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- Created on Thursday, 14 October 2010 17:12
Peking - Paris - Report 9 - A quiet day of repairs, with no stages...
After the dreadful rainy and muddy previous day, Saturday was a glorious sunny morning. But surprises can struck anytime...
Twenty minutes after the start, on a straight line on a good tarmac road one lower rear shock mount went... The noise of a shock trailing on the ground is by now familiar...
No option but to jack the car up, remove the top mount bolt and the shock and drive slowly to the next welding shop...
The next village was 10 miles up the road and we stopped a police car to ask for the next garage. They led the way to a vast compound with twenty or so small car repair shops.
The guy they took us to, Ahmet, proved to be very competent. It was the same plate we welded before but on a different place (see picture).
We took the opportunity to do a number of other small things that needed done:
- the other plate was also showing cracks and was welded too;
- we changed the two plates to their original Magnette position, incresing the distance between the top and bottom mounts by some two inches;
- changed the rear axis U bolts with four new ones just received from England,
- changed a front wheel bearing that was gone and promised to break soon,
- and installed again the gamous sump guard.
After about three hours and a bill for just 50 TL (we gave him a larger amount in US $ for his delight) and a picture, we were on our way. Decided to do no more gravel stages (the Magnette in survival mode...) and arrived at about 6 pm at Abant Lake, with snow on the road side...
