Well I think its time to resurrect my old resto thread!
So 18months on, whats changed....well my wife and I are well into our 5th year of our 2yr visit here in Melbourne. Due to my second UK storage solution becoming less feasible and our decision to stay here for a while longer, the wife and i decided to ship the camper over to Aus. What better place to enjoy a camper/bus - or as I should refer to it form now on, a Kombi.
I ended up opting for a container shipping mainly due to the fact that the bus wasnt driveable with a working fuel gauge for a ro-ro. Also, I had a few other things like my red9design wishbone setup to ship along with an aluminium fuel tank etc.
After I sorted my Import Permit to allow me to ship my camper to aus, I organised the shipping down to Southampton and awaited 3months for its arrival in Melbourne. Tracking its progress everyday on the website once I knew the vessel's name was quite sad but exciting. It finally arrived in Melbourne!
After failing its quarantine and paying to have its underbelly cleaned and then re-inspected a friend and I collected one saturday morning:
I let the wife drive while we pushed her into her new home. Sad news followed the following week that our landlord was giving us the boot because he was renovating the property and then moving in with his family :x . devastated. I was losing my double garage! I frantic search didnt find a property with such a good garage space, but a lovely house and enough space for the garage and my fishing kayak. I even treated her to a bit of flooring!
if only that was the only stress we've had. While prepping the bus for its engineering signoff, prior to getting it road registered, i discovered that my starter motor had pretty much burned out. after taking it apart it was bad news - the only place for it was the bin. turns out that the stock starter that i was running was 0.7HP and the Porsche one for my engine is 1.9HP...that will explain the historical sporadic difficulty in cranking when hot. I ordered a HI-Toque starter from a place in aus:
Next up was, giving the engine a full service when I discovered a snapped head stud!! which means only one thing! Pulling the engine and rebuilding!! at least the top end. Inspection during teardown will depict whether there are other things that need doing like replacing P&C's. or even the case needs to be split.
I am currently in a bit of dilemma now. do I fit a temporary replacement type 4 engine and get the bus on the road asap. allowing me to then slowly teardown, inspect, replace and rebuild or do I just rebuild the engine I have and have the bus off the road for even longer... with only evenings and some weekends free to work on the Porsche engine i can see it being several months before the engine is rebuilt and don't really want to be pressured in terms of time to get the bus on the road and rush the rebuild...especially as I haven't done it before. on the other hand, the bus wont be the same with a type4 engine in it - vein I know, but the whole thing about this camper is the everything that's in it. I know its interim, but still... At least I think I have a reliable guy who can provide me with a replacement engine. it will come complete - even with the tinware and he'll even so a fully service of it and compression test!
so whats next. A full compression test on the Porsche engine and cylinder leakdown test will give me some feedback on engine condition. Historically I had lower compression on no.2 so will be good to see if that's still an issue as I wasn't sure if it was just a bit of carbon buildup on the valve/valve seat or something more concerning. I'll be tearing down the engine anyway so will ultimately find out, but will help to give an idea/
