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And the pics to prove it!

Sat, 05 Sep 2015 21:00:38 +0100

The Titanic sank on her maiden voyage and we're still rolling!

Sat, 05 Sep 2015 20:32:36 +0100

Yes!!! Finally we’ve done it! Can you believe it! After 6 years in the building, running out of money, other jobs getting in the way and nearly losing Pierre in March, we have almost completed out first trip in this behemoth of a motor home….and what a gal she is! And what a trip we’ve had!

Firstly, a little background. We were ready to sell our house in February with just the finishings on the inside of truck to complete when Pierre had a major stroke under anaesthetic and spent 6 weeks in ICU fighting for his life. We were very blessed to be able to bring him straight home from ICU and care for him there, and do therapy at home with the support of our dear friends from rehab matters. The boys have been amazing, not only with helping their dad in his recovery, but also completing the inside of the truck. Pierre is making excellent progress but still has a ways to go.

So, in July Pierre turned a huge corner, as did the truck…she was finally ready for roadworthy which meant we could then licence her and get on the road…or so we thought! She passed the roadworthy and off I went very excited with all the papers only to be asked for my homologation certificate. Pardon? And there we came to a halt…who knew?!!

Enter Cheryl Sandmann……ok yes so she is based in Cape Town, but having spoken with her and discovered after 6 weeks of dead ends in Johannesburg, that yes she can help us from start to finish, the only snag being we’d need to bring the truck down there for the NRCS inspection…….really? A snag?!! All we saw was ROAD TRIP!!!!

So a week ago, we packed our truck complete with Georgie, our last remaining dog and set off at 3 am for Caope Town. Our first problem presented very quickly in our blinking lights….seriously! The zenon lights were faulty so we annoyed many motorists en route with our continued flashing….we were so relieved to see sunrise!

We hit Beaufort West in the pouring rain and discovered where the leaks persisted….one very important test, but not advantageous when the leak is over the bed! Strike one for Isaac….he suffered the most there. Unfortunately the pet friendly camp site was a muddy parking lot directly off the N1….not enhanced by rain by any means….one lesson for us though was seeing a family living there in tent and caravan, and heading off for school in the morning…We have nothing to complain about.

Further down the road, Josh was surprised that numerous people were flashing us….did they all really like the truck?! No….we stopped for fuel and realised one of the shock mountings had broken off……..2 hours later we were on our way again having found a mechanic to weld it for us!

We arrived in Cape Town on Tuesday….and believe you me this lady is slow. 400kms to Bloemfontein normally takes 4 hours….make it 6! We managed 110kms downhill with the wind behind us! Once! She cruises happily around 80 to 85kms. Do you know how slow that is!!!! KMs tick off like miles….very slowly.

And Cheryl? Cheryl is amazing! She took us through all the inspections as promised, and will do all the completion of forms etc as necessary….that was the easiest and the smoothest part of our trip!!

We left Cape Town on Wednesday and headed up via the West Coast to Namaqualand. Ike had wanted to fish but we couldn’t find pet friendly camping…so we pushed on to Citrusdal and that’s where the fun began. We again arrived late with our blinking lights and discovered that the other shock mounting had broken….so first thing we found an engineering works who did a great job putting gussets in…..which the men would have had to do upon our return anyway.

However our lights were now not blinking anymore…they weren’t working at all….Ike suspected that the men had not reattached the wires to the battery, so we stopped by the side of the road to do that. Isaac had already commented to me he really hated doing this job as it was a very narrow space and dangerous as you could easily short the wiring of the truck if you touched positive to negative……what happened?!!! He got the spanner stuck between the terminals and fire broke out beneath the truck! He extinguished that (thank heavens we needed an extinguisher for the road worthy). And then he began to sweat as it could have destroyed the whole of the trucks wiring….but it didn’t! We were so blessed. We lost the cable to the winch only.

So we all breathed a huge sigh of relief and stopped to pray and say Thank you to God….and off we set to Springbok. I organised the accommodation and was so sure we would be there in daylight this time….no more of these blinking lights!!!..........

130kms outside of Springbok at 4.30pm we began to smell burning rubber. The back airbag had burst and the tyre was rubbing on the wheel arch. The men got out to examine the situation….came back in as deflated as the airbag and totally out of ideas as to how to fix it.

Enter Andre….owner of a tow truck company in Cape Town I happened to find on Google complete with his cell number….as now of course it’s 5pm. Eish, he says when he hears where we are….that’s gonna cost you plenty….but tell me what’s wrong…..On hearing the problem he says ‘now listen very carefully to me…..’

One and a half hours later they boys had followed his instructions to the letter……where on earth in the middle of that barren scrub land are we going to find a log of wood? I did contemplate sawing off the top of one of the wooden poles marking the laybye….I wondered how obvious it would look afterwards!! But walking along I found the only 2 pieces of wood that could possibly have been abandoned in that area plus wire?! So with a piece of wood holding up our suspension we crawled into Springbok at 40kms per hour….finally arriving at 10pm with our blinking headlights!!!

We had to stay one extra day in Springbok whilst a rather expensive air bag was couriered up from Cape Town. It arrived this morning so we had it fitted and left there by lunch time. So we made it….in daylight this time to stay in Upington over night. And what a pleasant unexpected stop over…the best camping spot so far.....

The Cactus Thorn, the Finger and the Bush Doctor!

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 04:27:54 +0100

One joyful Monday morning (4 weeks ago), Dad said "why don't you trim the cactus to burn off some of that excess energy" (Tigger has nothing on Josh! -Ed). So I went off with a machete and a saw. I took down one and then I cut it up into smaller pieces with the machete, it went through the branch quite easily! I wanted to see if I could cut down another branch with it, but it wouldn't go through, so we tested out Isaac's mini chain saw (small hand held chain designed for camping in the bush to cut small branches for firewood!), which worked very nicely, but the cut was horrible. So I cut that off with a D saw, but, because the middle is hard and the outer flesh is soft, by the time I'd sawn through the hard bit, the blade hit the soft flesh, slid down and I got a thorn stuck deep into my finger. There were several, which I got out, but that one I couldn't manage........so Mum stuck me in the car and dragged me off to the doctor! He also tried with a needle, and got rather worried and sent me for an X ray (note to self....organic matter doesn't show up on X ray!). Mum was busy paying and the diligent Doctors (note - who are shareholders and have caught us before! -Ed), summoned us back to do an ultrasound....picked up what they thought to be a 12mm foreign body in my finger! But again weren't sure and at this stage started talking about doing an MRI of my finger!!!!!
At this point Mum called it quits and off we went for the antibiotics!!
The next day she took me off to an orthopaedic Doctor who's a friend and stuck my finger under his nose! Being sensible and very conservative he told us that he could operate but it was like looking for a needle in a haystack, and as he told the X ray department "it was a little overkill to do a MRI of my finger at this stage!!" He told us to wait and see if it festered and then we'd deal with it....easy as pie!!
So for the next 4 weeks we watched this finger....Mum panicked at one stage and took me back off to this Doctor who wanted to know what she was panicking about....it looked better than before!!!
So.....one month later....it did start to swell up and yes it had been sore for the whole month! On Sunday, Mum told Dad she was worried and we should do something.....so Dad did!!!! He told me to soak my hand in a mixture of bleach and warm water (as advised by the pharmacist!!), took a small scalpel and opened the top of it. Not more than a minute of fiddling with Mum peering over and that 12mm cactus thorn shot out like a bullet.....what a hero Dad is!!! Haha!, you should have heard Mum shout when that thing shot out!!! (Do you know what it's like being married to a super hero who can do anything!!!!! - Ed).
So....back on antibiotics, being congratulated by the orthopaedic doctor, and a great deal of admiration for the human body, the way God designed it and it's ability to heal itself!!!! Note to Mum....please don't panic so much....Dad is a very capable bush doctor, and knows his stuff!!!

Laying the electrics and fixing the bumper bashing!

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 13:52:15 +0100

Well a few things have happened in the last couple of weeks, one of the main things we did on the truck was to lay the electric cables within the framework......sounds easy? Huh!!! ....Well least so I thought!! We started by drilling holes in the framework, which wasn't quite as straight forward as it sounds!! The drill bits often have to be re-sharpened along the way! I discovered that threading these thick wires was not so easy as well. It's very hard to pass the corners in the tubing, and you often don't know where you are as you thread them through. When you finally find the wire at the other hole then it's another job to get it out!! We ended up with lots of loops of wire at the corner holes that Dad had to rescue us!! Once that was done we then had to cut the wire to size to finish it....but one of the problems I encountered was where I had drilled the holes, they were sharp on the edges, which of course can cut into the wire and cause shorts. It took me a couple of hours just to thread one wire!
The other exciting thing that happened was that the water tank (made from stainless steel) arrived! When we got it the guy who made it reckoned it was about 100L tank. That afternoon Ike and I spent filling it up with a 20L bucket....we found out it holds 150L of water. Well it held 150L still has a couple of leaks in the welding to be fixed!!
On Monday, Dad and I were out and had a bit of a bumper bashing on the highway. The front of Dad's truck wasn't so bad...but the other guy's back bumper resembled a crushed up piece of tin foil. We spent the last week pulling out the front where it was slightly pushed in and repairing the bumper/bullbar. We finished spray painting it yesterday and then went off to a range to shoot our compound bows....A good time was had by all!

Fitting the 9.5 KVA Generator

Sun, 20 Feb 2011 19:56:00 +0100

So this week we completed the work on modifying the generator to fit in a compartment under the double bed at the back of the motorhome. Originally we were going to fit it so that it was rigid in the back, with the exhaust running outside of the generator......however we made 3 fundamental mistakes....
1) We made the generator compartment too narrow to accomodate the exhaust comfortably....would result in too much heat.
2) We only had 0.5m overhang above the generator which would then make it difficult for maintenance.
3) Too small a space would cause not enough air circulation to allow for cooling of the generator.
Well if you look at those 3 problems, there was only one mistake....the compartment was too small!!! And it's too late to do anything about that....so of course...."we had to make a plan"!

To overcome the heat problem we removed the existing panels on the generator and remade exterior ones, out of aluminium, and consolidated most of the safety guard. At the outer end a 12 volt fan was fitted to form a wind tunnel.

In terms of space we decided that the generator needed to be on runners for easy maintenance...but to find a simple, stable, lightweight yet strong runner system is not that easy! As we have 0.5m overhang above the generator it seemed the easier to put the runners above the generator. We used heavy duty garage sliding door runners above it to slide it in and out! So that's sorted out the maintenance problem!

Then we had to figure out what to do with the exhaust system, so that we didn't shorten our trip dramatically!! We have actually run the exhaust over the top of the generator...however it took Joshua (14) to point out to Dad that he was running it the wrong direction! Having corrected that we then managed to drop a nut through the engine cover.....3 hours later it was retrieved and the engine reassembled! So we finished the week with insulating the exhaust to transfer heat out of the centre!