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DISCO3.CO.UK > Morocco Challenge 2007 News

Morocco – The bits I can remember…

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10forcash
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Joined: 09 Jun 2005
Location: In the naughty corner.... eligible for parole 2025
Posts: 13634

2007 Discovery 3 TDV6 HSE Manual Zermatt Silver

Morocco – The bits I can remember…

As the title says – apologies if dates, times, guilty parties names are wrong, this is how I remember it.

To the boats!

Pretty uneventful trip, RLD, Chris, Beaker and myself left ‘Poteen Central’ about 1100 on the 11th, got quite a few stares on the motorways- even some approving

‘s as well

. Got a text message from Vince asking if we could call in at Frogs Island to pick up a pair of rear shock’s for his 110, the gas assisted ones he’d fitted had broke as had the replacement ones

Saw JJ at Frogs, stole his LRO mag as there was a ‘guess who’s D3’ feature, bit pi$ $ed as the same hack had spent about 3 hours with me talking about modding D3’s and not a mention – still, that’s what editors are for I suppose. Rolled out of there after Chris had finished giving their workshop monkeys a ‘how-to’ session on fitting the ARB rear bumper into a filling station….. With one till working and a two-line queue inside the shop that couldn’t be seen from the pumps

Got to DG’s with time to spare, dished out stickers and dealt with some minor ‘detailing issues’ before leaving for the ferry port, more stares on the motorways (mainly from DG and Gazavich) then we entered the high-security part of the port, checked in and parked up behind team Iron… at that point Martin walked in, to dish out yet more stickers and take some photo’s, completely circumventing the port security measures! Finally, after being advised of a ‘delay due to planned maintenance’ (presumably planned when they found one of the engines was still in bits after being in dry dock for months) we boarded the boat – with hindsight, I should have heeded the warning signs at that point, what appeared to be a coach party in fancy dress was in reality a horde of chav’s from the north-east… This was confirmed when the ‘mini-cruise to Bilbao’ was announced over the PA.
So now the race was on…..
Find your bunk, drop your bags and then find the bar before the chav’s invaded it. To be fair, the cabins were OK, although I’d have been happy with a downgrade to steerage if it meant I could get away from the sound of Gazavich trying to explain why his toilet was blocked with puke and poo…..
After a few hours of chav-watching and stella drinking, even the ‘P&O players’ began to look OK (if a little orange) Occasionally, Chris would whisper across the bar “will ya look at the snatch on that one!” – well, for Chris – it was a whisper. The boat had yet to leave. Eventually, we did leave, the only benefit was that some of the chav’ and the welsh grannies involved in the knit-a-thon left he bar to puke up, the disadvantage was that the remaining chav’s crowded the bar seemingly convinced there was about to be a snakebite drought… I think it was at this point that the resident security took an interest in us – either that or they had won the ‘Max & Paddy lookalike’ contest. Not entirely sure if they were here to keep us from the chav’s or the chav’s from us, anyway, they must have appreciated the attention we gave them ‘cos they told all their mates about us on their radio’s. The night wore on… and on… and on… one of the few highlights was being challenged to a drinking contest by a pi$ $ed-up wannabe chav, six triple gins(and £74) later, he was doing swastika’s to the toilet, returning several minutes later with vomit down his shirt to buy me a drink. Night turned into day, Max & Paddy got bored and the bars eventually closed – time for bed!
Woke up at beer-o’clock, found the others in and around the bar – some had actually been eating!! The chav’s looked even worse in the daylight. Spent most of the day contemplating how long it would be before security turned up once the planned game of ‘wheelchair skittles’ got underway, went and shouted out random numbers during the bingo instead claiming to suffer from numerical tourettes when challenged by the staff. Time for a few more stella’s before we docked.
After an eternity on the burberry prison ship, we eventually disembarked splitting into two convoys, the D3’s & 110’s went hooning into the distance (AKA the Hammond route) whilst Team Iron, BCB and RLD took the ‘May’ route. So far the plan was working….
Having suffered catastrophic front diff failure a week before we were due to depart (Big

to Nick at Yeovil LR for achieving something the combined might of my local dealers, LRA, LRCS and a few other random LR contacts couldn’t – a front diff was sent by special courier, arriving at my dealers at 1545 on Friday, the dealer didn’t know it was coming… Cheers mate!

) I was a bit sensitive to vibrations and noises out of the ordinary, just outside Madrid, something didn’t feel quite right….. moving in slow traffic in the tunnels I could hear something that sounded like a stone rubbing against a brake disc, I was worse on corners… once out of the tunnels it seemed to go away so I assumed it was just a stone. About 40Km’s later, things felt a bit wobbly in corners so the call for a stop went out on the comms. The next junction was for Dos Barrios and approaching it I could see what looked like a Tapas Bar – that’ll do!
Off we came and parked in front of the Los Arcos Hotel – to the total disinterest of the locals, a quick temperature check of the wheels confirmed that there was a problem with the left rear wheel. Jacking it up allowed the wheel to be moved side-to-side significantly, in desperation we tried to re-torque the hub nut, cue a call to LRA.
So, to recap there we were, in the middle of Spain on a Friday afternoon with a failed wheel bearing, a holiday weekend ahead of us and the earliest a dealers would be able to look at it would be 0900 on Monday, no idea if it would be fixed on Monday, if parts would be available or even if the dealers would have time to do it, a quick look on GTR revealed it to be a bit more complicated than I would like for a roadside / self-help job so there was only one thing to do….. Time for a beer.
After a meal and a couple of beers, the other vehicles (except for the other half of Team Poteen) rejoined the Hammond route heading for Algeciras whilst we booked into a couple of rooms and resigned ourselves to a weekend climbing the walls. I reality, we had a great time, a 24 hour bar and the best seafood and steaks you could wish for – the food was so good I was persuaded to have a bit myself

interspersed with more San Miguel and comedy moments you couldn’t make up (pink hammer time & soldiers playing table football with loaded weapons comes to mind). Anyway, as sure as tick follows tock, Monday morning arrived, the recovery truck turned up at the booked time

and took us back up to Aranjuez, as we pulled up outside the dealers, things looked worse than you could imagine. The ‘Dealers’ was a small back-street garage where the owner was also the salesman, workshop manager and head technician. The walls were covered in the required LR special tools none of which appeared to have been used- ever. Fortunately we’d considered this scenario and downloaded the workshop instructions from GTR, whilst Chris & myself attempted to teach the little swarthy sweating bloke basic English, we pointed to the GTR document on the PC screen in the car, the little bloke sweated a bit more then laughed….. Was that good? Meanwhile Beaker set up his Archos to record the triumph / disaster and Tim got the Poteen out, this could be a long day. Eventually LRA rang me and explained the situation (the little sweating bloke was one side of the workshop on his phone to LRA, I was on the other side, also talking to LRA, It seems funny now! He was going to strip the wheel down to confirm what we already knew then LRA would ring me to explain the options. At one point the little sweaty bloke had to get two handlamps as the four of us in close formation round him made it impossible for him to see what he was doing, he sweated some more, broke a knuckle bar, made a few phone calls and eventually LRA rang me. The wheelbearing was in Madrid but the wheel hub was also damaged, this wouldn’t be in Madrid until 1600, Chris volunteered to go to Madrid to collect the parts, LRA said they would need authorisation for this to happen as it wasn’t the ‘usual way of doing things’ I pointed out this was an ‘unusual situation’, they said they’d call me back with the address the parts would be at….. They didn’t. At 1400 the garage closed for lunch until 1600, at 1500 LRA still hadn’t responded to my three calls with regard to getting the parts from Madrid to Aranjuez. Time for a command decision – get a taxi to Madrid, but from where? In the two hours we’d been sat outside the garage (Chris &Tim had gone off in search of beer supplies for Morocco) I’d not once seen a taxi go past. Over the road was a filling station, I finally persuaded them to ring a taxi to take me to the address the garage owner had given me as he left for lunch. As we entered Madrid the taxi driver (the only one in Spain to stick o the speed limits!) told me in broken English “Madrid, they all drive like the blind”…. Great.
More fun at the Dealers in Madrid, no-one spoke English there either and no amount of pointing or gesticulating to the rear wheel of a D3 in the showroom was helping, eventually I persuaded them to ring the garage in AranJuez, this seemed to help – the wheel bearing was placed on the counter but the wheel hub still hadn’t arrived….. 30 mins later, it was brought in by what can only be described as a tub of grease on legs; still, I think it was the first time I’d smiled all day! Back in the taxi and forty minutes later I’m thrusting the two boxes at the sweaty little bloke… Watching him put it all back together was ‘interesting’, he completely shunned the tools especially developed for the job, preferring to use a grinder, several progressively larger hammers, impact sockets, bits of wood and copious quantities of grease and sweat… still, it all worked and everything went back together with no bits left over (I checked) With a flourish, he dusted off his torque wrench and set the hub nut loading, staked the nut in place, refitted the roadwheel and then let himself down by getting in the passenger seat to roadtest it!
I went on the roadtest with him – still sweating despite the aircon being set to ‘artic’ (although several wetwipes managed to get the moisture off the gearlever as he was using his left hand to wipe his brow with) Lets just say that it was ‘interesting’…. So that was it! Back on the road!! Only one thing to do now –back to Los Arcos for a beer! We bid farewell to our sweaty friend (who to be fair did an excellent job and dropped everything else to help us – or maybe to get rid of us – and to LRA for pulling it all together, they constantly rang us to check on progress on the Monday afternoon and rang again on the Tuesday to check everything was OK. If you ever get stuck around southern Madrid, get yourself to the Dealers in AranJuez – top bloke!!) Once back at Los Arcos we had a relaxing couple of hours before taking a steady drive down to Algeciras with a few Jetboil stops on the way arriving in time for the 0630 ferry, the advantage or arriving that early is that most of the ticket touts are still asleep (mainly outside the terminal) and there isn’t a queue at the ticket booth. The disadvantage is that the clock in the vehicles were still at British time so we were 15 minutes too late for the 0630 ferry….. So time for a beer.
Christ, we’re still in Europe – more to come once my memory has been jogged by Senor Miguel

If you’re wondering where my supporting photo’s are, I managed to lose my camera on the chav-boat….

Hopefully the rest of Team Poteen will have some supporting evidence

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Wed Oct 31 2007 7:29pm

Gareth
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Joined: 07 Dec 2004
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2005 Discovery 3 TDV6 HSE Auto Zambezi Silver

I thought you'd been a bit quiet

Quote:
After a few hours of chav-watching and stella drinking, even the ‘P&O players’ began to look OK

Christ, you were

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Wed Oct 31 2007 8:18pm

DSL

Joined: 11 May 2006
Location: In the Dog House!
Posts: 9169

2006 Discovery 3 TDV6 S Auto Buckingham Blue

Good to hear from you, thought you might have been traded for some camels! Looking forward to the next episode, this has been great to keep me in the back of the house with all lights off in the front just in case any little trick or treaters are out there!

Honda Dog U better DUCK!!!!!

Wed Oct 31 2007 8:41pm

DG

Joined: 12 Dec 2005
Location: The Gaff !
Posts: 13040

2006 Discovery 3 TDV6 S Auto Zambezi Silver

Click image to enlarge

After 15 pints they looked really good

.

I've been accused of vulgarity. I say that's bullshit

Last edited by DG on Wed Oct 31 2007 9:00pm; edited 1 time in total

Wed Oct 31 2007 8:52pm

Gareth
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Joined: 07 Dec 2004
Location: Bob the Builders 'ere
Posts: 9372

Youv'e photo-shopped that havent you

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Wed Oct 31 2007 8:53pm

Slimer
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Joined: 06 Jan 2005
Location: Nanny State
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2008 Discovery 3 TDV6 SE Manual Chawton White

Took me a while the work out they were he Piano Players they kept going on about

Nuke 'em! Nuke 'em all!

Wed Oct 31 2007 8:53pm

DG

Joined: 12 Dec 2005
Location: The Gaff !
Posts: 13040

Gareth wrote:
Youv'e photo-shopped that havent you

OK you got me

....I put in the curly headed blonde with the mullet ...purely to maintain the chav value of course

.

I've been accused of vulgarity. I say that's bullshit

Wed Oct 31 2007 8:58pm

NoDo$h

Joined: 02 May 2006
Location: Decapod 10
Posts: 5493

2006 Discovery 3 TDV6 SE Auto Cairns Blue

Superb account Mr Ten. I would have posted my thanks for the chuckles sooner, but it took a while to get the wine out of the laptop keyboard.

Genius mate, pure genius.

Don't Panic! Everything will be fine.... inflation is only ~~2.5%~~ ~~3.0%~~ 3.3% and the flying pigs are carbon neutral

Wed Oct 31 2007 10:00pm

tony bennett

Joined: 28 Jul 2005
Location: South West
Posts: 439

2005 Discovery 3 TDV6 SE Auto Zambezi Silver

A jolly good read mr 10 and nice to know you are ok. regards
tony
05 "Battlestar Galactica"

Wed Oct 31 2007 10:28pm

christyler

Joined: 31 Dec 2005
Location: Cork, Ireland
Posts: 899

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