Sorry for the longish post but it was a long trip
A few weeks ago we went for a camping trip from Sydney - Brisbane - Fraser Island - Cairns - back to Sydney via inland roads. All up just over 7'000k in 3 1/2 weeks.
Before we started, my WK2 had just about 4'000k on the odometer and was pretty much a standard Overland CRD. The only modifications I did was fitting a UHF, the full set of bash plates and side steps.
For the trip I hired a big off-road camping trailer with two queen sized beds, weighting >1000kg.
It was not meant to be a serious off-road trip also Fraser Island and the Queensland outback roads did add a certain off-road element.
With this post I just want to describe my experience with the new WK2 for camping/touring.
Overall the Jeep did well with plenty of (pulling-)power and was very comfortable for long hours on good and also sometimes very bad roads.
Some of the highlights....
The first challenging time came on Fraser Island. The trailer, usually only noticeable when looking for a parking space in the city, created a lot of drag in the sand and I almost got stuck crossing from the beach to the inland road. This was probably my own doing as this was my first time with trailer in deep sand and once I knew how it behaves all subsequent crossings presented no problems. (And as a side note, a Troopie without trailer required some shovelling to get over the same spot
)
We arrived at high tide so had to take some inland roads to get to our campground (Dundubara). I used mostly the off-road 1 (ORA1) setting and only occasionally went to ORA2 to get over some of the worse spots.
I did get through easy enough and did never feel that I was missing on ground clearance. (An inspection after the trip confirmed that the bash plates did not have any serious scratches.)
Unfortunately the second day it started to rain and it kept raining for the remaining 3 days on Fraser. We did some more inland tracks but after the second day of rain I didn't want to risk crossing the now deeper and deeper waterholes and we stayed on the beach for the remainder.
Back on the mainland, the trip turned uneventful again but we kept getting a few rainfalls along our route. After Cairns we had to turn around (running out of time) and decided to take the inland roads back to Sydney. We mostly selected smaller roads which obviously were dirt or gravel roads and also some with very deep ruts.
This usually presented no problems except where there was recent rainfall and the roads were still wet. On one occasion we were driving along a single lane road, reasonable dry in the middle but very muddy on both sides. My sister which has not much experience driving on these type of roads decided to avoid an oncoming road train by driving onto the side of the road. What she didn't realise was how heavy and deep the mud was. The result was that the Jeep got stuck in the mud.
Recovery was easy enough and only required a gentle tug with the snatch strap. Probably wouldn't have been an issue at all without the heavy trailer or a decent set of tyres instead of the stock Kumho Solus.
Before we got home we had the almost obligatory Kangaroo strike. A sizeable grey roo hit the car on the side while we were travelling with 100km/h. The result was a big dent in the lower panel of the front passenger door
Some noteworthy issues and problems:
1) After each water crossing (>30cm) I had to get out and check the panel covers at the front. The plastic inserts holding the front radar sensor and the covers of the recovery hook and the screw-in hook on the other side tend to pop out easily and usually required a firm push to reset them each time. On the upside, the front sensor was working fine and only required an occasional wipe with the finger to get the mud off.
2) On the freeway a small bird hit the front of the Jeep. It managed to hit the plastic cover of the screw-in hook and dislodged it. I only noticed later that the cover was missing.
3) Quadra lift is great to get over obstacles but it would be much more useful if the ORA2 setting would retain some suspension capability. In ORA2 the suspension has almost no travel and it really can only be used for a few meters and then it is necessary to go back to ORA1. This can result in many - stop - switch to ORA2 - wait until ORA2 reached - cross bad spot - switch to ORA1 cycles.
4) Towards the end of the trip I noticed that I sometimes could not get to ORA2 and the "air suspension cooling down" message appeared. It got gradually worse and currently I cannot even get into ORA1 position. Will get the dealer to look at it during the 10k service next week.
5) The navigation unit becomes rather useless once you leave the main highways. It was not unusual to see the indicated position 100m parallel to the road or often there was no road at all on the navigation display.
6) Fuel consumption (calculated) over the complete trip was just below 11L/100km. This includes about 500km on Fraser and obviously towing the trailer for the full trip. Consumption was more or less proportional to the quality of the road.
7) The stock Kumho Solus tyres on 20" rims did better than expected in sand but were no good in mud or even on wet roads. Before the next trip I will replace them.
My personal impression after this trip is that the WK2 is a great car for (semi remote) touring which is capable of getting through tougher places but at the same time it does feel "fragile" and every time you press one of the many buttons there is this "god, I hope it works" in the back of your head. The Overland comes with a lot of gimmicks and, apart from the late failure of the Quadra lift, they have all worked as they are supposed to which shows the efforts that have been put into creating this car. With my previous cars if something broke there was always the chance to be able to fix it but the WK2 tells me clearly that fixing it on my own in a remote location will most likely not be an option and this is the only part I don't like.
Pictures below:
1) It's raining on Fraser.
2) Stuck in the mud...
3) Not my favourite task.
7'000k trip with the WK2
