Straight into the deep end
The next morning was the first time I experienced some corrugated gravel, and I hated it immediately. And it was made even worse because I had decided to drive around in a 50 year old car.
The corrugations on the road was a nice warmup for what was going to be a very kak day. The plan for the day was to get past Upington and then figure out where to camp from there.
Sadly the plan did not work out as expected. Between Groblershoop and Upington I decided to test how far I could drive on the left hand fuel tank. I had filled up on fuel in Groblershoop so it would be a good test. I found that under a quarter tank the fuel would not feed nicely and the engine would run very rough and make the Goose jump.
I didn’t think it was too bad and carried on driving on the right hand tank when this started. I had more than enough fuel.
While driving I was very surprised that there was a wine route outside of Uppington. Wine is not really something that I ever thought I would find in the Northern Cape. I thought the Western Cape had “exclusive rights” to winemaking in South Africa (or at least that is what people from the Western Cape think).
After filling up in Upington and stopping for some quick supplies, I decided to carry on driving because it was still early in the day. Now that the left hand tank was full again, I decided to carry on testing the left hand fuel tank.
It was still making the engine run rough and about 30 km outside of Upington one of the jumps caused the side shaft to break.
There was a loud back from the rear axle when it broke so I knew immediately that something had broken and suspected that it was the side shaft. The Goose very quickly went from a rear wheel drive that could 4x4 to a front wheel drive that was limping along.
I just had to find a decent place to pull over and try to fix it. This was not something that I expected would go wrong this early in the trip and knew it could potentially end the trip early. Hopefully the side shaft had broken on the outside of the axle and not close to the diff, because that would have been a simpler fix and then I could have carried on and found somewhere to sleep for the night.
Sadly this was not the case, as soon as I pulled the side shaft out I knew it was broken in the diff and it would be a big repair to get it fixed. And I needed a workshop to do it, I could not fix it on the side of the road.
The simplest thing I could do was phone Len and see if I could come and fix it at his workshop in Postmasburg. The only problem was that I was about 250 km away and that was a long way to drive after having a breakdown.
As soon as I phoned Len he did not hesitate to help me. He said I could drive directly to his workshop and it didn’t matter what time I got there. So now it was a mad rush to strip out the side shaft and rear prop shaft to make sure that the Goose was good enough to drive the distance without causing any more damage.
It took me the rest of the afternoon to get back to Postmasburg and I only got there after dark. As promised, Len was waiting for me at his workshop. We quickly discussed what to do next and made the only sane decision not to do anything on the Goose that evening and only start the next morning. I quickly had to find somewhere to sleep for the night. I slept at the same place I had the previous two times, but decided against camping and asked for a room instead. They were nice enough to let me use one of their rooms at a very discounted rate (and I didn’t even have to ask for a discount).
Len was also kind enough to invite me to his house for dinner that night. Something I was not expecting at all, and it was probably the nicest dinner I had for a long time.
Looking back now it is unbelievable how kind everyone was that day, I did not expect anything but everyone just came together to help. It feels like I should have said thank you to everyone a lot more than I did, hopefully I can go back there soon to see everyone and thank them properly.
The next day we had to fix the Goose (I say we because Len’s son was there as well to help). Luckily Len and his son had the idea to try and poke out the broken piece of side shaft through the diff from the other side of the axle. If this worked we would not have to remove the diff and the repair would be a lot easier.
It worked to everyone’s excitement, now we just had to clean the dirt off everything, add new grease to the wheel bearings, reassemble everything and fill up with oil. This took most of the morning but progress was good and I was very happy that the trip could carry on.
The worry from the previous day was gone and I hoped that this would be the worst thing to happen during the trip. To be honest I didn’t think that I would have a breakdown this bad in the first week so it did feel like a bit of a baptism of fire.
Luckily I had enough time to get back to Upington that afternoon, and I would get there before the sun went down. I was too lazy to spend the time to find a campsite for the night so I found a decent bed and breakfast to spend the night. It was nice to not have to worry about anything that night and just have to figure out where to go the next day.
