Off to Oz!

Hey people, just because we’re back from the T2 Rally, doesn’t mean we’ve been sitting around doing nothing!

If you take a look at the Entry Info page, you’ll now see that we’re preparing to accept entrants for next years T2 Rally. If you’re interested in grabbing a place, then leave your email address and we’ll keep you updated!

We’ve also been busying ourselves planning a few more adventures, making various contacts and generally expanding our empire. We’re all pretty excited about some of the stuff we’ve got planned.

I’m off to Australia tomorrow to take part in the Postie Bike Challenge. It starts early Sunday morning, so I’ll once again be switching on my tracker then, and you can see my progress via the LIVE TRACKING link.

Catch you all when I get back, in the meantime - take care and have fun

Team Suspect Device and Team Gammy Gecko signing out

Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s been a blast.

To put it in as few words as possible, we covered 10,700kms in a 1964 Morris Minor we rebuilt from scrap in 4 months and on a 1991 Yamaha Super Tenere 750 we assembled in 36 hours straight including paint.

Our work here is done.

We’re off now to new adventures somewhere on this little planet, and as per usual we shall complete them in our own jaunty style. Probably in the most complex manner possible and always in or on vehicles that we have hand-built. It’s what we do.

In the words of the immortal song by An Emotional Fish:

“Celebrate, this party’s over, I’m going home”

PSM Signing out…

That’s right folks, the last update. This is where the story ends.

After 24 days of driving from Tipperary I’d been in Bamako in Mali with my co-driver for a few days and he’d been pretty ill. On evaluation of things the time it would take for him to recover (I’m still not fantastically well myself) we weren’t going to have it in us to make the final stint. Having gone so far and suffered/experienced (equal measures) so much we called it a day in Bamako and got on a plane at around 3.30am today. I’ve not been home long and obviously photos and so on will follow. It’s a bugger that we didn’t make it but the Micra never let us down and it was really a health problem and the fact that driving to and through Africa is really fucking hard work. We did a cracking job getting as far as we did and doing as much as we did. Not all the way but damned near enough. By yesterday morning we had both agreed that Timbuktu would take more than it would give and what we needed was to just get out.

Thank you all for your words of encouragement and support, I’ll be typing up my journal over the next week or so and getting the photos up and doing my best to satisfy any desires people have to know what exactly went on… I’ve written a lot!

We managed 4821 miles through 8 countries and one principality in 21 days on the road. No mean feat in a car 20 years old. The only real casualty to the car was losing the exhaust on the stretch into Bamako. I like to call it the “sports conversion”. I managed to sell the car in the city, and hopefully the Mali tax men will never find me cause I sure as fuck didn’t do the paperwork right but I’m home now and that’s what matters. I may not have swapped my co-driver for camels and/or a life of luxury in a remote spot of the world but we had one hell of an adventure.

Hopefully catch up with you all soon,
Dave

Timbuktu…. some other time!

Well, having spoken to a few friends at Mountain Madness on Tuesday/Wednesday, the general consensus seems to be that if I even get into Morocco without a full V5 and insurance documents (they didn’t arrive before I left), then every cop would pull me for speeding, then fine me at least triple for not having adequate documentation. After that, I probsbly wouldn’t even get into Mauritania or Mali as you need a V5 (or equivalent) in order to buy a lassier passez (or however it’s spelt). That’s ofcourse, ignoring the fact that I’d be on my own, with 2 tons of jeep, in the sand. Nope, seems it wouldn’t be much point continuing towards Timbuktu under those circumstances, so I’ll just go to Timbuktu some other time (some other time being after the end of the Bamako rally in February. Bamako to Timbuktu isn’t very far at all).

As for this rally  - I’m now finding suitable places to go/stay for next years rally. Found an amazing place on Thursday. Gotta make the best out of a bad situation, right?

After that, I’m heading into eastern Europe. I want to go through the Montblanc Tunnel, and I’ll head a bit east from there, then come back up north through the bottom of Poland and into Germany, Holland, Belgium, France (again) and back home.

Hopefully, I’ll be home in time for V festival

Another Update

We got to Mauritania yesterday having traversed the mine field and border posts. There has been far too much happen to comment on it all right now. You will all have to buy the book! Suffice to say we are both still safe… I have mobile signal but I cant send texts and using this german(?) keyboard is a nightmare!

Will update whenever possible!

Back on the road!!

Maybe that’s a bit premature, but I spoke to the garage about an hour ago, and the car is ready. I’m just waiting for a taxi to take me there to go and pick it up.

I’m kind of gutted it wasn’t ready yesterday, I wanted to go to Tudela to see the festival and the bull running. I guess there is always next year.

I got a text from Dave and John yesterday afternoon, they’re now in Mauritania.  

 

Update from Spain (again)

I went to the garage on Wednesday, it’s the Pamplona main Suzuki dealers workshop. I had an interesting episode of charades with Reuven that works there, but in the end, we got there. The radiator is badly damaged, so it’s being replaced, apparently beyond radweld or even repairing at a specialist rad shop. Still not convinced that the rad is the source of the problem, but I guess if I’m taking it into the desert, then the cooling system needs to be in tip top condition. Reuven mimed to me that he couldn’t see any other problems other than the radiator, but couldn’t be sure…. anyway, it’s promised to be fixed by Monday. In the meantime I’m still stuck at this hotel in ‘Transport City’ (it’s as bad as it sounds).

Luckily, the Repsol garage across the road has an amazing deal - last night I bought a 2L bottle of Coke, a 2L bottle of mineral water and a 1L carton of the finest cheap vino tinto (Don Simon) all for a massive total of €4,25!

If the car is fixed on Monday I intend to drive across the Pyrenees to  Llavorsi, where I know I can seek some advice from a few people who are a lot more experienced at this than me. I’ll probably be there for a day, and then continue south-west towards Seville and Algeciras.

It looks like I’m going to have only about 4 weeks to get from Algeciras to Timbuktu and back - ideally all the way back to Faugheen, although at this point in time, realistically - I think I’ll be happy just to get back to Europe, where I can leave the car somewhere safe (to collect later) and fly back home. I have a tight deadline as I have a flight to Brisbane on 4th September for the Postie Bike Challenge.

Still in Spain…

I´m still stuck in Spain.

So far, from what I can gather, there isn´t a local Daihatsu dealer, so the jeep has been towed to a Suzuki dealer in Pamplona. There now appears to be some confusion over authorisation to even get a diagnosis of what is wrong with it (´it´s the water pump…. WATER….PUMP…. agua… pumpo…. si?´. Apparently, according to Spanish law, they need my consent - but I speak ´poco de Español´ so I can´t really communicate that over the phone… I´ve told the RAC I fully consent to a diagnosis, but they´re having problems passing that on… and all the time I´m stuck in this hotel, which whilst quite nice, and having internet access, is in the middle of a services, in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to do all day :-/

It´s frustrating, as I know it´s the water pump, and I know a part like that costs only around 20 quid. It should only take an hour to fit - any competent mechanic could do it. It´s been 4 days since I broke down… WTF!?

Moral of this story is - don´t buy a vehicle and take it on a massively long overland journey without first having enough time to buy a few spares for it (including a water pump). Oh, and take RadWeld and Gun Gum.

Pump and circumstance

First things first… I didn´t end up taking the SJ410. It just wasn´t ready in time… at some point either myself or Greg will get round to updating you all with the story of us frantically trying to put the jeep back together in time.

I didn´t take the KTM either. I decided that it was too fine tuned to deal with large stretches of motorways, and would likely explode before we even reached the ferry at Poole.

With just 2 days to go, myself and Greg were busily scouring Ebay, AutoTrader, GumTree and everywhere else we could think of in order to acquire a suitable vehicle at such short notice. However, we were able to find something suitable in the shape of a 1990 Daihatsu Sportrak. 509 quid sealed the deal on Ebay, and I picked it up from Portsmouth only a few hours later.

The next day I drove it to Pembroke to catch the ferry to Ireland for the launch in Faugheen (more on that later) and on the Monday, after we had been to Hay-on-wye (more on that later) I drove it like a man possessed to get home in time, finish my packing and to get to Poole to meet the rest of the guys to catch the ferry to Cherbourg.

So far things haven´t been too eventful - hypermarche carparks have become the location of choice for en-route maintenance and bodging.

Yesterday, crossing the Pyrenees my water pump decided it had had enough. There was also a small leak in the radiator. Whilst we could fix the leak in the radiator with an egg white (really, we have video evidence), there wasn´t much we could do about the water pump - so it was time to call RAC European breakdown (having a Barclays Additions Plus account is marvellous!).

A few hours later, the mechanic was with us - as far as I can tell in broken Spanish, and a mixture of charades (try doing ´water pump´in a game…) we agreed the water pump had died, and we´re now holed up in a hotel (all on the RAC!) until the garage can replace the pump (hopefully on Monday).

Until then, we´re chilling out planning our route, recharging our batteries (both literally AND figuratively) and washing our stinky smalls.

With luck, we´ll be back on our way on Monday afternoon  - whereupon the live tracking should start moving again. If it doesn´t, it means things have gone horribly wrong, and you can expect another update. Actually, the mechanic has a rather nice Nissan 4×4 in his workshop…

Update From Spain

Hi All,

Just a quick update from Espagnolia. We got into Spain yesterday after a longer time in France than anticipated. Now we´re in a hotel for a couple of days because Lee´s water pump has gone. So far the Micra is the only beast to have no mechanical issues at all… lets hope it stays that way!

For those who aren´t in the know, you can track our progress live from the main page using the live tracking link. It wont show a lot of progress till at least Monday now though!

Hopefully will update within the week when we reach southern Spain and wait for a ferry across.

Keep your eyes to the skies,

Dave

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