Crikey it’s wet

[onetrack]

Yes, the old Champs had everything sealed to the nth degree, they were quite amazing in that respect.

[pmccarthy]

My beetle could handle deep water if you hit it fast enough and aquaplaned across!

[Litespeed]

 Now the storm has stopped in Port Stephens and the sun's out.

 

But never count your luck, as I speak the wind went from zero to 25knts...bugger

[facthunter]

The weather you're getting is rare this time of year and is due to the high sea temperature. The HEAT they are getting in Europe currently is Unprecedented. Never before recorded figures.  Nev

[old man emu]

6 hours ago, spacesailor said:

( on the Blue mountains ) were waved on by the ' traffic police ' ,  because only 4wd 

Vehicles could navigate the detour,  through a flooded road

That's a special case. The Police/SES had deemed it safe for 4WDs & trucks to go through the water. What I wanted to highlight was that doing such a thing in the circumstances that often lead to vewhicles being washed off the road is something to be prevented by all possible means. Most frequently you hear of these incidents happening on rural roads where the safety of the crossing is not known.

[facthunter]

AS has been said the cooling of a Diff can suck water in fast and a bit of water in EP oils is death to the gears and tapered Roller bearings. What about the Alternator, starter. door and window lock mechanisms?  Ignition systems. The thing can float and be swept off the road surface or hit a deep washout. It's NO good for the vehicle in many ways and seriously UNSAFE.  Be situationally aware and not find out the hard way that it was a DUMB Idea.  A DEAD HERO is no help to your family. Nev

[Litespeed]

Climate change or global heating is really kicking in fast.

 

Meanwhile new mines and gas ventures get a big tick and the world burns...

[Litespeed]

For water crossing, unless you can safely walk into the water and check total depth, ie safe enough to walk into then it is a no go period.

 

Cars,4wd and even trucks are no match for running water.

 

If you don't trust it to walk through, then stay away. That means the driver does the walk not a passenger, so the idiot behind the wheel pays the piper.

 

If someone dies, you the driver have killed them and should expect a manslaughter change or dangerous driving occasioning death.

 

There is absolutely no excuse. A goal sentence is the only adequate response. No remorse or I thought it would be okay is enough.

 

We don't accept it in boats or aircraft and vehicles should be the same.

 

Every flood event sees some idiot kill themselves and often others with a it's fine attitude. And the poor rescue guys risk their life to rescue them.

[onetrack]

I got caught out with a floodway in the W.A. Wheatbelt in Feb 2017. A huge Summer storm event came through the State and flooded most of the Wheatbelt. Creeks and Rivers were running bankers and the Phillips River Bridge on Hwy 1 on the South Coast got washed out to sea!

 

I was silly enough to have organised to take a bootload of tools and equipment to an auction North of Lake King. We got stopped at Kondinin, as the highway to Hyden was under deep water.

So we detoured 25kms to the South, to Kulin, to visit a good mate who ran the tyre shop there. After we had a good yarn and great steak sandwich in the Kulin Hotel, we set off back to Perth.

 

We were in the Missus' Camry and I had about 200kgs of stuff in the boot, so it was riding well! We came to a modest-sized creek just West of Kulin (which I knew pretty well, as I lived in Kulin for over 20 years) - and this creek was running pretty solidly, too. The crossing was essentially just a floodway, a lowered area of bitumen through the creek width (which was about 150 metres).

 

I stopped and looked at it, and it didn't seem to be excessively deep. The signboard was still visible and the water level read "0.2M" on the numbers. So I eased the Camry into the creek, and started to cross it - and HOLY MOLY! - the water was more than halfway up the doors! The Camry spluttered for a second, making me think it was going to stop, but then it recovered and I kept it going until we got out the other side, where I stopped. 

Water ran out of the car everywhere! - and horror of horrors, the back floor was soaking wet! So we went on home, and once there, I pulled the seats and floor mats out, and spent nearly a day getting all the residual water out of the car, and drying everything out! Luckily, it was stinking hot, around 40°, so everything dried out rapidly.

 

The worst part was, Toyota use a weird, foam-type padding under the floormats, in the footwells, about 50-60mm thick, and this stuff was 100% porous, and each piece held about 20 litres of water!! I spent hours squeezing them and pressing them, trying to get all the water out.

 

Finally, the next day, everything was nice and dry, so I re-installed all the padding and floormats and seats - and promised myself I would NEVER take notice of any floodwater gauge again, without walking through the water!!

 

Here's a photo of the floodway, notice how the "0.2M" mark is about 0.6M above the actual road level! The "1M" mark, is more like 1.4M in water depth.

 

This is the Google Maps location - https://maps.app.goo.gl/tUQTDd4rQGfKCC3S7

 

 

 

Edited Wednesday at 01:53 PM by onetrack

[nomadpete]

16 hours ago, pmccarthy said:

My beetle could handle deep water if you hit it fast enough and aquaplaned across!

And with the light front end, the front wheels aquaplaned before the back ones.

 

So when I hit an inch of water at 60 mph, .... no steering ! And the front gets a fright and tries to get behind the back ones.

 

That was a fortunately brief lesson on the Newell Hwy, forever etched in my memory in 1969.

 

 

[onetrack]

Our family business owned several 4WD dual cab LN106 Hiluxes in the late 1980's, when we first started out in mining contracting. We were working out of Marble Bar, re-treating the gold tailings at the Marble Bar State Battery by constructing large leach vats.

We had a team of employees and family members living in Marble Bar, and one of them was my 20 yr old middle nephew, who's a bullet, who just need to be aimed, at all times. 

 

A huge cyclonic event brought massive rains to the Marble Bar region in March 1988, when we were there, and the Coongan River ended up in flood, running about 10M deep and 600-800 metres wide. Every minor creek around the region was also running a banker. So the nephew decided to go barrelling around the place in one of the Hiluxes, checking out all the water! 

 

Typically 20 yr old, he sees a flooded creek, so you simply gun it, to get through, don't you!! He plowed into a deep creek doing about 50 or 60kmh, the water sloshed up everywhere in a massive displacement, and the poor old 2.4L diesel Hilux sucked in a gutful of water at about 3000RPM, that went straight through the air filter, and into the guts of the engine!

 

Now, we all know that water is incompressible, and my nephew learnt this the hard way! One cylinder ingested a full load of water - and as Toyota build very robust engine internals, the only way out for that incompressible water, was via the engine block! The cylinder burst open and then punched a hole through the outside of the block! The engine was instant scrap! A hard lesson learnt!

 

The Coongan in flood....

 

[facthunter]

Bugger!.  Nev

[pmccarthy]

I was working on a mine that used Mini Mokes for scouting around the lease. We had some empty bitumen lined overflow dams that were near the mill, and we used to take a shortcut through the dams. One day there was an overflow and the dam had a metre or so of water in it - my mate drove the Moke in without looking and it almost disappeared. I reckon just the windscreen was sticking out.

[facthunter]

Did they leave it there?  Nev

[pmccarthy]

They pulled it out. I don't know whether it was fixed, I guess so because they had extensive workshops and lots of apprentices. We had to use big International utes after that. Here's a pic on the way to a job.

[nomadpete]

1 hour ago, pmccarthy said:

They pulled it out. I don't know whether it was fixed, I guess so because they had extensive workshops and lots of apprentices. We had to use big International utes after that. Here's a pic on the way to a job.

Aaaargh!

 

Where is WH&S?

 

Not wearing hi viz

Not wearing hard hat

Not wearing gloves

Not wearing safety glasses

Not wearing SPF50 long sleeves,

No seatbelts

No seats

No Prework Risk Assessment.....

 

 

Probably wearing thongs.

Probably more passengers in the vehicle than vehicle is licenced to carry....

 

And yet, impossible though it seems, you are still alive.

 

Edited 5 hours ago by nomadpete
No valid reason

[facthunter]

eVEN PUTTING A FANBELT O

N ONW ISDIFFICULT.   DOG must have saved you for a Purpose.  Nev

[pmccarthy]

To be fair, we were all wearing tinted safety glasses on that ute. Three of us in the front and five or six in the back (I took the photo).