Chris may have started the process of removing the sump guard but after a hearty noodle breakfast I finished it off. The plate was only connected to the car with one of the corner bolts, this meant the guard could rub against the wall of the front wheels. As much as I would have loved to keep the horrible scraping sound, I decided I'd rather not burst a tyre while driving. I reached under the car and tore the sump guard off the car with my bare hands, my bare hands and my tool set. We are getting quite used to driving without a sump gaurd so I wasn't too worried as we put it in the boot to protect our luggage, I swear it has spent more time in the car than it has under it. I offered to drive the morning shift and as we got back onto the main road I was glad I did. The track turned into the stuff Mongol Rally dreams are made of; instead of a single stone covered road there was a huge number of smooth gravel and sand tracks weaving their way through the Mongolian steppe. We chose tracks at random, safe in the knowledge they were all part of the same "highway" and would eventually meet again. It was a fantastic morning of driving as we sped our way through the desert. I looked out the right window and could see Khan Touch This flying down a track, to the left I could see The Motoring Morons barrelling along a different track, and in the wing mirror there was The League of Extraordinary Mongoliers ploughing their way through the desert - three cars that should never have made it this far and a 4x4, all kicking up a cloud of dust as they went. Occasionally a sand patch would turn up on a corner and you could feel the rear of the car begin to slide. At one point I looked in the rear view mirror and saw the Terrios join our track in a four wheel slide over a small sand dune, not wishing to share my path I veered off to chase Khan along their track. We had the time of our lives until the dream ended and the s&^te road returned with a vengeance. As we crawled over the potholes and rocks we were forced to do something we hadn't done in a long time, I chickened out of the path we were on. No matter how bad the road had gotten before we had always been able to find a line that would mean we could continue, but not this time. This time the potholes would have swallowed our car whole. We reversed with our hypothetical tails between our legs and watched as The Mongoliers smugly continued with no trouble. We caught up with Khan who were arsing around quite literally, as they mooned us out the window as we drove by.

 

The potholes were replaced with a road surface but it wasn't any better surface. The wash-boarding rattled the car and our bones apart. We were feeling at peace with the convoy after our morning drive and offered the other teams a lolly pop as they drove by. Unfortunately we needed to slow down to let them pass us which made the wash-boarding much more noticeable. As we sped back up to join them the car started making a loud banging noise from

the rear wheel. Chris leant out the window but couldn't see anything wrong, when we stopped to investigate he couldn't see any flat tyres. Then we started to smell burning, burning is rarely good so we stopped again for a more thorough investigation. I looked under the car and noticed the smoking fluid covering the rear axle. One of the rear shock absorbers had cracked and leaked all of its hydraulic fluid, while under the car I also noticed the exhaust pipe had snapped at the joint to the muffler. Neither of these are vital for the functioning of the car so we limped onwards hoping to catch the others. The car sounded amazing without a muffler, but the lack of suspension for one wheel meant at every bump the "suspension" would bottom out with a loud bang and a buck like a horse that has had a GoPro rammed in its face. When we caught the others, who had stopped at the side of the road, they had a laugh at our expense then we continued to Altai where our problems could be fixed.

 

In the city we spotted a sign for the Mongol Rally Auto Service and began to follow it. A warning had been put on the Facebook group by one of the event organisers which claimed they only offered a terrible and overpriced service, but there were a large number of comments saying exactly the opposite - I can tell you with hindsight that we definitely should have believed the organiser, but I'll leave the details until tomorrow. At the mechanics yard we found a large number of Mongol Rally teams and their broken cars, the Mongolian landscape was clearly winning this fight. We met two of the teams we had entered Iran with and compared damage. They had definitely faired worse, Matt from Team Scrumptious and Tim from Team Unlikely had both lost their team members who had to rush to Ulaanbaatar to catch flights home. The remaining two guys had been at the garage for a few days while Team Scrumptious' Punto had its entire engine replaced. Clearly the engine transplant had been rejected as they were now waiting for a truck to carry them to UB. There was also a familiar pair of faces waiting for us. Clearly The Lions Cubs shouldn't be left without adult supervision, if their car had slight issues yesterday it was well and truly f#*ked today. Driving without a clutch had led to a lot of other issues: their sump gaurd was torn off, their gear box had a massive crack in it and had lost all fluid, and half their wheels were severely damaged. I explained what was broken to one of the mechanics and he nodded like they could easily fix it. As it was only a "small problem" they let me skip the queue. I watched as the younger mechanic jacked up the wrong side of the car and removed the wrong wheel, obviously I had told him when he started that it was the other side but he just ignored me like I was an idiot so I let him slowly realise himself. Once he had reattached our wheel with confidence like he had purposely removed the wrong side he directed me over the inspection pit. Inside the workshop they removed the correct wheel and shock-absorber and left to get a replacement from a local parts store. The others went to find lunch in the city and I stayed with the car to keep an eye on everything. While they were shopping I spoke to another team who were waiting to be fixed. At some point their fuel tank had ruptured and they were now running off a jerry can in the passengers foot-well. I sat inside using the time to catch up on these blogs when the family's teenage son came over, apparently he was going to university in Ulaanbaatar to study Civil Engineering and Architecture. They came back with a new shock absorber and replaced the base connection with our original as theirs didn't quite fit in the bracket. While it was being reattached I followed the older mechanic under the car to discuss our exhaust issue. He said they couldn't fix the snapped exhaust but he could make a clean cut and make a connection to keep it from dragging on the floor. In hindsight this was clearly bollocks, they had been welding on our shock absorber and had spare pipes lying around their workshop. Since I liked how epic the car sounded, I agreed and once the job was "finished" I settled the bill and went to meet the others at the restaurant. I had made a mistake by staying with the car. The scraps left behind from their meal were delicious. I would have happily let the mechanics steal all our things if I could have had a full dish. After lunch we returned to the workshop to find the Lion Cubs problems finally being investigated by the mechanic. They were led to the inspection pit while we sat outside to wait for them. An hour and a half later we were growing impatient and debating leaving them behind. Miles came out of the workshop like a worried father and gave us an update on the surgery, the outlook looked promising and they were still mid-fix. We agreed to give them another half an hour until we were going to leave to find a place to camp outside of the city where they could meet us. The half hour passed by and they were still inside the workshop, so we packed up and left without them - apart from The Morons who decided to keep the Lions company.

 

There seems to be a common theme with the road conditions in Mongolia. Around major towns and cities there are tar-maced roads, with the covered distance varying proportionally with the size of the town. The new suspension was rattling as we made our way our of town on the smooth roads. I assumed it was rattling because it wasn't a perfect fit, it seemed to be working normally so we ignored it. Haunger was driving the Khan-mobile, which is a rare occurrence, as we watched him swerve to avoid a small leaf on the road. This needless swerve removed all trust we had in following his movements on the open road. Unfortunately his next swerve was a big one, not the movement he made but the obstacle he was avoiding. The smooth tarmac ended without warning and dropped down a steep 6 foot slope. The Yaris' brake lights suddenly slammed on and the car veered to the left and dropped out of sight. Chris slammed on the brakes but didn't swerve, and its a good thing he didn't. We were still going at a fair speed as the three cars flew off the end of the highway. If Chris had of followed the Aussies we would have been joining them inside their car via their roof. Somehow The Mongoliers swerved at the last minute and stopped beside us in the desert. We stopped briefly to empty the faeces from our trousers and laugh off the near-death experience. The landing positions were ideal for a rematch with The Mongoliers, not that we instigated it... much. Clearly they thought as drivers had changed the drag-race might end differently. The two separate cars had landed on two separate tracks through the desert. As the engines revved, ours sounded incredible after its exhaust surgery, and the count down was shouted Chris relived his training in London a month ago. The race followed the exact same outcome as their previous attempt. We left them behind as we sped off the line but they slowly clawed back space as we started to reach higher speeds. The two tracks converged after about 400m but Chris had leant from my mistake and didn't lift off the acceleration until we beat them to the single track. We celebrated our victory for a short moment until we noticed the large dip in the road. Chris was slowing down as we came over the edge but it wasn't slow enough. The car was still decelerating as we climbed out of the dip, but the roof box wasn't. On level ground we watched as the sun was slowly blocked out by a large object. The roof-box slowly slid off to the right of the car and fell onto the floor. We pulled over to the side of the desert to laugh at our freshly detached roof box. We walked back to our roof box and found all three Mongoliers laughing. Rob told us he had just been saying 'watch, they've got their car fixed so I bet they're going to do something stupid'. The Aussies eventually arrived as they had been too scared/responsible to join the race and couldn't believe their eyes. The response from all of us was the same from everyone, first there was a lot of laughter, then there was the idea to use it as a sledge behind a car. I was relieved the roof box hadn't smashed our windscreen as it came off, that was what I had been worried about when we first noticed the roof bars moving after the last road in Turkmenistan. The roof bars were still attached to the box, so before we committed to the sledge idea I wanted to try reattaching it. Unfortunately the roof bars were now completely ruined and couldn't be tighten around the car, fortunately that meant the sledge plan wad approved.

 

While I unpacked the car and tried to remove the remaining back-seat everyone else began fashioning the sledge out of rope, bungee cords, and tow ropes. The rear-seat was being stubborn and wouldn't budge, even after breaking Sharkey's socket set I was no closer to having slightly more boot space in the car. Luckily Sharkey didn't seem too upset about the tools, mainly because he was distracted by the finished sledge. The roof-box was placed upside down with bungee cords to give the rider something hold onto as the Terrios towed it along the sandy track. We each took turns riding the sledge in a loop along the road and back. One person rode the sledge while two people hung onto the outside of the Terrios, out the passenger door and sitting on the spare wheel. The person on the door directed the driver to slow down or speed up, depending on the riders preference, and the person perched on the rear wheel was there to record this momentous occasion with a GoPro. Since we're all very safety conscious Jamie had suitable protective gear as he perched atop the wheel, and was wearing a pot on his head - remember kids, safety always comes first. I took full advantage of my turn and wore my traditional Kyrgyz desert sledge hat while drinking a beer as the sunset over the desert. Once my fun was finished we set about repacking the car, because we had lost a large amount of storage space we needed to donate some equipment to the desert. Most notably was our second spare wheel which I left by the roadside incase an enterprising Mongolian wanted it. Unfortunately the sump guard no longer had a place in our hearts or boot so I began digging a grave in a nice desert location, I tried to hold back the tears as I laid it to rest in its shallow grave but I wasn't successful with the grave or the crying. The sledge riding got out of hand fast, especially as the roof box began to deteriorate, there were multiple riders and there was fire. We had just finished repacking the car and giving up with the sledge as we noticed two cars coming over the horizon. The Lion Boys and the Morons had finished with the garage and were coming to find us, not that we had made it very far. We left before they could catch us in the act. Though the roof box was close to finished we decided someone would ride it until it completely fell apart, and when it did that would be where we camped. It didn't last long and the other two had caught up just in time to witness what we had created. Finally the convoy was back in full strength for the evenings camp, we had a few beers and reminisced about our fallen friends - the sump guard and roof box.