The day the Beast became the Bastard

On our way down to Devon to stay with family for Christmas the Beast threw a tantrum 90 minutes into our journey. Smoke started belching out the exhaust, we lost power and a gut-wrenching grinding sound started emanating from the engine, leaving us stranded on the side of the highway for about 5 hours while we waited for a tow truck.

A piston needs to be replaced at a cost of over £2,000. The soul-destroying thing is this was its first “lengthy” journey since we got the car back from being serviced a month ago.

We had just spent an absolute fortune at a company that specialises in overland preparation, first getting them to service it to the point where it was reliable enough to handle a trans African trip, and once they had done this adding all the other gadgets.

I’m not going to mention their name just yet in case things turn around, but at the moment they refuse to accept any liability, saying it’s just really bad luck.

We’ve been told that the cause of the problem was a tiny piece of rubber that got into a pipe preventing oil from getting to the piston. Overheating etc ensued. Why it happened a month after this service and not before is clearly a mystery and just one of life’s little coincidences. Maybe I’m just being bitter, but ultimately we paid a fortune to get a reliable car and we got back a car that broke down within a month and I would expect them to fix it at their own expense. I would be interested to hear anybody’s thoughts on this.

They also seem to have lost the extension to the ladder for our roof top tent.

On a positive note, I can’t thank the RAC enough for their professionalism. These guys work their arses off over Christmas and I would especially like to thank Tony for all his help.

More about the Beast / Bastard to follow…

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