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| August 20th+ Excerpt from a two-part article written by myself (Sam Glover), published in the March and April '07 editions of Practical Classics magazine. Making our escape from the beautiful-but-deadly plain, we backtracked along the mountain pass and cheesed it south to Olgii, arriving in the dark with a significant sense of achievement after a terrifyingly sideways charge. Running on a Russian substance that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike diesel, the cab met its match on a steep hill ascent, requiring us to tack at tangents to the path, finally reaching the top in a shroud of sickly black smoke. Olgii was a fascinating Kazakh frontier town in all but its location, and we were charmed into spending some time there, soaking up the warm hospitality and enjoying constantly surprising food with lashings of Ghengis lager, which was in no way as unrefined as it might sound. We contracted the patching of our battered vehicles to a local garage, who expertly repaired the hemorrhaging fuel tank of team Skip Rats’ Granada, and replaced the three broken leaves in the cab’s stricken spring with UAZ items. As we departed, we vowed that this was the final fling for our tired and troublesome steeds, though none of us could have guessed how short-lived it would turn out to be. Only 50km from the town, the Granada’s clutch cable gave way as a result of something uncertain failing within the mechanism itself, making a bodge impossible without removing the gearbox. Second and third gears were still roughly available, so we opted to press on regardless. Clearly unhappy with this decision, the cab nose-dived violently as we pulled away, the casting that supported the top of the right-hand front hub assembly parting company with the chassis, causing the attached wheel to fold itself into the wing. Stopping regularly to wedge the wobbly item at a sensible angle, we crawled back to Olgii with an air of finality. We managed to sell our cars that evening, the Granada and Volvo raising surprisingly grand sums, and the stricken cab returning the £150 we had paid for it. It was sad to watch the vehicle that had been our home for the last five weeks limping away to an uncertain future, even if our relationship with it had, at times, been a little volatile. |
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Clive Aid
Contacts
Clive's Corner
Current galavants:
'08 Iron Curtain Tour
Future galavants:
'09 India?
Past galavants:
'07 - Nurburgring
'07 - Banjul-Zwickau
'06 - Swindon-Vladivostok
'05 Plymouth-Banjul