James Stephenson

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

Oh wait, I did! By Odin’s beard today was a rough one. Woke up at 6 and felt very average. By 7 i felt like someone had kicked me in the guts. By 7:15 the vomiting had commenced. I have no idea what it was, i have been more than diligent with hand my alco gel/hygiene, and it was 9 hours since i had dinner, but i every 30 minutes or so i had a sneaky spew. I know it doesn’t sound pleasant but i have to put it this way; I would much rather spend the good part of the day leaning over the side of Penny than having to pull over and go for a quick dash into the forest….

The morning was a short transit to the world cup sections. Well, the final 20k’s of the transit brought us into some thick jungle-like environment. Wet and muddy. And the Chinese (im not sure why) where building/upgrading the main road going through, so the only thoroughfare was the very sub-standard roadworks workers road on the sides. It was a bog-hole! Ridiculously muddy. We ended up driving on the half-constructed new road, avoiding the road blocks to stop exactly what we did, and to the disgust of most of the workers. But there was no other way, they soon saw light in what we were doing, and the awesome-ness of our car and just let us pass.

By the start of 1st (3 sections in total) world cup time trail i was feeling better again, and jumped back into the drivers seat. First section: beautiful run, 6 minutes late over 20km/s (very impressive, i even overtook 2 cars!!!) It was hard dirt base small rock and a bit of sand, climbing up through the forest hills, no potholes or ruts to worry about, only corners and trees. Hahaha. Second section: dropped about 19minutes over 40km run, roads deteriorating a bit, my energy waning, hadn’t eaten since night before. The final section was another 40km and i had to get dad to drive, i was almost spent, didn’t realise how crook i was. Dad caught a SERIOUS case of the red mist, trying desperately to make up loss time, in this red fever of his we hit a few washouts that were –let’s just say – less than ideal. We broke both rear wheels, snapped a bunch of spokes on both sides, no punctures though surprisingly.

So, both our spare wheels are being used, so if we have a puncture (touch wood) the only way we can change a tyre is with 3 key things; muscles, tyre levers, and tyre lube. Well, when i say ‘we’ i really mean ‘dad’ hahahaha 😛 So much for my tortoise and the hare ethos of mine. Hahaha.

Oh, and we also ran out of fuel about 500meters before a fuel station in town, and it cost us about 9dollars US to get 7 locals to push us in, it was hilarious. The rally photographer and video recorder was already at the petrol station and caught the whole thing……. How embarrassing.

News on the animal spotting. Today has been a day of many first’s.

-Spotted a herd of zebra’s! Still don’t know if they are black with white stripes or white with black stripes

-GIRAFFES! They were well in the distance and only just recognisable but i’m still counting it.

– Elephants, as above. Still counts/ -More baboons and other kinds of monkeys.

James

Tanzania is awesome, i am a millionaire here!! I’m throwing around 10,000 (whatever local money is called) notes like they are 2 dollar coins.

Today was too good to be true, 335km…… total. Not 335km in a time trail or one part of a stage, only 353 k’s from nairobi to Arusha. There was 100km of dirt in the middle that did a kinda horse shoe loop from the main road as a time trail. We started and did about 5k’s and realised it was a bit too rough to keep going, in respect to the health of our car (no need to thrash it to death when we will get maximum penalties anyway). Like, the first section was 12km to finish in 24minutes, which is an average of 120kph, when we started we found we could barely crack over 70kph from how rough it was. At the border, everyone said it was a wise move us dropping it out.

Last night went out to dinner (sans dad, he was tired) with both the 240z crews, Grant/Simon and Alex/David and Nick/David from the Land rover and went to a brazilian steak house! It was magic! they had 13 or 14 different kind of meats that they brough around and you just choose some so they slice it off thier stick they have onto your plate. I had crocodile meat, lamb, pork, chicken, another kind of lamb, some different kind of pork, some beef, more miscellanious meats. Fantastic meal.It was like a really, really, really, really classy/posh version of an ‘all you can eat’ sizzler! Then – as you do when you’re somewhere classy – everyone had a big fat cigar.

Sad news today. The swiss fellas in car number 6 – 1990 Carrera 4s Porsche – had their car on the back of a truck from nairobi down to Arusha today. Because they had some issues, fuel lines had ruptured and minor running gear problems with a faulty diff or something like that. Anyway, on the truck today and leaky fuel porsche was leaking too much fuel and somehow caught on fire. Result: a pile of ash which was once a prosche, which was on top of a pile of ash which was once a flat bed truck…. Both burnt to the ground. Thomas and Lucas – great, enthuiastic blokes – had their bags/passports/documents/everything in the car when it burnt. Devistating news. Sorry to hear about that guys! Hope something can be sorted out.

Today was the quickest and most fluid border crossing ever. A stamp here, a signauture there, 10 bucks here, 30 bucks there and whooossshhh. Next thing we are hurtling down the road doing 107kph. AND then the NEXT thing we know is the locals had put make-shift speed bumps in the middle made from dirt to slow people down around thier goats or something (i dont really know why, all i know is there was a giant dirt speed bump that snuck up on us) and evey now and then i had to throw out the anchors to try and pull up in time… very inconvenient if you ask me, it ruined our moving average speed hahaha.

Still nothing wrong with penny, while a boat load of people still in the carpark rebuidling suspension I went beside the pool and had a cup of local coffee.

Still no Giraffes 🙁 Or elephants. or that Lion that took my leg…… One day ill get him back….. One day.

😛

James