Guro and Caroline Blog

Amy!!!

By the second visit to the carmart in sydney, we considered ourselves proffesional cardealers and decided we didn't need the hostel mechanic. Never met him anyway.
And when seeing Amy, it was love at first sight! She is green/blue (this has been an issue of some debate) and long and wide and so so pretty. Ford Falcon stasjonwagon as you would expect in the backpacker world. She came with many great accessories as well - tent (now known as Ben), cloth hangers, mattress, linen (for some reason known as Manchester in Oz...) and a fantastic blue set of dishes and cutlery. We bargained with the danish couple that used to own her and finally paid them 1800 aussie dollars.
Amy was then left to rest for a day whilst we made sure that Spanna and Seb got it on :)
Saturday 13th of Jan arrived with lots of gorgeous sun and we set of in our new wonder vehicle. She got fed and purred happily as she took us all the way to the blue mountains. We saw the sites (see other part of blog) and all were merry. We did notice a faint petrol smell, but didn't worry. Until the smell got a lot more obvious after a very bumpy road... Caroline had a quick look under Amys belly and found a pool of petrol. Ups we thought. As it was sunday, we drove her very carefully back to the camping place we had just left, and the next morning we took her to hospital. We talked to mechaninc I who said go to mechanic II up the road, he might have the part you need (just a little o-ring, won't cost you much at all). Mechanic II was a bit more concerned (and he did actually look under Amy), and said -oooooh, ayayayay.... Think you'll need a new central piece. But I can get you one of them this afternoon, will cost you about 180$ + 40 for fitting it. Yes, you'll be fine just going up the road to the visitors centre. See you at 2pm!
Relieved we headed off, telling Amy she was going to be fine. We saw a film about the Blue mountains, and got back to Amy. But she didn't start. Great we thought, knew we should never have trusted a mechaninc. Called mechanic II who said ooooooh, ayayayay.... Sounds like the fuel pump. Just get her here and we'll see what we can do. So we paised ourselves for getting roadcover and got a hold of mechanic III that works for RACV (oz version of AAA/NAF). He said - backpackers are you? buying cheap cars? Almost like he'd seen our kind before... He called the towman and we got ourselves to mechanic II. 3 hours and 373$ later, Amy got the all clear. Happy as larries we headed off. To the end of Megalong Valley, which is about as far away from civilisation you can get in the Blue Mountains. Found a fantastic camping site, and made the housesitting deal with Ray. Very kindly he even offered to get us food for the next few days, but having Amy, we said no. After he left Tuesday morning we made a shopping list and went back down to Amy to drive the hour back to civilisation. And Amy wouldn't start. She sounded exactely like she had done the previous day. After fighting back the tears of despair, we headed back to Rays house to call the garage. To which we didn't have the phone number. We couldn't find the number for directory enquiries either, so ended up calling Else, who then ran around a shopping centre asking random people for the phone number to directory enquiries... Eventually got a hold of mechanic II and with somewhat tension in her voice Caroline explained the situation. He asked where we were, and when he realised we were too far away to get towed, and that we would try to force him to come out and see us, he finally gave in. Eeeeehhh, we did notice a bad connection to the fuelpump when we put in the new one yesterday. If open this and look under that, you'll find a plugg. Try unlugging and replugging it.
So we did. And Amy purred like a kitten!
After this, she has been fantastic. She has now taken us all the way to Melbourne, so we are again full of hope!

posted by Guro @ 03:34