Day 18 Wed 29 Jun 2016 Yekaterinburg to Perm (Russia) 420 Kms

Today, it rained again. Not all day, but the sky was overcast all day.  There was no competition  - we drove from Yekaterinburg to Perm using a northern route which is not the shortest but kept us on probably slightly quieter roads.  There was actually 100 Km of divided highway leaving Yekaterinburg.  The standard of the tar roads has improved slightly from yesterday.  Maybe it will keep getting better as we move westward.

The thing that never ceases to amaze me is the people who turn out to watch and wave.  They are everywhere. 

Today there was an amendment which the organisers said was at the request of a town, Chusovoy, to change the route to come through the town.  We were going to bypass it. The amended route took us to the Chusovoy stadium, where there must have been thousands watching as we drove very slowly around the running track and over a very high podium.

Another media interview for Mark

Arriving here at Perm was a similar reception.  We had planned to swap the rear tyres with the 2 spares to give us the best rubber we have left for tomorrow stages to Kazan. 

But the crowd was so great on arrival we decided it best to come back later. 

The Monument marking one of the points where Europe and Asia meet.

Our not-quite-so-luxurious room in Perm

Tomorrow there are 4 stages scheduled on the way to Kazan where we have a rest day and hopefully we have a new set of tyres waiting for us.

Day 17 Tue 28 Jun 2016 Tyumen to Yekaterinburg Russia 384 Kms

A short day by the standards of the last two days.  Even shorter when the only stage for today was cancelled due to water damage.

Mark being interviewed by the local media

They substituted a couple of runs of a local autocross so we had something for the day.

 It wasn’t a bad circuit. Perhaps a little rough and you had to stop beside the timing marker to get your time taken.  We did it twice. Two seconds quicker the second time. 
However, our Belgian friend Joost, with the Mercedes now firing on all eight cylinders, went five seconds quicker,  but we increased our overall lead over Rob Garnsworthy's Mustang by nine seconds, to 6min 13. 

It rained again for some of the day. The tar roads were characteristically rough. We saw one accident.

A large traffic jam in the city forced us to resort to Google to find a way around it.

Part 2 - later:

What I didn’t say is that Google has 'traffic view' which showed where all the traffic was stopped.  We found a new route that was mostly green with only a few red bits.

After booking in we asked the local fixer where we could get a wheel alignment.  He made a phone call and offered a scrap of paper with – I think it's an address (see below).  After travelling a few of Google's red roads, we arrived in the area and tried to ask a few people where this place was.  

Eventually we found it.  It was the Nissan Club which I think was a normal Nissan dealer. Boris, who we were told was the contact, seemed rather unhelpful, but while we were deciding whether we really needed a wheel alignment or not, another person, Dimitry, walked up and with reasonable English asked what we wanted.  

I’m not sure if Boris rang him but Dimitry had us follow him (he ran in front) for about 300 meters to another building (which looked suspect) and wait while he opened the door.

Well inside was a modern workshop with wheel aligners, drills, lathes , milling machines, polished floors and a passion for drift cars.

To shorten the story a little, they made us coffee, did a wheel alignment (we limited it to “just do the toe-in please”) and they examined the rally car while we admired their drift car. 

The boys add their sponsor sign to the car, and Mark tries out the driver's seat in their drift car

In the end they put their company name on the car and we exchanged email and web addresses.  No cost. They were great guys.

I guess building construction is dictated by the extreme winter weather.  I wonder how many other buildings are really good on the inside with a very drab exterior of thick insulated walls.

Inside the workshop was lovely and warm.

Rooms at our very flash hotel..The view from my 5th floor room below (Mark is on the 19th floor)

Across the River is the Church of All Saints, built this century on the site of the merchant's house where the Romanov Royal Family was assassinated in 1918 during the Russian Revolution.

Day 16 Mon 27 Jun 2016 Omsk to Tyumen, Russia (Siberia) 627kms

Another long drive with one scheduled test.  It was cancelled.  I think that was a good decision as it went through a village with masses of people and other traffic.  Not sure what they were thinking when they thought it would make a good ‘timed to the second’ section. 

We had rain again.  It seems to rain for part of every day.  It was colder today than it has been.

Russia’s roads (and I haven’t seen all that many yet) are mostly rough tar.  Some times with huge potholes and broken tar, other times with a gutter running along the road where the weight of trucks has left furrows.  These furrows fill with water when it rains and the car seems to want to jump out of the furrows all the time.

Vehicle density is way too high for a single lane each way.  Trucks, probably 40% of the traffic, travel at 80 to 90 KPH.  Cars try to travel at 100+.  The speed limit is 90 most times.  

Cars constantly try to pass the trucks. 

On the notice board, someone changed the "110kph max" to "190kph"

We frequently find cars coming towards us on our side of the road.  The done thing is to move over and make room for a “third” lane. The locals pass trucks and other cars without clear vision.  While we are waiting for the road to straighten or to see over a crest, locals sail past when we are way too cautious to take that risk. The locals rely on others making room if necessary.  It’s not for the faint hearted.

ERA Mechanic Owen changes a ball joint on the Datsun

The other complication is that the driver being on the wrong side in a right hand drive car, it becomes the passenger’s job (i.e. me) to advise if it's safe to pass. Passing can be further complicated when the truck decides to move to the middle or the other side of the road to avoid a pothole or broken tar.

We ended the day by changing the bottom ball joint on the front left. Would be nice to have another set of struts.  The event’s not half over yet….

Day 15 Sun 26 Jun 2016 Novosibirsk to Omsk, Russia (Siberia) 668kms

The scene at the start today from Novosibirsk:

Car No. 5 (on the left) is the 1923 Vauxhall of Australians Max and Julie Stephenson

There were no tests (sections timed to the second) scheduled today, but there were to be three time trial sections. These were cancelled because of a massive storm *. 

This was probably a good thing for us as we took on a tankful of bad fuel just prior to this point.  The engine did not like the fuel and pinged very badly.  

We had about 400km of transport to do after the sections were cancelled so we thought that should use a good portion of the bad fuel.  

As we got close to Omsk we stopped and dumped all but 10 litres of the fuel so we had enough to get to a service station that had hopefully good fuel to mix with and dilute the bad fuel.

I’m not sure this is the end of the problem. The fuel gauge has stopped working at the same time and the fuel pressure seems very weak at the engine end but is much stronger at the fuel pump.
___________________________
*To quote the event's official reporter, Syd Stelio:

Russian mud has stopped entire armies in years gone by, so it had no trouble bringing us to a grinding halt.

Day 14 Sat 25 Jun 2016 Rest Day Novosibirsk (Siberia)

I’m told Novosibirsk is the capital of Siberia. and that the name means ‘New Siberia’. 

The temperature here is 30 degrees summer and winter.  In winter you put a minus in front of the 30.

We found somewhere to wash the car before we had a look at it.  I was hopeful that would be the end of our day but not so.

 On the way into Novosibirsk, Mark thought he could hear bearing noise, and sure enough, the left rear wheel had a problem.  We were worried about play at the top of the front struts where the shaft slides in and out as well, but when we called Stewart Wilkins back in Sydney, he advised that on full droop, the bearing are close together and this is not a problem.

Stewie also gave us the part numbers for bearings.  We had a few problems. 

One, our phones won’t work and two nobody can understand us anyway.  Got the local SIM card to work by putting more credit on it. Topped-up twice through the day.

Mark’s Telstra phone seems to work intermittently.  Never when you want it.  My Optus phone doesn’t work at all. The Russian SIM seems to work OK but gobbles up the roubles.

The workshop was built a bit like a big refrigerator.  I guess it’s insulation for the -30 winter days.

Problem two -  the language barrier.  Another competitor who speaks French and English was able to talk to a local lady who spoke French and Russian. When we wanted to say something, our friend translated to French, then our lady friend translated to Russian. And it also worked in reverse, but it was tedious.

We hired a mechanic, a young guy who only spoke Russian, but was keen to help. He went to a bearing shop but they only had one of the two races we wanted.  The bearing shop wanted us to knock the old races out of the hub and bring them in to see what they had that might do the job.  We were reluctant to knock the old races out as we thought there may be no way to keep going if they couldn’t find equivalents.  Anyway, eventually we did and eventually they found bearings to fit.

We also found our bent rim (which had become a spare) was flat.  This turned out to be punctured by a piece of sharp rock.

Next issue was torn rack boots.  After looking at this for a while and having tightness in the steering, we decided to remove and straighten the rack. 

After undoing engine mounts and raising the engine and dropping the somewhat bent cross member, we found the rack wasn’t bent at all.  The problem seemed to be that the cross member moved back a little, so the steering shaft was too long and was binding up.  After grinding a mm or so off the end and extending the flat spot a couple of mm, it finally all seemed nice again.  

Our local guy sourced some new rack boots quite quickly.

On starting the engine, the fan was now touching the radiator shroud.  The engine must be sitting higher!  So Mark and the mechanic repositioned the shroud.

The repair of the left rear tower is also holding up well.

Sorry for all the technical jargon today.  Cross fingers it all holds together.

Car 103 Eric and Renee from Belgium, serviced their 240Z in the same place as us and were a great help.  Many people have helped us to this point. 

Our other Belgian friends Joost and Jaques rejoin in the Mercedes today and will go fast. 

On a side note - The hotel mixed up everyone’s clothes.  They were trying to sort it themselves as every item had a unique number. But they ran out of time.  We all had to go to the basement where clothes were spread everywhere and find our own.  I'm missing a pair of socks. 

At least, they waived all laundry charges.

We go to Omsk tonight.