Why isn't anything ever easy?

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It's late and I'm tired. A lot has happened since I was in Ceduna three nights ago. That was a very comfy motel room I stayed in and I got up very early ready for the day - and because I wanted to nut out what was wrong with the Jackaroo. I had absolutely no idea after checking the car over and decided that it was possibly a computer problem because I was of the belief that cars this age were often highly electronically controlled. Unfortunately my knowledge depletes rapidly about there. I saw a couple of mechanics in Ceduna and bounced ideas off them. They were about as baffled as I was. I pushed on anyway, still exhausting myself trying to figure out what could be going on. It most certainly was hot as I had predicted in my last post, so I was stoked at how comfortable I was in the car with the air-conditioning on.

As I rolled towards Port Augusta, I had my first blow-out. The tyre was absolutely knackered and irrepairable which is something I'm certainly used to by now. It wasn't much fun changing it because it was at least forty degrees outside - I was absolutely stuffed when I hopped back in the car. To add insult to injury, there wasn't one 215/75/15 to be found in Port Augusta. So, I had to decide whether to spend another night in paid accommodation, or try my luck and see if I could make it to Port Pirie with no spare. I took the second option and camped in a rest area half way. I must admit that was a bad night. I was worried I'd lose a second tyre and there was a lot of noise which included railway maintenance crews coming to fix a signal on the nearby railway line and plenty of trains. Had it been a cruisy day, it probably wouldn't have bothered me so much.

So the next day I went into Port Pirie which is a town I've always enjoyed visiting. First things first and it was breakfast - at McDonald's for the first time in three months. I can't say I enjoyed it. Then I was off to find a tyre. I had about as much luck here as in Port Augusta. So, you improvise. There was ONE 235/75/15 at Tyrepower so I thought I may as well go for that because I actually have another one of those. So I got that 235 and had some rotating and balancing done to have a car that was ten times more stable on the road. Awesome. Mission #1 Accomplished.

As I had been doing in almost every town, I thought I'd try and find automatic transmission experts. I tried absolutely everyone and then had one last option - K&C Service and Repair. These guys had only been open two days so I was very lucky as they were both experts in the area I needed. I met Chris at the desk and he readily came out to the car with a suitcase full of plugs and adaptors etc for diagnosis purposes. So the next step was to find the Jackaroo's plug. 20 minutes later, we realised we didn't need to plug anything in except for two connectors already in the car and we were shown codes on the dash made up of variations of a flashing light. Our decision was to get the speedometer fixed. Keiren said that this was a highly likely cause of my problem because automatic transmissions receive signals from it. Well, you learn something every day. It certainly fixed the problem. So I was off as happy as a lark. I can't wait to drop in next time I'm in Port Pirie!

That was last night and I wasn't able to write about it then because I couldn't get the internet. Unbelievable - I could get internet on the Nullabor - but I couldn't get it 80kms out of Adelaide!!

The next morning (this morning) I drove in to Adelaide and just as I was entering Gawler, I couldn't believe my luck. All of the sudden I heard crunching and groaning noises coming from the speedometer. Yep, back to square one, It broke, the automatic gearbox is playing up again and that speedo assembly has to come to bits. At least something fun comes out of it!! For most of the morning I was cursing myself for getting something with a Holden badge on it.

I drove through some beautiful areas today and now, ridiculously late at night, I'm almost in Victoria. Groovy.

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