Saturday, April 17, 2004
More trouble.
Well, we finally got out of the shithole that is Lithgow and made it a stunning 40 km down the road before i thought the temperature gauge was a little off. Pulled into a garage...and the water was fine. However, there was oil pissing out all over the floor.
So, we had to stay there the night in an expensive motel.
Next day, we spent 350 dollars on a new crankshaft oil seal. This was something that the people we bought the car off had just had repaired. He also said that whoever had done it had put the timing belt on backwards. holy shit....
Easter
well, my continuing bad luck with cars continues unabated.
well, we did some great offroading this easter weekend in the blue mountains, a couple of hundred k's from sydney.
we got 5 of us and all our gear in "Bruce", our 2.4 litre turbo diesel mitsubishi pajero 4x4. We headed off loaded to the gunnels and she performed just fine. first night we camped we met this lunatic called chris and we followed him the next couple of days as he was going off roading. we followed, and Bruce performed admirably, i was scared shitless as i was driving and have never done any offroad driving myself, but me and bruce soon got it together just fine and we were doing all sorts of stuff i was worried about being able to walk up let alone get a car to go up. it was fanatstic and once id stopped being scared i started to really enjoy it. confidence in Bruce was fantastic...we'd made a good buy and got a bargain.
well, we did a couple of days of that and then we were back on the freeway. about 5 k's after we got back on the tarmac i suddenly lost all gears and had to pull off the side of the road. chris reversed 2k's down the motorway to come find us and then gave us a very scary tow about 10 k's to a service station. we subsequently found out that it is totaly illegal to tow anything in oz, so we were lucky. actually, we were very lucky because when we got a lift into the town , lithgow, where weve been stuck since sundayt, that is near the service station, there was a police breath testing station set up. i cant imagine what kinda shit we'd be in now if we had been merrily towing our way through that...
well, anyways, we got a proper tow from the NRMA, which is like the AA back home. actually, we joined on monday by phone and then claimed we broke down tuesday afternoon, 30 minutes after the 24 hour no claim limit had expired....funny that...
anyways, we've been in this town for a few days now and theres not a lot to do, so have been drinking quite heavily and worrying the natives.
the mechanic guy here, john edwards, is one of the nicest guys i have ever met and he is doing the work on the car for us. it turns out that the middle of the clutch became detatched from the outside of the clutch. this is not normal. he has only seen 4 others like this in 22 years....so, yes, we pissed off a bit. however, we were incredibly lucky...had that gone when we were off road we probably would be in hospital right now.
well, its gonna cost us 500 bucks to fix. he's had a look at the rest of the car and he thinks its in good nick so thats a good thing. also we get new transmission, transfer box and engine oil and filters and the handbrake adjusted too, so we know that the car SHOULD be ok after this.
and we also owe the dealer 500 dollars on the car....so we are going to try and get them to help us out with the cost. failing that, we could just bugger off...he has my passport but i could just loose it.
so, hopefully the car will be fixed tomorrow and we will be back in sydney tomorrow night, get the air con fixed at the dealer, haggle the price down then go and pick up the two chicks who want a lift with us and head off into the big blue again....
anyways, have to sign off now as we have to go and buy a 4 litre box of wine.
taters....
kev
