Tuesday, 9 September 2008

Tying up loose ends

After spending five days in Prague, I am pretty confident we were the last team to leave Praha and the Czech republic. We did a bit of sight seeing. Had a go on a go-kart, saw some old bones and looked at an old castle.
Friday 5th September 2008, the day before leaving prague the alternator on the car died. Lucky for us Lukas and Petr were very helpful and managed to find us a new replacement. Bad news was it wasn't in stock, and we would have to pay extra for overnight delivery. We were cutting it fine. Met up with Petr at 8 am on Saturday. He took us to pick up the alterator, then we drove to where the car was parked. It took about an hour to fit the new alternator. Start up the engine. The battery warning light went out. We were good to go. Thanked Petr, then drove the car to the Corinthia towers hotel for Ginge to check out.
Then we drove out of Praha for lunch before dropping Ginge off at the airport.
Three Kippers and I headed towards Karlovy Vary, then crossed the German border. Heading towards Mitterteich. The Sat nav had a lot of problem locating the autobahn from here. But we read the road signs and navigated through. We stopped off in Frankfurt am Main for the night. It was about 800 km from the German - Czech border.
The next day. Three Kippers drove all 600 Km from Frankfurt to Calais.
Being a Sunday, all the shops were shut, so no shopping for us! We had a late lunch at the Buffalo Grill near Auchans before going to the ferry port to change our return ticket. It cost us 28 Euro to change the ferry return date from Monday to Sunday. We were in Dover by 6:40pm. The rest is very uneventful. Though we did get a lot of stares from other cars on the road and the customs guy in the UK couldn't stop laughing and waived us through when he saw our car and had read the team name.

Thua

The Arival day in Praha!!!

Righty ho then, since I am still fairly compus mentus (Loads'a caffeine) I thought I'd get on here and start posting. Please excuse my typing if goes off a bit, I’m on a serious espresso high and have yet to find my bed! And yes, I know it’s now 18:30 the following day, damn those all night bars!!

The Mary Hinge Shavers Society makes it to Prague after 100 or so km of winding country lanes (Got some great videos of that) with the shat-nav attempting to guide us up drive ways, down dead ends and short cuts up pathways and through farmers fields!. We made it to the city and joined on the major roads. (The shat-nav works great in the big cities never letting us down when it came to precise hotel locations :shock: )


We very quickly found our hostel and parked up in the police parking over the road (not really the best idea especially with our car!) to unload the baggage and prepare for the Parade (Ahhem!) in the square. After the car had attracted some attention from the gavers I decided to circle the block and find parking (lol, parking - as if!). While going around I saw the fellas in the Mat Black Carlton estate and to my surprise they offered me their car (time to trade up :wink: ) So I took them back to the hostel and "created" some parking on the pavement to chat to the others about taking 2 cars back to the UK. Done deal!




All we needed to do now was park 2 cars!

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Myself and the "long haired hippy" headed out with a vague location to find free parking, sadly this did not go very well and while I was following him his SPAK-NAV was losing the plot! The Carlton started to stutter and conked out! Sadly my team mate didn't notice and kept going joining on to a major road. His SPACKED-Nav (Joanna Lumley "darling") took him back in to town with out me, unable to turn off he found a familia(r) place, yes the hostel. I was kind of stranded with a car that would now not run anymore, why me!!!!! So I sat there waiting for my team mate to return, not knowing that he was now struggling to find exactly where he lost me!

After some time of waiting expecting to see the Czechalier return and feeling very lost in a new country I’ve never been to before 200 krona in my pocket (~£6) and just a mobile phone! After a couple of attempts to call my team mate who really realy badly needs to buy a new handset and get out of the dark ages; going to voice mail and getting cut off I started to panic a little (big city, strange lingo = scary time). I sent a text "Come back you git!" I was totally lost and looking at a bridge in the distance not knowing this one didn’t span water!!! Arggggghh!! No hope working that one out then, lol! I walked around and found some parking for the flamin Carlton down the hill. Senza la steoringa asista par favori!!!

By now I was feeling fairly cheesed off and was ignoring the beeping phone in favour of getting to the square, with some help from several English speakers and with me only knowing 2 Czech words (Dekuju ti = thank you and Prosim = please!). I made it to the square at 7~ish a tad late and then found the lads in the Graffiti Golf; jumped in with them and all was well.


Justin presenting the winners


Everyone bundling into the bar


The winning team

All problems aside, clashing personalities left at the door etc. I have to say that the long haired hippy really is a nice chap and hope we (now that we have 2 cars) will be signing up for the home to Rome next year ;) Mary Hinge no more but just you wait and see......

So please join me in thanking my team mates who did a blinding job of driving in difficult and sometimes heated moments. A big thank you for helping to make this trip happen!

I know I was off on one last night a said some things that shouldn’t have been said (please excuse my drunken stuper and lack of knowledge about the afore mentioned [sounds a bit legal! Lmfao] technological disaster in Prague that blighted my team mate. So please be super everyone; yes _you_ too! And let things be as they be. Both my team mates including myself did a great job of (sip)sing each other off on more than one occasion (this is just what happens when you get cooped up with people in sometimes tricky situations) I am so glad that even after all the (lob)locks that went on we are all still good friends and hope you all welcome us all back for another run in convoy!!

TTFN

Spangles. AKA - Ginge, familia bloke and lucky legs!

PS. Home to Rome or CRX2009 next year needs to be via my sister’s place in Udine (oo-din-eh), I’m sure I can persuade her to cook the entire convoy a slap up Italian dish with a few beers round the pool! Are you reading this Liz Friz?

Alan

Day Four. Salzburg - Praha

We made the 6 o'clock news http://www.streetsafari.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=172&Itemid=9

Alan

Challenge for today: Spot the Trabant.
It was quite bland driving on the Austrian motorway. We were one of the first few cars to drive out, so we cruised on the motorway waiting for other Czech Wreck cars to go by so that we can film them. It will be our last chance to do so.

When we got the few minutes of footage of other wreckers passing us. We decided to test the czechalier's top speed.

We did well and made it to the Czech border around lunch time. There was no one at border control so we drove straight pass. We did stop off to ask a man in a cigarette kiosk if he sold a tax pass for the motorway, but he didn't seem too interested. We continued to a petrol station, stopped to ask the cashier about a motorway pass. She didn't speak English and none of us spoke Czech. We decided to push on. We found a nice little truck stop in the Czech republic and decided to stop for lunch. The food was very cheap and quite good.
After lunch we decided that it was about time we started the challenge. We drove past a DavoCar lot, but didn't see a Trabant. We even stopped off at a car dealer and asked them, but they didn't have any.

The sat nav must have been set to avoid motorways because we were driving around on small village roads, thinking we're lost again. Then almost instantly we saw the skyline of a city. Yes we made it to the outskirts of Praha. And not one Trabant in sight.

[The annoying thing was : the days after the the challenge we kept seeing loads of Trabants]

Followed the sat nav to the hostel. Then.... well read the next post!

Thua

Tuesday, 2 September 2008

Day Three. Bormio - Salzburg

It's the day we've all been waiting for...it's Superman Day. Thats right we all had to dress up as superman for the day, even the women. But that's not all, there will also be a water pistol fight at the top of Stelvio pass.
I tell a lie, we started using the water pistol as soon as we set off from the start point. Soaked the team ahead of us as they were easy targets, stradling the sun roof portal. This didn't last long as they sped off and left us for dust.
On Stelvio pass. Ginge got soaked to the bone. Well he was trying to take everyone on, and some of them were using super sized cups.
The hairy one was filming the event with his camcorder, though some footage he shot are a bit questionable: Why are you recording the crotch and legs of the blokes?
We had a scream (mainly at one another) coming down stelvio pass. Then pulled up with where there was a few teams to have lunch.
After lunch the Mazda boys left us their rubbish in our open sunroof. We owe you one lads!
When the rubbish was cleared, everyone had left. We had to stop a cyclist to ask him for directions. We gave up the task for the day, identify and photograph of the missing picture clues. The Sat nav went ga ga at Andermatt. It kept telling us to turn left onto people's driveways. When we ignore it's direction, it directed us to the train stop and told us to board teh ferry. OK. Low tech time...read the road signs.

Thua

Monday, 1 September 2008

Day Two. Interlaken - Bormio

Interlaken to Bormio.
Yesterday was just about motorway driving. Today we get a taste of the hills. Our task for the day is to spot as many American cars or vans as possible.
We went on three passes with narrow lanes and tight twists. The road is also very hilly. A couple of teams cooked their brakes by constantly applying the stop pedal.
There is nothing like the smell of burning brakes. We took the Bernadina pass and went onto Bormio, after ony spotting 3 American made/ branded vehicles.
We crossed over into Italy. The border controls took no notice of us.
The sat nav managed to find the hotel without any problem. The landlady was not impressed with our car when we pulled up in front of the hotel. The look on her face could turn milk into sour cream.

[Edit: Thua, tell everyone how you crashed the car after driving just 2 feet next morning! lol (Ginge)]
It was early in the morning I was not fully awake. Hadn't noticed, that the car had been moved forward from its spot. When I turned the car, I had the intention of clipping the signage, but I ran out of road and hit the signage and the log barrier full on. My-bad.

Thua

Day One. Calais - Interlarken

We got to the gathering point quite early and thought is this the right place. No one was there. Then we saw some vehicles which were similarly decorated as ours and decided to follow them. The sight of so many personalised cars was a sight to behold.
After last minute decorations were added to the cars. The clackson sounded announcing the start of the rally, erm I mean trip.
Challenge for today, Take photo´s of foreign national license plates en-route to Interlaken.
We saw lots of fellow wreckers driving up real close to the big lorries to take a picture and then speeding off. After a while the lorry drivers got annoyed as five or six cars would get close behind them then pull away. The lorries would swerve out to scare the wreckers. We played this game too, but our camera took so long to focus that more often than not we got blurred pictures or pictures of our vehicle´s interior. We gave up the challenge, but still managed to get 17 different nationality plates.

Arrived at Interlaken. The sat nav got us lost again, when we told it to take us to our hotel. There were 3 haupstrasse´s in Interlaken. And it took us to the wrong one. We had to stop and ask a local gentleman who took ages to direct us. Eventually we found our hotel, but it was 2 km from the meeting place.
The trek to Hooters wasn't very eventful, though the night turned out to be more then a certain MHSS crew can handle. "Rock-a-bye-baby, on the tree top..."
Met a few more teams and swapped stories. At the end of the evening, we had a long walk back to the hotel.

Thua

Day Zero. WGC - Calais

Hey everyone. Finally found a place to get on the net!
After spending a few hours on the M25, M11, A13 and M20 due to road closures, We got to Dover in the nick of time for our ferry. We were stopped at customs. They took one look in our packed boot, gave up and waived us into the queue.
We met the Shark team on the ferry and the Rover 214 team. The shark team in their Mondeo was putting some finishes to their fins after having lost one under the wheels of a transit van coming down to Dover.

Sat nav lost the plot in Dover and kept telling us to head away from the ferry terminals. So we resorted to low tech and read the sign posts.

After just over an hour on the ferry, we were risking life and limb on the French roads. The sat nav redeemed itself in it's effort to guide us to the hotel.
but our adventure is not yet over for the day.
We drove to the meet point to register for the event. Got excited when we saw lots of cars in the parking lot of Auchans that we did not realise we had forgtten to take all the correct paper works required. Luckily it was back in the hotel. So off we went in the car again. Grabbed the papers and drove to Auchan. By the time we registered, the shops in Auchans had shut and locked tighter then Chen's wallet.
So we consigned ourselves to the pub for sustanance (of the solid and liquid variety). We met a few teams, but it was getting late and so we called it a night.

Thua

Wednesday, 27 August 2008

Funky new paint







Alan

Last Minute Prep

Back in the middle of August, some yobs tried stealing the chrome sports exhaust from our Czechalier. They failed to do so, then some one else scratched the bonnet of the car. SamSpangle you need to move Mate!
A few days later we noticed an odd noise coming from the exhaust. When the thieves tried to yank the chrome sports exhaust they must have loosen the rust on the backbox.
Now there is gaping hole. We patched it up with a tin can and the bodgers favourite, gun gum. But that didn't work and the hole got bigger.

We managed to get a second hand exhaust last Friday. Two days before setting off, we had to fit our new exhaust... here are some Pics






The old exhaust Hacked out!











More Gun Gum!













After a busy day at the office Clark Kent puts in the hours to fix our car!

Sunday, 10 August 2008

Check it out. Blacked out windows

Proving that underbody sealant has more than one use!




Time for some ham

Today was all about making the car more presentable!

I’ll let the pictures do the talking :)



Masking the tyre......



Starting with yellow....



The wheel trims got it too.....



Oh yes, oh yes! omg, lol



Adding the all important stickers.....



A mighty fine job, but thinking silver was a bad choice!



Looks better in the back window....



Bob Marley would be proud.



Aint she a beut.



Ready for the rally stage!


Moody angle showing off the battle scars.


I am going to be so embarrassed to drive this to work now!

Friday, 8 August 2008

Engineering some life into the old beast!

After completing the work mentioned below to pass the MOT we now needed to try and make the car more reliable. The engine seemed fine but did have a tendency to get a tad hot. The engine sound can only be described as, “bag of old nails” but all this just adds to the cars charm.

We drained and replaced the engine oil, fitted a new oil filter and filled up with some fresh oil but sadly those nails kept-a jangling! I got hold of a cheap CD player to fill the hole in the dash and found that all 4 speakers still worked. It needs a nice big sub though ;)
Next we tackled the cooling system and managed to find all 3 water pipes brand new for £23.50, the stat was more of a pain at over £15 because it came complete with the housing it was pressed into. First we disconnected the lower pipes and drained the water then we flushed out the entire system using a hose pipe. After fitting the new water pipes and stat we refilled the system and bled out all the air. Hopefully now we will not suffer an embarrassing moment realising that our car is only good for one thing. Boiling water!

We also considered some of the moving rubber parts required to make the car reliable and inspected both the cam belt and alternator/power steering belt. After some careful consideration we decided the cam belt would be fine, but since we purchased one we’ll bring it along for all the good it might do if the engine grenades. The alternator/power steering belt looked real nasty, kinda like it’s going to snap but it was quite expensive at I think £20, so we decided to see if it will snap on the trip. If it doesn’t snap we’ll return it at the end of the trip and get some cash back, lol!

Lastly we've fitted a heavy duty battery and a 240 volt inverter to the car, so we got ourselves a power station with our own mains electricity supply!

Tomorrow I intend to add some colour to the car and put the stickers on. The wheels are getting it! I am going to buy 4 colours, one for each wheel. Should be fun, pictures to follow.........

Wednesday, 6 August 2008

Cunning Stunts Presents; The Mary Hinge Shavers Society


So I changed the title; a little more catchy now? :)
Personally I was thinking the page could do with some photos so I’ll add some from the initial build.

The car of choice was a nice diesel with air-con, good fuel millage and a nice chugger for the long haul. Our budget to buy the car was just £100, yes just 100 English pounds! Thinking this would be easy we set about the internet and various other means to very quickly find that while you can buy a car for under £100 it would cost £500-1000 to make it road worthy again! All the time I had in the back of my mind the fact that I had brought a car for just £50 that was road worthy and came complete with an MOT.... We continued to look but everything we looked at either came with some known issues or we were simply outbid every time. Anyways, my car didn’t have a diesel engine and didn’t have air-con, despite this we were not perturbed. So without further ado let me introduce you to my old car. Here we have a stunning example of a car with 170000 miles on the clock, 1.8l petrol, Vauxhal Cavalier on an ‘L’ plate. Even though the car did come with an MOT it would run out before the event and it was clear we had some serious issues with the brakes, lol.


In any case this car was my daily driver and continues to be so. We took the ol’ girl down for the MOT after having done no work what-so-ever and knowing there was a good chance she would fail, but we could at the very least find out if the Cav would be a good idea...... You guessed it; MOT FAILED.

001 - Nearside front position lamp(s) not in good working order [1.1.4a]
002 - Offside outer front constant velocity joint gaiter split [2.5.C.1a]
003 - Offside rear brake recording little or no effort [3.7.A.4a]
004 - Offside rear parking brake recording little or no effort [3.7.A.7a]
005 - Parking brake efficiency below requirements [3.7.A.9/10]

Now we set about the repair...
We needed to replace the CV gaiter “easy” I said! (fool) CV gaiter about £4, so cheap too. At the first attempt we could not get the hub nut off because the thread was far too long for my puny sockets. Long reach socket £8.50ish. At the second attempt we got the little fella apart, (starting to sound like Steve Erwin now!) but the damn CV joint was not going to give up without a fight. After some time with all three of us taking turns with the hammer....................After much more time had passed the onset of darkness made us give up, however we had a new plan! Universal CV joint glue on gaiter, about £15 and comes complete with knife, glue, gloves and instructions. As you can see from the photo below it went quite well with three pairs of hands!





We also went on to replace the old front brake discs and pads, even though it passed the MOT on these worn out rusty old things. Was only £45ish for the parts and took 30 minutes per side.
Next up the rear brake, we replaced the leaking cylinder and cleaned up the shoes. Cylinder was less than £10 I think. Replaced bulb (50p) and job done!
Time for MOT number two....... PASSED with zero advisories :)

Check out the sports exhaust! lol

Wheels from a police car ;)

3 ton trolley jack a must :p

Hehe sorry, couldn't resist!
....................................................

Tuesday, 5 August 2008

The mundane preparations

Now that the car is ready and the route has been announced. Its time for the tedious and costly part, booking ferry and accomodations for each check point.

Here is the route:

Day 0 : (28th August), Dover to Calais (France). Check in.
Day 1: (29th August), Interlaken (Switzerland).
Day 2: (30th August), Bormio (Italy).
Day 3: (31st August), Salzburg (Austria).
Day 4: (1st September), Prague (Czech Republic). Check out.

We have booked the ferry. The hostels for the start and end leg has been booked. The other 3 stop off points needs hotel booking, but we are confident that it will be done by the time we set off. Otherwise a tent is our contingency plan - what do you mean, we haven't got a tent!

We also need to sort out travel and car insurance for the trip. The driving rules for each of the countries have been downloaded from the AA website. Need to make sure we are clear on it.
Also need to prepare a list of do's and don'ts for each country.

Thursday, 24 July 2008

The preparation

A few months ago we submitted our entry form and fee for the Czech Wrecks Rally. We wanted our team name to be called Cunning Stunts, but unfortunately we were pipped at the registration post by another team. So we called ourselves the Mary Hinges Shaver Society.

The pre-registration is in August 28th. You can check out the course here...
The actual rally lasts about 5 days.

Finding a wreck which satisfies the entry requirements turned our to be more difficult than originally anticipated. Luckily one of our team member does have a wreck and we managed to persuade him to donated the car to a worthy cause.

Since then we have changed the front brakes (disc and pads), front steering gator, rear brake pump, cooling pipes and passed the MOT test. We also changed the battery, not that there was anything wrong with the old one. We wanted a higher power battery so that we can drive a voltage inverter in the car. This will be used to recharge cameras, phones, laptop, vacuum cleaner and cooker. I was only kidding about the last two items. No we'll be ordering take-outs on the trip.