Picked the Azalai up from OEC today. The breakdown was apparently caused by a wiring loom contacting with the [transplanted] auto box’s oil feeds and consequently being melted. Paul [at OEC] was surprised that the transmission oil ran that hot; but he has now secured the loom away from the pipes so all appears to be fine. OEC have subsequently recommended to Ashcroft Transmissions that it might be worth adding this step to the fitting guidance. It is worth noting that it’s still early days of making this adaptation to the Puma TDCi Defender. The oil leaks were the same pipes’ attachments too – obviously a few cycles of running has bedded things down as they’ve expanded and contracted. They all took a bit of crimping up and again that is now cured.
Paul is making a few finishing touches to the tail-lift and the Landie goes back next week for fitting. Job done.
Second course of vaccinations today at The Travel Health Consultancy – Rabies and Yellow Fever. We discussed the WMT Course ‘Wilderness Medicine for Explorers’ that we undertook last weekend. James Moore of THC is also a lecturer for WMT. The course was certainly as comprehensive as promised and clearly will be invaluable to anyone who is planning to stray away from the beaten track – especially if responsible for the wellbeing of a group. The delegates were all pretty cool too – once again many of them doing some pretty incredible things with modest understatement. For our purpose, it has given us a good sense about what is and is not to be expected in both preventing and rectifying detrimental health! Further the course equips you with the power to obtain some antibiotics and medications to use on the road. Thoroughly recommended.
The only downside was the inconvenient truth that fatness and alcohol are predisposing factors in most of the bad things that were under discussion.