This wasn’t in the plan
I spoke too soon, in the last post I mentioned why I picked a 32 year old vehicle for the journey and how I could ideally fix anything that went wrong. However, this is not the case as I was not expecting to do a gearbox just driving around the block were I live.
It was like any normal day, I had spent a few hours washing the car and updating the firmware for all the devices in the camper. Then I decided to take it for a drive around the block like I had done many times before and as I took off at the intersection at the end of my street, “Kaboom” went the gearbox as if it was exploding though the floor of the cabin. I limped to the side of the road with the constant banging and as I tried to take off again there was an almighty crunch and bang with every gear I tried to take off in. I parked on the side of the road and got out to check underneath looking for any damage or maybe it was some thing other that the gears, nope everything looked okay. So now I had to try and get home which was only 500m away, so with the banging and crunching and coasting down the hills, I managed to get to my driveway. Now what, how do I fix this and what are my options were the first things that came to mind.
I called my local Landrover mechanic, whom I had already booked the truck in for December as I wanted him to go over all the drive train components, replace anything that needed replacing. So now when I told him of the predicament I was in, the reply was “I don’t have the time to rebuild a gearbox” and “I don’t want something as big as your truck clogging up my workshop”, great!.
The next thought was to see if I could buy a refurbished gearbox and maybe fit this myself or find some one to fit it, I managed to find a refurbished gearbox on gumtree but who would I trust to fit it, as I didn’t feel confident in trying to do it myself and I really didn’t have the room or resources.
The next call was to KLR Automotive in Sydney NSW, again 1400 kms away from where I live. Straight away I was met with “Yeah, no problem we do gearbox rebuilds every day”. Fantastic, now how do I get a truck that you can’t drive, delivered 1400 kms to their workshop.
I started searching car transporting websites and most of them wouldn’t accept a car that doesn’t drive by its own motion. So then I thought what if I hire a flat bed truck and drive the 1400 kms there and back with the hire truck, this was possible so I booked the hire truck and the tilt tray. The plan was to have a tilt tray load the truck at this end onto the tray of the hire truck and then coordinate a tilt tray at the other end to unload.
Then after a bit more research, one of the transport companies suggested “Loadshift”. Load shift is a website were you enter the details of what you would like transported and then sole traders bid for your load. Within a few minutes of posting I had a couple of quotes that were cheaper than me hiring the truck and delivering it myself. Great! transport booked using a low loader type trailer with a winch to assist in loading.
So now with the truck picked up and transported to KLR, I trust that they will do a good job. While it is there they will rebuild the gearbox and while the gearbox is out it would be crazy not to replace the current clutch with a heavy duty one and also change the main engine seal as well as go over all of the drive train and check any thing that needs replacing like I had initially planned.
