Great Central Road

LukeMac · Jul 11, 2016

Good moaning people and happy Monday :ball:

I'm writing this post in order to gain some understanding about the great central road, the Mrs and myself and our two dogs will be taking on the outback way trip this year in December :confused2:

i know its going to be hot and etc but that is the only time i ever get off long enough to do any travelling and it is the only part of this great country i have not seen yet.

i have done my fair share of out back driving in west aus with work etc.
I would like to know what mod has anyone done to help with cooling? im already looking at upgrading the radiator but if there is anything else?

OR if you even traveled this way during the month of December yourself? id love to have a chat and find out about conditions you encountered, any info at all would be great.

My plan is to do majority of the travelling during the morning and nights and to keep out of peak of the heat.

any information would be great. many thanks!!

bods · Jul 11, 2016

Hey mate. I did it in the middle of january this year in my d22. Didn't do any cooling upgrades, but I wasn't towing anything. If you are it may be worth it. I just did a full fluid change coolant, gearbox, transfer and diffs and oil an filter. Apart from that, I ran a cheap obd2 bluetooth adaptor and the android torque app on my phone to get accurate coolant temps. Intake temperature ranged up to mid 40s and coolant didn't get over 97c even with the aircon on and doing around 110km/h in some parts.

The road conditions on the nt side of the border were horrible. I ended up killing the front left shockie the corrugations were that bad... the rest of the road was awesome though and didn't have any regrets doing it in summer. I have a long range tank in mine though so did the whole road from laverton to ayers rock only using that plus 40l of jerry cans that I had on board.

LukeMac · Jul 12, 2016

bods said:
Hey mate. I did it in the middle of january this year in my d22. Didn't do any cooling upgrades, but I wasn't towing anything. If you are it may be worth it. I just did a full fluid change coolant, gearbox, transfer and diffs and oil an filter. Apart from that, I ran a cheap obd2 bluetooth adaptor and the android torque app on my phone to get accurate coolant temps. Intake temperature ranged up to mid 40s and coolant didn't get over 97c even with the aircon on and doing around 110km/h in some parts.

The road conditions on the nt side of the border were horrible. I ended up killing the front left shockie the corrugations were that bad... the rest of the road was awesome though and didn't have any regrets doing it in summer. I have a long range tank in mine though so did the whole road from laverton to ayers rock only using that plus 40l of jerry cans that I had on board.

Cheers mate!
Im looking forward to doing the trip, ill only be towing my camping trailer, its pretty light and wont be holding much as i like to travel with bugger all.

What obd reader did you use? im having a look on ebay at the moment sussing it out. will they fit a 2005 d22 navara?

i was going to invest in a long range fuel tank for the navara but im already carrying a bit of weight in the ass of the navvy with the dual wheel carrier rear bar.
i work around meekatharra alot and those long range fuel tanks are so handy!

i just changed all my shockies and leaf springs last weekend so hopefully that will be ok but for the convenience of taking a spare front and back i might just do that.

bods · Jul 12, 2016

Ah didn't realise yours was so old. None of the obd2 setups will work with yours. The only option is ecutalk, but that is a bit costly unless you were planning on using it a lot.

You will get reception with telstra at the 3 communities along the road from memory, I hired a sat phone for the week for about $130 just in case anything major happened, but didn't need to use it...

Fuel is probably the only big consideration. Heading east, as you come into laverton, if you turn left at the old bp bowsers there is a self serve credit card diesel bowser in the industrial area. When we travelled through that was a good 20c a litre cheaper than the actual bp in town. I didn't bother fueling up in the communities. They were all over the $2/l mark...