To Abant lake

The merry group of misfits left Yozgat at 7.30am to rejoin the rally at Abant lake. We took the direct route on the motorway missing all today's time trials taking us past Anakara.

The car struggled to start but eventually after considerable coxing fired up. The morning was cold but at least dry. That was not to last!

North of Ankara as we reached 1500m it began to snow and we were getting ice on the windscreen. This was not what I was expecting and certainly not what the car enjoyed. We had very limited power particularly on the hills and we are really having to stay on the ball to keep her in 4th. There is so much for the driver to have to think about without worrying about power on the hills. We struggled on all day accompanied loyally by car 39, Alex and Dom, who knew, as we were all off the official route we had no support if something went wrong. The car finally came to a halt in the carpark outside our hotel! Someone was looking after us.

Beer and a sandwich (must keep everything in perspective) was followed by a complete cleanup of the electrics. Cleaned the distributor, changed the rotor arm, removed the filter and found that the lead to the condensor was dirty and loose, cleaned all the spark plug cables (found that a couple were very loose) and ensured that no damp can get into them. All in all a pretty thorough job and she started first. We won't really know whether we have cured the problems until tomorrow but fingers crossed.

And then I spotted that the weld repairing the headlight brackets has snapped. I shall consult Peter Banham the evening. There's always something going on.

This time next week, fingers crossed, James and I will be in Paris. Just 3000km to go now. Mustn't count out chickens!

RHC

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