Driving to East Poland in 2 Days!

1,600km in two days seemed somewhat optimistic but we did it. Two long days in the car and really only doable owing to motorways on which we could travel at 140km/hr, but Beany and Micky Moo were pretty good all the way.

The next few photos are from the drive across Europe, staying in cheap motorway hotels along the way.  (Clicking on any photo will display them all full screen like a photo album).

Our first night upon arrival in Eastern Poland.  This is the communist era apartment block where relations of Sylwia's live.

It might not seem a lot by Western standards, but they keep their little apartment immaculately and the views from the kitchen window are lovely.  They are surrounded by open land, grow their own vegetables and tend their own beehives for honey. Many Polish people living in the countryside keep their own chickens and other animals.  I think they are quite content.

Sylwia's aunt used to live with us to look after Beany when he was little and she's still very fond of him indeed.  Beany chatted away to her, telling her how to make loom band bracelets, and though she listened intently she didn't really understand a word - she doesn't speak English.

Biskupiec, just down the road and the biggest town serving the nearby villages.  Sylwia's home village, Kolno, is 15 minutes drive from here.  In towns and villages like this you can get a big delicious meal in a restaurant for the equivalent of about £3 (NZ$6).

This is Sylwia's flat in the tiny village of Kolno, which she owns with her brother.  Their flat is the two upper left windows.  The building is communist era (with concrete walls about half a metre thick!) and was the family home when her parents were alive.

Our expedition prepared Mitsubishi Shogun (Pajero) has been attracting attention all the way from London. Quite a few people stop and stare.  Mitsubishi and other Japanese 4wd's are especially well liked across Eastern Europe and Russia, where there's plenty of tough terrain (we spotted quite a few in the Spanish Pyrenees last summer too). Yet probably few people living in these places can afford such a vehicle.  I'm keeping ours under close watch!

The many tiny villages around here are separated by rolling countryside, farms, vast dense forests and numerous lakes. It's very beautiful!  In the next couple of days we'll be giving the car and our off-road mapping equipment a bit of a test run by navigating from Sylwia's village of Kolno back to the town of Biskupiec, entirely off-road through the forest.  It will be good preparation for Romania and Albania.  I've plotted a route that looks good and am looking forward to it.  The locals go into the forests around here to pick blueberries and mushrooms so perhaps we'll stop and do some of that too.

So, now that the big drive over here is done we'll stay here for about a week.  I have a few London linked issues to take care of before we start the main part of the trip and Sylwia wants to catch up with friends and family.

Water Tank and Shower - Part 1

There's still much to do, but with the main components now installed it was time to do some testing tonight.

In the photo below you can see the water tank and two electric pumps mounted on the wall behind.  Not visible on the other side of that wall is the heat exchanger unit, which is plumbed into the car heater/coolant lines.  The large pump is for the shower and it pumps 11 litres per minute.  The small pump will supply water between the tank and a tap - it pumps at 4 litres per minute.  Both pumps have built in pressure switches, so physically turning a tap on/off triggers the relevant pump to switch on/off. But I'll also have manual power switches to isolate the pumps when traveling.

The water was coming through the heat exchanger at over 30 degrees, but for complete control over temperature just recirculate the water through the heat exchanger until it comes up to the desired temperature and then turn off the car engine.

I got it up to around 39 degrees in about 3 minutes, which test showerer Beany actually found a bit too hot initially.

Waiting to shower.

Success! It works.

This was just a test run.  Once  it's completed. I think we'll have a shower tent to allow normal shower privacy.

Upgrading Suspension on the Mitsubishi

In preparation for our big trip I decided to upgrade the shock absorbers all around the car to Koni HT RAID suspension, which is some of the heaviest duty 4wd suspension available.  The coil springs were upgraded to Ironman 4x4 last year, which also gave the car a useful 50mm lift.

In doing this job I was surprised to find that the original Mitsubishi (KYB) shocks were actually still in good order after 73,000 miles. Nevertheless the job was worth doing, as the new shocks have huge oil reserves that allow them to keep from overheating in extreme conditions.  The Koni shocks are physically large - I can't even wrap my hands around the front shocks.

Starting with the front.  The upper control arms and ball joints had to be undone to get the strut out, but apart from some bolts that were a bit difficult to undo it was all quite straightforward really.

Passenger side strut removed.

The top strut mounts were hard to undo and difficult to reach - an unhelpful combination, but no problem with a breaker on an extension.

Both front struts removed from the car.  I decided not to remove the coil springs myself because this can be a dangerous job and one would want to have a very heavy duty set of spring compressors to do these.  Indeed the first mechanic I showed these struts just looked at them in amazement and said "what are these off - a tank".  He declined to do the job.  But eventually I found a mechanic with a heavy duty spring compressor machine and he removed the springs and assembled them onto the new Koni shocks.  Albeit he did it incorrectly the first time by not paying attention to aligning them to allow them to be installed on the car. This necessitated a return trip to him to correct, but then all was well and the newly assembled struts went in easily.

Below is the newly assembled red Koni installed on the passenger side.  Apprentice Beany also visible.

After a bit of a rest in the afternoon and visit to the gym we continued into the evening.  The photo below is our dinner break - pizza and coke.  We had completed the front earlier in the day and had moved onto the rear.  

Jacking the rear of the Mitsubishi up high enough to get the wheels off the ground is a bit freaky.  It has to be jacked a long way to get the wheels off the ground, it's a heavy vehicle and you need the flattest ground you can find or it feels scarily unstable.  I get the jack stands underneath as quickly as possible.

I couldn't finish the rear on the Saturday night owing to the new Koni's coming with a 22mm top nut - there was no room for a socket and I didn't have a spanner that big.  Another trip to Halfords was needed on Sunday morning to get the spanner.  Photo below shows the bright red new Koni shock installed in the rear.

I had to buy a new large torque wrench to do this job as some of the suspension mounting bolts were listed as high as 145NM of torque in the Mitsubishi workshop manual.  I know many home mechanics (and professional one's too) wouldn't go to the trouble of torquing everything back to factory specs, but I think it's good practice when reinstalling safety critical parts.

Finally the car was all back together and down off the jack stands.  Miss Micky Moo came out to inspect her trusty chariot.

Job done, but still a water tank system and heat exchanger shower to install before we depart in 2 to 3 weeks!

Aaron's Day Out

Yesterday I decided to take a day out to just enjoy myself and forget about the stressful situation surrounding me in London.  So after dropping Beany at school and Micky at the child minder I drove out to the military training site known as the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire.  It's a fair drive, but I had all day and what a nice summer's day it was.

Remember if you click a photo you can see them all bigger like a photo album, though you won't see the commentary that appears on this page, so perhaps read this page then click on a photo to view them bigger.

Military vehicles were practicing along this part of my route but I knew not to take a photo, as I've been chased down for that once before and made to delete the photos.

I had to divert my intended route here because red flags were flying where I had planned to go, which means they're firing live shells and if you proceed past the flags a mortar could land on your car!  Actually there was a serious incident recently where the army fired a live mortar and it flew well out of the red zone, over two villages before blowing up in a farmers field.

This place that looks like a village isn't quite what it seems.  It's in the middle of the Salisbury Plain, miles from anywhere and is known as the German Village.  The army uses it for test combat training and you can't go in there.

The next photo shows the German Village in the distance.

In winter this whole place is much more of a mud bog and more care is needed to make sure you don't end up getting stuck.  But in summer it is much drier and not challenging for the Mitsubishi, which would probably have coped just fine even had I left it in 2wd mode.  That said the wheel ruts are deep in places and occasionally I hear my bash plates scrape the ground.  I have nearly 300mm ground clearance under my bash plates, so despite the lack of mud a car still couldn't come out here even in summer conditions.  Even the Santa Fe would be at risk of getting bellied on the tracks with deep ruts.

Still some water around.

The photo below shows the new roof rack and bag I have replaced my roof box with.  It's working out very well. I stopped here briefly to make lunch, but I didn't have time to stop add long as I would have liked as it was already time to head back to London to pick up the kids.

All in all an excellent day and I successfully, though briefly, managed to forget about difficulties in London.