Hail Baja Day 1

I'll make this quick as I have to get to bed.

The engine started overheating early on. The fans were OK but the top hose had chafed and was leaking, so I cut-and-shut it using a couple of spare jubilee clips and a double-ended joiner - but it didn't hold. After the third failed bodge, the service crew from another team gave us a hose which worked, the sweep team doinated extra water and we were again on our way - but much delayed.

Came aross Mabbsy with a leaking rad, stopped but couldn't help and anyway Streaky was almost there. We passed him a couple of km later. We had the option to bail out at the next 'rescue' point, but we were now going well so decided to try and make the 200km to the service point, knowing that if we got that far we would be time-barred, but permitted restart tomorrow.

We made it - but the engine temp was close to the 115c limit and went into cripple-mode a couple of times, necessitating us to take a brief 'time-out' to cool it. We also threw a tyre and got stuck once, and suffered the indignity of being towed out by a police Cruiser! Oh, and the exhaust hanger broke, which I jury-rigged with some binding wire.

Having reached the service point, we exited on a gatch track and aired up. Just 200m from the road, the power steering packed up, a sure sign that the belt had gone. It had - but so had the idler pulley, and while we had a new belt it wasn't much use without the pulley. So we ended up being towed 250km back to Hail by the sweep team's V8 Land Cruiser.

Streaky and I set to work, the main job being to fit the new idler, which fortunately was in the service vehicle. The rest of the bodged repairs will have to suffice for tomorrow.

After this stage, Yazeed Al Rajhi leads in the Mitsubishi Racing Lancer, by a narrow margin from Bakhashab in the V8 engnied FJ Cruiser, with Raed Baker third in the Mitsubishi L200 pickup.

Now - bed.