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I finally picked up my truck from Harare.
As most of you said: drop a new battery in, check oil and water, changed the one flat tyre and bob's your uncle. I worried too much - should have remembered it's a Toyota! We did Bulawayo / Harare (500km) before changing the oil and filters and then went into Bots through Francistown.
However, later in the trip we were on our way to Botswana via the Victoria Falls when I put a big hole in my radiator and it dumped all the coolant by the time I stopped. This was just north of Hwange town and at about 9pm. After hours of waiting I finally got a tow from a big truck and pulled into the Vic Falls Hotel at about 2 am. Talk about stressfull towing experience: I only had a short metal cable and a scabby bit of nylon rope and the ###### things kept breaking.
I got a bush mechanic in the Falls to look at it: the first obvious thing was the ###### great hole in the rad. We pulled that and sent it for brazing and pressure testing. It came back, we fitted it and turned over the engine - coolant was being spat from the gasket area at the rear of the engine. We went to Kasane looking for a new gasket - no go, so we sent the mechanic to Livingstone. He found it and fitted it. Now in the UK this usually means getting the head pressure tested first and then, assuming it's OK, getting it skimmed and a new set of head bolts but hey, this is africa so I went with it. After fitting the gasket and running the engine coolant started spilling out the exhaust - here I am a bit unclear as I wasn't standing over the guy at the time so I am unsure if he meant the exhaust pipe or the exhaust valve. Either way, he said it was "buggered" so I put the BB on a 3T truck and brought it home.
Cont.
As most of you said: drop a new battery in, check oil and water, changed the one flat tyre and bob's your uncle. I worried too much - should have remembered it's a Toyota! We did Bulawayo / Harare (500km) before changing the oil and filters and then went into Bots through Francistown.
However, later in the trip we were on our way to Botswana via the Victoria Falls when I put a big hole in my radiator and it dumped all the coolant by the time I stopped. This was just north of Hwange town and at about 9pm. After hours of waiting I finally got a tow from a big truck and pulled into the Vic Falls Hotel at about 2 am. Talk about stressfull towing experience: I only had a short metal cable and a scabby bit of nylon rope and the ###### things kept breaking.
I got a bush mechanic in the Falls to look at it: the first obvious thing was the ###### great hole in the rad. We pulled that and sent it for brazing and pressure testing. It came back, we fitted it and turned over the engine - coolant was being spat from the gasket area at the rear of the engine. We went to Kasane looking for a new gasket - no go, so we sent the mechanic to Livingstone. He found it and fitted it. Now in the UK this usually means getting the head pressure tested first and then, assuming it's OK, getting it skimmed and a new set of head bolts but hey, this is africa so I went with it. After fitting the gasket and running the engine coolant started spilling out the exhaust - here I am a bit unclear as I wasn't standing over the guy at the time so I am unsure if he meant the exhaust pipe or the exhaust valve. Either way, he said it was "buggered" so I put the BB on a 3T truck and brought it home.
Cont.
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