The calendar tells me today is 17th April and the next rally starts on 9th May. So we have a scant 3 weeks to get the Beast back into full fighting form. Demurring, delaying, shilly-shallying and procrastination are clearly not going to get the job done. What is required is the making of brave and expensive decisions, which is precisely what I have done.
Yesterday the Beast went into Nanjgel to have the engine extracted, and today the engine headed out for the short trip to Al Numairy Performance, who are conveniently just down our street. There, the nice Mr Fadi (who is currently blasting up the quarter-mile at Yas in his 3000bhp monster) and his crew of V8 experts will strip the thing down and take out all the sand, and do whatever is needful to make it a happy motor again.
This morning I blatted out to Dhaid to see Antony at Joy International, which is the ultimate elephant's graveyard for deceased Nissan Patrols. From his extensive stock of wrecks, we selected a straight and rust-free roof, which will be ours on Saturday for the princely sum of Dh3000, plus Dh150 for cutting and transport. This, and the engine-less Beast, will go to Saluki so that Rod (new recruit) can set about converting it into a pickup. Rod used to work for Ali Al Shawi and has done numerous such conversions, so Mark and Robbie-the-fabricator have given him unlimited use of the angle-grinder and buggered off to Qatar to see some rallying! That he is being allowed unsupervised carte blanche to massacre my vehicle is a little worrying, but like I said, brave decisions are the order of the day.
So hopefully, we should get it all sorted and have an engine back in before 9th May, although we may have a multi-coloured vehicle at that point. I foresee a blend of blue existing body panels, white roof, grey fiberglass and possibly a dash of red primer as being our race colour scheme.
I shall attempt to document the process, so watch this space. Let the destruction commence!
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