BUSH MECHANICS with GEOFF LEWIS
NOT A GOOD START We've all heard of, or have been in the situation ourselves of waking up in the morning at camp, walking over to fire up the 4x4, and nothing, completely dead. This leaves the age-old question of what to do next?
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here are a myriad of whizz-bang products out there which can solve this problem in seconds, though they aren’t much good to anyone if you have left them at home or just don’t have one to begin with. There is one item though, which many of us have, or can afford. So, before we get started on a solution for this problem there are just a couple of things to outline for those who are new to the mysteries under the bonnet. 1. 99% of all 4x4s require 12 volts in order to function properly. 2. If you have an automatic vehicle the following could possibly, partly solve the problem. 3. If you have diesel 4x4 and it is manual you will need to ingest at a minimum an entire box of Weet-Bix and put plenty of cement in your tea or coffee for this to work. 4. If you have a point ignition petrol 4x4 (traditional) then the following will be a piece of cake.
are incredibly simple in their overall operation and they use a 6-volt battery. Any well-prepared outback traveller should always carry spare batteries for their torch, so if you have a 6-volt battery in your torch and you have a spare 6-volt you could potentially have 12 volts if the batteries are linked in series (which means, positive to positive, negative to negative). This can be done by using some spare electrical wire from your tool kit or in a LDS (life and death situation) it can be salvaged from your indicators (as you can just simply use hand signals if required from there on). In most situations, it is simply a case of your 4x4 not having enough guts from the battery to be able to turn the starter motor over or it doesn’t have enough power to turn the motor quick enough for it to fire. For a point ignition engine to fire it requires a minimum of 6 volts, however, the starter motor requires 12 volts, so you simply roll start the car. But what if that is not possible? By having linked the 6 volts in series or just hooking up your torch to the positive and negative terminals of your battery, you will be able to give the battery just a little bit of a boost which might be enough to get your
So, what is this item we pretty much all have and can afford? It's a torch. Yep, just that, nothing more. One of the best bangs for your buck torches is the tried and tested Dolphin torch, which can be picked up from any supermarket. They are waterproof, have great longevity, 106
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All hooked up.
