Moroccan Rally 2012 re-launch set

We are pleased to announce that the Moroccan Rally 2012 re-launch date has been set for Saturday 8th September 2012. Less than 2 weeks away from today.

A monumental effort has gone into making this re-launch possible with less than 3 months since our previous attempt.

We must thank the following people who had made this re-launch possible; Drew Brown for giving us a place to stay when we were broken down in France, for trying to get us back on the road and for starting Red's journey back to the UK; Mark Granger for letting us use his Land Rover Discovery and for driving with Alex all the way to Tours in France at ridiculously short notice to bring Red back to the UK.
An enormous thank you to Moss of the Desert Bunnies for giving up his weekends and evenings on many occasions to help us prepare our replacement engine and rebuild Red.
A massive thanks to Lewis, part of the Rusty Rhinos Ground Crew for all his time helping us prepare Red. Thank you to everyone who has helped us along the way and those around us who have had to be flexible whilst we concentrate on our rally preparations.

Thank you also to Jim of Ecosse World for his continued support on the rally.

Ecosse World continue to be our Moroccan Rally 2012 sponsor.

Ecosse World Express provides logistical solutions for specific markets & industries where speed, reliability, and security are of the upmost importance. Ecosse World Express are specialists in time critical and high value shipments offering a 24/7 on demand service. Services vary from On Board Courier option to express transit full load trailers covering the UK and mainland Europe daily. Visit the Ecosse World website at http://www.ecosseworld.com for all your logistic solutions needs.

Our fund raising effort resumes and whilst we have already raised over £1,100, we hope our recent story encourages those who can to make a donation to the Mercy Corps.

Red, our Land rover, back in the UK and ready for action

It has been a while since we've posted an update, but Moroccan Rally 2012 re-launch plans have been simmering away.

Drew, who we met in France and had put us up for the night and helped us try to get back on the road had been looking after Red for the last 7 weeks.

We had a plan to bring back Red to the UK on Friday 17th August. Drew had very kindly offered to bring Red back to the UK on a trip he had already planned. He had a trailer and everything was set.

However, during his trip up to England, his trailer suffered two tyre blowouts. The tyre garages did not have stock of the required tyres so he had to continue back to the UK without the trailer and Red. Drew had driven Red as far as Tours in France, shortening the remaining distance home.

Given that we had planned the weekend of the 18th/19th August to get our replacement engine in Red in time for a possible re-launch in early September, we had to react quickly.

Alex, along with friend Mark, hired a trailer on the afternoon of Friday 17th August, caught a late night ferry from Dover to Calais and continued driving onto the tyre garage in Tours, France.

After some non-stop night driving, they arrived around 9am on Saturday 18th August to find Red in the tyre garage on Drew's trailer.

Red was moved across to the hired trailer and was towed back to the UK with Mark's Land Rover Discovery.

Alex and Mark caught the evening ferry from Calais to Dover on Saturday 18th having not yet had any sleep for a day and half.

When Alex and Mark got to the UK, they had a short break before continuing their drive up to the home of the Desert Bunnies which is equipped with all the tools and gadgets one could ever need to service and fix a Land Rover.

Alex and Mark arrived at our special Land Rover service centre on the morning of Sunday 19th August.

Moss (Left) and Mark (Right) can be seen helping Alex get Red off the trailer.

Work then began on our engine swap out. Our old and failed engine was hoisted out of Red with little difficulty.

Left: Moss of the Desert Bunnies. Right: Lewis, part of the Rusty Rhinos ground crew.

Work continued on a very hot Sunday afternoon taking off parts we needed from the old engine and fitting them onto our replacement.
As we took the sump off the old engine we realised how terminal it was. Bits of shredded bearings can be seen in the pictures below.

Once our replacement engine build was completed we hoisted it back into the Land Rover. This was certainly not as simple as removing the old engine and we spent the next two hours into the Sunday evening manoeuvring the engine using rather creative techniques. Eventually, with the help of what can only be described as a Knight's wooden lance, we secured the engine into place.

We continued working on Red into the evening and got quite a bit of work completed but we were not in a position to start up Red as we had hoped but we weren't far off.

Alex resumed working on Red on Saturday 25th August, this included fitting a new oil pressure gauge that can help us predict oil related engine failures before they become terminal. We believe that the oil pump had failed on our previous engine causing the catastrophic failure.

Red was finally started up today and taken for a test drive, there were no problems and performance was better than ever. We are now at a point where we can declare Red as rally ready once again! We look forward to announcing our re-launch date shortly!