May 31, Sunday
Well.. we were making great progress to get back to Brisbane by today but that came to a halt on Wednesday when the jackaroo suffered some sort of fuel problem starting Tuesday afternoon. We left Camooweal after topping up with diesel intending to make Longreach by the mid-afternoon. With both of us driving we were able to do 2 shifts each of about 120 kms in between meal and fuel stops.
After stopping for breakfast at the Inca Creek rest area at the Burketown road junction we got through Mt Isa and on to Cloncurry to refuel Pulling in to the Service Station the car was idling very rough but after stopping across the road for lunch it went back almost to normal.
However as Frances drove South towards Winton we gradually lost power and it was difficult to stay in top gear. In the end we stopped for the night at the Kynuna East rest area, 145km short of Winton.After spending the night here the performance was even worse on Wednesday morning and we ended up limping to Winton at about 65km/h in 3rd gear!
A road train driver who passed us, after a CB apology about our slow speed, told us to go to Central Motors in Winton who are the RACQ agent and the main mechanical centre in town. After checking with them we then checked in at the Pelican Caravan Park which is diagonally opposite.
That afternoon proved first off that we had no dirty fuel problem, or fuel problem of any sort. The problem still seems to be maybe one of the new fuel injectors we had fitted in Townsville last year but is proving difficult to determine. Tomorrow will hopefully find some more answers so we are going to be here at least a week.