Our faithful Land Rover George has now done 178,000 miles and has needed some work to replace old and failing parts. The transfer box has bee9n completely rebuilt by Richard Hall of Glencoyne Engineering after developing a whine on the Balkans trip. The vacuum pump is leaking so is also being changed. The rocker cover gasket will be replaced at the same time (they often leak oil).
The oil in the front differential is contaminated with one shot grease so the seals have perished. We are considering refurbishing the front differential while it is apart.
So many major parts have now been replaced. Minor ones such as hoses, thermostat, suspension bushes etc will be done before South America. Coolant will be changed as the wrong type of antifreeze was used in the Gambia.
The clutch master cylinder (and slave while at it) will be done as the master cylinder was weeping.
The intercooler is being changed due to corrosion and leak. The pipe between the two fuel tanks is perished and is being replaced. Steering pump is leaking so additive added. New Bilstein steering damper. New heavy duty flanges all round. Track rod bushes being replaced with polyeurethane as perished. P Gasket on water pump being replaced and stripped thread helicoiled. Transfer box seal being replaced as leaking. Work done by Overland Services
We hope that attending to all known faults will mean greater reliability and less anxiety on the road. Famous last words….
We have moved our web hosting to a new provider and the site is so much more responsive. We hope some of the latency issues with the old provider are now history. If you experience any problems do let us know.
George’s “container stuffing” in Hamburg by Ricardo Gomes Overlander shipping:
In previous trips we have always purchased local SIM cards in each country. However this is time consuming – queuing and providing ID etc. This time we have researched travel eSIMs. There are now probably 50 or more. All with pitfalls. For example unlimited data is throttled after a few Gigabytes so impractical for uploading photos to websites.
We have identified GoMoWorld and ETravelSIM as being the best options for us.
