One of the biggest milestones in our brief Micra owning history has now come to pass as we have had the little beauty insured. It has been insured for a month starting on the 3rd of July, just in time for us to drive down to Birmingham for Isaac's christening. The car seems to be in good shape with it flying past all sorts of top end cars down the motorway to Birmingham. The only car we struggled to overtake was another Micra. The 1.0 litre engine gives the car some quite awful acceleration though the top speed seems capable enough. It's handling ability matches that of a banana boat with caution needed when going round bends at speed. Chris and Laura informed us that the back seemed comfortable enough, though granted as Chris said he's only going to Birmingham and back in it. Phil jumped in on the way back and things looked a little more cramped.
Over the weekend Rich's Dad made a sump guard for our Micra courtesy of PFC Industries:
We did a bit of work to fit it yesterday:
Our Dad's finished off fitting it today so I will follow up with a picture soon. Rich's Dad also made us a guard for the front radiator grill to stop stones hitting it:
Our car is now essentially bulletproof, capable of facing any terrain no matter how tough.
We now also have three brand new wheels for our Micra. They are going to be used as our spares should anything go wrong. Two of them will be going on the roof and one in the boot. We managed to get hold of three rims from a local scrap yard. Upon arrival we were pointed in the direction of some dead Micra's in what can only be described as a car graveyard. There were a few Micra's and luckily for us there was one that had the 14 inch rims that we needed. We also had a scout around for some caps that we're missing from our engine though these had already been taken. Climbing on to the cars which were stacked on top of each other did not appear to be particularly safe. As I climbed up on to one Micra the car above it swayed dangerously from side to side.
Having got our rims we took them to Attercliffe Tyres Limited who kindly fitted tyres to them for cost price. They also gave us with a puncture repair kit as a first line of defence should one of our tyres blow.
We have also been doing quite a bit of shopping for the rally. We have purchased a new car aerial as ours was non existent - something we didn't spot when purchasing the car. We'll now be able to tune in to see what Central Asia's finest radio shows have to offer. It also means that our itrip actually works without it having to be right next to the radio.
Joasia Staszek has kindly donated the money for us to buy a camping stove and some gas for it. The rest of the gas coming courtesy of Towsure who donated us a cash voucher. Couple this with the pans and cutlery we were donated by Susan from freecycle and we'll now be able to cook all sorts of fine cuisine on our road to Mongolia.
Route planning has also been coming along nicely. We will be setting sail from Dover to Calais on the 7pm ferry on the 23rd of July. We will then need to make swift progress to Germany in order to be there for the German grand prix on the 24th for which we now have tickets. We will then continue on to Prague for the Czech Out party and then Poland for the 26th where we'll be staying with Rich's cousin in Krakow. Beyond this, our plan was to travel on to Kiev to visit Chernobyl. However, we have found out that due to some local government issues at the moment this is not possible for the time being. Maps from the Ukraine onwards have been bought so beyond Krakow we will go wherever the wind takes us.
Finally, Dom kindly sorted out the art work for our car. The boy is a genius with photoshop and made most of our sponsorship logos from scratch.
We're having the car stickered up on Friday so will get pictures up of the finished product then.
Our final preparations are going to kick off next week. Keep checking back as from Thursday onwards we'll keep this blog bang up to date with our latest endeavours.
xx
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