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New Look!
I have nothing against the “Ultraviolet” theme I’ve been using for years.
But it’s not phone-friendly :-(
So now you get “Blogstream”.
2 Strikes, no more.
Back in December 2017 I had Tanya’s Golf’s turbo overhauled at Turbo Repair Master in Ndabeni. All good, car went well, things were good for almost a year, and then Tanya phoned from Paradise Motors — oil all over the place, chrismas lights on the dash (fortunately the Golf tells you when things go wrong, soon enough to prevent expensive damage).
Had the Golf flatbedded to Alan Edwards, they said it was the turbo feed pipe, had the car flatbedded to Turbo Repair Master, I bought a new pipe (R1098) and they fitted it, R850 labour. Chalked it up to wear and tear.
Except not that long afterwards, Tanya phones me from work, oil all over the place, christmas lights on the dash… so I scheme maybe Turbo Repair Master stuffed it up when they replaced the pipe, lemme do it myself. Bought another new pipe (R1121, inflation), fitted it.
And not that long afterwards… yea, same story, different place. This time it was on Hospital Bend. By now I had figured out that these pipes can be brazed for a lot less than the cost of a new one (Hosefit are the people to speak to) so that’s what I did — had the one from the previous time brazed, fitted it, took the other one out, had that brazed and kept it for a spare.
But by now of course I was asking questions. The answer: the turbo oil line bracket in the picture above is rather important. And somewhere along the way the guys at Turbo Repair Master had not bothered to refit it. That leads to strain on the banjo, which causes a crack, oil all over the place, christmas lights…
OK, live and learn.
So here we are in November 2021 and I figure it’s time to overhaul the turbo in my Golf. Go on over to Turbo Repair Master, offer to do the R&R myself, ask for a quote on the turbo work only. Fellow there makes me a good price (2k less than in 2017) for the whole job. I tell him about the saga with Tanya’s car, point out the bracket to him… get the car back… check… not only is the bracket missing in action, the feed pipe is bent way out of line.
Something is wrong here.
As far as I can tell the fellow didn’t have the patience to wiggle the pipe into place. no, he applied brute force. The pipe is wrecked. Fscking butcher.
Fortunately I still had the spare.
So after trekking back out to Ndabeni to give the owner a heads-up on this fuck-wittery (and to get my bracket back) I fitted the old pipe and both brackets (there’s also one behind the engine) and all is well.
But I shall not allow Turbo Repair Master to wrench on a car of mine again.
Postal Service ain’t what it used to be
When my mother was in Europe back in the eighties, she exchanged air-mail letters with ny father back home, maybe five or six in the four weeks she was there. Two, three day service, basically.
My landlord Sergey in Ljubljana gave me a post card to send home. I have it to him on the 4th of October. OK, he only mailed it later, because the cancellation is dated the 14th of October.
It arrived here today.
Malica at Gostilna Gezove Jame
“Malica” translates to “brunch”. Gostilna Gezove Jame‘s special on the day Paul dragged us there was pasulj, a Serbian bean soup with smoked sausage. Really good, and extremely affordable.
Whether you pay 1 Euro for your 50:50 wine and sparkling water spritzer, or whether you buy a liter bottle each wine and sparkling water, it works out to a Euro a spritzer :-) Beer sells for maybe a Euro, maybe €1.09 in the supermarket, so €2.20 is fair. And €5.90 for a large bowl of soup/stew with bread on the side is not bad at all.
You also get a free chaser each — or maybe that was just Paul’s good looks.
Rustic Homes and Gardens
Our little place is never going to feature on Instagram.
But I finished the improvised stair handhold (the beams with the angled cuts are salvaged from when we increased head clearance last time we were here). Some sanding required.
This little bugger caused us a lot of pain. Leaked into the main house, messed up the floor and some of the skirting board, caused some swelling in the chipboard of one of our cheap cupboards, hella mess.
Hopefully it won’t happen again… but it will.
OK, our Instagram claim to fame will be the sunsets, not the interior decorating.
First-World Problems
Slovenia has a lot to be said for it. No loadshedding, no long queues at the traffic department…
However.
Last time we were here the internet (Telemach starter pack with four-day free trial, throw away, buy another starter pack) worked fine. But since then they changed something.
Things that work better in South Africa: the internet and electronic banking.
Grendel.si
A long time ago, Bob Hoover (no, not that one) needed a way to get home after delivering a car, and negotiations happened, and he bought a VW Microbus (sight unseen) with the idea of fixing it up and driving it home.
Things went badly downhill from there*.
But he ended up driving it home**.
What feels like a long time ago, we bought a T4 kombi in Slovenia, abused it hauling bricks and tiles and planks and stuff from Varaždin and other places, drove it to Prague and back and then to Budapest and back (7l/100km all the way!) and parked it for a few months at the end of that holiday. Said few months turned into two years and quite a bit of change. Armed with temporary plates and jumper leads, we went to get it… and it started up immediately, no jumpers needed.
Things went badly downhill from there.
You see, Bob’s Grendel had a badly seized back brake drum after being parked in a field for a number of years. He had a hella time getting that sorted out.
Our Grendel had developed a bad case of completely rusted and seized back brake disks while being parked in a dry barn for a couple years. I have no idea why. What I do know is it took a rather long pipe and some delicate (hah! Surely I jest) hammer-and-chisel just to get the wheelnuts off, and a lot more hammer work to remove the calipers.
And the driver’s side (this is Europe), up against the wall where a dog couldn’t piss on it even, was worse. So that wasn’t it. Also the resident dog is female. And the barn was locked.
So I got onto the interwebs and found a “local” website, being autodoc.si — .si is Slovenia, right? Nope, they’re in Germany and the parts get dispatched from Poland. My order placed on the fifth eventually landed on the twelfth. The internet is a lie.
Anyway, parts arrived — calipers, disks and pads — for a total of 149.81 Euro (buying new calipers was easier than buying a caliper windback tool or doing it with a G-clamp and a vice grip, both of which I would have had to buy in any case).
Fitted those, much swearing and abuse of tools specifically bought to solve the problem at hand (six point sockets and a breaker bar) and I had the new brakes fitted, and the kombi was on the road.
Unlike Bob’s tale, our story takes a downhill turn from here. We drove back to Ljutomer and left the kombi with Boštjan Kralj at the local (Renault) service station. Problem is by now we had less than a week left in the country, and in addition to re-doing the front brakes and replacing the exhaust pipe, they also reckoned that we would need to replace all the metal brake pipe lines under the chassis. All stuff that I can do, easily, but by now I had learned that parts take a week to 10 days to arrive, this was Monday, and our tickets were for Friday.
Combine that with also needing a place to park the kombi*** until Pieter returns next year (assuming no further Covid crazy) and it made sense to sell the kombi to one of the dudes at the garage. He got a damn good deal out of it, but there’s going to be a lot of soaking stuff in WD-40 and maybe even applying the blue-tip wrench here and there.
It was good while it lasted. Farewell, PartyBus.
* Go here, fast forward to page 212, spend a few days reading. Or read all of it. Bob wrote well.
** And the fsck up to Alaska the next year. It’s all in the Sermons. Go. Read.
***There happens to be one garage for sale in Ljutomer. They want 6000 Euro. That’s about 2000 Euro more than it’s worth, i.e. not a good investment.
Artificial Dumbfsckery
The good: Here I am in Slovenia after an absence of more than two years. Yay!
The unexplicable: Rather than not doing anything, Facebook’s script kiddies wrote code to extract my IP address, feed it through a database to determine my location, and decided to translate my notifications to Slovenian, undoubtedly to show me and the world how brilliant they are.
Look dudes, dropping R10k on a return ticket to Ljubljana does not make one suddenly speak Slovenian.
Boo.