Oruro to La Paz 220km

 

 

It is a dead straight road from Oruro to La Paz where we have a change of driver (Hugo departing and Barbara joining) and a well earned rest day. The only thing that could possibly go wrong was getting caught in the morning traffic of Oruro, so we agreed wheels would roll at 07:30. We are very much a zero blame team but the net result was finally departing at 08:30 right into the most savage traffic jam Oruro could throw at us. Waze lead us straight up closed roads and it took us over an hour to get out of the city. Not what we planned but we would undoubtedly have a very easy run into La Paz, after all its dead straight duel carriageway.

It was all going swimmingly until the police decided that we had been speeding. The national speedlimit in Bolivia is 80km/h and we were 'clocked' at doing 100km/h. They were perfectly charming but insisted this involved a fine of 200B (about £30), on the spot, no receipts. I felt the easiest thing was to pay, particularly since we had definitely been doing more than 100km/h. When they tried the same trick with Chris it wasn't so successful. When he asked them to prove how a car designed in 1909 could possibly be doing 100km/h even the Bolivian police had to accept defeat and waved him on.

Dramas were by not means over. Nigel's Lagonda is still not right and it is defeating even the best brains in the business. Why has he no tick-over, why does the car run well on the open road and like a bag of nails in town, why are his plugs becoming so black? We are running out of ideas but lets get to our AirBnB and work through the problem.

 

Before our turn off from the main road we were diverted into a massive jam of vehicles all seaking to get around the problem. It was chaos and in the process Nigel damaged his exhaust, just one more challenge to add to his already extensive list! The new route took us around the back streets, then down a near vertical track and then over some enormous speed bumbs which bottomed the Lagondas. Finally we arrived to our best AirBnB where we were met by the delightful Isabell our hostess.

Nigel and David, with occassional input from myself and Chris, set to solving the mystery of the poorly perfoming Lagonda. The investigation started by comparing both Lagondas, which should be identical. We emptied the cars and removed the floors. Immediately you could see that Ham's car has a large and effective heat shield between the exhaust pipe and the fuel pumps whilst Nigel's didn't. The heat from the exhaust whilst travelling on the open road was escaping, whilst in traffic or stationary it went straight up into the fuel system. The result, fuel vapourisation! Finally we thought that we knew what the problem was and set about making a 'bush fix'; a piece of plywood, cut to size and covered in aluminium foil, positioned between the exhaust and the fuel pumps/ filters, was the solution with clean fuel filters just as a belt and braces. Whilst this was being worked on, the ever inquisitive Chris, asked what the air vent on the fuel tank was for. When David explained and felt the small vent he discovered that the small valve (20p from any cycle shop!) was still in the pipe. ie as the fuel was being consumed in the engine no air was entering the tank, creating a vacuum and undoubtedly resulted in fuel starvation and fouled plugs. We remain firmly a no blame culture! The challenge now does seem to be sorted. How brilliant is that, all hands to the problem and now problem solved (fingers crossed!). Nigel is claiming sabotage. Really?

Tomorrow is a well deserved rest day when we will have to replot our course. Tonight, after Barbara's excellent cottage pie, we were told by Isabell's son that the border to Puno has only just reopened after 60 days and they have let 210 trucks through today. We think the possibility of the border prioritising 3 vintage cars is the square root of zero! We have a day to figure out the next bit of this adventure but for now everything is good!.