speedy88
Club Retro Rides Member
"Nice Cortina mate"
Posts: 2,277
Club RR Member Number: 118
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Feb 29, 2016 12:41:21 GMT
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Hi. For those who don't know, 3 members of this very forum will be undertaking the Mongol Rally. What's the Mongol Rally? Unlike the other banger rally pootles around Europe (as fun as they look), this one is actually a challenge: link. The rules are simple: One finish line, £1000 for charity and a hilariously unsuitable car. Team members are myself, jrevillug and Colonelk . Here's Colon eating an ice cream: So, purposely difficult roads chosen all the way to Mongolia. How hard can it be? It's only 10,000 miles right? Easy peasy. How far is that anyway? Oh... That far. And with "easy" return route that totals 15,000 miles. And 6 weeks. How hard can it be, right? Ok, well we could have bought a pretty solid Micra 1.0 for less than £500. So did we? Err, no. That'd be boring, right? A blind decision on ebay got us this instead: Looks pretty good actually: Oh wait: Oh no. Yeah... What we've done here is we've spent too much money on a rusty PITA again.
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Feb 29, 2016 12:45:05 GMT
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That's the spirit!
Now it needs banded steels, and cut the springs to have it scraping the floor. Then it'll be PROPERLY unsuitable. But Awesome. :-)
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The Millenium Volcon"Get yourself a Volvo if that's what you really want, you might be dead next year. In the meantime, you could be going sideways in a gigantic land barge."
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tofufi
South West
Posts: 1,452
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Feb 29, 2016 12:46:58 GMT
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I have been following this on FB already. Really looking forward to seeing pics of your adventure
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Pugly
Part of things
Posts: 11
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Feb 29, 2016 12:51:43 GMT
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I did the rally (well, most of it - we rolled in Kyrgyzstan) last year in a 205 and had an awesome time. You will love it, especially the Pamir Highway which it looks like you're taking? If you are, follow the Wakhan corridor - the most beautiful place I've ever seen.
We followed a similar route except we went overland through Iran. Good luck on the Visa trail!
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PhoenixCapri
West Midlands
Posts: 2,682
Club RR Member Number: 91
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Feb 29, 2016 13:05:18 GMT
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Excellent! You're going to be having fun with the welder look forward to seeing how it comes together - those hillmans are at least pretty reliable, did 30,000 miles in 2 years in my old Superminx - just make sure you fit a nice weber 34 ICH or something to it!
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jpr1977
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 656
Club RR Member Number: 18
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Feb 29, 2016 14:18:01 GMT
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Do they still auction the cars of at the end?
A friend's old mini finished it and was auctioned off to become a bar ornament, though I haven't visited said bar yet to check...
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Sinky
Posted a lot
Run Baby Run......Please!
Posts: 1,395
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Feb 29, 2016 14:50:25 GMT
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Sounds fantastic.I'm so jealous The car. The journey. Good luck guys. Bookmarked
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2001 Volvo XC70 wagon
2003 Piaggio X9 Evo
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speedy88
Club Retro Rides Member
"Nice Cortina mate"
Posts: 2,277
Club RR Member Number: 118
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Feb 29, 2016 17:21:35 GMT
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Now in order to comply with some rules on here and not get this binned off to the "Readers Rides" section, I'm going to try and summarise the build. Yes, this is somewhat in retrospect. We actually started on this before Christmas... All this means is there's going to be more pictures and less waffle. All you need to know really is it was way more rusty than anticipated which we resolved with several weekends of welding which can only be described as "frantic". If you want the gritty details read on, if you just want to see the pictures, feel free to scroll past this bit... So, what have we bought? This is a fairly crusty 1960 Singer Gazelle. It runs (sort of) and everything works (kinda). It's part of the Roots group, a Hillman Minx in a posh frock so to speak, suitable for driving middle class families of the early 60s to church, the seaside and not much else. And with 70,000 miles on the clock she's no spring chicken either. Weekend one of restoration. Although it's relatively rust free on the important areas, the rear chassis leg is pretty bad (picture 1). So we pre-booked an MOT (which we attended and failed) filled her up with petrol and drove her to a friend's workshop. What could possibly go wrong? Well, everything. Picture 2 shows us broken down a whole 10 feet from the compound gates, a sight that I'm sure we'll get used to. A blocked fuel feed was the culprit and we set off again albeit on very low power after manning the bicycle pump on the fuel lines. Sadly, the car was very very slow and refused to pick up. Despite our best route planning, we had developed quite the queue and members of the British public were audibly tutting at us. After a few head shakes and disgruntled looks, we pulled over into an industrial estate for a head scratch (picture 3) where a weak spark and bad rotor arm were identified. We decided by this point as we'd been averaging about 1 mile an hour (3 hours by this point) we should perhaps give up and get the tow rope out. It was at this point that James disappeared. Bearing in mind this was a dusty quiet industrial estate on a Saturday morning, there was only one business open in sight... An auto factors right across the street. What luck! I found James asking the chap behind the counter if he happened to have a replacement rotor arm for the Singer in stock. Surely not? Turns out he does - a whole £1.60 too! With this installed the Singer inherits the performance of a brand new e-type (by which I mean unreliable). I take off and actually manage to lose James in the traffic, meeting him at the unit and ready to unfold the rusty horrors that await...
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speedy88
Club Retro Rides Member
"Nice Cortina mate"
Posts: 2,277
Club RR Member Number: 118
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Feb 29, 2016 17:25:40 GMT
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By the way, did I mention our facebook page? If you do the social media thing, please follow us for more regular updates. link
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Feb 29, 2016 17:55:35 GMT
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I'll be keeping my eye on this thread for sure! That's one hell of a challenge you have ahead of yourselves
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Project - 1990 Trabant 601 Daily - 2006 Saab 93
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Feb 29, 2016 20:06:58 GMT
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Good luck guys. I recently came across another group getting themselves ready for this at a show here in New Zealand.
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speedy88
Club Retro Rides Member
"Nice Cortina mate"
Posts: 2,277
Club RR Member Number: 118
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Feb 29, 2016 22:10:05 GMT
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Thanks for the kind comments all. We treat the engine to a full service. We noticed that the oil pressure was pretty bad on the drive over. Turns out 15+ year old oil gets pretty thick in the cold. Who'd have thunk it? Oil and electrical service done, she fired right up with full oil pressure - Lovely. James in his infinite classic car wisdom noticed an important spring and washer was missing from the oil filter housing. This has the function of essentially pressing the oil filter against the housing to force oil through the filter rather than around it. Not good, and not something we'd find parts for. Ever. Luckily, we were in a unit full of shi... useful things. A Hillman Imp engine head was pulled onto the bench and we extracted one of the valve springs. It fit... *perfectly*. After some milling on the lathe, some perfectly sized washers had been created. Some more rot: Some new metal: Some of the lead seals may have gotten a bit hot... Early morning of the second weekend. Blurry eye'd, mojo dwindling from the previous week's rust discoveries and general early morning brain fog, I decide the best course of action is a nice cuppa and some pre-prep before the marathon of welding. Set up lights, got the tools out ready and clearing the area etc. We're going to be doing quite a bit of welding around the rear seat area so naturally I removed them. They just pull out on these cars. Any normal person would have thrown up at this point. Luckily, decades of browsing the dark areas of 4chan have left me desensitised. The smell of rats curse word suddenly released from it's tomb of 15 years hit me pretty hard. Coughing and splutting, I INSISTED everyone else who happened to be down the unit at that time to come have a look/smell. There's basically nothing left other than the vinyl cover.
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Feb 29, 2016 22:16:54 GMT
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Haha. Its always rewarding unearthing such a treasure. Especially when you can share it with friends. This looks like fun. Bookmarked.
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Feb 29, 2016 22:27:19 GMT
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a few of us did this in 2010 you will never forget or regret it i still look back at the pictures and hope to do it again best of luck. we put up a sing at the finish that said killarney 13000 km it was still there last yr everything is money in mother russia
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benzine
Part of things
Posts: 333
Club RR Member Number: 87
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Feb 29, 2016 22:40:20 GMT
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Decent! Should be an amazing trip, looking forward to updates. I've thrown some charity coins at your faces.
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speedy88
Club Retro Rides Member
"Nice Cortina mate"
Posts: 2,277
Club RR Member Number: 118
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Decent! Should be an amazing trip, looking forward to updates. I've thrown some charity coins at your faces. Dude! You are awesome, thank you thank you thank you! If anyone else is feeling generous and wants to donate to a very good cause we've got two options: Mind - www.mind.org.uk - Who do extremely good work for mental health and raising mental health awareness. Their movements have changed the face of mental health massively even in the last few years alone. Cool Earth - www.coolearth.org - The world is a beautiful place and worth exploring. And we'd love to keep it that way for future generations to explore. Help save the world just a little bit. Our page: www.justgiving.com/teams/shouldhaveboughtamicraWe'd be grateful for any amount - every little bit really does go a long way. If 50p is all you can spare, 50p will be gladly accepted. And a few quid is worth it for all the free entertainment I'm going to be posting up, eh?
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Epic!!! Love the whole idea of this rally. I would love to do it one day in the future with an equally unsuitable car. Best of luck guys.
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Does this start at Goodwood? I was looking through their calendar the other day and saw "Mongol Rally", but guessed it could have been one of the slightly more prestigious ones
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speedy88
Club Retro Rides Member
"Nice Cortina mate"
Posts: 2,277
Club RR Member Number: 118
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Does this start at Goodwood? I was looking through their calendar the other day and saw "Mongol Rally", but guessed it could have been one of the slightly more prestigious ones Yes! I think we get to do a parade lap too which is pretty cool.
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ya its good crack and i think you get the location of the check out party on the day are ye getting a spot tracker
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