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MadMatts 4wd adventure through Africa: Part-5

Posted by MadMatt - 4wd Tips on February 26, 2018
Posted in: Adventures in Africa, Mad Matt - 4wd tips, Mad Matt 4wd Trips. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment
The Rescue!
Shaun and I bid the rest of the team goodby and headed back out to the beach for the run North. The last fuel stop was on the outskirts of town so this is where we’d fill the tanks and the 200 liter drum of fuel jammed inside the back of the Land Rover. It was during the filling process as the fuel pump numbers rolled past 200 litres that the attendant came out waving, yelling and fuming at us. I looked at him and smiled which is what you do when you have no idea what another person is saying. Shaun seemed to work out that he thought we were about to do a runner or not be able to pay for the fuel. Being Westerners we could have afforded to buy him out but he’d obviously been burnt a few times in the past.
Driving up the beach in the afternoon was actually a rest from the hectic week we had had getting all the parts together. Shaun and I just chilled out and let the Ks roll on by. The sea was rising towards a high tide as we again approached the National Park check point but this time we were prepared and with a left turn we headed of into the Sahara desert once again. For me this has to be some of the most fun in a 4wd. Ducking weaving searching out a trail where it’s non exist. Once we were a few kilometres inland we ran parallel the the beach for another few kilometres. Then we headed back out the the beach to continue our way north having bypassed the check point. As far as I know there is some fella still sitting there waiting for those white suckers to come back and pay him.
With night just about on us we pulled up behind a dune with the sound of the ocean in the distance we crashed for the night. I chose to sleep under the stars on the roof rack. I know where the term “chandelier of stars” comes from.
The next morning it took us till lunch time to find our abandoned team. As the GPS way point got closer the tension for Shaun and I increased with the fear of what we might find. Would they still be there? Would they be dead? When we came around a small dune to see the Land Rover and two people sitting in the shade of it we let out a cheer and hugs all around.
After we had some lunch and shared all the stories about the preceding week we got stuck into the engine rebuilding. Because Peter had prepared a lot of the motor it only took around 2 hours to have the girl running like a Swiss watch. No one was interested in playing in this sandpit any longer so we turned tail to do the drive to Nouakchott. I drove the repaired 4wd so I could keep an eye on how she was running. Early on she was running perfectly but problems were on their way.
We had decided we would just drive all the way to Nouakchott without a camp over. We made our way back around the the check point without incident. It was during this process where I needed full power to get up some of the dunes I started to feel I was down on power. To be honest at this point in time I really didn’t care to much as long as I could keep driving I wasn’t stopping to investigate. As the long night wore on I was slowly loosing power to the point I was selecting lower gears and revving the engine harder to try and make enough power to get the job done.
By the time the lights of Nouakchott were on the horizon I was really having a tough time keeping the old girl running. She was back firing and had so little power, I was in 1st gear at times. I finally managed to crawl of the beach and onto the road into town. I think the motor died as we rolled to a stop out front of the accomodation. The rest of the crew were sitting out front when we pulled up and we all excitedly reconnected.
To round the story out the next morning upon investigation I found that despite our best efforts sand dust had built up on the pushrods and cam shaft lobes so that when I adjusted the valves, the sand gave me incorrect adjustments. This meant that once the sand got filtered out in the oil filter and the motor settled down the valve gear wasn’t opening the valves enough to let the motor run. I readjusted the vales and she ran sweet again.
In part 6 we head to Senegal for more of this crazy African adventure.
I’m MadMatt stay safe on the trails.

MadMatts 4wd adventure through Africa: Part-4

Posted by MadMatt - 4wd Tips on February 23, 2018
Posted in: Adventures in Africa, Mad Matt - 4wd tips, Mad Matt 4wd Trips. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

It’s Broke and I can’t fix it here.

After the adventures of the day, discussion around the camp that night was all about the “what ifs”. What if they didn’t let us go? What if they pulled the trigger and shot one or all of us? Sleeping under the clear desert stars and waking the next morning ready for whatever was next in our adventure. We didn’t have to wait long! The desert in this area was mainly small low lying hills and dunes that were covered in clumps of sunburnt and windswept bush. So for me leading the way it was great fun picking creative driving lines in and out of gullies and troughs and up and over the various rises we could climb. 

 
We traveled along like this for a few hours when I noticed the Yellow Landrover was no longer in my rearview mirror. We didn’t have radio communications of any sort so I waited for them to catch up. There was no sign of them after 10 minutes so we started backtracking the way we had come. As we came up a rise and onto a small flat area there they were with the bonnet up. They tell me how it just stopped and now it won’t start (their a helpful lot). I start to investigate and sure enough the motor won’t start in fact it won’t even turn over although I can get a little bit of back and forth on the crankshaft with a spanner. I’m starting to think we have a real problem and would need to go deeper into the motor. 
 
Seeing as how we would be a while I suggested we get some shade set up and get lunch happening while some of the guys and I start spinning the spanners. We pulled the rocker cover of and all looks normal so off comes the sump to have a looksy looksy in there and oh dear. The insides look like scrambled eggs. I can see a bent connecting rod. Now it’s “off with it’s head” which reveals the complete picture. An exhaust valve head has broken off the valve stem and very quickly smashed a hole in the piston, bent a connecting rod, and bent and cracked the cylinder head. It had even caused the spark plug to break away and fall into the head forming a perfect hole in the top of the piston shaped like a spark plug.
 
Surely it must be time for a cup of tea:) What to do, what to do, what to do. I had a decent range of spares but not a new cylinder head or Con rod. After a fair bit of deliberations as a team it was decided that we would head to the city of Nouakchott the capital of Mauritania for the parts. For security, 2 of the team would stay behind and wait with the 4wd till we returned with the spares required. Once the plan was made everyone repacked and jammed ourselves into the 2 remaining landrovers. Yes Bill and Bob the flower pot men were still with us. I had carefully collected all the parts that needed to be replaced and tried to think through every possibility of what could go wrong and how I could solve it if need be. There was no coming back to grab something I had forgotten. 
 
The thought of leaving friends in the desert without any way of getting out was very scary and we were determined to get back to them one way or another. As we headed off we had a real sense of excited fear in the vehicles. As we continued picking our way across the desert there wasn’t much talking as we tried to get our heads around what had just happened. 
 
We all wanted to go on an adventure when we had left London but this was hectic and felt like it was well and truly on the edge of reality with danger around us all the time. Maybe thats what adventure is, the excitement before hand the fear during it and the fantastic stories afterwards.
 
It was well into the afternoon by now and we were getting close to the beach which we could use as a road all the way down to Nouakchott. Once we got onto the beach Shaun informed us that there was a National Park that we had to pass through and that they would want to see that all who had entered the National Park we’re leaving it as well. Of course we had a problem not only had we left a vehicle in the park but we planned to come back into the park and rescue them. As we’re heading down the beach we’re trying to come up with plans of how we could miss the National Park check point when suddenly we were at it and had to stop. 
 
Shaun once again begins negotiations and tries to explain why we’re one Landrover short and missing 2 bodies. After an hour Shaun decides the African way is best and just pays a bribe so we can get on our way. The conditions being that we MUST stop in there on our way back so they can record that we have got our other vehicle out. (read so they can get more bribe money from us) We were all over that one now so we just plotted the location into the GPS to be used later.
 
A few Kilometers down the beach it was almost dark and the tide was rising chewing away at the beach so we decided to head into the dunes again and make camp for the night. Once again as we sat on the top of a sand dune with a peaceful breeze in our faces watching the moon rise above the Atlantic we discussed the adventures of another day in Africa.
 
The next morning we make our way along the beach arriving in Nouakchott soon after lunch. When travelling a book written by the Lonely planet is a must have and the girls had been reading up on where we should stay in town and had settled on a modest Cafe’ with lodging rooms out back. I was mad keen to get our parts and head back out to get our friends but by the time we had settled into our digs and sorted out a few other details like getting some black market currency everything was closed for the day. 
 
Now I’m not sure how the African system works but most Africans seem to know someone who can get things done for you and all you have to do is ask a few questions of people and most of your requirements can be arranged and this was the case for us. We needed someone who knew where to go to get the parts we needed and as it turned out we were in luck. The Cafe’ owner knew a guy who had a car and for a small fee would take us around town collecting all the parts we would need. Now it seemed to me that the spare parts trade was a generally a mix of specialists where one guy would sell reconditioned pistons another the conrods and another the bearings. This made the job of buying our parts ridiculously time consuming. 
 
Our Chauffeurs car was a 1970ish Peugeo that would have had it’s last service in 1970 and by the time we all piled into it it certainly made many noises of complaint but hey thats Africa. You just go with the flow and it was better than walking. We thought the best place to start would be the Landrover dealer who had most of the parts in stock and even showed us a brand new cylinder head but we didn’t own an oil company so couldn’t afford any of his parts so off we go to the black market side of town.
 
I won’t bore you with the details but it took 5 days of scrounging around the back blocks to find all the parts we needed. The piston from our motor was one size oversize and all I could find was a std size piston. The cylinder head we got our hands on had been serviced that many times without new parts that the valves had almost receded to the bottom of the valve seats. But as best I could tell it was flat and would work. 
 
Around about day 4 in town and Shaun and I start to think through and plan our rescue mission when we realised that we wouldn’t have enough fuel in the tanks to drive out into the desert and return let alone have enough fuel to drive the stranded Landrover in so we needed to find a clean drum to hold at least 100 liters of petrol. We set our chauffeur who had proved his worth onto the task and within the day returned with a drum strapped to the roof of the Peugeo. Upon inspection it was actually clean inside and would work well for us.
I’m MadMatt Stay safe on the trails.

MadMatts 4wd adventure through Africa: Part-2

Posted by MadMatt - 4wd Tips on February 16, 2014
Posted in: Adventures in Africa, Mad Matt - 4wd tips, Mad Matt 4wd Trips. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

When the ferry pulled into the busy port of the city of Tangier, I was greeted with a completely new world. Having grown up in a third world country in the wilds of Papua New Guinea I was used to things being different but this was certainly different to any other place I had visited. The hustle of men in dresses coupled into the new experiences of an old civilization had me keen to hit the road and get out of the city.

Men in dresses

Men in dresses

Fortunately after a little bit of shopping that’s what we did, hit the road. Now I could go on about all the traveling bits but if you’re like me you’re more interested in the exciting stuff so lets get down to the boarder with Mauritania.

Morocco and Mauritania had been at war for quite some years and were now in a cease fire. What this meant for us is, we had to cross a section of no mans land along their boarder. This section of Africa is a gateway from Europe into the heart of Africa and as such there are numerous guys who travel into Europe and buy cars to drive down into Africa to be sold. When we arrive at the boarder post we find all these OLD Peugeot’s lined up waiting to cross the boarder. The way the crossing worked was that on a certain day both boarders would be opened into the no mans land section so that crossings could be made. So everyone had to wait until that day arrived. While we we’re waiting we meet two guys who were definitely left over french hippies on their way to set up a sowing clinic in Africa. They had an old Landrover same as ours and in the end we invited them to travel with us for safety. I can’t remember their names so I’ll call them Bill and Ben the flower pot men.

Young MadMatt with hair in the green pants. Bill and Ben to the right

Young MadMatt with hair in the green pants. Bill and Ben the flower pot men to the right. James Bond Shaun white shirt and Blue head dodad thingy. My future wife beside me. Peter in Black at front.

The day arrives, the boarder gets opened up and all of a sudden it’s like an off-road rally is on as a hundred or so cars, trucks and 4wds take of into this No Mans Land. I must admit we got caught up in the hype and hooked into the crossing at a speed that was probably a bit fast but we survived. This part of the world is mainly desert and soft sand is the norm so knowing how to drive sand was a great skill to have BUT remember the old Peugeot’s? Yeh! Well some of the guys had never driven in sand let alone in a 2wd car so within a couple of Kilometers we started seeing cars broken down, bogged and struggling. Somewhere along the way we learned that the Mauritanian boarder wouldn’t be opened until all the vehicles had made the crossing.

Watching all the vehicles struggling I realised that this was a great opportunity to have a heap of recovery fun. I let the tyres down to a much lower sand driving pressure allowing me to drive wherever I wanted without getting stuck and went back out to help those in trouble. The first guy we came to had his front wheels pointing in opposite directions because his steering had busted, after a bit of thinking I was able to strap the broken bits together so that he could have a bit of steering. Hooking our Snatch strap on we began pulling car after broken car onto some harder sand where they could drive. Then we found a short wheel base late model Nissan Patrol stuck with the driver scratching his head wondering what to do. After a bit of a chat I said mate do you mind if I drive your Rig because I believe I can drive it out of the sand without any trouble. He’s happy as for me to do it. Well to say I was having fun now would be an understatement. This Patrol had a big turbo, big fat muds (tires), factory diff-locks and was made to eat sand for breakfast. It didn’t take much to get the Patrol free, air down and just a little bit of back and forwards packing the sand and out she came. When Old Mate saw I knew what I was doing he said I should use his Patrol to go and help the others, so with one of my mates as my offsider hooking up cars and overseeing the FUN we hooked in again. I was buzzing I was made for this.

All this took a few hours and by the time we got the the Mauritanian boarder there seemed to be a few pissed off people. Pissed because we had taken too long to recover everyone??? They could have come and helped! By the time we got processed across the boarder it was nearly dark so we settled down for the night camping in the desert. A stiff breeze had come up and so we decided we would set up our canvas tarp between the 4wds as a shelter from the wind and blowing sand. Rather cozy with 12 of us in there but the funny thing was that with the wind blowing the canvas all over the place the sand was being forced through the canvas and made the whole inside of the “tent” like a calm dust storm. When I woke up in the morning my eyelids were full of sand and so before I could open my eyes I had to roll over and tip the dust out of my eye sockets. Ahh the adventures of Africa.

Next I’ll tell you about the soldiers that point guns and land mines.

 

I’m MadMatt stay safe on the trails.

MadMatts 4wd adventure through Africa: Part-1

Posted by MadMatt - 4wd Tips on February 9, 2014
Posted in: Adventures in Africa, Mad Matt - 4wd tips, Mad Matt 4wd Trips. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

How about I tell you some more of My African Adventure story? Due to the length I will do this over a few Blogs.

Back in 1994, (I’m not too old am I?) I had the opportunity to go 4wding in Africa with eight others in two Series two Land Rovers. My role was to be the trip mechanic and the 4wd expert. We traveled from London through Spain, Morocco, Mauritania, down to Dakar in Senegal on the north west coast of Africa. At the time Australians were on the nose as far as Spain was concerned so I wasn’t allowed to travel into Spain. You may have heard of a place called the Rock of Gibraltar which is located in the bottom corner of Spain. Well Gibraltar is a British territory and so I was allowed to fly there from London.

Gibraltar has the coolest airport because they actually shut the main road so the plains can land.Gibralter Airport
So the plan was that I would fly into Gibraltar and Shaun one of the others on the trip would come pick me up and smuggle me across the Spanish boarder into Spain. I needed to get into Spain so that I could travel on the car-ferry with the rest of the team from Spain to Morocco. When the big day arrived Shaun met me at the airport and we walked across the airport to the Spanish check point. I was suitably nervous thinking I was about to get locked up in a Spanish prison to never be seen again. I asked Shaun how smuggling me across the border was going to work, thinking of the Australian Customs I had left a weeks earlier. Metal detectors, guards, cameras, dogs and guns. Shaun was one of those guys that you liked as soon as you met him, he carried himself with the confidence of an experienced traveler who knew the tricks of staying alive when you’re living on the road out of a back pack in wild Africa.

Shaun didn’t have much to say other than “you let me do the talking” and stay in the background. “We will walk in the front door and if you come in a little behind me then wander across the room and out the door on the other side of the room.” We were approaching the crossing by this stage and I’m thinking there is no way this is going to work.

Shaun asks me “you ready” and before I can say anything he’s walking in the door and I’m following him thinking I just have to wander across this room that’s all so I walk in the door to see Shaun happily chatting to a bunch of guards, creating a distraction. So I get to my meandering across the 10 or so meters of room waiting for the hand to grab me on the shoulder or the yell indicating I had been spotted but before I knew it I was out the door and into Spain without so much as a stamp in my passport. I felt like a real bad dude now I was officially an illegal immigrant into Spain.

Gibraltar Spanish Border

Once we met up with the rest of the crew at the port where the ferry would leave from we started to plan for our departure across to Morocco the next morning. In the back of my head I’m thinking how am I getting out of Spain? I was trying to think of ways I could hide in one of the 4wds without being found. Later that night I hit Shaun up for the plan and to my dismay he says your going to just walk through the customs and onto the ferry. I’m not James Bond in case you hadn’t noticed. Standing in the slowly moving line watching the customs officer clearing all the passengers ahead of me with thoughts of Spanish prisons running inside my head gave me plenty of time to get scared. I hand the officer my passport which he casually flicks through once then a second time looking for a stamp that doesn’t exist. He motions to a guy with a gun to come over and asks me why there is no stamp in my passport? I play dumb which is easy when the brain is cramped with fear. They chat about which cell I should be put into and then decide I should go and wait in the corner for a bit. Now I’m thinking that the ferry will be leaving without me when Shaun shows up and starts chatting to people with guns. One of them comes over to me and starts asking awkward questions to which I play dumb, again not to hard, then he asks me a really easy question. “If I let you onto the ferry will you ever be coming back to Spain” Yippy I can answer that one, “No flipping way,” to which he says of you go. So Morocco here I come.

Standing on the rail of the ferry with my first adventure behind me feeling like I could take on the world was a fantastic feeling. Little did I know that in the months ahead I would have guns pointed at me, nearly drive over Land mines, rebuild a motor in the Sahara desert and almost get killed by a swarm of angry locals.

Part 2 next week.

I’m MadMatt Stay safe on the trails.