Jim’ll fix it (or Dodgy Brothers are on the job)

Sarah told me a story about The Boy in a Tent – Max Woosey – who just finished 3 years camping in a tent in his backyard (and other places such as 10 Downing Street and Twickenham). He is also going to the coronation apparently. He raised more than 700,000 quid for charity and you can read a bit about him here.

 ‘Tent boy’ ends charity camping challenge after three years | Devon | The Guardian

The reason Sarah was telling me the story is that he apparently had to replace his tent every 10 weeks because, basically, that was the life of his tent. We had been talking about the difficulty in buying camping kit that is actually up to being used non-stop, and that even relatively expensive stuff just doesn’t seem to last.

I have spent a lot of time fixing stuff or replacing stuff that has broken, and we are keeping track of everything, mainly for our own interest, but it might also interest others. I must note that we don’t always buy the most expensive kit – a lot of our decisions are influenced by the need to fit whatever we buy in the car or trailer, so buying a heavy canvas ensuite tent might be a good quality solution, but we just can’t deal with the size an weight of that stuff.

You may think that there are some obvious engineering inventions that have been world changing inventions, such as the screw bottle top, but in my view nothing beats 100 mile and hour tape. It can be used to fix almost anything. It is sometimes mistaken for duct tape, but is usually a lot more stretchy and also cheaper. It has been in almost constant use of the last seven months of our trip.

Here the things that have caused us some grief:

Coffee plunger – the handle broke at first and I taped that up – later the glass jug broke and we had to resort to daily use of the Wacaco espresso maker, which makes great coffee, but is a lot of ginning around first thing in the morning. We chased a replacement plunger for weeks, and had a bit of amusement at the expense of various teenage shop assistants in Colac who didn’t know what a coffee plunger is (not sure they knew what coffee is). Replaced it eventually with a plunger from the op shop that didn’t work very well, and later replaced that with one from Woolies in Whyalla. Huzzah!

Shower – over the years we have had a few 12V showers. They cost about $40 and have a 50c electric motor running a tiny plastic impeller which does a great job of pumping water through a pipe and into the shower head. Ours worked for about 5 minutes on the first night we needed it. I then spent about an hour pulling it apart and gluing up the impeller which is about the size of a 5c piece. I put it back together and it then worked for about 5 months (although we don’t use it all the time – maybe 30% of the time). The glue job on the impeller eventually gave out, and although everything else was working fine, that 2c part meant that we binned the lot. The main mistake with the shower has been using it when camping at the beach, which means sand gets in somewhere, and rust follows despite best cleaning efforts.

Fridge – this was reasonably well documented previously, but the compressor just died one day (my diagnosis). It is possible that this could have bee repaired, but we had to keep moving and camping fridge repair people are hard to find even in major centres. We sadly left that one at the recycling place at the dump in Malacoota and so far the XTC replacement is working well, although it is really fussy about its power supply and I had to run some 16mm² cable through the trailer in order to get it to work properly.

Trailer back/kitchen gate – again this was documented reasonably well previously – we were really lucky to find the guy in Malacoota who could fix it for us, and so far it seems to be much better than it was originally.

Ute canopy window – this was a bit of a disaster. Worth knowing that if you have a fancy (expensive) canopy with a curved window then you’re on the hook for a very expensive piece of replacement glass, if you can get it. Our canopy was second hand (maybe 5 years old) and we couldn’t replace the glass. Eventually resorted to some engineering works of our own involving rolling a piece of aluminium with the car running over the aluminium sheet which was propped up on some 2 x 4. Very dodgy brothers, but is serving us well so far.

Struts – for the rear canopy window. Both were cactus and not up to holding the aluminium replacement. Can’t buy what you need off the shelf, but you can order exactly what you want from a couple of online places – that requires you to have an address to ship them to of course, which is a bit tricky when you’re on the road. Thankfully I have friends in Mt Barker who let me ship a bunch of things to them (and then helped me install the struts).

Second screen for Sarah’s computer – this is pretty important for her productivity and reducing work hours as much as possible. The first one lasted a couple of months and then stopped working. The manufacturers ghosted Sarah when she started chasing the warranty and eventually we decided it was worth the money to get another one (from a different manufacturer).

Hot water bag – leaking.

Canvas food cupboard – got eaten by mice, who then got in and ate the bread.

Rewiring 12V stuff – there has been quite a lot of this – some of it just small repair jobs where my own previous work hasn’t been up to the rough treatment that it gets. Bigger jobs have been to wire in two new circuits for the fridge and for a permanent place for the inverter. We weren’t sure when we left home exactly how the inverter setup would best be installed, so kicke it to future Jim to deal with on the road.

One diesel Jerry can leaked and was subsequently dumped and replaced.

Renewed two of our trailer tyres which were unevenly worn and bald in spots. Bought some second hand ones in Shepparton which had heaps of tread, but it seems likely they had been on the shefl for a while. Our trailer rims are 15” which used to be really common, but that size has gone out of fashion – and are therefore a bit harder to find in small towns.

Deep cycle battery – I killed one of these when we changed to the new fridge. If you run the AGM batteries too low then they wont recover. The new fridge as indicated, is a bit fussy about the input voltage, and required me to rewire the trailer to get it working without having to carry batteries around to where the fridge is located. When we first got it, as a solution to the voltage problem I ran it off the inverter (which is very inefficient). The inverter has no low voltage protection for the battery and will just suck it dry until there is nothing left. This is pretty much what happened over the course of 24 hours.

Anderson plugs – lots of these have been replaced, mainly due to tough conditions in which they’re being used.

Shower/ensuite tent – this had had about a week of camping before we left home, and has been erected now for a total of about 70 days – which is the magic “replacement tent” point for the boy in a tent. We have replaced two of the composite poles, and there is a rip in one of the sides caused by a very windy night in Lockington. The rip was sewn up by Sarah and then taped up with 100mile and hour tape and has been going ok since then. The tent in general is looking very faded from a lot of sun exposure, so I am not sure how it would have been if we had seen a bit more sun.

Collapsible sieve – finally gave up the ghost and replaced with like for like pretty much.

Wine glass – broke in transit somewhere – replaced with a 50c glass from the Salvos.

Plastic drinking cup – has seen many years in service, but finally cracked under pressure.

Kids chair – broke in various ways, and replaced like for like ($5 chair from Bunnings).

My chair – support strut rivet broken (too many beers consumed perhaps). Drilled the hole a bit wider and replaced the rivet with a bolt/nut.

Pole spreader pole inside the tent – broke the plastic lugs from two of these – was able to fix one with replacements but not the other. Bought an aluminium replacement which is much better – but much more expensive too.

Door zip – we had the door zips replaced before we left home, but the inner zip that keeps the fly screen closed became damaged after a few weeks of solid use. We call it a fly screen, but it is really a screen for keeping everything out of the tent – snakes, spiders (good luck with that by the way), millipeeds (no chance), mice, etc. The big ticket item in there is keeping the snakes out. We haven’t seen many so far, but I know they’re out there (although I keep the snake chat to a minimum out of respect for my Kiwi wife – I don’t know too many Kiwis who are fond of snakes  – or too many Aussies to be fair). I heard a tale when I live in London that when there you were never more than 3 feet on average (something like that) from a rat. I suspect a similar statement could be made about venomous snakes when you’re in the Australian bush, but enough of that chat – you never know who might be reading this…

Bike – my bike quick release axle knob came off – got a free replacement at Anaconda which then broke. Got another free replacement in a bike shop in Whyalla which is actually much better than the original.

Internet extension pole – this broke basically before I used it, but we were 1500km from where I bought it so the 100 mph tape has been put to good use there.

Picnic rug – the large Aldi picnic rug is our camping version of carpet. It has seen a lot of use over the years and was worn out. Replaced when a timely Aldi picnic rug offer came up.

Gas hose – for the stove. Hard to get the right replacement but ordered on line and had it delivered to Melbourne. It is the second replacement for this stove, which makes me think of the limited life expectancy of the stove, but I will do what I can to keep it going..

Boogie board – Heidis boogie board started peeling and I glued it back together with liquid nails (by far the most versatile glue in the kit). Both kids boogie boards a looking a bit the worse for wear after getting squashed into the car every week and then used for sand dune surfing.

Shoes – various shoes have been repaired – most successfully but not all. Liquid nails is the glue of choice, but be careful – it can be messy and it is difficult to clean of excess later on.

Jeans – Sarah’s saw a lot more action than expected during an Australian summer – replaced in Melbourne.

Sarah’s and my chair both ha the same problem with a poor design – fixed with cable tie.

Wacaco espresso coffee maker – cracked outer casing fixe with 100mph tape.

Food box – these are essential for keeping the wildlife out of your food. As described, the canvas cupboards don’t cut it. We overpacked a food box and got a crack in the lid, then I broke the handle with some impatient closing of the handle when it was over-full. 100mph tape.

Tool box – some rough handling of one of the plastic tool boxes broke the lid – still in use with half a lid.

Plumbing – the trailer has a 80 L water tank and a couple of pump taps. I had to take the plumbing apart to allow the welder in Mallacoota to do his stuff. I then needed to replace all of the hoses with the short bits of garden hose I have on board (for using on public taps when needed).

Kitchen tap – was leaking horribly all over the kitchen, wasting water and making a mess. Replaced the tap.

Electric blanket – we will never camp without a 12V electric blanket again, but our first one from Aldi stopped working and I couldn’t trouble shoot it, so we replaced it with one from Supacheap Auto. Hot water bags are great, but the electric blanket can get you through a Tasmanian summer.

Solar panel – this was a new 200W solar blanket from Kings when we left home. I spend a lot of time monitoring the power situation, and noticed that something wasn’t charging correctly. Rule of thumb for all things electrical is that about 99% of the problems are caused by connection issues. I did a fair bit of electrical checking with my handy multi-meter and found that the blanket was producing about 12V which is about half what it usually produces. I figured that there was probably a wire broken inside the blanket somewhere, and after a few days of thinking about it I cut it open, found the broken wire, fixed it retested and got about 15V output. Still a couple of cells not working. I thought a bit more about it and then decided that I needed to o a bit more invasive investigation – this turned up nothing fixable, but showed me that the blanket wasn’t really weather proof, and this seemed to be the source of the major issues. This might not be a surprise to some, but we can’t hang around the camp all day moving solar panels in and out of cover every time it looks like rain, so it is reasonably important that they can be left out in the rain. Replacement solar panel is not a blanket, and takes up a lot more space than the other one, but so far is proving to be much more robust.

Car tyre – had a leaking car tyre. Had it repaired for $30 in Port Fairy where they removed the screw.

Leaking water containers – these are our extra water containers that are collapsible and we can only fit them in when we are camped somewhere – so for use if we’re going to town and running out of water. 100 mph tape has fixed the leaking enough.

Computer backpack zip – I am probably trying to keep too much stuff in the backpack, but it is cactus.

Solar voltage regulator – came with the Kings solar blanket, accidentally got it a little wet, stopped working soon after. Replaced with a much better IP66 rated regulator from XTM.

Trailer light plug – seemed to have a lot of internal rust so clearly not weather proof, which is a bit of a design flaw. Re-terminated all of the wiring and replaced the trailer end of the plug.

Tent rope tensioner – these are old school made of wood (now cracked) and very robust, but have seen a lot of wind action. 100mph tape has fixed it for the moment.

Trailer tyre – tread came off while on the highway.