Mercury Rising

Our first mechanic problem –save for driver error (see yesterday hahaha). So there we were, trooping along like we always do, on some much loved tarmac which has been unseen for 350k’s, and our temperature gauge starts going through the roof. What on earth……..???? Turn the engine off immediately and pull over to investigate. Things look dire when i open the radiator cap and its empty, little bits of steam pouring out. No dripping underneath so the radiator wasn’t cracked. Open the oil filler cap and it looks milker white inside – fluid immulsified in oil….. Not good. Looked terminal. And because there aren’t any water ports running through our head gasket (bypass jackets on the outside) it couldn’t have just been a head gasket problem. Only thing at this stage was a cracked head, or split block. Nooooooo, not this again! Not in the middle of the Tanzanian outback. We pull the tappet cover off just to see on what scale it was. By this time Phillip, Martin, Andy, Chris and Ed (Phillip is the big boss/syd stelvio and the others are marshals) had pulled up and gave us encouraging words…. and then started taking pictures. Hahaha. That didn’t bother us. Back to the investigating: pull the top of the engine off and after some poking and prodding we actually find that a welsh plug (gallery plug, core plug, the plug that remains from the sand casting process or something like that) had fallen out. And this plug is a direct link from the water jacket into the rocker gear and cam-train, therefore all of our water had been pumped and just flowed down into the sump. Now the question is, how do we fix it now we aren’t terminal? The brainstrust combined thought of bashing some wood in as a plug(would have worked fine because it isn’t a pressure system), but that idea quickly vanished when we found the old plug amongst the cam followers. We gave it a giant whack on the top of a ball-pene hammer to flang the top, whacked it back into it’s original hole, and splayed the top of the hole with a cold-chisel to make sure it couldn’t pop back out again.

Brilliant! Everything was looking good. Then dad goes to the back and pulls out the green 5liter bottle of stuff to pour into the radiator to replenish lost liquids, I came round from the side in time to yell, “DAD WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” In dad’s stressfull-ness he had started to pour engine oil into the radiator…… hahahaha what a muppet. Only a litre or so made it in >_< We managed to float most of it out in the end. So at the moment our radiator consists of about: 60%water, 37% waterless coolant and about 3% of engine oil. It is a horrible brown milky colour but it seems to be working fine, still conducts heat just as well, and its not boiling.

But anyway, the first 400k’s of today was great, challenging dirt roads, a short and rocky hill climb timed to the second (i i had a flawless run, smooth but swift!!) and more monkeys/baboons.

Tomorrow has no competition and is just a transit to the border of Zambia to the town of Mpika, we have been told not to expect much from the accommodation. I’m sure hilarity will be ensured when we listen to some people complain.

This entry is dedicated to Poopsie, the greatest dog to have ever lived. Loved by all. Sorry to hear about that Mitch.

James