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Poor old Florence has had a few problems during the last couple of months! The ignition fault started back in Jordan - Richard was driving from our camp on the beach into Aqaba during a torrential rainstorm (the first time it had rained that heavily in about 5 years - oh great!) - the Range Rover stalled at traffic lights and refused to start again. The first I knew about it was when Max and Dillon appeared through the rain, towing Florence and a bedraggled looking Richard who had spent ten minutes with his head under the bonnet trying to work out what the hell was wrong! It took another hour to trace the problem to the ignition switch - after fourteen years of working fine it had self destructed. As anyone who has worked on a Range Rover knows, you usually have to undo 40 screws and be a trained contortionist to be able to get at the faulty part - the ignition switch was no exception. The problem was due to the plastic casing melting and allowing the ignition switch to move, resulting in an intermittent connection; Richard made a temporary repair by jamming a folded up piece of card under the slider contact and putting a tie wrap around the ignition barrel to hold everything in place. The car started once more - and I sent yet another email to Famous Four to ask for a new ignition switch to be sent to Riyadh.... The problem didn't end there - although the temporary fix worked 90% of the time, occasionally the card would move, particularly if we had driven across bumpy ground, and it would be time to get the tool kit out again! But the ignition switched called it a day when we were in Saudi Arabia. After a particularly gruelling drive across bone shattering corrugations and impossibly soft sand we stopped in a tiny desert village to buy some food. For the previous hour or so we had smelt a particularly unpleasant burning plastic smell inside the car - at first it seemed to be coming from the area around the central cubby box - but when Richard accessed the ignition switch he discovered that the power lead had burnt out and not even a new card-and-tie-wrap combination was going to fix this one! Abdullah, our 'fixer' from the King Abdul Aziz Foundation looked slightly aghast - that is until Richard demostrated just how easy it is to hot-wire a car! And so, for the next 400 miles, a small piece of wire became our key - problem solved! Once in Riyadh we picked up the new ignition switch that had been sent by Famous Four to a friend's office - replacing the switch was a relatively easy job carried out in the Marriott car park, which raised a few eyebrows. Additionally Richard had the usual maintenance work to do - checking the engine, oil levels and under the car to see if anything had worked loose - it had; the polybushes are not a success! On to Kuwait and time to sort out a worrying rumbling noise coming from under the car. This had started before we left the UK - it usually occurred at exactly 56 mph and all the mechanics whose advice we sought were convinced that it was the exhaust vibrating. Richard remained unconvinced - but decided to leave things as they were. Since Turkey the vibration has been getting worse - occurring at pretty much any speed - and Richard decided the time had come to let someone else have a look at the car. Somebody was looking after us... back in Amman before Christmas, when we were checking out of the hotel the receptionist handed me a note with a telephone number to call. I had no idea who it was from and didn't phone until we had picked up our Saudi visas, later in the day. The message turned out to be from a Jordanian who had spotted Florence sitting outside the hotel and, intrigued, checked the website and found out that we were heading for Kuwait - where his brother, conveniently, runs a Land Rover Garage! We raced back to the hotel to meet Eddie and his brother, Mohammed - who insisted that we bring Florence into his garage in Kuwait City where his mechanics would do any work required! So off we went to the New Experience Garage.... It is unheard of for Richard to allow anyone to work on Florence - he would much rather deal with problems himself. However, it soon became apparent that the mechanic, also Mohammed, who was busy inspecting Florence really new his stuff. His opinion - confirming what Richard already knew - was that the rumbling was coming from the transfer box. Richard felt the problem was worn bearings - but Mohammed was fairly certain - judging by the movement in the front prop shaft - that the noise was caused by the bolt behind where the prop shaft connects to the transfer box (bear in mind that this is me and not Richard writing this so excuse the non technical terms!!) working loose. So Florence was booked in for surgery the following morning.... |
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As we stood watching Florence being operated on I kept an eye Richard - as long as he was looking cheerful things were going OK! Once the front prop shaft was off Mohammed realised that it was a worn bearing in the transfer box front output shaft that was the cause of all the noise. Still Richard smiled, even when the transfer box was pulled apart and all the horrifically expensive transfer box oil poured onto the floor! Fortunately Mohammed did not have to resort to dismantling the exhaust - it had taken long hours and a lot of swearing to get the exhaust assembled and it was unlikely that we would be able to get it sealed again. Luckily it seems that parts for old Range Rovers are easy to come by in Kuwait - 20 minutes later the new bearing and oil seal arrived; one and a half hours later Florence was back in one piece. The rumbling has improved - but unfortunately has not disappeared. If anyone has any ideas please let us know! The best was yet to come - when it came to settling the bill, Mohammed refused to let us pay for the work that had been done, only the parts - which came to £55. A big thank you to the mechanics at the New Experience Garage for looking after Florence!
The offending part! |
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