Our long term test car is still at it, driving around the vast Australian landscape but not without it’s challenges.
Just last week we had the turbo Ford in the workshop to do our annual inspection after it had rear suspension failure somewhere out on a country road. It had to be recovered and brought in. The car is now at 230,000kms on the odometer which is far beyond our original 60,000km test and now well beyond the 2nd 60,000km testing and into the 3rd 60,000 test cycle.
We are super pleased with the results we are getting from our products and this car has helped us understand how far we can predict that our product will last for and how robust they really are.
We prep the car with some new experimental products and some of our existing products while the suspension is being repaired.
- We wash & claybar the body with Mega Gloss Wash to have a look at the condition of the paintwork and Hyperseal. We find that the Leading edges of the car are holding up well and the Bugs are still easy to remove but the water beading has dropped off. The horizontal surfaces that are most exposed to the sun and acid rain are doing well and no halo’s or swirl marks are appearing and the acid rain fallout is easily removed without any ingress into the clearcoat.
- We re-coat the car with Hyperseal. We found the application to be easier than the first time we did it so reapplication after extended periods is no problem.
- We take a good look at the Shield 120 that was applied to the windscreen and see that there is very little pitting on the glass and no cracks or impacts to be found. This is 2 years of service for 130,000kms.
- We then applied Screen Shield which is a stronger product for impacts and is a permanent solution for the windscreen.
- We apply our Long Lasting Tyre shine to all tyres
- We apply some experimental products to various components
After replacing the lower coil over suspension bolt (one of the problems with coil overs is that any failure will cause the car to bottom out with no spring support).
On the road again
No sooner had we photographed the car and it was on the road again going west into the Australian interior desert for a very long, hard drive to Adelaide via White Cliffs and Broken Hill, MAD MAX territory.
The end of the trip findings
This trip the ford travelled over 5000kms on a variety of terrains in borderline extreme conditions. We check the condition of the coatings after the trip and we are very pleased with the results.
We will take our findings to develop some of the still secret experimental products further and finalise some of the others.
We will keep updating blogs on the test car over the next 12 months when the car will be at the end of it’s service life.
Mid 2018
It was decided to retrofit the original coil and shock suspension system after several more suspension bolt failures that when happens the car is immobilised. Along with this we started looking around for a replacement car as the reliability of the ford was starting to become an issue.
Some time later we found a 2006 BMW 740Li with 100,000kms and matte grey vinyl wrap. See blog
On driving back from picking up the BMW and a final drive around Mount Panorama endurance circuit a kangaroo jumped out in front of the car and caused big damage to the car..
This spells the end of the road for our long term test car.
Kangaroo Impact
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