Roadside Repairs at Tibooburra

My parents and the brother who used to drink at the burned down pub in NSW were waiting for us there. They had been camped there for a few days, having come in from the north through Queensland.

By this time all the roads in Western New South Wales were closed because of the rain.

I was fairly pleased to see them as the Datsun Ute was only running on two and a half of its four small cylinders.

“It just needs a valve grind.” said Dad and my brother.

I was hoping this was all that was wrong and had bought a gasket set before leaving Broken Hill.

Our camp was on some high ground about 3km of relatively dry road out of Tibooburra. When the rain stopped we pulled the head off the Datsun. One valve had a fair size gap burnt in it and another was not looking very healthy. Time for some serious roadside repairs!

We left it and went to the Family Hotel. A few beers and a lot of questions later we had established two facts. One; the drinkers in The Family were a friendly and helpful lot, and two; none of them knew where to find a valve for a Datsun engine. However one bloke did have some grinding paste but not the suction cap tool for the job.

Next day, I started grinding the seat of the less damaged valve, using a screwdriver in the slot on top of the valve to spin it back and forth on its seat. This was beginning to look like a lengthy roadside repair. After the six hands of Dad and my brother and mine were starting to blister, we decided to search for a valve to replace the one with the important bit missing.

I knew the crafty Japanese engineers had based the Datsun engine on the old Morris. So in the absence of any wrecked Datsuns around the town we waded through the mud to an old Morris wreck that the helpful locals had told them about. It turned out to be a Morris 1100 with a completely different type of engine.

Only slightly daunted we made our way to the Tibooburra rubbish tip. There we found the head from an old Holden. The valves looked remarkably similar, but way too long in the stem. We took a couple back to camp anyway.

Towards the end of the next day our roadside repairs were well under way. The damaged valve had been seated nicely. It was time for some bush engineering.

I noticed two grooves in the Holden valve stem, one for the collets which held the valve spring, and another for the valve stem seal. The groove for the seal almost matched the collets groove in the Datsun valve.

I cut the end off the Holden valve and with a couple of washers under the spring it fitted perfectly. After two more days of cutting the seat with a modified file from the same rubbish tip and lapping with the helpful local’s grinding paste, the Datsun was running on four cylinders again. Perfect timing, as the roads were open again.

These roadside repairs lasted for a couple more outback trips until I finally replaced the engine.

From roadside repairs back to Outback Yarns