Fame at Last

Initially, we had decided we would try and get out of the garage in 10 days. This was the deadline for the cat paperwork. After this day we would have to pay another £100 to legally take the cats back into Argentina or smuggle them in. It didn’t take long for us to realise that we wouldn’t be able to make it in time and so we decided that we’d smuggle the cats in later and take our time now to get Ruby in the best shape possible. We were determined that even though we were here yet again in another workshop for another breakdown, that we would not let it take over everything. Unlike the previous time, we were in a well-equipped town. Here there were not only plenty of shops, but also restaurants and bars. It was a nice break every now and again to go into town and grab a cheap cocktail, or try some Venezuelan food. We gave ourselves the occasional afternoon off and this gave us new motivation to tackle the rest of the problems that needed sorting.

While the engine was priority number one, we also had a rather annoying suspension issue to sort. We had replaced our air shocks in Santiago as well as one front tyre. Ruby currently was very rather wonky at the front and had been for some time. With new shocks and a tyre though, we wanted to try and get to the bottom of the issue before we damaged our new things. We had briefly attempted stripping the front suspension the other day, but hadn’t gotten very far. Our bottle jack had lost so much oil it couldn’t raise the van up high enough to get the wheel off. Now we had got a new one, we decided to have another go at it. With the new energy of those who had already completed an engine rebuild, we attacked the front.

It seemed that the fault might be the beam adjuster screws. They were bent to the point that it wasn’t possible to screw them fully into the beam. This meant that they weren’t clamping the bars as they should. They are very specific bolts though, big chunky ones with an internal Allen key in the top and a pointed tip to locate the bars on the other end. Whenever you need something specific and impossible to find, Latin America comes into its own. We have had more than our fair share of bad mechanics but one thing that has rarely let us down are the tornerias. These metal workshops will make just about anything up for you and once again Mario took us around the local one with our old bent bolts to see if we could have some made up. The guy took a quick look at the bolts and told us he would have the new ones made in three hours for $15.

Hopefully these new bolts would fix the wonky front suspension. We wouldn’t know until it was all refitted but when I returned to collect them a few hours later I was pleasantly surprised when the tornero handed me two brand new replica bolts. They looked perfect.

In the midst of our suspension job, other things ticked away. I made us a small ladder so we could climb up and clean our solar panel easier. We had been carrying around spare copper piping for some time and thought this would be the perfect project to use it up. We got rid of our old awning and used the copper legs to make the ladder and the tarpaulin to make a cover for the small generator I purchased. We had a look through everything we were carrying and got rid of the unnecessary things and repacked it all into new boxes.

After being delayed for some time inexplicably in Germany, our parts from the UK had finally arrived. We had put them in Lee’s name and decided that only he would go and collect them to save on the bus fare. The idea being that I might be needed to get on with some engine rebuilding. This had already been long completed though and so while he spent the day in Santiago, I mounted our new generator on the roof rack muttering about the ridiculous import fees that DHL were charging us.

Lee got back late that evening but now it was official. We had everything we needed to reassemble. The next day I changed out the input shaft and refitted the bellhousing. Mario had headed off to a campout in the south as it was Easter weekend. We weren’t quite at that point yet but we hoped we would make it to the campout the following weekend. It was apparently a local get-together and at around an 80km round trip it would be the perfect test for our engine.

Over the next couple of days we slowly worked through the jobs left. We started to put the suspension back together only to realise that the threads in the beam had also been damaged. Fortunately the friendly tornero lent us the right tap to repair the threads and we managed to get it all back together. We also moved the adjusters around, giving the front end more of a lift. To my disappointment she still sat wonky, but after a bit of measuring it seemed that it was likely due to the rear being incorrect rather than any remaining issue with the front. At least now we could drive without damaging anything as the clearance between the chassis and tyres was much better.

While we wanted to move on, we didn’t have the pressure of an expiring visa hanging over us and so if we wanted a day off, it was no problem. Most days we walked down to the local booze shop and picked up a couple of cans of Cusquena. Lee had found some common ground talking to the locals over football and now every time we walked past we heard them shout ‘Hodge, Hodge!’ from behind the counter. We spent some time in particular talking to a local called Matthias. He was interested in our trip and what we were doing here in San Felipe for such a long time. We told him we were just down the road, working on our camper and chatted for a while about our travels.

I didn’t think much of it until I heard a banging on the door the following day. I opened the gates to see Matthias there with another guy. He introduced himself as Jose and asked if he could come in and speak to us. He apparently ran a local news channel and wanted to interview us. We filmed a quick ‘advert’ there and then and he gave us directions on how we could get over to the neighbouring town of Los Andes to do an interview with him on Monday.

Amidst our filthy days working in the garage, Mario’s mum regularly popped into the workshop to remind us that we could come and sit in her garden at any time and to bring us some fruit. We wanted to cook our signature curry for their family, but Claudia, who had initially greeted us, was now back in the city. Mario was away for the weekend too at his campout. So in the end we cooked a huge dinner for his mum, boxing up the leftovers for Mario to enjoy later. We sat in the garden under the tree and enjoyed one of our finest curries, if I say so myself. His mum shared the photos to their family WhatsApp group and soon his brother and family arrived to try some. We enjoyed some local wine and a nice evening off from thinking about Ruby for a change.

Before we knew it, Monday was upon us. We headed into town to try and find the bus to Los Andes but didn’t have much luck. After asking quite a few people, we eventually managed to find the collectivo service here. To me, collectivos are normally the local buses in the form of minibuses or sometimes people carriers. Here the collectivos look like taxis. They’re yellow cabs, almost like you might see in New York. Despite their size though, they are shared. After we figured that out, we were soon on our way.

I had explained to Jose, or JL as he prefers to be called, that as soon as we left the house we wouldn’t have internet. We were a bit late, after taking an extra hour trying to figure out the public transport which hadn’t been located where it was supposed to be. So we pulled up outside his house to see him already in the street waiting for us. He ushered us down the road and into his house. I hadn’t realised until this point that the ‘studio’ was in his living room. That at least made it a little less intimidating as from the video it had looked like a proper TV studio. We sat down, got our microphones sorted and soon we were chatting away in Spanish on local TV. He asked us about our travels, our experiences of Chile and (rather awkwardly) our relationship with God. I think we did pretty well though, considering.

Instead of heading straight back afterwards, he dropped us off in town at a local bar where we could try the local craft beer and share a surprisingly good veggie burger. Then we flagged down another collectivo and headed back home.

We were now dangerously close to refitting the engine and soon enough the day came to tackle it.

With access to an engine crane, this job is far simpler. It didn’t take us too long to get the engine back in place. Firstly, we slid the block under the rear bumper without the intake manifold. The height of the throttle body meant that the engine must sit under the bay first and then the inlet could be installed from the top. With the inlet in place, we could attach the crane and move the engine into position. The clutch slid together perfectly and after the normal wrestling of the engine mount, the crane was removed and more or less everything was back together. While we were so close to finishing, we held off for one more day while we went and replaced some of the more battered coolant hoses with new ones.

And then the moment was upon us. It is something I dread, the first key turn. So much hangs on that moment. It’s those seconds in which you find out if things have more or less gone to plan or not. New metal parts that have never touched before suddenly spin at 700 revolutions per minute. For me it’s always a nail-biting experience. The tension was drawn out even more by the fact that as Lee turned the key for the first time, nothing happened. A wire had been missed off the starter motor. Then again, he turned the key. The engine cranked, and cranked, and then, after what seemed like an age, coughed, spurted out a cloud of smoke and roared into life.