Garage Prt 3

This coincides nicely with an update about the gearbox. It had now been with the shop for a while, despite the fact the guy had stripped it apart the day after we brought it in. Unfortunately, it wasn’t good news. The bearings were completely trashed, as suspected, but because they had allowed everything to go out of line, we had also broken a tooth on the diff. This was a far bigger problem. We told the mechanic we’d source the new diff and get it to him as soon as we could. 

As we have the 091 box which is generally on later bays we weren’t too optimistic about finding a new one in Ecuador. To our surprise, Mauricio did manage to source one. The only problem was that it was only the crown without the pinion and changing these parts individually is not a good idea. They should, as with many things, be replaced as a set. I spoke to a guy called John in the UK who had rebuilt our gearbox when we had broken the first one, all the way back in 2018. I thought he’d be able to give me any idea of ratios and part numbers as it looked like we’d be importing one from the US. However, things took a good turn when he offered to send us a second hand part for free. This too, was at a ratio that would be better for us on the roads here. As we had recently got bigger tyres, we had lost some of the power from our box. He also got the new bearings and all the other parts needed to completely refurb the box. The only thing we didn’t need was the gear sets that he had originally installed, they were still going strong. 

We had paid for this, along with the hefty postage cost to ship a weighty chunk of metal out to Ecuador. Now, it was ready for collection and delivery to the gearbox workshop. Now we just had to get into the capital and collect it. There were several other things we needed in the capital too, from specific hoses, to fabric for new door cards. As ever, things in the city are organised into districts and so the fabric shops are not near the electrical conduits shops or the car hose shops. While Quito does have a bus service, it’s a pretty long-winded process to get around, the city is so long and narrow as it nestles in the valley that it takes around 3 hours to cross it on a bus. The gearbox mechanic had told us that once he had the parts, it would be two days until it was ready and then at this point, we’d need to find a way to bring it back to Machachi. We really didn’t want to pay another $50 for a taxi. So, with all this in mind,  I had found a good deal for hiring a car online; we could hire one for three days for the same price as a taxi for the afternoon and this would also mean we could go and do all the odd little jobs we needed to do with ease. Refilling the gas bottle in the garage kitchen for example, would now be a simple matter. Along with buying a new starter battery. After not having wheels for 6 weeks too, it would be great to head to a bigger cheaper supermarket and stock up too. 

With everything ready to fall into place, we got on the first of two buses to get us to Europcar. We arrived bang on time, and walked into the shiny and largely deserted office. After several moments one of the two girls behind the desk graced us with their presence and waved for us to have a seat. We waited… and waited… as she tapped away on the computer and largely seemed to ignore us. Then eventually she told us we would need to pay a $7000 deposit as the car didn’t have insurance.  I told her it was included online and then she proceeded to give some lengthy explanation as to why it wasn’t ‘their’ insurance and it didn’t count. Naturally, we weren’t about to put down a $7000 deposit to rent a Kia Picanto, even if we had had the money. We told her to cancel the booking and began to walk to DHL instead, writing off all the other things that we had planned to do. Now we'd be lucky just to get the parts to the garage in time. It was a good job I'd taken the gate keys with us. this morning as there was no way we'd be back before the garage shut that evening.

We not only had to collect the gearbox parts, but also some new wiper parts sent from The States by a friend. The Fedex office was closer and so we stopped off there first. It didn’t take long before she told me that while the office offered a service with Fedex it was literally just for posting passports. The proper office was in the far north of the city, well over an hour away. At DHL, we had more luck. We paid our import fees and soon were in possession of our parts. Now we just needed to take two more buses to get them to the garage and as it turns out, walk up a very big hill. 

It was now nearing the end of the afternoon as we finished up in the garage. We had just enough time to trek across town to the Fedex office. Another bus. Another hill. And a monsoon. Soggy, tired and fed up with buses, we arrived at Fedex, the final stop of the day. Now with these parts, I could begin to reassemble the wiper motor and therefore the dashboard, meaning the electrics could finally be finished. We definitely hadn’t intended to spend an entire day simply collecting two parcels but at least another cog was set in motion and we got on the first of the last three buses that would take us the three hour journey back to Ruby and some very needy cats. 

The following morning, I was ready to go. I had the wiper motor in pieces first thing, ready to fit our new arms and get the dashboard back in. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long to realise that despite the parts came off another late bay bus, they were different in every single way possible to our current ones and there was no way we could make them fit. A waste of time, our friend’s money and yet another delay… 

The news of the gearbox parts arriving though seemed to chivvy the garage along a bit. Mauricio told us that he planned to paint it first, which seemed a bit weird, and then put it on the ramp and do the welding. For the millionth time, I explained that while nice paint is all very well and good. The suspension was infinitely more important. I really hoped that he understood that, considering the roads were about to get bad again. There was still a lot to do before it could be painted though, and often days went by where we were the only ones working on her. It felt like they weren’t doing anything, because we were, even though our cab doors sat there in the corner for days without being touched. We had now got to the point where we wrote off the rest of our visa to the garage. It was clear we weren’t going to be doing anything fun in Ecuador as by the time we got out of here it would be a straight drive to the border to get out in time. While we hoped that the pace would pick up soon, we still had plenty of things to be doing ourselves. Finally, we had finished painting the pop-top and so we prodded Mauricio into getting the rest of the floor inside welded and painted. It was only a few small patches but it was stopping us from putting down the new floor. A good job to be getting on with while we waited for the gearbox to be done.

We headed ten minutes down the road to Don Tablero, taking a kitchen door with us to match up what colour flooring we wanted.. Here we spent a while debating our new floor, before eventually agreeing on ‘Toscano’. It would be a change from our old bamboo floor and as much as I loved real wood, the idea of having one single board that couldn’t get dirt and water in the cracks seemed like a good idea and so we went with a cheap and cheerful laminated fake wood board. Although as fake wood goes, I thought it looked pretty nice. After finally getting it into a taxi and getting it back, it was unloaded and put on the back of one of the trucks on the ramp as a temporary storage place until we could cut it out and lay it.

The truck in question, was Philips truck to be precise, he had been in and around the workshop helping out with getting his own car back on the road. It also turned out that he lived in the north of Quito and he very kindly agreed to bring us down our gearbox once it was completed. We had paid before we left the garage in the hope that some kind soul might bring it to us, and it turned out that he was the guy. He dropped it off to us a few days later and Ruby’s heart was reunited once again, although it would still be some time until it was refitted. 

We continued fitting our new floor, and then greatly angered Philip when he saw in the video that the floorboards had been put on his truck. Although there wasn’t a scratch on it, he then refused to talk to us for the rest of the time and so we awkwardly avoided each other and soon his car was finished and he left. It should have been the perfect moment for us to be back on the ramp, but Ruby still wasn’t painted and so another car took the spot. 

The work was getting there though and now with the gearbox back, all hands were on deck to sort our doors. We told Mauricio that we needed to leave the garage on the 18th of April, knowing full well that it’d never happen but trying to give ourselves some margin to make the 10 hour border drive. With five days to go, she was in the spray booth and we continued to paint all of the interior metal work and reinstall the interior units, while they prepped the outside. We had already been to the paint shop and picked the colour we wanted. We even opted for the more expensive paint with varnish, in the hope of protecting it for longer. After a long day, the guys stayed late to paint here and finally, for the first time in years, she was just one red again. 

As great as this was for progress, we were fast running out of time. While we didn’t plan to have all the cream painted, there was a section of the front gutter that needed replacing in order for us to remount our new roof rack. In the end, they offered to do it all but it was a somewhat rushed job to the point where instead of wiping off any access silicone, they simply sprayed over the top of it. That wasn’t the only thing being rushed, they were also cutting corners when it came to masking off areas and large amounts of our tools as well as our newly varnished worktop, were now sprayed cream. After finding and buying some very expensive Osmo varnish specifically, and then spending many hours rubbing down and treating the kitchen. We were not too impressed. On the plus side, we did have a totally resprayed van and she was looking nice, now we need to get on with the mechanical jobs. 

Our friend had sourced us some other wiper parts that were the right type and these would be brought back with our friend Alex when he returned to Quito. In the meantime, Ruby had finally made it to the ramp and we had the large job of fitting front beam adjusters, while Mauricio was in charge of sorting the rear suspension. It didn’t take us too long to drop the front beam and it was at that point that we confirmed, as I had suspected, that the ball joints needed changing. We messaged Martin from Guayaquil who seems to sell the cheapest parts and sent him a long list of things we needed to change. Nearly $300 later, we had a complete set of brakes, ball joints and bearings coming our way, along with a new speedo cable as we hadn’t been able to remove the old one without breaking it. 

On the rear suspension, a huge tube insert was being fabricated that would go inside the old bent torsion tube. This should not only give us the correct angle but also be a far stronger solution than just sticking more and more weld on the outside. With a local torno in charge of making that, we could continue to strip the front beam. As ever with Ruby, if it can break, it will and so I was in no way surprised when we removed the front torsion leaves to find three of them broken. Yet another thing to fix… and time was ticking on. Our comfortable leaving date of the 18th had passed and every day ate into our very short visa. With a $475 daily fine for overstaying, tensions began to run high in the garage.