Falcon hits the road!

Today is another good day......

The Falcon left the workshop at 3pm today for her first drive in 2 years down some of the leafy back roads in Karen, Nairobi and, apart from the backdraft of fumes into the open rear, she purred along happily as a Samboy (are we allowed to say that in this modern world we inhabit?).

DIFFERENTIALS

The past week has been spent ensuring that the new pegging setup within the differentials remained on spec and then a nerve-wracked few hours fitting the casings, connecting the half-shafts into the diffs, connecting the locking dogs on the electric lockers, and sealing the hardened metal casings. The fact that Mungai put the Front Diff onto the Rear was our only mishap......it took another day to correct and redo. !!

Once installed happily, telephone calls were made to the UK and then around Nairobi to ensure we got the correct oils, particularly for the Front Limited Slip Diff (LSD) which needs its own special synthetic lube apparently. At $30 per litre it had better be good!

There was a problem disengaging the Central Diff locker, it was stuck !! We know that it operates from air pumped from the engine through a rubber tube and on closer inspection we found that the rubber tube had a series of holes in it.....”Panya” declared Simon which is KiSwahili for “rodent”! The tube was replaced and bingo the locker released itself.

ELECTRICS

Batteries were hooked up, fuel pumps restarted, rear tail lights installed.....then we looked again at the winches.

Warn Winch

We took off the covers and found things were in quite a state of disrepair. The winch cables have become worn and untwisted. In addition the armature grooves against which the motor brushes rub have been worn completely smooth. Enquiries have been made here in Kenya asking for help and to begin with I was told there was someone locally who might be able to replace the armature and the brushes. The I turned to other RCHarge competitors who are knowledgeable about these sort of things and in the Spirit of the Charge are always willing to help out. Their advice is that there is little point in replacing the armature on its own, which means the whole motor is caput!

My next stop was to contact Gigglepin Winches in the UK who have asked for photos of the motor output shaft to be sent. They said that we may be lucky but Warn changed the splines set up on new designs regularly and there may not be available spare motors for what is quite an old model. Even if available, Warn apparently price these things so that a new winch is a more economic choice. Photos sent, lets see what comes back.

Chinese Winch

Three years ago we used a local mechanic, Lionel, who sold us an inexpensive new winch from China, promising that it would do the job well enough. Opening this one up resulted in even our Kenyan mechanics raising their eyes skywards as the gear mechanism is jammed and in addition we can see that one of the brushes has snapped and so now we need a new set as they cannot be repaired! The German knows Lionel quite well so we will send him on a diplomatic mission to see if any spares exist.

Summary - Warn winch, old and broken. May not ever work again! Chinese winch, less old, also broken......oh dear.

BODYWORK

David the Welder has continued “slowly” to finish off the rear piping roll cage and opening up the last of the wheel arches to prevent the tyres rubbing against the bodywork. I have asked the yard to stop fiddling with minor issues and get the car onto the road for testing.....there are a few more cosmetic things to finalise but weeks 7 - 5 will be spent largely putting the Falcon into tough situations to test her engine, driveline and suspension properly with at least 4 weeks left to repair any nasty breakages.

Personally I am thrilled to see the Falcon back on her boots, trundling down the Nairobi streets. She never fails to turn heads, literally !!