Had a bit of a bad day today, again. It seems that our “rest day” isn’t to be ! After yesterday’s drama with the gearbox leak we had a plan to fill up the fuel tanks, get some food, check the gearbox oil level and then chill out for the rest of the day.
Step 1, filling up the fuel tanks, turned the whole day upside down as diesel started pouring out of the top of the main tank and all over the forecourt. The sender unit seal has failed after splitting and it looks like my attempt yesterday to tighten up the locking ring has made it much worse, turning a minor leak into a major torrent.
We bought a plastic jerry can from the fuel station while making use of their emergency spill kit and pumped fuel out of the tank into that while trying to stem the flow. With the fuel lost on the forecourt and 20+ litres in the jerry can the level dropped below the sender fitting and I could take the sender out. The rubber seal has spilt near the top so no straight forward fix. By rotating the seal I think the situation is better and we bought some SikaFlex form the hardware store and added that as a secondary seal. Adding the jerry can fuel back to the main tank revealed a minor leak but nothing of the scale we’d experienced previously. I then added yet more SikaFlex around the outside of the assembly to try and reduce it further. Only time will tell if we’ve succeeded.
We did get the rest of our jobs for the day done and managed to get a couple of hours of chilling out including a swim in the pool at the camp site.
The good news is that the auto box oil level is fine so we’re going to carry on and monitor it. The fuel leak, if it still exists, is more of an inconvenience as it means we’ll need to carry a jerry can to maintain fuel capacity.
Tomorrow we’re going to hit the road again and head to Port Headland, probably stopping for the night at a rest area on the way. As of today it looks like the Gibb River Road is now open along it’s entire length so we’ll continue to that and take stock prior to committing.