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!

Replacement engine acquired for Red

We've had some rapid progress since our last post. Red, our Land Rover, is still due back in the UK in August, but we're wasting no time in getting an engine ready.

Drew put us in touch with someone who was prepared to sell their engine for our Moroccan Rally 2012.

The engine being loaded up

Moss and Alex had the day off on Friday to go and collect the engine.

Moss from the Desert Bunnies driving our engine back to base

And here is our replacement 2.25L petrol engine that will be powering Red through to the Western Sahara.

Voila!

Once unloaded, Moss and Alex inspected the engine, the result was very pleasing indeed. The engine is in good condition and will be good to go once we've finished servicing it. Our service will include fitting a brand new Land Rover original oil pump and replacing the gaskets.

Moss (left) and Alex (right) examining the engine

Up close with our new engine

Moroccan Rally 2012 latest news

We are now back in England, having had to surrender to engine failure in France, 500 miles in to the rally.

We had a long journey back to London which included walking, driving, taking the metro, the tube, the train and the eurostar. It took 6 trains, 1 car and our legs to get from Aunac in France back to London. All in all, that took about 9 hours.

Red, all packed and ready to go the night before the rally
We set off on Saturday 24th June at 5.25am, 25 minutes later than planned. We arrived at Dover with 15 minutes to spare, but customs decided to have a quick look at our vehicle which delayed us further. This resulted in us being put on the next ferry 50 minutes later.
Not ones for giving up, we decided to drive up to the original ferry that we were supposed to be on and managed to talk the ferry loader into squeezing us on. He put us in with all the lorries.

Parked up with all the lorries
Because we were so late and in the rush of the ferry staff closing all the parking areas on the ferry, we were left behind and locked in. Here we can be seen using the emergency phone on the ferry to call the ferry crew to come and get us.

Adam using the ferry emergency phone
We arrived to a sunny Calais and were on our way, hoping this was just the beginning of our epic drive down to Morocco. It was still early morning, we'd had some chocolate doughnuts, but clearly that wasn't enough so we had to tuck into something else.

Alex helping himself to some dry cereals
After about 12 hours of driving, as we approached the small town of Ruffec, our oil pressure light came on and we lost power. We pulled in to investigate the matter but realised we might have a serious problem as the engine made a loud ticking noise each time we revved it.

At this point it was about 1am in the morning. We were still able to drive the car, but at speeds not exceeding 15mph and if faced with a hill, our speed would drop much further. So we drove around the outskirts of Ruffec to try and get some ideas, but then crashed out in the car at 2am and got a couple of hours of rather uncomfortable sleep.

At 4.30am we were up and decided to limp the car at 15mph to the nearest major town, Angouleme. We got there just around 6am and were still exhausted, so we checked into a hotel and fell asleep.
Once we were up at 2pm, now Sunday 25th June, we emailed a few of our contacts, posted up requests for help on Land Rover forums and then walked into town in search of possible garages.

The outskirts of Angouleme
As we wandered around the sleepy outskirts of Angouleme, we found numerous car garages that may have been able to confirm the terminal condition of our engine. Being Sunday, we would have to wait till the next day before they'd be open. However, we hit a spot of good luck when we got back to the hotel to check the Land Rover forums. A member of the forum put us in contact with Drew. Drew was about 20 miles away from us and offered to help look at our car.

We limped the car to Aunac, 20 miles north of Angouleme and Drew looked the car with us for the next 6 hours. The conclusion was that the engine needed to be replaced. This was the confirmation that our rally had come to a premature end. Drew was incredibly hospitable and put us up for the night.

Drew (Left) and Alex (Right) working on Red

Red being taken apart

Working late into the night on Red
We camped the night out in Drew's garden, got up and had some breakfast and finalised our return plans. At 2pm on Monday 26th June, Drew drove us to Angouleme train station so we could catch the first of our many trains to Paris. We arrived in London around 10pm.

What next?

Red is still in Aunac. Drew is very kindly bringing Red back to the UK in August. We are sourcing a replacement engine for Red and if we can time everything just right, we'll be back on our way to the Western Sahara a bit later this year. We'll keep you all posted.

The fund raising will continue for the Mercy Corps. We've raised over £1100 and this will be carried forward into the re-launch of the Moroccan Rally 2012. We are hoping that this false start and our determination to head for the Western Sahara will help us raise even more for the Mercy Corps as our re-launch date approaches.

For now, all that is left to say is 'Long Live the Moroccan Rally 2012' :o)

False start for Moroccan Rally 2012

We got about 500 miles away from our Moroccan Rally 2012 launch point in London to then experience a fatal problem with the engine.

We spent most of yesterday considering our options to repair the engine which included exploring local garages in Angouleme, posting up requests for help on Landyzone.co.uk (A Land Rover forum) and emailing our various contacts.

One of the Landyzone members put us in touch with Drew in Aunac, who has been incredibly hospitable and helpful. We spent 6 hours yesterday attempting to diagnose the fault. We took the head off and the the head was slightly warped, we couldn't see anything else obviously wrong with only the head off, so put it back together in the hope that it might solve the problem. Unfortunately it didn't resolve the problem and has confirmed our suspicions that the engine is terminal.

We will be heading back to the UK at some point today and will return to Aunac in the near future to collect the Land Rover. The Rusty Rhinos don't do AA!

The rally is not cancelled, but will be relaunched once the car engine has been repaired/replaced in the UK. Full details of our events and the relaunch will follow.

We hope it is sunny in England!

Rusty Rhinos ready for Moroccan Rally 2012

With just over 3 hours till the Moroccan Rally 2012 launch, we can finally say we are ready!

It looks like no more than 3 hours sleep for us which is going to make our 48 hour drive to the south of Spain and into Morocco somewhat challenging!

We had a few issues that slowed down our preparation including having to repair a headlight, tail light and brake light. Then just as we thought we were done, our car stereo stopped working so we had to take it apart to try and repair it. It seems to be working now.

We're expecting to depart at 5am as planned to catch the 7.35am ferry from Dover to Calais. This is our last blog update as we'll be on the road but you can continue to follow our Twitter feed which will be updated regularly.

We are very excited to be heading to the Western Sahara and leave you with a late night photo of Red, our Land Rover, with the camo net fitted.

Music for the road

One of the most essential rally items is music. Music is the only in-car entertainment system that we have. Entertainment system sounds quite elaborate, the actual set-up we have is 2 large speakers mounted somewhere relatively close to our ears, a basic stereo and an mp3 player that is wired to the car stereo.


Alex fixing the wiring to our speakers on the Moroccan Road Trip 2010

We have to mount the speakers near our ears so that we stand a chance of actually hearing what is pumping out of our mp3 player over the engine noise.

If you followed our blog on the Moroccan Road Trip 2010, then you'll remember we have an mp3 player that we consider quite special. It is the Samsung YP-K5.


Samsung YP-K5 - 4GB MP3 player with built-in stereo speakers

The Samsung YP-K5 has rather small built-in stereo speakers that are actually quite effective by the tent and in enclosed spaces, so we can take our music with us in and out of the car. The battery life is excellent.

We carry quite a variety of music with us to help us with our drive. We have same classic rock anthem favourites, a lot of indie music and some dance music for those long night drives. We even have some very cheesy and rather embarassing tracks to play whenever we want.
Some of the artists on our mp3 player include rally essentials such as the Dire Straits and Mark Knopfler, David Bowie, Coldplay, Razorlight and Pulp. You are also likely to find a variety of classics from Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Tom Petty, The Eagles, Pink Floyd, Cars, Foo Fighters, Chicago, Keane, Sheryl Crow and many others. Awesome!