Sunday, January 14, 2024 – Tarifa, Spain
Jan 16th, 2024 by rallyadmin
The day starts early. There’s no food at the hotel. And it’s a long way to go to Tarifa. Get fuel and some breakfast. That’s the plan.
The car starts easily and sounds okay. Up and out of the garage. We wend our way through Bordeaux and eventually find the motorway. The only thing to fend off the boredom is the slowly worsening weather. The morning started with a heavy overcast and as we head south, it starts to rain. The rain steadily gets worse as the road goes up in altitude. At about 2,000 feet, it’s pouring, the visibility is dropping like a stone and the wind is picking up.
But as we crest the small range of mountains the rain diminishes and eventually stops. Farther down the road the rain stops completely and near the Spanish border the sun comes out.
Everything goes well for a couple of hours until we stop for a bio-break. The Freelander had started running rough again and, again, when we pulled into the rest area, the revs came down, the engine stalled and wouldn’t restart. We decide to wait about 30 minutes to try to start it again but it doesn’t start.
It is a good deal warmer than it was when the car first stalled. We wait another few minutes and try again but with starter fluid sprayed into the air intake. It takes a couple of tries but it finally starts and seems to be running a bit better than it was before we stopped. Back on the road and nursing it along by keeping the speed down, hoping that if the problem is temperature related, the lower speed might ameliorate the problem.
We drive the final 2 hours to Tarifa without any issues. But we know that we have to find out what the problem is and get it fixed. The drive through Morocco won’t be warm until we get to the southern part of Western Sahara and into Mauritania. And by the time we get to southern Mauritania and Senegal the ambient temperature could be right up there.
While we are driving along, Clemo calls Angela, our British friend who lives in La Linea, Spain and works in Gibraltar. She has contacts all over the Tarifa, Algeciras, Gibraltar area and hopefully she can put us in touch with someone who find the issue and fix it.
She calls back and tells us that her partner Paul has a man who works for him and who also services Land Rovers as a side hustle. He (the mechanic) thinks that the problem is diesel getting past the rings into the motor oil, thinning it and that is allowing the oil to get too thin and overheat. There is an oil temperature sensor that will shot down the engine if the oil is too hot. It sounds plausible to us and what do we know.
We have a meeting with the mechanic tomorrow in Gibraltar in a free parking garage where he does his side hustle. In a parking garage. A free parking garage. Stranger things have happened. We arrive at the hotel, Meson de Sancho, check in and finally breathe a sigh of relief.
The Meson de Sancho is the meeting place from all of the teams who are going to travel together. There are some that won’t arrive before we leave on the 16th and there are a couple of teams that are meeting us farther along the route at the Hotel Barbas on the Mauritanian border. But for those who do arrive at the Meson, it’s Silly Shirt Night.
The dining room doesn’t open until 2000 but the bar is open earlier and the beer and wine is flowing. And everyone is in their own silly shirts. This year, floral Hawaiian shirts seem to be the most common choice but others are more in line with the silly concept. Mine is a shirt with “SHIT SHOW SUPERVISOR” emblazoned on the front. A few others shouldn’t be publicly described so as to protect the reputations of the wearers. But all in all, a success.
While we are eating, Angela and Paul arrive and it’s off to the bar to say hello. It’s great to see them. They are a fabulous, fun couple that we spent a lot of time with in Banjul last year. I a lot of beer and then a couple of scotches. And my gas gauge drops pretty close to zero and I retreat to the room before I continue and wake tomorrow having regrets for not leaving sooner.
Tomorrow, Clemo’s Freelander is fixed and we get to see Gibraltar.
Obi-wan