With over 12,000km travelled and 259 nights in
a row spent sleeping, cooking and living in our
van as a family of two adults and three boisterous
boys, below is the breakdown of what’s broken
so far and how we’ve fixed it.
STONEGUARD
The welds had completely snapped in areas due
to corrugations and wind pressure. We fixed it
by using a checkerplate aluminium sheet, Sikaflex
and pop-rivets to reinforce the broken joins.
TOW HITCH BOLT
We noticed this bolt had fallen out on the Tanami
track, presumably from vibrations. We replaced it
with a bolt off the rear wheel holder as we figured
that had a lower priority than the tow hitch coming
apart! (We bought a new one when we could.)
BROKEN WATER FITTING
When there was reoccurring water leakage on
the floor of the caravan next to the toilet, we
wondered if it was a case of the boys not being
able to ‘aim’, or something more sinister. We
investigated within the toilet cassette hatch and
could see the water fitting was dripping, so we
replaced it with a spare fitting we had.
SKYLIGHT AND AIR-CON LEAK
One morning we woke up to a drip noise from
the air-conditioner. We found some droplets of
water coming through into the van. On closer
inspection, we found the silicone was a little worn
from the roof, so we reapplied around the worn
areas, which fixed the problem.
12V EXHAUST FAN
Our shower exhaust fan stopped working
because the positive wire had snapped off (again,
presumably from corrugations). We re-soldered
the positive back to the terminal with the soldering
kit we have in our toolbox.
SHOWER TOWEL RAIL
The result of three sometimes heavy-handed
boys in the van putting their bodyweight on the
rail was ruined thread on the screws holding our
towel rail in place. We used adhesive glue and
thicker screws to re-tighten.
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