The last of the Daisy and Ditzy's tweaking

The boys were hard at work this week-end tweaking all sorts of things with the two vehicles. I say this because they both returned looking black and grubby and smelling of diesel, and of course demanding food..... lots of food!

The focus was mainly on Charles' Ditzy, so I'll go through the list of jobs very briefly (As you know, I'm no mechanic!!)
- made a shovel mount from scratch to mount on the rear ladder
- tidied up the auxiliary battery and switch board wiring
- added two outside lights; one for the rear door and one under the awning (I foresee us fighting a loosing battle with the midges and massive flying bugs at night. Lol)
- the horn button wasn't working so this was re-wired
- a bracket was made for the steering wheel to cancel the indicators
- more wiring done on the alternator
- they did a crankshaft rear main oil seal as it was leaking quite badly
- replaced the centre diff washers, a job that was missed the first time Rob rebuilt the transfer box (apparently this was a fun job as it was the first time doing anything like this)
- cut off the rear bumper and refitted it more securely
- Charles fitted a ladder extension and drilled some more holes to allow for better adjustment of the ladder on his Howling Moon roof tent
- welded the over centre catches on the solar panels as the clasp wasn't strong enough and opened itself up in the closed position so a small weld prevents this and now works perfectly
- waterproofed the awning on Robs Daisy

So overall a very busy week-end.
As I was asking Rob for the list, half way through I started thinking "What the hell have I got myself into!?" I don't understand half of it and the list keeps coming!
But it's nice to know all that's left to do on the vehicles is a overall service and a good clean!! We are pretty much there!!! YAY

Other than that we applied and paid for the carnet which is Daisy's passport. A total of £890 (OUCH!), that's almost as bad as my citizenship application! This passport will allow us to temporarily import the car into all the African country's (except Egypt). We will receive the carnet around the 16th of October, ready for us to drive away into the sunset!! :)

Enough about the cars; lets talk fun, camping, overland, food and drink!
So we will be heading to the Stratford Overland Show this week-end where we can swap stories and gain some last minute advice from like minded people. We hope to meet you there for a beer or two, so please pop by and say hello!!
We are very excited for this show and its nice to see the weather should play along! We love opportunities like this as we get to test the cars and of course we get to see our travel buddies, Cat and Charles. We don't get to see them much as we live in different counties.

As always, make sure to follow us on Facebook at
https://www.facebook.com/Where-to-next-Africa-301927936647306/timeline/

Cat and Charles also have their blog at
http://ditsysdisco.blogspot.co.uk/