This Adventurous Age

Adventures travelling and working around Australia.

Tag Archives: TPMS


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2018 Travels March 22-29 (3)

MARCH 22-29     HOME TO MARONG AND BACK (3)

We left the caravan park at 9.45am for the return trip home.

Marong en-suite site

It was the Thursday before Easter, so we were expecting the meet the usual exodus of traffic from Melbourne.

Only a couple of hundred metres from the park, a loud alarm sounded. After the usual “what’s that” panic, worked out that it was the tyre pressure monitoring system (TPMS) we’d installed a few years back. I had wanted it so we could monitor the tyres on the Terios when it was being towed behind Bus. John had put sensors on the Bus too, but they’d caused all sorts of problems and had been abandoned, with John telling me it was all a waste of money. Today, he conceded that the system had proved its worth! Without it, we would probably have ruined an almost new tyre on the Terios, and had it blown out, may have damaged the car as well.

A rear tyre on the Terios – that he had suspected a while ago of having a slow leak – was registering 15 instead of the required 26.

We found a place to safely park beside the road and John got set up to re-inflate the tyre: new air compressor out and attached to Terios battery, assorted hoses and gauges all came into play.

Unfortunately, the label on the part that attached to the tyre was in French. John belongs to the operating style that resorts to instructions only after all else has failed. In this case, he couldn’t even read the instructions!

The air compressor ran noisily. Eventually he realized that the tyre was deflating further, not going up. More fiddling about ensued, while compressor ran on. John tried applying different end bits to the hose – most of which didn’t seem to fir anything we could see. Maybe there are different standard sizes in France? The bargain portable compressor was not looking such a bargain, right about now.

Eventually he gave up and we proceeded to change the now very flat tyre for the spare. We’d never had reason to use the Terios jack before and discovered that it was a tedious little piece of gear that took forever to wind up, half a turn at a time. Ditto to wind down again, after the wheel change.

It was 11.30 when we got going again. Nearly two hours taken….some frayed tempers….

Driving towards home, we discussed keeping a bottle style jack in Terios – much faster to use. John promised to sort out the operation of the air compressor – before it was needed again! I thought back to the built in air compressor that we’d fitted to the old Defender, with its reserve air tank, and wondered if there was room somewhere in the Terios to get one of those? Over the years, we’d had ample practice at using the Defender one.

After Heathcote, we began passing lots of oncoming traffic, as holiday makers headed north for Easter. The effects of slower caravans on the traffic was obvious, especially when there were several in line. At times, there would be a tail back of vehicles for more than a km. This was particularly bad in the stretch between Seymour and Yea, where there are mots of bends and few places to overtake. We were pleased to be going the other way.

By the time we were going over the Divide and down towards Yarra Glen, it was mid afternoon and the oncoming traffic was quite constant.

Stopped as usual at Glenburn to refuel, where there was easy access. $1.347cpl.

In our street, we went through the usual routine of stopping by our drive to unhitch the car on the flat, before taking Bus up into the sloping parking bay.

When I went to start the car to put it away…nothing! Dead lights and a slight groan from the starter. I cursed the bloody air compressor – and John for running it off the car battery for so long while he fiddled about with hoses and fittings. Clearly, it had pretty well flattened the battery, and whatever juice had been left had probably expired while being towed, with the Accessories function having to be on so the steering is unlocked. However, this alone should not have been a problem – we have towed the car like that all day, at times, and the battery has been fine.

So – call to the RACV. By the time they arrived we had Bus unpacked and most stuff put away in the house. The service man got the engine running, but his checks showed the battery was now on its last legs, so we bought a new one from him. The old one had been in the car when it was bought in 2012, and I didn’t know how old it was then, so couldn’t really complain.

Quite a few lessons learned today!

Dog oblivious to the dramas…

Just to cap it all off, when I first opened the house, there was a dove flying around inside! It was rather frantic to get out and eventually flew out one of the doors I opened – but not before leaving assorted feathers and other mementoes behind. Judging from those leavings, it had been inside for days and perching mostly on the top rail of the vertical blinds in the family room. Luckily for it, there had been a bowl of dog water in that room. I remembered that I’d arranged for friend M to come last weekend to fill the bird baths, water the pot plants plants and pick herself a good quantity of the figs ripening on our tree. Turned out she;d forgotten to bring a bag for the figs, and used her house key to come in and get one, leaving the house open while she picked fruit. The bird must have decided to explore then and become shut in – four days ago.

I have had better days!


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2016 Travels September 2

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 2     HOME TO MARONG   240kms

Bus had been ready to go for a while. The hold up had been waiting for three weeks before John could have the stitches removed from his leg. I’d ben doing some leisurely packing over the previous days.

It seemed timely to start a short trip now – maybe three weeks? The obvious first stop was Bendigo, where we hadn’t been in over a year. Grandson had a semi final coming up, in his hockey, and daughter’s partner a netball grand final. We could earn some family brownie points by attending these events.

Departed home at 10.30am. There were always last minute things to do, like packing those last fridge items, and filling rolls for lunch, and we were not in a hurry.

This morning, an added complication was a call informing John that his sister died earlier this morning. We had known this was coming, so it was not a shock. It was thought that the funeral would be late next week, so we decided to continue with at least the Bendigo part of the trip.

There was definitely an emerging pattern to our trip departures – that we have to stop at the park a couple of kms away, down the bottom of the range, to make some adjustment or another to the rig. In this case it was – again – the tyre pressure monitors. John had put them back on the Bus front wheels. He hadn’t ever gotten around to investigating solid sleeves for the inner rear tyre valve extensions, so we didn’t have the monitors on those, which had been the source of an unpleasant flapping noise on their first trip. But it was evident, as soon as we got up to any speed, that the front ones were making that noise now and would have to come off.

The monitor things are fiddly and hard to remove, which is probably a good thing. He swore a lot. The metal edges of the monitors were chopped about from flexing and hitting on the wheel rims, even over that short distance. Clearly, for this system to work on the Coaster, most wheels would have to have some modification to the tyre valve posts. It might make sense to just keep the system on the Terios, which was what I’d intended in the first place.

While John was working on the wheels, I watched a group of Little Corellas – of which we have a lot in the area these days – playing in a big gum tree a short distance away. They were taking it in turns to swing on “ropes” of bark hanging down and clearly just doing so for fun. They really are entertaining birds to watch. I know they are noisy and can be destructive, but I do like them. Had such a vivid memory from when we were camped at Purni Bore, on the edge of the Simpson Desert, some years ago, and there was a large dead tree containing a huge flock of corellas. A noise startled them and they rose all at once, like a great raucous cloud. Once, we would only see them in places further north – along the Murray, Coopers Creek and the like. But now they are well and truly present south of the Divide. Climate change?

Corella trees at Purni Bore, Simpson Desert

It was 11am by the time we got going again, taking our usual route via Yea and Seymour, to Bendigo. Also, as usual, the GPS was fixated on taking us back to Melbourne first. The only route it seems to recognize to Bendigo is via the Calder Highway.

On the large farms approaching Yarra Glen, workers were busily harvesting crops of Brussels sprouts.

Brussels sprout farm Yarra Glen

Along the bypass route around Yarra Glen, there is one roundabout where the route to the Melba Highway is straight ahead, and the road to Healesville off to the right. John took the latter, then had to find a place to turn around, before playing circles on the roundabout to the correct exit. This is something else that now seems to happen every trip – it gets him every time, and sometimes even on the return journey.

The many hectares of grape vines around Yarra Glen and Dixons Creek had all been neatly pruned and looked very tidy. In one of the vineyards there was a red helicopter parked. I wondered if it was tour related, or someone’s private transport?

As we churned our way up the Divide, some cars coming down towards us were flashing their lights at us. Of course, our initial reaction was to think “police ahead”. Then, when there weren’t, to worry if they were spotting something wrong with the rig. The reason became apparent not far from the top – a broken down 4WD and large caravan, parked partly in the oncoming lane. Traffic cones had been set up around it and there was obviously someone helping.

There were a lot of caravans heading towards Melbourne – the return of the grey nomads…

It was a very pleasant day for driving. Fine, blue sky, cool but not cold.

Yea-Seymour road

Topped up the fuel at the servo at Glenburn – $1.149 cpl.

Stopped at the Rotary Park at Seymour to eat lunch and give dog some exercise. I wanted her kept on the lead, to keep her away from water, but he who learns slowly let her off for a run. She promptly found the nearest large muddy puddle and wallowed in it. That undid all the good work of the dog groomers! Wet, muddy, smelly dog now. I was not happy. She was.

Lunch stop Seymour

I don’t think we had ever seen the country between Seymour and Bendigo so green and lush. There were lots of full dams and flowing creeks. Part of Lake Eppalock was visible  from the road near Axedale, so it had to be pretty full.

I took a phone call and John was able to pull over to talk. It was to tell him that the sister’s funeral would be on Tuesday – sooner than we’d been previously told. We decided to keep going. Dog and I would stay in Bendigo and John could drive the Terios back to Melbourne for the day. I was pleased that we had set off today and were not now waiting around at home for the event to be over.

The Garmin had finally caught up with where we were, and directed us on the usual Over Dimensional Route through Bendigo. Only one glitch, when John seemingly couldn’t count to three and took the wrong exit from a round about. Again! Naturally, we’d managed to time our passage through the city to coincide with school let-out time…

It was 3.45 when we reached the Big 4 Marong Holiday Park, some 14kms west of the centre of Bendigo. We had not stayed here before, but were still trying to find a really good dog friendly park in the area. By initial impressions, this could be it.

I had previously phoned the park and booked us an en-suite site from today until Tuesday morning. Now, in view of the funeral, they were able to extend it for an extra night. After discount, we paid $36 a night, which I thought was very reasonable for a place of the quality that this turned out to be.

Set up on en-suite sites, which had ample room for us. The bathroom was compact, but clean and  quite adequate. I was most impressed with the nearby roofed BBQ area and adjacent camp kitchen room, which was very comprehensively equipped.

Left Marong again at 5pm to drive back to Bendigo for grandson’s hockey match. It was cold, and we had to stand for the whole game, which was murder for the legs and lower back. “Our” team lost, so that was the end of the boy’s hockey season for this year. But he appeared to play well – I think? I would appreciate the game more if I knew something about the rules.

After the game, the boy headed off to spend the weekend with his father, who had come up from Melbourne to watch the match, so we wouldn’t see him again until Sunday afternoon.

Drove back to Bus, stopping at Marong to order fish and chips from the general store’s attached shop, which John drove back to collect at the appointed time of 8pm. Very nice they were too.

We certainly needed the little electric fan heater to warm up Bus.

John watched football on TV. I did some hand sewing of the quilt project.

Bed at 11pm. We were both tired. For some reason, not long after getting into bed, I got a really nasty cramp in one leg. Unusual for me and it sure woke me up again! Was very careful how I moved that leg for the rest of the night.


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2016 Travels March 15

TUESDAY MARCH 15     HOME TO TOORA     220kms

There did not remain much packing to do this morning. Only the last-minute fridge items, and the things like laptops and camera that we do not like to leave overnight in Bus when we are not in it. I made some wraps to take for our lunch.

John backed Bus out of onto our narrow road and then pulled into the side so we could hitch up the car. It is not the easiest place to get Bus out of. In the process, he ran the front off side along the  drainage grate at the edge of our nature strip.

Terios hitched, house closed up, dog on board – and we were away, at 10.30am.

Straight away, I noticed an unusual noise – kind of whup-whup-whup – that seemed to change as our speed changed. Then the TPMS gadget started its loud beeping noise, indicating a flat tyre on passenger side front wheel of Bus. But it was not driving like we had a problem. Had to go a couple of kms before there was a place we could park Bus on level ground, out of the way of traffic – in a park carpark area. By the time we got there, the display was indicating the driver’s side front tyre also had a problem.

The issue on the passenger side was immediately obvious – the TPMS cap monitor was gone. John thought that maybe his encounter with the grate had knocked it off. We unhitched the Terios and he drove that back home to search the street for it – those units are expensive!

While he was gone, I had a good look round Bus but could not see anything wrong that might account for the repetitive noise we’d heard. I also took dog for a good long walk. It was quite hot and she was more interested in finding water to drink, than walking.

Eventually John was back. He could not find the missing cap. Then, he noticed that the top had sheared off the driver’s side one. That had been nowhere near the grate, so he was not impressed. He put the old, standard valve caps back on the two front wheels. Then he drove Bus around the flat area, while I watched and listened to try to pick up the noise source. No use.

We discussed me taking car and dog back home and him taking Bus to Toyota or truck tyre place to try to get a fix, but then he decided to drive up the road a way, to see if he could work it out. Came back and said he thought it might be the TPMS monitors on the long inner back wheel valve extensions, flexing and hitting the wheel rim. So he replaced those with the standard caps and went for another test drive. No more noise. Whilst that was a relief, it was annoying that we had the problem at all. I did not judge it a good idea to remind John that I’d previously told him that forum advice had been to get rigid metal valve extensions on the back wheels, for TPMS!

Hitched up car and set off again, after a delay of nearly two hours.

The TPMS system was still doing readouts for the Terios’ wheels, at least, and the two outer back wheels of Bus. Need to get it all sorted when we were home again.

Took Eastlink and then the Monash freeway, and proceeded to Pakenham, KooWeeRup, Foster, to Toora. It was very windy – the worst winds we had yet encountered in Bus, so was hard work for the driver. Would have been really nasty towing a van.

The urban spread of Melbourne seems relentless, gobbling up what was farm land to the south east. Vegie growing country.  I wondered when planners would start to realize that, whilst a rapidly growing city needs houses, it also needs food – and a lot of the most productive land was going under. The same was happening to Melbourne’s south west too.

Approaching KooWeeRup, saw a sign to that town, and took that turn, though the GPS had remained silent. It looked right on my paper map, which was not all that old, but turned out to pre-date the bypass that now goes straight to the South Gippsland Highway. Wonder how long that had been there? We took the long way round, for sure.

Predictably, M and C had arrived at the Toora Caravan Park a couple of hours before us, and texted that it was windy! We knew that already. As we approached Toora, saw wind farm towers on the hills behind – that figured!

We had been allocated a drive-through en-suite site that was quite roomy. It cost us $40 a night. The en-suite was clean and a good size. I liked that there was a glass screen instead of the dreaded clingy shower curtain. But it only extended down one side, so water did splash out and wet a lot of the floor. A mop was provided!

Very nice site at Toora

The park was on a hill side, so we had some views across in the direction of the Prom. The park was very well equipped for a family holiday – heated indoor pool and spa, tennis court, jumping pillow, several BBQ areas. It was certainly a place we would be happy to stay at again.

M and C were likewise quite happy with their cabin.

After setting up, had a very late lunch, and relaxed for the little of the afternoon that was left.

John took dog for a walk across the highway and down some streets. Clearly, she was not impressed by the traffic encountered because, for the rest of the stay, she refused to go anywhere near the front gate, but would happily walk around the rest of the park. On my late afternoon walk with her, there were some rabbits grazing at the back of the park – which dog resolutely ignored. However, she made a great effort to reach a fallen pine cone, which she then carried for the rest of the walk. Strange creature.

The four of us enjoyed a pleasant happy hour at the Bus.

Our tea was pre-cooked chicken marylands. Quite enough, by themselves, after the late lunch.

Through the night could hear some noise from the wind turbines on the hill behind the park, but it was not unpleasant or intrusive.


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2016 Travels February

FEBRUARY     SOME ADDITIONS TO THE BUS

Last time Bus went to the local Toyota dealer’s for a service, they could not remove the front wheel nuts in order to check things behind the wheels. They did not have a special tool and were reluctant to exert too much force on the lever they did have, in case they stripped or broke the studs.

On the way home from the dealer, John had taken Bus to a truck tyre place and they undid the wheel nuts, to establish that it could be done, and then re-tightened them. Back home, John could not make them budge again with the “normal” gear he had on hand.

We were told at Toyota, and had not known until then, that the wheel nuts on the two front wheels undo in different directions on the two wheels: one clockwise, one anti-clockwise. Something else to remember…

When we first bought our caravan, back in 1997, we had both gone through a steep learning curve, in order to understand how everything worked, and potential issues and pitfalls. For most years of our vanning, we felt knowledgeable and secure in this.

Acquiring Bus was a whole new ball game. A much more complex one too. For the last four years I had haunted online forums that featured Coasters, and motor homing in general. Neither of us liked the sense of not necessarily knowing what was happening with the vehicle or house systems, or about potential hassles.

After this problem with the wheel nuts, we decided it would be wise to buy a “nutcracker” – a special kind of tool that helps undo wheel nuts. More research ensued, then eventually John drove to Kyneton and bought the chosen tool, which cost less than $100. He wanted to inspect it, in person, to make sure it came with the right sized fittings.

Another fact we had discovered was that the outer and inner back wheels have different sized wheel nuts. Suppose there was a reason for that, but I never found out what it was.

Six wheels on Bus, plus a somewhat inaccessible spare. And all this complexity. We’d had six wheels on our Defender and Trakmaster rig, plus a couple of spares. The KISS principle applied there – all the wheels were the same and interchangeable: Defender wheels. We had been spoilt, clearly.

John already had a tension wrench for doing up wheel nuts again.

We hoped we would never have to actually use these tools ourselves. The wheels were a bit too heavy for us to be manhandling them ourselves, these days. The thinking was that if we did have to call out Roadside Assistance to change a wheel, at least we would know that the appropriate tools will be on hand.

Nothing to do with tools….Couey’s latest game…ball in pool

I had been concerned on our previous trips with the rig, that if the Terios got a flat tyre while we were flat towing, we probably wouldn’t realize until unnecessary damage had been done to the tyre. I discovered that there were warning devices available for just such situations. So the next area of research was into tyre pressure monitoring systems – TPMS. John was keen to have these on the Bus wheels as well as on the Terios, so we needed a system that managed ten wheels in total.

John decided to buy a system from a Melbourne based firm, so he was able to go to the outlet and talk it all through with them. This was not going to be a cheap exercise!

He fitted the monitors, which replace the valve cap on each tyre, and then set up the receiver unit in Bus. Another screened gadget to add to the proliferation on the dashboard! And the rats’ nest of leads that all plugged into the extension gadget that in turn plugged into the lighter socket.

The receiver unit, in theory, showed the situation with each wheel in sequence – its pressure and temperature. The unit beeps – loudly we discovered, when a tyre is under the set parameters he entered. Getting the whole thing to work with each wheel registering in its turn, took ages, with John fiddling about outside with wheels and me inside Bus letting him know what was showing on the screen. Each of the ten wheels had to be checked and some pumped up. Good thing he has an air compressor. I kept telling myself it would be worth it.

The day after the installation, John took me out to Bus to demonstrate the unit again. It beeped. One front tyre on Bus was down to 12psi. John worked out that he had not screwed the monitor unit on properly and it had leaked air overnight. That was remedied.

We did no further testing before our next trip. Mistake….