Where's T1 & Margaret ?

[Mrcoolabah1au]

Must be quite in crystal brooks no internet for a week

[T1 Terry]

Must be quite in crystal brooks no internet for a week

It is far from quite here I can assure you, trucks all day and night and squawking gallahs daylight to till dark, be glad to get back to the peace and quite of Mannum.
System is all but finished, just an inverter used for dumping excess solar into the hot water system letting the smoke out to sort, then heading back home to Mannum to get the gear/battery pack together for John's caravan install.

[Riverlander]

Hi T1 Was wondering how you were going up there with all the heat and storms. Just started on the van roof for the solar panels. Hoping the aluminium angle will get here tomorrow. Rest of the van is ready for a trip to Mannum but there are heaps of small jobs to do yet. At least the air-con is in and working for you. Catch you when you get home and settled again.
Cheers John and Faye

[T1 Terry]

Well, we is back from Sydney, things didn't go quite like we hoped as far as the court thing went but at least they won't sell the house out from under us to pay for their next house in the Greek islands. If it had gone through to the end we would have had to go back yet again at the end of the mth because one of the NRMA specialists was on holidays in Mauritius, I kid you not, paid way too much money at their victims expense.
So, the Hino went well ... well except for the whole upper dash thing Brian built coming crashing down after leaping over a few of the launch ramps Victoria loosely refers to as a highway. The only difference between these "highways" and what NSW calls a fire trail is these had black stuff on the top rather than dirt.
The exhaust manifold gasket was leaking a bit when we left, it is leaking big time now Every opening around the engine has black soot marks around it and all the engine bay is powder black coated, what a mess.
I seriously damaged the start battery pack before we left by accidentally leaving something turned on a dragged it dead flat and this caused one of the old lithium cells to turn into a balloon and refuse to function as designed. Once it was started first thing in the morning it was generally ok to restart each time during the day, but this became a bit touch and go on the last day home. Had to put the battery charger from the house battery to the start battery on a few occasions to get it started again, once on the highway outside Hay after Margaret stalled it at a lollie pop man site, but they were very understanding and just moved the lollie pop man to behind the Hino and carried on as usual It started again before it was our turn to go again anyway so all ended well
Apart from that, Hino went well, even though it blows clouds of black smoke when the revs are down so it has to driven like you hate it, the fuel economy wasn't much worse than the Mazda at around 16ltr per 100km so can't complaint too much about that eh