Garage Prt 4

Despite the fact that they’d had 6 weeks so far to do it, the bodywork still wasn’t done. And so in between us doing mechanical work on the ramp, the body guys were still respraying the parts, polishing and trying to make all the doors fit in. The latter being somewhat of a challenge. When we had arrived at the garage the passenger door wouldn’t shut without an enthusiastic slam. The bottom of the door hitting the cab. Now the guys had spent some time with a large hydraulic piston making the door frame fit the door. It was great. Now it shut with a neat little click. Unfortunately, they then repeated the process with the sliding door and this threw out the passenger door. Ironically, it seemed like there was too much metal in a camper where on the whole we normally lacked metal.

While they did this, and we waited on the metal parts from the torno, we had the front beam on the floor. Mauricio was trying to source us some new suspension leaves to replace the broken ones and we were in the process of fitting beam adjusters and changing the steering pin. It took us a day to cut drill and mark up the adjusters ready for welding. At the same time, the rear suspension tube was also ready and it was another late night in the garage welding up these two major things. This meant that tomorrow, we could refit the front beam. Our parts had also arrived, delivered to the local bus depot and Mauricio drove me in early that morning to collect them. A huge box of brand new parts, all ready to be fitted onto our new raised beam. That was enough to keep us occupied and Lee and I steadily worked our way through refitting the beam and all the new parts.

It was all going pretty well until we realised that the addition of the adjusters meant that there was insufficient space for the gear shift rod to fit. It seemed that you had to buy a custom made one with an angled section to go around the beam. Mauricio was undeterred by this and soon whipped one up the vice out of the steel tube he had lying around the workshop. It now became a priority to fit the gearbox, so we could check that all of this worked. 

While I had assembled our new brake hubs on the bench, we couldn’t yet fit them as we still needed new torsion leaves. Once again, Mauricio drove me back into Quito and to a guy who had a beam off a German bay. He sold us a set of second hand bars as well as a rear backing plate for the brake drums for a pretty reasonable $70. We then stopped off to collect a new ball joint for the steering from another VW contact, before returning back. While things were getting a little manic, it was nice of Mauricio to take the time to act as a taxi and help us get all the parts we needed to get back on the road. Finally, we had all the parts. Now it was a question of time and welding to fit them. 

We focused on the front beam. While the beam itself was installed, with the major components refitted to it like the brake servo and steering linkage, we needed to refit the new bars. This is a bit of a pain in the arse. The bars must be fitted into a central metal sleeve. This is in the centre of the tube which is full of grease, meaning you can’t see it. As the bar is comprised of several leaves, when you hold one end and go to feed them in the other ends tend to move out of line. After a while I figured out the best order to slide them in and then just as I had them all in, I had to take them all out again. It's hard to see when they’re removed, but as you can imagine these individual metal bars are not completely straight anymore as they’re second hand and have spent numerous years being twisted in one direction. This means it's pretty important that you note the slight bend in the metal, and make sure they all go the same way. Otherwise, while they will fit, you end up with some nasty gaps at the end that will make it very hard to refit the arms, rather than a set of nicely aligned pieces. After much greasy wrestling, I had them in. I would like to say this was the hardest bit, now we refitted the arms. It seemed like it was impossible to actually adjust the beam with the new adjusters, or at least on the ramp. Lifting the suspension means you need more weight in the van in order to refit the suspension. You need the weight of the van to push against in order to lever the suspension into place. Levering anything on the ramp was impossible, Ruby was so heavy at the rear that any kind of pressure on the front caused the entire bus to part company with the ramp. In order to refit the bars in the normal position, I had to get Lee to sit in the cab as ballast. With time so short, we refitted it in its original position. While we might not benefit from the work now, it was something that could be adjusted in the future. Now it was a race against the clock to fit everything else. 

I was a little disheartened to not have things go quite how I wanted with the front, but if I thought I had had a bad day, it was nothing compared to Brandon’s. The garage has two dogs. Millie and Brandon. Millie we affectionately nicknamed Millie the ‘Mop’, as she was utterly filthy. Brandon didn’t look like he had been used to wipe the floor, instead he had a penchant for stealing anything you left on the floor and chewing it to death. We lost kitchen plates, bump stops and hoses to Brandon’s favourite pastime. They were nice enough dogs though and we bought them some treats and wet food throughout our stay. Despite the fact that for Latin American dogs they were probably pampered, we noticed that on Sunday when the garage was shut they wouldn’t get fed and couldn’t help feeling sorry for them. 

That evening, we stood in the kitchen, warming ourselves up with yet another cup of tea. We noticed Brandon inside looking sorry for himself, with a bandaged paw. Mauricio came and chatted for a moment before casually telling me that Brandon nearly died today. Apparently they had gone to lunch, and for some reason, Brandon had tried to follow them across the road. Mauricio has multiple cameras, covering the garage and outside. He pulled up the footage on his phone. On a busy dual carriageway, Brandon ran out, got hit by the first car that spun him into the second. He was thrown across the road before somehow running off. We had seen so many dead dogs on these busy roads, many drivers not even braking when they run out that I can’t say I was surprised. What was more surprising if anything, was that he didn’t have a scratch on him. He lay on a blanket we put out looking very sorry for himself, but aside from being quite bruised I imagined, unharmed. He was one lucky boy. As a special treat that night, an angry Aimee was kept inside our room and Brandon was allowed to sleep inside. 

Now with the rear welding completed, the engine was refitted. I don’t think we’ve ever had so many pairs of hands to help us. Normally, it’s just me, Lee and a broken jack. This time it was all back within the hour. At least now, we could theoretically drive. I had now received the second attempt at wiper motor parts and this time, with the right ones, I could finally refit the dashboard. This part wasn’t an issue. That came when the guys tried to refit our windscreen. They got about half way around, before breaking it. It really was the last thing we needed. Despite the fact that Mauricio happily agreed to pay for it, every time I asked him when the new one was coming he reassured me it would be today. For a week. 

In the meantime, I ploughed ahead with the front electrics and soon we were in a position where we could start the engine. Everything was in place and it was the moment of truth after nearly two months. Really it should have been no issue, as there was no problem with the engine. Ruby turned over and refused to start. After some poking around, it turned out that this was entirely my fault. As I had refitted the front electrics I had triggered our inertia switch and turned off the fuel pump. We also had a bad connection on the crank sensor and with these two minor points remedied, there was that familiar noise as our engine roared into life. Finally, it seemed things were coming together. They needed to. Our visa expired in three days and we were a ten hour drive from the border. 

Now the final bolts were tightened, the suspension adjusted and the new shift rod tested. It was only a test drive of a few minutes, but happily she drove. The only noise now; the rear shock absorbers. It seemed that despite them being one of the main things I wanted to do, we’d be leaving without the new ones being attached. Mauricio had tried to remove it, realised it wouldn’t come off and told me that he wanted to take out the fuel tank. As the engine had only been back in for 24 hours, and had been sitting on the floor for two months, I wasn’t particularly impressed. Now there was a horrible as the rear shock was still attached but the bolt permanently loose. At this point though, there was nothing we could do and so we started the last job. Repacking. This in itself, was a mammoth task. Ruby was completely empty, for the first time ever. We packed until it was nearly 2am and we could no longer stay awake. Tomorrow we would finally leave as the new windscreen was finally fitted.

As much as I would like to have got out of there earlier, it wasn’t meant to be. As easily as she had fired up the night before, Ruby now refused to start. It seemed we were getting no spark and no power to the main ignition relay. Mauricio poked around in the ECU and somehow it started working. I don’t know what he did, and I don’t think he did either but now it ran again. After wasting precious time with this fiasco, we continued to pack. 

While I was grateful for the free room, it had been so incredibly damp that it had nearly ruined a lot of our stuff. Even things that had never been worn, we took to the laundrette as they were growing mould. In refitting the toilet panels, I had to trim each panel down by nearly a centimetre to get them to fit back into the frame again, the amount the wood had expanded in the time it had been out. They has also warped completely out of shape and so they had spent at least two days under a heap of batteries trying to straighten them back out. I was very glad we had never moved the kitchen inside as if that had expanded the same amount, it wouldn’t have gone back into the van. We’d had problems enough refitting it with the new floor level, I can only imagine the dramas if it had also got that wet. This meant that as we went to put everything back in the van, not only did we need to clean the van first, as it was dusty after all the sanding and painting, but we also needed to clean mould off every single thing that went back in. Every piece of clothing, every piece of cutlery, every individual food packet.... This was a pretty time consuming process and as we reached midday on Saturday we realised we simply weren’t going to get it done. We made arrangements with Mauricio to come and pick up the remainder of our stuff the following day as we needed to head up to Quito and pick up our new roof rack before returning back through Machachi on the way to the border. 

We needed to return anyway to pay him. For over a week we had asked him for the total price and he had avoided the subject. We weren’t sure if this was because he didn’t really want to charge us, or because he was going to deliver us a nasty expensive surprise. We had been in both situations before. In the end, we finally got it out of him. He asked for $1500 to pay his workers and told us that we didn’t need to pay for any of the work he had done. We got the apartment for free too. I think it was a very reasonable price and we were happy to pay it. The problem was that as he had told us so last minute we couldn’t physically take that much out of the ATM. We paid him half, and told him we would return with the rest the next day, which he seemed pretty relaxed about. 

And so the moment had arrived. It was not how I wanted or how we had planned it. We wanted to have the van nice and organised. Tidy and clean. Then we planned to let Lexi check it out for the first time. Giving her time to adjust to the space before we turned on our noisy engine and scared her. A nice slow and steady introduction. In reality, we chucked our stuff in. bags piled upon bags. There was no floor space at all. Then we piled our new Starlink on top of all of that. With the van completely and utterly jammed full of stuff, we chucked Aimee and Lexi on top, fired up the engine and immediately left. It was the end of the afternoon and with no time to go to look at the roof rack that day, we pulled back out onto the Pan America planning to get to our friends house for the night. Despite the fact that we drove in a complete mess of a camper, somewhere in which our new terrified kitten had buried herself, it was good to be behind the wheel again. As you might expect from us though, our happiness to be back on the road was going to be short lived.