As the aussies would say... "not happy Jan!" After all my effort spent on the mighty Range rover... turns out the block's cracked. Bit of a major, then. Might be time to cut my losses... either that or do an engine transplant from the old discovery... might not be worth the hassle. We shall see. Will be interesting telling the manager, after being pretty confident I could get it running. Well, I did get it running... just happens that the stuck thermostat and the overheating wasn't part of the original equation. Not sure how easily they are going to be able to shift it now either... guess if we sell it as is where is with the discovery too someone will get a bargin.
Anyhow, fairly interesting week out at the mine, typical mine scenario, the rules kept changing. Turns out the dragline shutdown is weeks behind schedule, so I won't be out there next week as previously thought.
I went out first thing monday to be onsite by 6:30 to do an induction for the dragline area, and boy was it wet. Raining cats, dogs, and small elephants. I got to the usual mine road, and it was cut off and closed due to flooding. So I took the alternative route, and the water was deep there too, but crossable with the 4WD. Brendan was going to meet me out there in his commodore, so I rang him up and met him in the town just before the water. He asked why, and I told him he would soon find out. So he jumped in my truck and we forded the river across the road, and finally made it to the camp. We carried on towards the mine, just to be told that the mine was closed as there was yet more water across the road and they couldn't get mines rescue personal on site. So, that was pretty much monday buggered, Brendan ended up going back to Rocky, the other tech went back to Gladstone, and I ended up staying at the camp incase there were any major repeater outages when the mine opened again.
Tuesday the rain had eased off a little, and there was access to the mine via a third route, which involved going down the main haul road as the usual access was still cut off. (And remained so until Friday). I went and completed the induction which was going to be on Monday, and then carried on doing the usual mine stuff that I was sent out to do. The other two guys carried on doing the dragline stuff, and found out that the place we were going to run all the cables to had been deleted off the new dragline plan. So, they are going to have to build us a new room to put the camera stuff in before we can run any cabling. That pretty much was the end of the 2 week job at that point, so the other two guys went back to town.
I had a few jobs to look at on Tuesday, but nothing too serious. Wednesday was pretty busy, installed a new radio to a dozer, looked at a few faults, had plenty of work to keep me out of trouble.
Thursday was the opposite, pretty much dead, not much to look at at all. I did some site checks on a repeater site, just about got stuck twice because it was so wet. Friday was looking good, started with an hour long safety briefing on faults with EWPs and what to do if you catch measles. Not too many jobs on, I was hoping for an early escape back to Gladstone... when the call from dispatch comes through, "Help, channel one is cutting in and out, needs fixed". This is rather an urgent problem, as channel one is their main operations and haul road channel, if that isn't working they pretty much can't run the mine. So given the bad weather, I figured it could be a battery problem. I collared a passing apprentice and told him he had an important job to do for king and country and got him to give me a hand to put the generator on the back of my ute.
They seemed to be having more problems at the northern end of the site, so we drove up there to the northern most repeater and almost got stuck several times. We eventually managed to get to the repeater, and after scaring off the local wallaby population we checked the battery condition. All was OK, and I couldn't fault the channel one. Thinking I may have got it wrong, we left and went to the next repeater in the chain. We finally managed to get our way over the rills and onto the access track, slowly crawling our way up the seriously rutted hill, trying not to fall down crevasses, and just as we were almost at the top, I see a haul truck appear over the horizon. Which was unusual, as they don't generally drive haul trucks to repeaters. Once we finally made it to the very top I discovered that in the few weeks that I had been away they had formed a new road right up to and past the repeater for dumping more mining spoil, hence the truck.
We checked the batteries here also, all OK. Just as I was lowering the lid to the battery compartment, I was hit with the sudden realisation that I had got sidetracked and forgotten to lower the cover on the battery box at the first repeater we had been to. So, back down the hill, this time taking the easy haul track, and drove back to the first repeater to fix the battery box lid. That was all pretty straight forward, but I still hadn't found a problem. Time was getting on, and I was keen on getting out of there, so I decided to check the last main repeater and leave the other 3 for someone else. So I drove to the last major repeater, just as the rain set in again. Checked the batteries, all OK, and checked the channel, all OK, and dispatch said it was OK, so I left it as it was and headed back to the workshop.
The rain was setting in well by now, so I went and washed down the truck and got off site. The trip home was very wet, in places the water was falling so heavy even with the wipers on full you couldn't see the front of your own bonnet. Finally made it home and called it a day.
Saturday we went to Rocky and I bought some ARB recovery gear for what now turns out to be a non usable range rover, however, always handy to have in case one gets stuck. Bought some more bits for the rather neglected train layout too, hopefully will get a chance to do some more on that soon.
Right, better go and get some dinner cooking, here's some pics from the week.
TTFN
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