Opening the toy cupboard.

Time to start arranging the off-road toys.

I put off playing with the tent this weekend, since it was blowing 55mph and snowing. Quite apart from the risk of it turning into an expensive kite, getting it wet would give me another job - trying to get it dry. So, we invoked Plan B - put the waffle boards on the roofrack and sort out the new solar panel.

I bought the boards from a local who'd retired from the offroad scene and had a lot of stuff to get rid of. Luckily I spotted his Gumtree ad before anyone else and got 2 sets of boards - lightweight and heavy - for half the cost of one, and they've not been used. Despite the extra weight, we'll carry the thicker versions to Morocco as they're strong enough to act as bridges as well as sand ladders. They fit perfectly on the rack and give me somewhere safe to stand while I'm leaping about like a gibbon up there. Not only that, and to satisfy our rule that "everything must have at least two uses", I can use one board to provide a stabiliser for the Hi-Lift jack:

The black paint on the upper board gives the locations for the Hi-Lift stabiliser kit:

which consists of 2 ratchet straps and 2 locking bars. The pin and clip are for securing the jack adapter. 

The ratchet straps are used to brace the jack against the stiffness of the board and stop it from tipping left or right, which is a real hazard when using these things. 

When we had our puncture last year, the bottle jack wouldn't work on the stony ground - too unstable - so we used the Hi-Lift and a wooden footboard similar to this, but it only did that job and was otherwise Dead Weight. This new arrangement is more useful and the boards can be used as seats if we have guests....which we anticipate might be pretty often!

The cover for the jack mechanism was made from an old inner tube, cut to shape and held together with press studs. I know it's not as good as a full cover, but it'll keep most of the crud off and it was free.

...and on with the Solar panel:

OK, so it looks like a bit of armour plate, but what you see has taken weeks of trial runs and wasted effort. The first effort was, in fact, more like a bit of side armour and way too heavy. The solar panel itself weighs next-to-nothing so I was determined to try to keep the whole set-up equally light. Eventually I made a cover from thin plywood, braced with battens around the edges. It won't last forever but is good enough for now. This is the panel in "transport" mode. It can be opened in situ....

and this is about the angle you'd want it to catch any energy just here at the moment. The sun does, despite rumours to the contrary, actually get above our horizon for an hour or two each day. Clearly, this wouldn't be an ideal angle for use anywhere south of the Arctic Circle (here - nearly) so it has to be a bit more flexible...

...Hmmm, dunno why this picture won't load "straight"...anyway, the whole lot comes off and can be moved around to follow the sun. The plywood cover acts as a stabiliser and we can put rocks on it to keep it in place against the wind. When the sun goes down we can fold it up and it's a table top.....
There's 5 metres of cable connecting it to the charge controller :

so we can pretty much put it anywhere - on the roof if necessary. Having the panel lets us keep the main (starter) and auxilliary batteries charged when we're parked up, so we are now completely free of the need to use campsites and external electricity. This was necessary last year. If we wanted to run the fridge and other things while wild camping, the battery would last just over a day and then need a charge from Daphne's alternator. This isn't a problem if we move every day but it's not the plan this year.

Sue has finally finished her work on her Forensics course, for now anyway, so is getting her head around the phrasebook. I'm concentrating on the social niceties and she's "doing the shopping", which means,among other things, learning how to argue over the price. If we learn a phrase a day, we should be pretty well sorted by the time we land at Tangier. 

Beginning to Bolt On the Bits.

...and there are a lot of bits to bolt.

The arrival of the new brake pads coincided with the warmer weather, so getting ouside again was quite pleasant. The temperature today is more like late Spring (for Moray, anyway) than mid-winter. Crazy times.

The brake pads didn't really need to be replaced having only been used for 9000 miles, but they're not exactly expensive so I swapped them anyway. While the back end was off the ground I greased the prop shaft joints, anointing myself in the process with several gobs of hi-speed grease. With a little air to bleed from the gun and struggling for room while on my back underneath, I opened the bleed screw and the air inside released with a crack, together with a jet of yellow gunk. It could've gone anywhere, but chose my right eye instead.... ho hum.

I remade the side panniers earlier, so these went back on.

 These were made up from some scrap metal fencing, a couple of strap hinges and over-centre catches which can be locked. They're suspended from brackets that clamp around the roof gutters.The front one is slightly larger and holds a NATO plastic water can and the rear cage holds a jerrycan. To save our backs the diesel can be siphoned out so there's no need to ever take the can out of the rack.

The ratchet straps are there to stop them moving about and bashing the window grilles. Both the grilles and the panniers were a project to practice my emerging welding skills. The fencing panels were galvanised....and I learnt another lesson! At least they won't rust. The window grilles were made from a discarded bed base which just happened to be exactly the right size once cut in two. There are 4 skips at the back of my work place which get regular visits....

We need to get the tent back on the roof soon, but I need to work out a better way of securing the travel cover. The useless plastic zip broke the first time we used it last year and we made do with bungees to hold it on. It'll be a simple fix to make it prettier, but once it's out of storage it'll take up most of the garage, which I can't afford at the moment. Then there's the awning, the recovery kit, all the kitchen stuff - which Sue will no doubt want to rearrange AGAIN, spares box, oils....well, you get the picture.

....I learn eet from a boook. First steps in Darija.

Anyone who's watched Fawlty Towers will remember Manuel's response to guests who comment on his command of language: "I speeking eengleesh very well." We've been learning our Moroccan Arabic - Darija - from a boook too, with all of Manuel's difficulties, although unless you hear the words spoken correctly, you never know how silly you sound. The Lonely Planet "Moroccan Arabic" contains a number of inaccuracies although using it will probably get you understood most of the time, so it's a good starting point. We were very aware that we were probably falling into the trap of teaching ourselves the wrong things and, despite YouTube and the 'net, we needed some proper tuition.
This week we were lucky enough to have an introduction to a local lady who's a Moroccan native and who was prepared to give us some time to demonstrate the bad habits we'd picked up and then do some corrective surgery. To Aicha's credit, she didn't laugh too much at our efforts and gave us a huge amount of help. We can now confidently argue over the price of a chicken or ask directions to the veggie market, as well as making a reasonable stab at the niceties of being sociable.
We know, from last year's experience, that French will be understood in most of the places we go but we found that once we got into more remote areas, the local French speaker had to be summoned before conversation could continue. Hopefully now we'll be better prepared and with luck not get seen off too much in the souk. Some hope!
So, we've ripped out the notes from our Survival Guide and are working on replacements. I've made a CD of useful phrases to play in the car, as I know that constant repetition works for me. By the time we actually get to use our Darija ( and I now know it's a long soft "J" as in theFrench "jamais") it'll be like reciting poetry. The problem will come when we get a reply that we don't understand. My secret weapon is " Takellum beshwiya, affak. Arwed, anna markan haddarsh l'arbeeya".....

"Say that slowly please. Say it again, I don't speak Arabic". A bit of a cop-out, I know, but at least it'll give me a breathing space to think of a better reply.

Now that the weather's got a bit warmer we can do some more work on Daphne. Lots to do.....

Too cold to do much...

Have you ever tried to do any spannering at Minus 4? While the tools don't actually stick to the fingers, after about 20 minutes it doesn't matter because you can't feel them anyway.
  We went into town yesterday to give Daphne a run, and she really didn't want to fire up. The battery is on trickle charge when she's not being run so the problem is that the battery is too bloody cold and/or the diesel is too thick. However, got going and set off. Well, having made quite a few re-arrangements of the "internals" recently, it's true to say there were a few rattles. In fact, every bump we went over created a racket like two skeletons bonking in a biscuit tin. This needs to be sorted....
  Anyway, despite the freezing temperatures the rear spare wheel carrier is fitted and working as expected, and I even managed to incorporate the socket for the Disco bike carrier. The puncture we had last year was easily solved with the spare, but we then had no back-up for a couple of days and I really wasn't comfortable with that. Although we would have managed, the lack of "insurance" really nagged, hence the double spare we'll carry this year. I was glad that the rear brake pads didn't arrive yesterday - I'd probably have frostbite by now if I'd tried to fit them.
  Sue has been slowly restocking the Emergency Rations box with quick cook food, so she'll probably have something to say about that in due course. Suffice to say that the space I've freed up by moving tools and spare parts around is rapidly being filled with kitchenalia!
  Here's a couple of pictures of the spare wheel carrier.

The bike carrier sits quite neatly in the centre of the wheel, and "wheel" make a bracket to fit it that'll allow us to carry a trash bag or something similar on the back :-). This'll keep the smelly junk outside and it won't matter if it gets "investigated" by curious folk. The outside hinges incorporate a carrier for the Hi-Lift jack with a lockable plate. The hinges and joints all have grease nipples and the whole lot came galvanised and powder coated, so we're very pleased with the whole thing. Getting the spare on and off requires some ingenuity though, unless you want to risk a hernia. The rear step and a lever in the shape of the shovel works well....and next time I take some pics for this, I'll use a decent camera. Thanks to Kristen, too, for teaching me how to use HTML to resize these.
The original "bolt on the door" thing is now going on e-Bay...dunno why people still fit them; our door was cracked across two frames because of that. Daft design, but I see at the local dealers that the TD5s less than a year old  still have them.

New shoes for Daphne.

With about 2 months until departure, it's time to begin getting Daphne - that's Sue's name for The Truck - properly blinged up with all the expedition toys. I made a start yesterday, mainly because it'd stopped raining for a while, the sun was out and the prospect of getting my hands dirty was easier to bear if it wasn't wet and cold and windy.
The tyres we used last year were OK, but a little thin on tread, we thought. Although 8mm should be perfectly adequate, we had 2 punctures, one of which was caused by a thorn. This created a slow leak which, when combine with reduced pressures anyway, had the tyre running almost flat after an hour or so. That's probably why we picked up the second, much more severe, hole. This was big enough to get 3 fingers in and was almost certainly caused by a sharp rock. This was repaired locally but since I didn't know about the first smaller puncture, it went flat fairly quickly. This gave me the chance to try out the puncture repair kit which worked well enough and gave us a serviceable, if not completely leakproof, spare. When we got home I bought some tyre levers and taught myself the fine art of roadside tyre removal and repair, a skill I wouldn't ordinarily have attempted to learn but is now part of the "armoury". Every cloud....

 Working on a gravel surface is a right pain in more ways than one. The jack won't slide, my knees and back get shredded etc etc, and woe betide you if you drop anything small 'cos it'll disappear until you've found/bought a new one, then magically resurface.
I checked the bearings, swivels, seals and brake pads "while I'm down there".

...and the Appliance of Science, well, basic levers anyway, to lift the new tyre and wheel back onto the hub. Nice shiny new wheel nuts added and these were painted with engine assembly lube to keep them that way, at least for a while. So now we have five shiny new wheels and five tyres that look capable of taking Daphne up Everest.
Landrover Spotters will note the HD drive flange. I was in two minds about these as they could transfer a point of failure from an easy-to-fix place to somewhere more serious, but having lost drive to the rear axle a while ago due to a standard one failing, I decided to take the risk. I reasoned that I wouldn't want a flange stripping its teeth while doing something like this:

...this is me launching Daphne out of a river bed. The front wheels are off the ground and the sudden shock when they landed probably didn't do the drivetrain any good at all.

The next job is to replace the rear brake pads which I saw are about half worn, and to get the rear spare wheel carrier fitted. I reaaly should do all these jobs in the "summer" but it was so dank this year I kept putting it off. It's supposed to snow this week.....

Happy New Year! The 3 of us have just spent a cold, drunken, noisy hour at the top of the field behind the house, watching the moon rise, the Northern Lights pulsing and the clock ticking through to 2016. The locals - over the hill - set off their fireworks but hopefully didn't miss the spectacular light show that Mother Nature provided. Hopefully our nearest neighbours didn't object to us sharing their field. I didn't hear any bleating, anyway.

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