from the claimed specs. I am going to add a ball valve before and after the pump to allow for a more efficient pump isolation and swap out when and if it happens - previous performance with the Aeroflow was poor, but am willing to try it again as have it in hand.
I pulled the previous gear pump out and apart, seems fine, reassembled and then bogged it up to make it watertight, powers up fine, will see if it goes back into service or not.
Noticed the gap between the rear pod and the body has increase by 15mm at the top from bottom. Unsure how accurately it was set up in the beginning, its mounted on a corrugated rubber so perhaps some compression taking place? I dont think there is that much weight in the pod in all honesty. I will have to crawl around and have a look at the chassis, but its already plated inside and out. From a mechanical/structural perspective the chassis plating systems dont do much to bending resistance, more reduce chassis box section stress. I may design up some deeper section profiles and get them cut, ie increase the section depth of the rear chassis rails by say 40mm+ using 8mm plat - will run some numbers to see what the reduction in bending is, will help. Its a mission of a task to execute though - but just time and money.
Started on the drivers side rear chassis stiffener plate. Its 200 x 6, welded to the outside of the chassis rail via dia 50mm hole saw holes, at both ends and stitched along the top. I will stitch the inside plate in the near future to the chassis rail. The weld zone turned out a mess! The mig welds were beautiful, then I got it into my fat head to fill up the centre 'donuts' with body sealer/deadener to fill up the depression - well you can see the result. I think I will let this dry then smooth it off with a top coat, will come up fine. Was speaking with @MB this arvo and whilst the plate extends to the rear side of the trailing arm pivot bracket, he suggested I try to extend further forward. Its a good thought, however there is only 50mm from the top of the chassis rail to the floor, and its congested and busy, so have to think that thru a bit. Hs thoughts are based around the GQ ute has 4 tray mounts, two are in front of the trailing arm bracket and two to the rear. You can see the first POD mount I have which is just behind the chassis bend and the second about 200mm from the rear of the chassis. I am already plated out inside and out in the region, so will think about this further. I am still not at root cause for the 15mm drop of the POD at the rear, will find it in time no doubt.
Passenger side is next, takes about 6 hours start to finish per side.2026-01-17_181218.jpg
Passenger side stiffener plate fabricated and installed, slightly shorter due to the cross bar mount, finished it off with the body deadener, yeah came up the same as previous, more cosmetic work to do. Planning the POD packer task for after my return from site. My neighbor gifted me a slide out drawer cartridge with the fold over tray for a BBQ, looking to swap that over for the slide drawer I have in place now.
About to pull the pin on a Bushwacker 180 Deg Awning, on special 50% off, cant lose I reckon, good strong pivot arms, but dont carry the same integrity impression of the Bush Company unit that comes from South Africa, specifically designed without poles as rated for the wind - to a degree. Did a measure up for the 270, but the supports are difficult to allow for the rear 90 deg cover, so the straight down the side protection is the go. Will wait for them t come on sale I think as still expensive for what they are.
Last edited by PeeBee; 4th February 2026 at 08:33 AM.
This mornings post disappeared, so here is the second pass. I raised the rear of the canopy by 12mm on the rear mount, 6mm on the centre and its essentially 'spirit level flat'. Took about 6 hrs start to finish, rear storage boxes had to come off, myriad of bee stings, but its done.
Also installed a different drawer system in the POD, that actually looks like it should be there, not an engineers solution of form follow function. Rear Pod drawers.jpg
OK, reliability testing continues. The little green plastic knob battery post isolator, brass on brass decided to shit itself on the way back from the High Country on friday, finally fell apart 500m from home at the traffic lights, stopped the car dead ( threaded knob stripped out the internal thread in the post block). It was hot, I was tired, didn't end well. Anyway, I got going in maybe 3 minutes but not without a lot of aggro from drivers who had to use their steering wheel to drive around me. Have now changed the device to a rotary marine isolator - Narva style, s should resolve that.
Lost the AC again - ground wire broke off at the earth terminal - small but very effective way to kill the interchiller operation, 15 minutes to find that one.
Set up the new awning and left it in a horizontal plane instead of a corner dip to shed water, got hit with a massive downpour just after setting it up - within minutes, and the center filled up and bent one of the side poles - rookie mistake, went to Tentworld when home and got a replacement internal pole, sorted.
The Icom IC400 remote speaker jack to pin decided to increase its clearance so was able to transmit but not receive via the external speaker. That took 4 hrs to resolve once home, now using the local facia speaker instead of the remote - will see how that goes. I think the issue is the 2.5mm jack is a right angle and it does not sit that well with the rear case of the radio. A straight out fitting would work better - will chase from Jaycar for an adapter.
Apart from these beestings, running well, no smoke or fires, batteries and inverter set up working well, recharged the batteries for the chainsaw maybe 10 times, fridge freezer good, happy days, might be on the pathway to reliability, finally.
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