No gap too short, no dip too hidden, no bend too blind. Overtake or get deported.
If you haven't read the finish line blog then you may not fully understand why I am writing another blog; surely it's all over. Well to recap: it's not. Will are I driving back. As decisions over a few beers go the one to drive a further 7000 miles back, in a car that has just gone all the way to Mongolia, is probably up there with one of the more rash. Then if on top of that you add the fact that there are only 7 days remaining on your Russian visa, and you have over 6000km to drive across Russia to Latvia, then it really just seems plain stupid. But looking back on the time I have known him it is obvious that Will and I are plain stupid; so maybe I shouldn't be so surprised. With no visa constraints, and always planning on driving back, Team Rub a Dub Dub are coming with us as far as Moscow. Anyway, this is just how not smoothly it has gone.
'Mongol Rally own brand beers are guaranteed to cause awful decisions'
7 days remaining on our VISA's:
I woke up horribly hungover. I suppose it's the only way to be after celebrating reaching the finish line. There was so much to do in the morning though sleeping was not an option. Instead I spent it trawling through piles of tyres picking the best ones to replace our extremely worn ones. The options weren't perfect and we finally left the finish line with two new, rather large, wheels on the back and one new wheel on the front; as well as one old one. We headed off to Irkutsk, 500km from the finish line and the start of the charge across Russia. We had no time to change the oil but hopefully will at some point, sleep was prioritised to avoid falling asleep at the wheel.
'Hux ft. Kangaroo looking like I felt the morning after the finish line party'
6 days remaining on our VISA's:
This was when we started properly. We drove all day and all through the night to make up as much ground as possible. After one of the wheels turned out to be marginally too large we swapped it yesterday for an old one I kept hold of. Not ideal but we are really in a rush. We had a good day making up a lot of miles before dark and the start of the night shift. I slept first to then drive in the early hours.
'Corner ahead? Yep. Okay, send it.'
5 days remaining on our VISA's:
I did the graveyard shift from 2am till 7am. This was fine until the very end when I started to lag and I was glad when we pulled over to swap drivers and refuel. As we were putting fuel in though we realised that one of the old tyres that we had left on the front left was horribly worn after a whole nights driving. Jacking the car up to swap this, with a spare borrowed from Team Rub a Dub Dub, it became apparent that a worn tyre was the least of our worries.
Taking the wheel off showed that the spring surrounding the damper had sheared near the top. Looking at each other we knew exactly when this damage had occurred. On the first night driving from the finish line to Irkutsk we had hit a particularly large pothole; virtually invisible in the darkness until we were pretty much in it. We had jumped out straight away at the time to inspect the wheel but without jacking the car up it had been impossible to see this shear right at the top. The spring was still doing its job to an extent as well, essentially with just one less coil, so the suspension had still felt about as awful as usual.
This was going to be manageable though we thought as we could still drive quite a way if necessary; as proven by the fact we had just driven about 1500km on it. We thought we should probably have a look at the other side too though just to check. We hadn't gone into that same pothole with the front right but it had taken plenty of other abuse throughout the rally. In hindsight, I would recommend to people that pre return journey from Mongolia you always check your car over when you aren't horribly hungover. When changing over the front right wheel I had paid zero attention to the suspension, and so had failed to notice the shear halfway up this spring too. Now I have to take the blame for not noticing this, but since he bottled driving back and this is my blog I'm gonna blame Hockey for actually snapping this spring at some point during the outwards journey. I literally have no idea when it was though, for all I know it could have been like that since Uzbekistan (although I doubt this). Mongolia is probably the true culprit, but again the way it had settled some function was still retained so it hadn't been noticed before.
Driving to the next town we stopped in at a mechanics, dragged out the tools, and queued the music...
Okay. That's a lie. There was no music. Just some broken English/Russian and lots of pointing. Anyway, they understood pretty quickly when we got it on their car lift and took the wheels off to have a look. They then started trying to get in touch with their suppliers about parts. This, we knew, was the only hard part of this whole process. Taking the old spring/damper systems out and replacing them with new ones we could have done ourselves but getting parts for Perodua's is hard enough in the UK let alone Russia. As it was looking like it would be a long time before they got anywhere with any parts we decided to gamble and not wait around for new ones. 5 days of visa left and we were still rolling along, so we got a few rims fixed up which had been tracking badly and set off again.
We made it 200km short of our target city for the night, Omsk, before things got worse. After repeated bumps the front left spring sheared again halfway up. With the spring now in 3 pieces it really had no function and sounded horrific over even the smallest bump; but we carried on crawling all the way into Omsk to a hostel that Rub a Dub Dub had gone ahead and found.
4 days remaining on our VISA's:
Will and I got up early to get the car to a mechanic as soon as possible, as the problem was now urgent and we could roll along on it no longer. With Omsk being a big city we were hoping parts could be sourced quicker here and stopped at the first garage we saw signs of life in. We were there 5 minutes before it opened, and first in the queue just as we had wanted to be. Again showing them the problem was pretty easy and after a bit of complicated sign language we had soon worked out that they were offering two options:
Option A: use the dampers that remained and squash new slightly ill fitting springs onto them. Positives: quick as they already had springs, and cheap. Negatives: extremely likely to induce the bounciest front end ever, and completely bandit.
Option B: new sets of dampers and springs. Positives: parts designed to go together usually preferential, far less bandit, ride endlessly more likely to be back to normal. Negatives: more expensive, hour and a half waiting time on parts, unable to tell if parts were going to be new or second hand, unable to find out what car the parts had come from so potential they wouldn't fit on arrival.
We gambled on option B. And it was a great gamble. An hour and a half later a bloke showed up with our new front suspension, which looked slightly second hand but in good condition (taken from a Daihatsu Move) and they got on with fitting it. Whilst the car had been up on the lift we had changed the oil and filter as well, and so half an hour later we were ready to roll out on our beautiful new suspension and with a fresh set of oil. The only other issue we had was maybe even more concerning. That morning the car upon starting had been struggling to idle properly, revving every second up to about 3000 revs before dropping back down. Engine problems were a big concern, and although the check engine light has been on and off throughout the trip it had mostly been off and never amounted to anything till this. On the short trip to the garage the problem had actually stopped but it started again when we tried to show them in the garage. Using google translate they had confirmed what we suspected, that it was a problem with one of the sensors, but told us there was nothing they could do about it unless we waited a day for a part. We had no time so we decided we would just have to head on and cross our fingers. We drove all day and the problem stopped early on as we were just leaving the garage. All in all it had been a hugely successful visit and to top it off the mechanic had kindly refused to accept labour charges, so we just had to pay for the parts and nothing else.
'Well f***'
'Well they definitely aren't supposed to look like that...'
3 days remaining on our VISA's:
We drove through the night again last night. We had a Subway at 4am and the constant crossing over time zones left us with no real idea of what time it was all day. Being absolutely shattered didn't help but the car was still crawling along all day so we are happy enough. I think my tenses keep getting messed up when writing this and I'm going to blame that on the lack of sleep too. We are staying in a hostel tonight in a city 400km from Moscow; which feels like our finish line.
2 days remaining on our VISA's:
What a long day this turned out to be. We set off from our hostel late this morning, as we were all so tired we couldn't drag ourselves out of the beautiful beds. It was one of the best hostels we have stayed in but we had to keep going. About 200km out from Moscow we hit absolutely awful traffic, due to road works, which held us up by at least two hours. As a result of this it was dark by the time we got here, and we scrapped the sights and instead just went out for some food and some beers to celebrate arriving here. We found a restaurant and treated ourselves to steaks. To top it off it turned that Thursday's are free wine with your steak night, which we could hardly turn down. Possibly as a result of the alcohol, the route came back up for discussion again over the meal. With our last drunken decision being to drive back we could hardly top this, but we ended up giving it a pretty good go. Our original plan was to head to Latvia and then south through Lithuania, before shooting west across Europe through Poland, Germany, Holland, and Belgium. Rub a Dub Dub have more time on their Russian VISA's so they were thinking something similar but via St Petersburg and Estonia first. Looking at the map though Scandinavia suddenly seemed very appealing and really not that far away...
A quick google of ferry prices later and suddenly the whole route plan had changed. The new route still starts with Latvia but now we are going to head north to Estonia, to then catch a ferry to Finland where we will meet up with Rub a Dub Dub again who will drive there from St Petersburg. We then have an overnight ferry from Helsinki to Stockholm, before shooting across for a quick visit to Norway. Dropping south again we reckon we can get through Copenhagen and Amsterdam before heading home. I'm so much more excited for this than the previous plan and we are just gonna assume the car can deal with the extra mileage!
16 hours left on our VISA's:
It's early. And we are not feeling too fresh. We are such lightweights now that not many beers at all are needed before we feel rough in the morning. 600km to go but we are going to see some sights in Moscow quickly.
'High speed sightseeing'
13 hours left on our VISA's:
Okay we should probably set off from Moscow now. Complete madness on a 12 lane section of road on the way out of the city; 7 on our side and 5 on the other. We made it out though in the end and drove on towards the border with no traffic problems luckily.
'Even when you have half a day left on your VISA there is always time for coffee'
4 and a half hours left on our VISA's:
We have made it to the border at last!! No idea how long this exit will take but hopefully it won't be too bad.
4 hours left on our VISA's:
It wasn't too bad and we have actually made it out of Russia in time! Parents can stop worrying and the car can take a huge breather that she massively deserves. Couldn't be more proud of Thunderbird 2 for somehow dragging us across two thirds of Russia in a stupidly short amount of time. We are nearly through the Latvian side too now and onto Riga tonight!
I'll admit that maybe we did get a touch nervous at times, and I'm certainly glad that it was just Will and I in that sense as of anyone we probably are least likely to get panicked. After all that the car had already been through, this consistent high speed driving really turned out to be the biggest challenge of the trip for it. Constantly pushing to overtake lorries and keep up the average speed took its toll but she has made it - bring on Scandinavia!
