6 weeks of Tassie

[jf1sf5]

Thats real adventure, looks like a forester camel trophy, love it....any more vids

 

[sjm]

I think everyone gets a nice shot of Cradle Mountain, it was warm up there and the lake was as smooth as silk when we went 3yrs ago.

I was there in November last year (Melbourne Cup weekend). Camped at Cradle Mountain caravan park, snowed all 4 days:

Awesome trip report Dedman, great photos, videos and descriptions!

 

[Kevin]

Fantastic stuff Dedman!

 

[NachaLuva]

Great trip & even better trip report

I wonder if that was the first Subaru to do the balfour track?

And this is at the end of the track again.

probably...& there's the proof you made it

 

[mr turbo]

What an awesome trip report

Some delicious camp fire cooking (possibly the best roast chicken I have ever tasted...);

That looks soooo yummy

We did come across one car stuck though, a Nissan Pathfinder full of ill prepared surfers. Amusingly they were following my line and the forester made it through no problems at all where as they got stuck.

After a quick snatch we were both on our way again (damn pathfinders are heavy cars)

Subaru to the rescue again

There are some great pics & vids there too, brilliant :biggrin:
I might even pinch a couple to make into some banners too, provided thats ok with you mate

And like my04tone said, it really took some big @$#$% to do some of those tracks alone
Well done mate :ebiggrin:

Regards
Mr Turbo

 

[Barnboy]

What an amazing trip!!

That video of you in the bog hole on Balfour was pretty cool, where you sunk right in and the muddies saved the day.

Thanks for the great write up, made my morning a work a lot better!!

 

[Dedman]

Great stuff!! love the pics, it also took some gonads to do those tracks on your own.

Yeah I tell you I was ****ting my self at times. Sandy cape beach was the worst because if you get stuck in this quicksand there is a good chance you wont have a car anymore.

https://www.redbubble.com/people/temma/works/2545536-a-big-oops#zoom

Aparently there is on average one car a year that gets claimed by the beach.

Thats real adventure, looks like a forester camel trophy, love it....any more vids

I have some more but its really just more of the same thing. Might upload some others when I get a chance.

I might even pinch a couple to make into some banners too, provided thats ok with you mate

Yeah feel free to use what ever you like.

 

[NachaLuva]

Yeah I tell you I was ****ting my self at times. Sandy cape beach was the worst because if you get stuck in this quicksand there is a good chance you wont have a car anymore.

https://www.redbubble.com/people/temma/works/2545536-a-big-oops#zoom

Aparently there is on average one car a year that gets claimed by the beach.

Yep that was a big oops lol

You did really well on some very difficult tracks that would scare off a lot of big fourbies

BTW, I checked that photo of mine of Cradle Mtn, it was mid June. I remember there was ice on the roads, some snow in the foreground from the day before but none on the mountain

 

[Gravel_Rocks]

Just awesome…
Thanks for posting the report for us.

 

[FozzyMatt]

Well done Dedman. Great report. Although I certainly wouldn't be taking the risk going out on my own like that, I've seen you show considerable driving skill before and obviously again here. You're always willing to push the limits of what your subie can do and I take my hat off to you for doing it!

Now you just need to make a locker for that thing and you'll be unstoppable!

In that last Balfour video, that last stretch was more like water with a land crossing than a track with a water crossing!

 

[mr turbo]

Yeah feel free to use what ever you like.

Fantasic
Thanks Dedman

Regards
Mr Turbo

 

[casperfromholland]

Awesome! What a journey, thnx for your story!

 

[carljwnc]

Wow!!! That was one wet trip report...glad it didn't 'dampen' your spirits.:lol:

Great report, thanks for the write up.:ebiggrin:

 

[Bobam]

Looks like great fun,Well done.
Organized and ballsy.
Taking your own anchor would help occasionally but when do you stop?
regardz

 

[Dedman]

Well done Dedman. Great report. Although I certainly wouldn't be taking the risk going out on my own like that, I've seen you show considerable driving skill before and obviously again here. You're always willing to push the limits of what your subie can do and I take my hat off to you for doing it!

Yeah going on my own was a tad risky but Sandy cape was pretty busy so it would be likely that we would be able to get a snatch out without too many dramas. The Balfour track was more remote with less people but if worst came to worst and we couldn’t get out we would have had a flooded car and would have had to have camped out until someone came along. I had everything with me to get the car up and running again when we did get out and with all the critical electronics up high or waterproof there shouldn’t have been to many issues.

Now you just need to make a locker for that thing and you'll be unstoppable!

Yeah with a rear locker there would need to be some serious terrain in the way to stop me. I am 99.9% certain i would not have got bogged on the cornwell mine track with a locker.

In that last Balfour video, that last stretch was more like water with a land crossing than a track with a water crossing!

Yeah the track was just crazy, probably took me half an hour to walk those stretches of water in that video before driving it.

Taking your own anchor would help occasionally but when do you stop?

I actually considered it for this very purpose but decided the added weight and cost wasn’t worth it considering I would probably never use it again. In Victoria there is very rarely more than 90m (90m is the length of straps and winch rope I had with me) of distance between where you are bogged and a tree (except for maybe the desert)




Now on to the damage from the trip which I neglected to mention until now..
The most expensive damage (so far) was to the starter motor. It got a tiny bit of water into the solenoid at some point which caused some corrosion to occur a week after we got back. This caused the solenoid to get stuck on when I next tried to start it which burnt out the starter motor and the solenoid coil. The whole thing needed to be replaced...


As I mentioned earlier I also chipped a tooth on the reverse gear which has made it a tad noisy but is still function for the time being.


I essentially removed the rear bumper from catching it on things but I have since re-attached it far more securely than stock.



Detached a rear mud flap backing up a hill (same time I broke the reverse gear). Have re-attached that far more securely than stock.


The water on the balfour caused the lining of the front wheel arch to come out on one side which I haven’t got around to fixing.

Broke the winch rope twice which I have since spliced back to gether. Dyneema is wonderful stuff.


That pretty much sums up the damage and apart from the reverse gear its all easy fix and relativley cheap/free and most of the plastic that came off was pretty sketchily attached before the trips anyway.



On another note, I am very very impressed with the electrical system on the forester. I have done nothing to waterproof any of it and even with the engine pretty much completely underwater there was no signs of it cutting out or loosing power. So much better than the days of distributors and points...

 

[NachaLuva]

Apart from the starter motor & the reverse gear, thats pretty impressive so little damage on such a serious track. Also good work on the waterproofing :biggrin:

Curious bout your in car camera. Presuming its your GoPro, where/how did you attach it?

 

[Dedman]

Camera gopro hero 3 black ed and is mounted on a suction cup mount. One of these;
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Black-W...954?pt=AU_TripodsMonopods&hash=item4ac9706402

and one of these to adapt the generic tripod mount to the gopro;
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/New-Rep...12?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_15&hash=item23323319d8

works great and the only down side is you have to mount the camera upside down. Also for under $5 it a pretty economical option when compared to the gopro version.
Probably wouldnt trust the suction cup outside though without a safety though

 

[NachaLuva]

OK, noticed it was mounted low & could see the top compartment above the glove box. So it was mounted on the windscreen low down?

Not happy with my position, up near the rear view mirror. I get reflections of the dash...very annoying!

 

[Dedman]

Its mounted up as high as I can get it with my mount.

The picture makes it look lower that it really is but the top (bottom) of the camera is about level with or a tad higher than the bottom of the rear view mirror.

 

[taza]

SF reverse isn't the strongest. We stripped the whole gear of all but two teeth when on the beach. After pulling the box down turns out reverse can't be replaced. Only the whole main shaft which is worth $1600!