Day 58 Ellenbrae Station and the unscheduled roadside stop

 One thing about this trip, is that no two days are the same; and just like the scenery and views changing  every time you turn the corner, today proved that you never know what each day will bring on this big adventure. We headed off early from Home Valley Station, each Clipper leaving as they were ready in the morning. The Gibb River road started out with amazing views of the Cockburn Ranges and other mountainous terrain, before levelling out with pretty ordinary plains of long, golden spinifex grasses, and gum trees, with the odd boab tree or grevillea and Turkey bush in between. The road had the occasional sealed asphalt stretches, usually on the hills. These provided a momentary reprieve for the ears from the rattling of every part of the Clipper. I had my earphones in and listened to Coldplay, to try and reduce the noise, Matt was wondering why I was ignoring him… I just couldn’t hear him above my music and the rattles from every part of Bridget vibrating lol!  I would ask a question , nothing. Just her drumming on her lap.  I thought she was nervous and having a fit of some sort.  Nup just Coldplay. We travelled about 100km before arriving at the next station of Ellenbrae, another cattle station established in the 1960’s. This station was famous for its scones, jam and cream, so we had to try them out of course. So we had a lovely morning tea here. And two coffees just because… I’m going to need it. 

We headed back onto the road, but the road seemed to have become more corrugated and rougher in patches. The corrugations to look at, reminded me of the frozen Vienetta ice cream dessert, just a lot less pleasant! And grittier in your teeth, as I was to learn later.. We were leading on this stretch, and we get message on the CB from Ian ‘I have to pull over, something’s wrong’. We kept going for a minute before Matt asked Ian “can it be driven” and the next message from Ian in the Trailways Clipper was ‘no, not driveable’. 😔. So Matt reversed 300metres back to where Ian had pulled up, and on immediate inspection, the rear left wheels were not where they should be, they were hard up against the rear of the wheel arch, the front spring mount of the rear leaf springs had broken. At 77 years of age, this Clipper part had decided it was too old for the bumpy road and snapped, dislodging the rear spring and moving the diff out of alignment as well. When we used to have the old Scenicruiser bus, it would break down so regularly that the kids named these times as ‘unscheduled roadside stops’. So here we were on the Gibb River Road, having an unscheduled roadside stop!

I should mention at this point that this is a catastrophic mechanical  failure. Two pieces of 8mm thick steel had snapped clean off the frame of the bus. The primary mounting point for the rear axle.  

Matt gave me the unused triangle warning sign, it was still clean and not at all dusty! and I walked down the hill to the crest and placed the triangle to warn oncoming traffic of a hazard ahead. By the time I returned, David and Brenda in the Discovery Clipper, with Elise and Simon in the car arrived. Matt was already pulling tools out and soon the 3 Clipper drivers were in their overalls and assessing the damage and had the Clipper up on the jacks and the wheels were off, and they made a plan of attack. We were making plans up as we went with this one. Brenda and I sat in the shade of the Clippers and would reassure anyone who slowed or stopped to see if we needed help, that all was going to be ok. Meanwhile Elise and Simon continued on down the road to where we had planned to camp for the night, to try and reserve a place for us all.

The broken parts were removed but the 77 year old nuts and bolts proved impossible to undo. Trailways is an American Clipper, and so some things are quite different to the Australian built Clippers, but the guys had been organised prior to the trip and made sure a welder, angle grinder and many other spare bolts and nuts and many other tools were brought for the ‘just in case’. Today would be the ‘just in case’ scenario. They then spent the next 6 hours under the bus. I’ll let Matt give you all the technical details and the work it involved. The ladies made sure the fellas stayed hydrated and fed. It was fortunately not a hot day with a nice breeze, and the sun was on the other side of the bus, so not directly on the side being worked on. 

Technical details 

The Front spring mount is a U shaped angled bracket that bolts to the chassis of the bus with 5 large high tensile bolts to hold the leaf spring to the chassis. This aligns the differential and transfers the push from the wheels into the body of the bus. Without this the wheels and differential just want to exit the vehicle in which ever direction they see fit at the time. The spring fits up in between two vertical 8mm thick steel plates and a pin passes though them, and the eye on the front of the leaf spring, a bit like this

 but imagine it broken off just below the two bolts at the top  on each side  

So you end up with these , 

Those triangle edges at the top should be part of the frame. And one of them had been cracked for a while as it was not a fresh break for half of it.  When the rest of the crack let go,  the other side said ‘ I can’t do this on my own’ and bailed out as well. 

When I first saw this I thought the metal was cast steel which can’t be successfully welded, and I was imagining having to go to Kununurra again to get something fabricated , but after getting it apart and shining it up with the angle grinder David said “I reckon we can weld that” . So we had to unbolt what was left of the mount on the frame so we could reattach the two vagrant absconding delinquent mounts to their rightful place. 

This proved difficult. The bolts were put on 77 years ago. The bolt heads didn’t like being told to move. They stripped off or just plain refused.  Enter our favourite tool.  Angle grinder.  Actually we had to rat though our collective bolt and nut collection to see if we had suitable replacements before hacking into it and rendering the existing bolts useless. Turns out that I had two high tensile bolts the right size and David had the other three. I put them in the bus 6 years ago.  So off it came with angle grinder and drills until we had the remaining third piece of the Meccano puzzle we now had to weld together.  I had a go at the welding at first but struggled to get it clean, so David had a go and did a great job ( yes we carry generators and inverters to run 240v tools ) so about 4 hours into it we started bolting it all back in.  That went in fine but the spring was way out of alignment as the diff was twisted slightly sideways, so we had to hitch a snatch strap to the diff and connect it to David’s bus and pull it forward again until it lined up with the newly repaired mount. Then we could bolt it all together again and go sightseeing. I watched the sunset from under the bus. Looked nice.  But then it got dark. So we had to look for all the tools and sockets we had strewn around (we all have the same work methodology, it’s somewhere here, I had it a second ago.)

By the time it was all back together we had all emptied the contents of most of our toolboxes all over the side of the road.  So we had a bit of a clean up to do. 

Things to note during this. We were all wearing overalls.  We all ate the Gibb river road. David had his best safety welding thongs on. Our wives told us of the lack of personal protective equipment. We did it anyway, and Darrell booth and Matt Thane were ringing in my ears “failure is not an option… work the problem” 

There is now a 5m stretch of the Gibb river road that is levelled out with no corrugations due to “three old Cogs” (as we’ve been affectionately referred to as) rolling around in the dirt for 6 hours 

Good news is the welds held and we made the next 30k of torturing corrugations to the nights campsite. 

Tech talk over…

By the time the fellas had finished, the sun had set and the light was disappearing fast. We had to madly gather up all the tools and equipment removed from the 3 Clippers and pack them up while we could still see, but we soon needed torches. Ian then took Trailways for a test drive and the newly repaired and welded mount seemed to hold. We then headed down the road to the campsite, another 30km away. The corrugations got worse with some pretty bad holes as well. But the new repair seemed to be good, and we were able to find the camp site turn off in the dark, and Elise and Simon had a fire ready and had managed to reserve enough space for the 3 Clippers to fit in. We all made easy dinners, and sat around the campfire to debrief for the day. The moon made an appearance and it looked like a smile. What a day, and feeling blessed that we were travelling together and able help Ian out.