Category: PENNY IN SOUTH AMERICA

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6th Feb – South America bound.

Sydney at the moment, next stop Santiago, Chile, where a very very unwelcomed 8 hour layover waits for us before a bit of a skip across to Buenos Aires. Some serious excitement hit me last night when I finally got my self organised enough to pack my bags. Collecting the few clothes I need and tossing them into my rucksack. Then in went my new goPro Hero 3 camera to my backpack and I thought to myself, “this is gonna be awesome!” I didn’t get to play with it much before I left but here is numero uno goPro snap. I’ll work out all the other cool things to do with it on my 15hour flight across the Pacific.DCIM100GOPRO

Cool story 1 of 687 to come: It turns out a girl I went to school with lives in Buenos Aires and has done for a few months so I will have someone to catch up with and show me the friendly city and its inner workings. Sorry father dear, you’re on your own thursday night. Can someone tell him that for me please? I’m not game enough. hahaha I kid, he will be fine on his own.

“Attention remaining customers, flight QF27 to Santiago is in the final stages of boarding, please immediately make your way to gate 12!”

See you later Australia. Catchya on the flip side.

DCIM100GOPRO

James

Monkey Wrench – Foo Fighters

Confused all ready??? Don’t be. Monkey Wrench is just the song that I am listening to right at this moment. However, in keeping of style, we do have quite a few monkey wrench’s in our tool box. Let’s hope we don’t need them.

Ok, so this is the beginning of another outrageous adventure. South America this time. Welcome to my blog if this is your first time, my last website was www.pennytocapetown.com if you want to check out me and Dad’s last long distance vintage car rally in Penny. Welcome to all my old friends and welcome to any new and future friends. Welcome all. I’m James. And Dad/Father dearest/Fahzer/Daddums/Big-daddy/The-good-navigator/The-navigator-who-dropped-our-route-book-over-the-edge-of-the-car-man, his name is Max, my friend and partner in crime.

Timeline: today is the the 1st of February. We leave Aus on the 6th of Feb and do some regular touristy stuff in Argentina/Brasil for a few days and the actual rally start is 14th of Feb.

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So what happens on here you ask? Well, as you may know, Dad and I are rallying Penny almost 15,000km’s around South America. Over the next fortnight (2 weeks for you American folk:) ) I will just have updates on general run-of-the-mill shenanigans and cool stories as well as updates on how Penny is when we collect her in Rio. After the rally event has started I will try to write some interesting update of the day’s happenings and stories and if I am not in a wifi area you will just have to wait another day or so to find out what mischief we have got into.

Some highlights and sort of things you can expect on here from last years Africa rally is: hitting a bus in Egypt, seeing giraffes, vintage car drifting and of course me getting semi-arrested in South Africa.

Why are we doing this? Well, ummmm, because we can. Who wouldn’t want to spend 6 solid months repairing/preparing a 90 year old car to ship across the other side of

The world to race for 15,000km’s only to ship the car back and have both car and drivers very tired and in need of recuperation’s. Well me and Dad love it! I cannot resist going to the complete unknown of culture and country to jump into the deep end and do something awesome! It all boils down to one fact, this trip will be LEGEN, wait for it……. DARY.

P.s. most of my blog titles will be some form of a movie/music/entertainment play on words. I love puns.

Stay tuned B’s and G’s. Don’t forget to subscribe so you can be the first of your friends to say ‘I SAW WHAT JAMES DID FIRST’

James

About Penny

This is the working Penny that we all know and love.

 

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See, it has full climate control!! The climate INSIDE the car, is exactly the climate OUTSIDE the car.

However, at the beginning of the year we rebuilt her engine for more power (of course) but came across a little problem about 500km’s into the new wizz-bang rebuilt one….. blew a head gasket and cracked the block. Just in case you have zero mechanical-know-how, there is NOT suppose to be water in those holes!

 

 

In the quest for more power, we put high compression pistons in (ratio WAS 5.0:1, now is around 7.5:1), reduced the flywheel weight in half, a counter-balanced crankshaft and lightweight alluminium conrods to get more revs (of course!)

Everything about her is still laregly original, still leaf springs and hartford shockies, same diff, same gearbox, same engine block (only re-machined and specced for more power). We put the bucket seats in for the extreme long distances we will drive, roll bar for safety and we completly rebuilt the dashboard to suite rally equipment such as trip meters and GPS’s.