At Kang the fuel situation needed attention aswell as our stomachs. While filling, the attendant asked me what is going on underneath my car?
As I looked I realized the worst had happened. Because I fiddled
One of my oil cooler pipes had shaved through somewhere. Luckily I did pack Oil, connectors and extra pipe but tension was to high, engine to hot and tummy to empty to address the situation right away. Luckily there was still oil at the tip of the dipstick so I was hoping for the best.
After lunch I gathered the courage to tackle the problem, first up was to determine where pipe had a puncture. So i was in the bonnet inspecting the pipes and asked my friend to briefly start it so that I can see where it is squirting from. Under normal circumstances one would first check if it was in gear and then start.
but no no, not today. Today we just give the key a flick and this patrollie is always eager to get on the road so it literally starts with just a flick of the key, problem number 2 is that it can start like that in gear aswell. Good thing I was mostly inside the bonnet than in front of it so things were mostly under control.
Well we got things leak free again and back on the road, unfortunately the garage's paving wont be the same again, poor Land Rovers, owner probably thinks it was one of them again.
The suspension situation made things worse, exhaust cracked and my airhorns rattled off. Luckily they just landed on the engine and I could save them. I also developed an issue that I never had before and that was that I started having temperature issues on the gravel road. I was coping with the TD and its issues because my problems were past 100km/h and not offroad. Now I was getting very frustrated because my tires were now on 0.8 bar and every time I hit corrugations I had to reduce speed to under 80km/h and 3rd gear or my water temps would go beyond 105 degrees.
But we managed the issues, on the open road with the forward aircon vent open we kindoff still had aircon, one dared not open a window or all the gearbox heat would be pulled into the cab
Sitting at De Hoop in Richtersveld I noticed a wet spot on the ground that didn't seem to dry up... so I was sitting one morning drinking coffee when I noticed something dripping underneath the car.
The diesel tank had a crack, so I took a bottle and roughly measured the rate at which we were losing fuel. I wasn't more than 5 liters per day so I sacrifised a water jerrycan and filled it with 20 Liters just for in case things got worse.
But we had an awesome adventure and Old Patrollie made it home by itself now with 480 000km on the clock.
Original Parts list:
Rear diff
Transfercase
Gearbox (2nd gear is starting to scratch
)
Most of the body
