This is basically as I typed it on the night, I’m too freakin’ lazy to reword it or remove the tiredness.
Arrived in goulbourn as of 11:30pm trip odometer is 1246km
God damn that was a long day, but it really seems like it flew past. Starting in Kempsey I travelled south (as is to be expected).
Stopped in the supa cheap in newcastle to try and find a sydney/surrounds UBD or similar, and got totally distracted by an intermittent squeaking noise emenating from the engine bay. I seem to be running on crazy at the moment, because it took me until Belmont to stop somewhere to find a long screwdriver to try and sound it out on the engine - all I could hear was that it was coming from somewhere at the “front” of the engine (not the gearbox end, since it’s a FWD car) and it changed when the RPM of the engine changed. I decided that I couldn’t work it out, so I sent an SMS to Darren to ask for help and he said it was probably the timing belt and to spray some CRC/WD40 on it to test it. I finally found a servo on the way out of Belmont and grabbed some - spraying some into the timing cover and onto the timing chain seemed to fix it, so I stopped in an Auto Pro at Gosford at 5:36pm to get some silicone spray as directed. Spraying that liberally in the timing case cover while the engine was running seems to have fixed the problem for now - the belt had probably dried out a bit, hence the squeak. I think it could have been aggravated by the timing case cover gasket being rather messed up, hanging out in places and the cover itself being cracked.
I’m really tired and there’s plenty more driving to do tomorrow I’m sure. The goal for tomorrow is to get to Canberra - about 150km - because I don’t have to be in Culburra Beach until Thursday night or Friday as my uncle won’t be there until then.