Sat in Coral Bay on the homeward stretch and it is blowing it's proverbial box off. It has been a good trip and will have completed almost 4000kms in less than two weeks! Not really sure how that happened- it just sneaked up on us
The legendary Jayco reliability issues have dogged us from day one with a few newbie induced problems thrown into the mix that I and the dragon can claim full responsibility for. Concerns thus far :-
- dopey me lost the little knob thingy off the crossmember on one side of the rollout awning. Me being a daft git forgot to tighten it up, so it lies somewhere between Mt Magnet and Meekatharra . This is something the dragon will not let me forget. No biggy - a trip to Camec will fix that.
- the lavvy we could not get to flush properly and unfortunately the dragon kept flushing and flushing at 02.00hrs and experienced a near Eureka moment with the blue stuff and number 1's getting right to the top. Massive operator error and it hasn't happened again thankfully, I saw my life flash in front of me and was standing in the turd tank again on MV Andalucia Star for several seconds in my head. For those that have read previous posts on marine based turd-o-phobia you will understand my trepidation on this point.
- could not get the water heater to work on 240v. No hassles as it worked fine on gas. Strangely enough it is working on 240v now. Odd, but may be operator error.
- Fridge was throwing a wobbly as we left Bullara station the other day. Found the cause today as I called in an auto sparky who expressed total disgust at Jayco's method of wiring up plugs. The cable is too thick and hard for the little screw to bite into it and somebody had heavy handedly stripped the thread so the cable was not contacting properly and the coil sounded like a Spanish castanet player with the D. T's as it could not get any power on 12v because of the crappy connection.
- internal lights flash like strobes at a rave venue. Was in serious jeopardy of an epileptic fit there for a while.
- The Winegard antenna is as much use as the proverbial chocolate fire guard.
- rollout awning is seriously out of alignment.
- van reverse camera packed up a few days back. Shoddy workmanship by the installer and will be visiting him with a rather large pineapple on my return.
- drawers that would fly open because they had not had the latch set properly. Retightened them but they are still not okay.
- drawers that fell out because screws were missing and/or too short or just not there at all.
- led lights on several fittings are buggered already.
- the wood effect panelling on the fridge and freezer keeps falling out.
- the grille above the range keeps falling out and was never the right size anyway.
- I bent the pawl arm on the jockey wheel when trying to manoeuvre the van into a tight spot in Exmouth. I had left the handbrake on and these jockey wheels don't like that very much. Will bash it with a drift and hammer when I get home to straighten it. 8 years at sea has given me full training on selection of the right vernier knockometer for the job and I have a shedful of them at home. I am not an engineer for nothing
- opened up an overhead cupboard tonight and it exploded in my hands because screws were not tight enough and had worked loose taking a big chunk of material out. I have Jerry Rigged for the time being.
Apart from the above it has been great. Not exactly as we planned it , but great nevertheless. Teething issues aside and the general " lucky bag " nature of all things Jayco it has been a great learning experience and we have about 3 pages of stuff that we need to look at buying/ doing/ modifying to suit our individual needs.
One final thing. Has anyone also noticed that whether you are going or coming back, that it is always uphill? Some odd phenomenon is occurring. It's probably global warming or a Chinese plot or some other nefarious goings on, but it is getting to me.
Back to work on Monday :-(
