Big desert crossings mean big fuel capacities. Where long range tank setups can accomodate the majority of your fuel needs, sometimes you will need to tack on a few jerry cans to stretch your range a little more. You’ll need a funnel as well, and we recommend the Mr Funnel Fuel Filter.
The Anne Beadell Highway needs a 4X4 with some good range to complete comfortably, with around 780 clicks of desert driving in between refills (Coober Pedy to Ilkurlka). You’ll cover more ground if you visit the diversions that you come across (like the light aircraft wreck and the totems), and you do want a little bit of extra, just in case.
For our journey, we ended up carrying an extra eight jerrycans between the two Patrols. Two fit onto the camper trailer, and the other six ended up going on the roof racks. Although it’s not an ideal place to store your jerry cans, having them securely strapped down didn’t cause any troubles throughout the trip.
For safety’s sake, we were emptying jerrycans into our tanks as often as possible, to get the fuel off the roof and improve our centre of gravity. Topping up diesel fuel in the desert via jerrycans can be a bit of a sordid affair, so anything to make it easier is a bonus.
We took the ‘Mr Fuel Funnel Filter’ with us on this trip, along with a traditional funnel as well. Having that extra barrier of filtration is never a bad idea, especially when we were in the middle of millions of square kilometres of red sand at the time.
What we didn’t realise though, is that the setup of the filter makes emptying the jerry can a much, much faster experience. Pouring the fuel into the funnel made for a ‘swirling effect’, which allowed the fuel to be despatched at a much faster rate than the normal funnel. With the top part of the filter still open to air, the funnel does not ‘gasp’ for breath and slow down the rate of fuel going in.
At one stage the Mr Funnel was misplaced, so we tried out the normal funnel (that had a bit of gauze as a filter). After about five minutes, and more than half to still get through, a decision was made to turn the cars inside out, to find the filter. Am I glad we did, it made the whole process much speedier, with extra filtration to boot.
The filter is also designed to save the last 100ml or so of fuel in the bottom of the funnel. The theory is that the swirling action with force larger particles down and to the outside of the funnel, below the filter and ultimately not into your fuel system. Very smart.
One small problem was that we had a small bit of fuel leaking between the funnel and the hose, which made the hand holding the funnel a bit greasy after use. I just got into the habit of giving my hands a good wash afterwards with a bit of soap. This filter gets a huge thumbs up from us, and will be part of every future expedition that involves jerry cans.
We picked up our Mr Funnel Fuel Filter from Ironman 4X4. For more information, call 1300 731 137
