The Preparation:
The last outing for Penny back in 2016 was when Julie and I did Peking to Paris and James and I did The Great Amazon Adventure were very demanding on Penny and she needed a lot of love and attention before setting off again.
When we started working on the rebuild we realized how close we were to not getting to Lima on the final trip.
The chassis was only holding together at the back of the front Spring hangers by about 1.5 cm’s of metal each side before we had a 2 piece car.
The body was stripped off the chassis along with everything else and we then welded up 26 cracks of various lengths in the chassis mostly around all the spring mounting positions. Some of these had strengthening plates bolted in and not welded to the chassis to hopefully help on the next adventures.
The engine we stripped, checked then reassembled as it had no wear from the previous trips.
The gearbox and diff were both stripped and reassembled with all new bearings along with the drive shaft, and replacing all the wheel bearings.
The main part of the rebuild was completed by late 2018 when farm work took precedence until early 2109 when we got back to Penny ready for shipping in early July.
Once it was all back on the road and after some test drives, James one of our staff spent the best part of a day on a Rolling Road / Dyno which culminated in Penny running the sweetest she ever has, and a great improvement in fuel economy which might lead to greater spark plug life.
Feeling confident we put her in the container and she is running like a clock with very few oil drops each time we stop.
The Plan:
The plan had rattled around in our heads for a while and during the P to P in 2016 Julie and I decided to start making a plan for 2018 / 2019. It became 2019 after Julie destroyed her knee learning to ski in early 17.
We both wanted to do Tibet and I wanted to take Julie along the Parmir Highway in Tajikistan where I had been and enjoyed so much in 2014 on Bangkok to Helsinki.
When we departed Bangkok we only had a few things set in Concrete:
Enter China on the 17th of September and depart on the 17th of October.
Accommodation booked in Lhasa form the 28/9 to 1/10.
The route across Tibet is fixed.
We have to Depart Russia by the 9th November
Everything else is in the wind with booking accommodation at the most a couple nights ahead at the earliest and sometimes when we are at reception.
Our plan is a little short on time from exiting China until we need to exit Russia due to the delay in Bangkok getting the car. The only way to correct this would have been to return to Australian instead of waiting in Bangkok for Penny to reapply for our Russian visa as this can only be done in one’s country of residences.
Julie has a couple of friends in Helsinki and Amsterdam that she would like to visit and I have a friend in Latvia to visit before arriving in the UK around the 24th of November.
The Tracker:
We have an InReach tracker in the car that is updating our position every 10 mins.
Sadly this didn’t start working until the end of the first day.
You can access this at https://share.garmin.com/YWRPP
At the first log on please click “View all tracks” in the top right of the map to see the whole route to date.
On the left you can view individual days.