Today we got up late not feeling too fresh and decided to try and get the grinding noise on the drivetrain looked at. I asked the hostel staff for the nearest garage and they phoned their friend to come around to take us. This massive guy showed up called Ucha, who turned out to be a legend. I went in his pals car and he went with Bleddyn to take us to one of the most surreal places Ive ever been, it looked like a Robocop set and there were about 20 garages in this tiny ghetto place. After a couple of test drives it turned out it was the transfer box chain like I feared and there was no replacement available. The mechanic reckoned it would be alright though, just noisy. Well I made an explosion gesture and he said no. I have a horrible feeling the transfer box issue is at some point going to come back to bite us in the arse though. Another mechanic put the diagnostics on the Jimny to check for fault codes and when he showed me them on the screen they were in Russian so I whipped my iPhone out and used the word lens app to change it to English. This fella was completely blown away by word lens and he was saying you make with my phone so I downloaded it on his phone and then everyone else wanted it too. I should be on commission for word lens as I think every mechanic in Georgia has it now. Since Ucha noticed the clutch bite was high, they said theyd sort a clutch out for us cheap so we went ahead with that. Ive never seen a couple of mechanics change a clutch so fast in my life, they were amazing. Ucha was clearly well respected (or feared) as he was ordering people about and getting people to let us sit in their cars to save is standing etc. Also it turns out Ucha used to be a rally driver for Lada and was desperate to do something to our engine, so since the engine light was on for the catalytic convertor, he insisted on having the cat ripped out. On the way to the exhaust place (a fellas shed who according to Ucha was the best driver in Georgia he insane) Bleddyn went in another car. I asked Ucha where my friend was and he said why you want friend, you dont need friend now you have me HAHA, that was pretty scary. They get money for the scrap cat so they did it for free too. Our 0-60 time might even be under 30 seconds now. The exhaust man asked if we wanted sporty voice or normal voice from our exhaust haha I asked for maybe slightly sporty and he looked disappointed. Ucha wanted to put a 2 litre engine in it too ffs but I said we didnt have time.. I told him about the engine work I did on the Vx and he was all over it. For spending the day sorting us out we thought it was only fair to give him a bottle of our police bribe whisky which he was made up with haha. Real nice fella. Now were off for a Georgian thermal spa :)
Posted on: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 19:45:26 +0000
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