Daves disasterous Ranger collection - the full pictorial story.

[dave21478]

You saw how it ended....now see how it began....

 

Wakey wakey time...

 

Breakfast of champions people who have given up on life.

 

Assemble....The usual confirmations, europennies, electric map, chargers etc.

 

Dave chooses Escort - it is super effective the only car in the fleet I trust to get me to the airport.

 

Wait a minute.... ENHANCE!

Damn, I missed it rolling over around the clock. 100k? unlikely. 200k? Possible. 300k? likely. Who knows.

 

 

Road closed. Aye, brilliant. Dont bother putting up any warning signs beforehand or anything, just close the fucker and leave people to have to U-turn and go back the way they came. Welcome to France, where the roads dept give even less fucks than anywhere else.

 

Single track road short long cut.

 

Eventually got back to main roads, motoryway and finally Toulouse ring road.

 

Remember where we parked, kids.

 

She could do with a wash, Stelios.

 

Pretty.

 

I landed at Gatwick and got the rain in to central London. Twenty fecking quid though.

 

The next bit was mental - I was too stunned to take photos.

Get this, right....someone...some utter genius has invented a railway, but its under the ground! Yeah, thats right, an entire railway system underneath the ground. Tracks, trains and stuff, all under the city! We are truly living in the future.

I guess there is a technical reason for it all smelling like hot farts?

 

Anyway, I made loads of new friends* by blundering around not knowing wtf I was doing or where I was going. The tide of humanity swept me to the platform and squeezed me onto the rammed carriage where it was nuts to butts standing room only. A few minutes later I swam out onto the platform and was at Euston station, where this was waiting...

 

 

56 fucking quid though.

 

Everything about this photo is grim.

 

At my destination, I was met by the seller at the station and he drove me to scenery I was more familiar with, ie bumpy wee tracks and fields everywhere. At his farm the Ranger stood patiently waiting in the farmyard. The guy seems to have a sideline going selling and breaking 4x4s. I had a poke round it....the bits important to me are fine, no chassis rot, no body rot, transmission, suspension etc ok. It started ok....could maybe do with new glow plugs, but ran well and drove perfectly on the test drive.

I paid up, did the papers and off I went.

 

You know the rest....

I got maybe a hundred miles in it without problem. Sally Traffic kept telling me that this was the busiest weekend of the year as it was the start of the holidays and traffic was generally fucked everywhere. I wasnt too worried as I has left a huge safety margin for my arrival at the coast, learning the lesson after the near miss when collecting the roffle MGF.

When I was doing my pre-trip bookings the ferry had been horrifically dear due to them price-gouging everyone going off on their hols, so for the first time in my life I got a better deal on the tunnel. My second underground train ride of the day!

Never got to do it though.

 

I hit a bad jam and it was fine for a while, then temp shot into the red and it started guffing out clouds of steam from the expansion tank.

FUCK.

I was close to services so nursed it on, parked up and let it cool down and refilled. It was blowing bubbles in the expansion tank. Probable head gasket failure.

What do?

I decided to attempt to carry on, and for a while it was fine. At 50mph or less the temp sat steady in the middle and it ran well enough, but speeding up or climbing a hill made it heat up rapidly.

I was tailgating HGVs, leap-frogging between service stations, stopping to refill the water and wondering how long it would take me....would I make the tunnel in time? Could I continue like this all the way down the length of France? 

The car decided for me by suddenly loosing its coolant after just a few miles, I could no longer leapfrog between pez stations. Ah fuck it all. I parked up on the hard shoulder and called the RAC at about 8pm.

A patrol got to me within about 90 minutes and never even looked at the engine. He just said a flatbed would come for me. It took a long time....4 hours in total waiting on a piss-wet hard shoulder in the dark before the truck arrived.

At one point during the wait a flatbed pulled in front of me, but took off again straight away. This was actually "my" truck but he was looking for a red van which was his job before mine.

Eventually I got picked up and a series of relays through the night on three different trucks ended with me being dropped in Aberdeen at about 10am the next morning.

 

I cant fault the breakdown guys at all....the first guy reckoned my long wait was partly due to how busy it had been for breakdowns everywhere and partly due to admin delays within the RAC as the delay between them getting the job and actually picking me up wasnt very long.

 

So now what?

Well, the Ranger is tucked up at my sisters house, patiently waiting.

.

 

On Wednesday I flew home from Aberdeen to Luton and then on to Toulouse, where I picked up the Escort and drove home.

Luton airport. What a shithole.

 

I havent quite decided how the next stages of the Ranger saga will play out....I have a couple of ideas and possibilities.

 

[fatharris]

That's a rotten bit of luck mate but at least you managed to get home.

 

What are your plans for it now?

 

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

[beko1987]

Can the SVM not descend upon it like a plague of locusts and fit a nice volvo lump, or a 1.9PD then get 320_touring to plug his laptop in or repair it for you?

 

Or see if Foad can be persuaded with pictures of the queens face to repair it and you spunk out even more to collect it?

[Rave]

A top tip for the future is not to pay the 20 quid for the Gatwick Express. The stopping train is about a tenner I believe and doesn't take much longer. Admittedly it is run by Southern and so there's no guarantee that it will actually run at all, but. They also go to St Pancras, which is a 5 minute walk from Euston, so no need for the underground at all.

Good luck sorting the Ranger out. It looks lovely in the pics .

[stephen01]

I'm surprised you woke at all going by the first picture

[DVee8]

Haha class great write up.Hope you get it repaired quickly.

[mercrocker]

Before I read this, I thought  "f. me he's not coming back to take a Rickman home is he?" 

 

After I read it I concluded you probably would have been better off  had it been one... 

 

Excellent travelogue anyway

[Junkman]

OMFG - Artex!

[stripped fred]

I'm surprised you woke at all going by the first picture

I completely missed that! Wow!!!

[AlabamaShrimp]

No need for the white stuff just staring at that table cloth for a bit will do just as good.

[SiC]

To be fair to the seller, its plausible that they didn't know that it was going to puke out its insides. Especially if they let you have a test drive, etc. Could be just rotten luck.

 

At least if everything else on it is fine like no rot, then its going to be not too painful getting it fixed. Especially trucks like this.

[dave21478]

OMFG - Artex!

 

Fuckin France, innit - home of Artex, from what I can see everywhere. The bedroom is super-deep relief on it too, you can get a nasty graze brushing against the wall!

 

 

https://youtu.be/tPnv2NXMx8g?t=26

[Mally]

Before I read this, I thought  "f. me he's not coming back to take a Rickman home is he?" 

 

 

http://autoshite.com/topic/25638-collectioning-rickman-half-and-half/

 

Not advisable.

[Mally]

Might be best to sort a few possible calling places on your way down when its all done just in case.

Don't want to be like a yo-yo.

I'm not exactly on the route, but you would be welcome here.

[DodgeRover]

Gatwick airport is about 15 minutes swift walk from Horley train station. That said I think it cost about £13 for a return ticket for the city last time I was forced to go there.

[anonymous user]

I'm surprised you woke at all going by the first picture

So am I, I have a very similar alarm clock it's rubbish.

[chodweaver]

Quote "I guess there is a technical reason for it all smelling like hot farts?"

 

Nope, there isn't.

 

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[Guest Hooli]

Well technically it is down to the amount of hot farts in the atmosphere down there.

[drum]

I'm in Angus and happy to help get/store parts while you're being French.

[cort16]

That's bad luck the truck look nice other wise. I guess you'll need to get the head pressure tested due to their love of cracking?

[Arthur Foxhake]

Is it not a FWD transit engine in there?

Plenty of scrap transits about to rob bits from in England if so.

[Lacquer Peel]

Is it not a FWD transit engine in there?

Plenty of scrap transits about to rob bits from in England if so.

 

Mazda engine.

[overrun]

Bad luck, mate. Hope you get it sorted!

Did your sister never try to sell that Pug, then?

[Junkman]

So, let's get the Autoshite shit together.

 

What is required?

Who can do what?

What's the fucking hold up?

 

Let's get this sorted out until Dave 22000 - 522 returns.

[Split_Pin]

That's shit luck mate, what a war that was. I'm just off the m876 motorway at Cumbernauld so happy to assist with lifts/tea/ tools etc. Don't offer Nutella though!

[Frogchod]

OMFG - Artex!

That's called crepi here.

replace the "e" with an "a" and it's fairly accurate.

 

Also bump for Junkmans idea.

[dave21478]

Did your sister never try to sell that Pug, then?

 

Repeatedly. Couldnt even give the fucker away for free....plenty of interest but when it came to manning up and actually uplifting it the excuses always started.

 

Overton took it in the end, and the driver reckoned it would be straight to the crusher as spares demand is at an all time low these days.

[dave21478]

So, let's get the Autoshite shit together.

 

What is required?

Who can do what?

What's the fucking hold up?

 

Let's get this sorted out until Dave 22000 - 522 returns.

 

Thankyou kindly, but I need to work for a few months to replenish the piggy bank - this whole adventure has left me busted.

[drum]

Saw this and thought of you

 

[loserone]

That's FOAD's, is it not?