Safari Rallyt; Restday rumblings.

Car No. 36 Shaheed Wissanji
The most recent problem with the BMW 2002 is that it has a leaking head gasket. A gap has appeared between two cylinders. With no spare, the crew were puzzling over what to do when a Mini enthusiast came up with a suggestion. He said that when that used to happen on a BMC A-series engine and they didn´t have a new gasket, they used to place a piece of welding wire where the gap was and then tighten the head down. This is the solution now being tried on the BMW .

Car No. 56 Rob Garnsworthy
The Ford Falcon is the biggest car on the rally - and has the biggest list of woes. On the first day, the suspension needed almost a full re-build and the local mechanics servicing the car contrived to raise the whole car by several centimetres. In the last twenty-four hours alone, the list of problems encompasses a broken exhaust bracket, a sheared brake line, a broken rear leaf spring and a snapped suspension ball joint. The Australian crew, familiar with rough roads in the Australian outback, reckon that these are the roughest roads they have encountered. There are positive things in that the Falcon is undamaged - "We haven´t hit anything yet or been hit by anyone else" - and that the drive train has performed faultlessly. "The only thing is that we have only had three dinners in four evenings, we got in well after midnight on those occasions. What with that and the heat, we are losing weight fast."

Car No. 1 Bjorn Waldegård
In our previous report, we implied that it was the ball joint on the steering arm that broke in the 70km Suswa to Narok section, but in fact it was the ball joint on the bottom of the strut assembly where it joins the track control arm. Thus Waldegård´s drive of 15km through to the end of the stage is even more remarkable since the whole strut and wheel were waving loose. And the only thing retaining them was the steering joint that we thought was responsible.

Car No. 5 Ian Duncan
The Ford Mustang was eventually retrieved from the 131km Olkejuado section, repaired and arrived in the parc ferme at Amboseli on Wednesday evening. It currently sits in parc ferme and later today Duncan will make a decision on whether to re-start on Friday morning. He currently lies seventeenth overall having taken a full two hour, forty minute penalty on the section where he stopped.

Car No. 37 David & Sarah Rayner
Unfortunately the Ford Capri had further problems with its steering during Wednesday. It broke in the first section but they managed to fix it in the stage but it then broke again on the other side of the car in the third section. They finished all three sections and are working on the Capri today, determined to start again on Friday. They currently lie thirty fifth overall.

Car No.23 Paul Darrouzet
This Capri is the one with which Stig Blomqvist won the London-Sydney in 2000. Since then it´s been rebuilt and modified and it would appear that the front suspension are more based on standard components. The consequence is that in four days of rallying the car has suffered five separate breakages in this area. With spares now exhausted and the risk of a serious accident if another steering ball joint should break, the crew have reluctantly decided to retire.


Non-rally activities.
Today on the rest day there are a number of charitable activities taking place. Bjorn Waldegard, Stig Blomqvist, Joginder Singh and Ana Goni have each planted a tree at the Ol Tukai lodge as a symbol of conservation towards the Amboseli National Park. Also present were the District Commissioners of Loitokitok and Kajiado.

The Kenya Airways East African Safari Classic Rally 2007 has supplied medicines to the Fatima Health Centre in Amboseli for the Masai people. It has also donated $1500 to go towards school equipment at an orphanage school for children of AIDS victims in Marangu just inside Tanzania.

Jeremy Bennett/Tim Chesser and Neil McGrigor/ Charles Nicholson have been raising money for the Alive and Kicking project which donates sports equipment to schools in Africa. They will be visiting a couple of the local primary schools in Amboseli in their two Ford Escorts to hand over some of their donations. So far they have raised three and a half million KSh


» Pressrelease från Safarirallyt, www.eastafricansafarirally.com.

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