There is no prejudice between our car add-ons so we woke up early, tore the roof box apart and gave it a decent burial. On the road we adapted to life without our roof-box. It was quite an easy transition, we drove without one in the exact same manner. The Mongoliers didn't stand a chance if we were to have another event in our series of drag-races, our spoiler can now give maximum down force to the rear of the car now that the roof box isn't interrupting air flow. The road continued as a lumpy dirt track, which was causing our suspension to rattle even more then yesterday. When Red Lion got beached in a deep sandy patch I took the opportunity to check the suspension rattle and I noticed what was wrong immediately. A shock absorber tends to work by compressing a fluid in between a base part and a piston thing, yes these are definitely the technical terms. The base is connected near the wheel, and the piston is connected to the main body. In our case the base was connected to the wheel, but the rest was free to do as it pleased - The reason our suspension rattled was because it was not actually connected to the car. The mechanics had connected the base and then put a bolt on the top of the metal rod protruding into our boot - this would be the poor service I told you about yesterday. Chris and Sharkey came over after everyone managed to free Red Lion and laughed at the useless attempt at fixing our problem. Back when we were in Scotland and trying to prepare the car we bought a roof rack from gumtree. The roof rack didn't fit our stupidly sized roof bars so I had bought some bolts and plates to try and hold the rack in place. My neighbour kindly stepped in and gave us his roof box instead, if you're reading this Bruce I'm very sorry but your roof box is buried in the Mongolian desert, which meant the plates were useless. It's a good thing I brought them along for the ride because the holes were a perfect size, and they were ideal for stopping the free movement of the piston. We wedged in three plates and tightened on a bolt to hold them in place. As we got moving again along the bumpy dirt road the bodge job on our suspension was functioning perfectly - We are now mid-way through Russia and I can tell you that it is still doing the job.

 

In fact it was functioning so perfectly that we lost two cars from our rear-view mirror; The Morons and The Mongoliers were no where to be seen. We stopped in the desert with Red Lion as Khan kept going, either because they didn't see us or Sharkey didn't want to fix another car. Eventually James began running back through the desert to find the lost pair, while all the non-energetic people sat by the roadside and twiddled our thumbs. The Aussies turned round after feeling bad about leaving us to die if a car was broken and joined the waiting party. James came sprinting over the hill and arrived out of breath with panic, that or he had just been running in the desert. Apparently The Moron's Micra had suddenly lost all power and The Mongoliers had stepped in to save the day by towing them to meet us - It had been their sick dream to be able to tow our broken cars for a long time, but we would all rather die in the desert than accept their pitty tow.

 

When the Micra rolled to a stop Chris, now the master mechanic, declared the issue to be due to a faulty fuel pump. When Sharkey, the real master mechanic, investigated he proved Chris' guess spot on. While the Micra's internal organs were torn out, the rest of us made use of our time in the wilderness. Adam called his girlfriend in Australia, Rob and James played a spot of golf, Haunger and I typed blogs until I was distracted by Jamie and Matt's impromptu slingshot - which failed miserably. The problem with The Moron's pump was a tad more severe than ours had been. Instead of a large and obvious crack in the case, The Moron's pump didn't pump at all. This meant The Mongoliers twisted fantasy would be coming true, they were going o have to tow the dead Micra off-road for the next 200km to the closet city. We slowly lead the tow vehicle through the minefield of car eating potholes. Luckily the dead Micra had a sump guard made from pure adimantium because the ride did not look confortable, they were pulled mercilessly over every obstacle with sump smashing lurches. The Yaris had been too reliable apart from its small petrol leak, but finally it was showing stress. We passed a suspension spring lying in the middle of the road, then a hundred meters we found the Yaris lying at the side of the road. The rear suspension spring had snapped and fallen off. Sharkey was using a collection of ours and The Lions tools so we were stuck at the roadside while he debated which spare was most suitable, a Nissan Micra spring or a Peugeot 107 spring, neither were ideal but he opted for The Lions. To show our disgust at this choice we poured petrol on the road and set fire to it. Petrol burns surprisingly well, so we got more artistic and moved onto patterns and smiley faces. The Mongoliers and Morons weren't being helpful so we sent them off into the desert since it would be easy to catch them on these roads. Once the Micra's spare spring was firmly in place, with the addition of 100 cable ties, we set off to find them.

 

We didn't find them for a long time, we reached the next large town without a trace of tow. I was leading the convoy of functioning cars as we approached the town, unfortunately I had no idea where we were or where we were heading. I could see a track heading over a hill and it was leaving the town in the same direction we were currently heading, so I guided us across town to reach it. On the other side of the hill the road was covered with large potholes, deep mud patches, and dry river crossings. We all discussed whether this road was the main "highway" we had been following, and concluded that it headed he correct direction so it mus be. The sky grew darker as we pressed on and I worried it might begin to rain, which would make the road impassable for our small cars but there was no sign of the other two. We passed a snapped tow rope in the middle of a pothole and debated what it meant, could it be a clue that we were on the right path or could it be just a random tow rope. After an hour I looked out of the window and saw a trial of dust coming from a track a kilometer across the desert to my right. As we got closer the car came into view, the car had two bodies and 8 wheels. It was clearly the tow crew and the road was improving, I got excited and rushed across the desert to meet them. When the two tracks converged we arrived at the same time, and we were greeted by The Mongoliers throwing potatoes at us.

 

We had timed the breakdowns perfectly, the sun was setting just as we reached the city. As is tradition, Huanger led us into the city to find a hotel with a few U-turns in-between. We checked in and walked back to the main road to find a place for dinner. We walked up and down the street and the only restaurant we found that was open looked like we might be murdered if we ventured inside, the appeal was not helped by the Mongolian fight club happening outside. Eventually we found a Korean resteraunt which was open, even if it did look to be half finished. The menu was full of things which looked like they might be very edible, unfortunately the waitress didn't think we could handle such a large selection of choices so limited the menu to two dishes - chicken soup or chicken wings. It has becoming infuriatingly common to go somewhere, ask for something and be told you can only have a certain item from the menu. To be fair the spicy chicken soup was really good, so I will let the waitress live for now.