Day 3

The tractor component of our mobile home is a 2022 model Ford F250 Ute. It is American built, imported as Left Hand Drive and then converted to RHD. These big yank “trucks” as they call them, are stupidly big for a commuter. There is no parallel with the sort of utes we are used to in Australia but these things are built for towing and are without peer. First there’s the motor. It’s a 6.7 litre, twin turbo, V8 diesel. It produces 475 bhp of power and 1050 ft/lbs of torque – and that max torque comes in at just 1600 revs. So it pulls like a train. Calling it a truck is entirely justified as those power specs are about the same as many semi-trailer prime movers. Coupled to this enormous donk is an auto, 10 speed gear box. The whole deal just flattens hills. We kick down a cog or two, add a few hundred revs and up we go. At about 100 kph in 10th gear the motor is just above idle at about 1400 revs. The gear box also has a number of different settings  which I haven’t explored much yet. Of course it also has flick-of-a-switch 4WD high and Low, so if we get in a pickle we have options.

The interior is relatively luxurious in an American kind of way but the suspension is crap – truck suspension. The yanks love them however because they don’t break but most people in Australia spend serious money on lift kits and fancy shockers etc.

The caravan is a new build from Bushtracker in Qld. The general view is that they are one of three Australian companies who build the best high quality vans. The others are Bruder and AOR. They’re all expensive but you get a very solid product which is engineered and built for the harsh conditions of places like the Gib River road, which literally shake cheap vans to pieces. The fact is however that we are not planning to go on roads anything like that. We will be mostly on bitumen so perhaps the Bushtracker is overkill but it would be bad to have a major equipment failure whilst The Rider is still going well. The other thing that helped our decision is that every van is bespoke – built entirely to our specs and configuration. We’ve had it for over a year now and done quite a few shakedown cruises without finding anything wanting. It has tons of solar on the roof, as much lithium battery as we could stuff in and as a result we can live entirely off grid for as long as the water lasts. But we have a small genny for backup and an additional water tank in the ute.