Tell Us Pre Trip Problems

[**Discovery300Tdi**]

We all know that when we have a trip planed we go over and over and over our beloved landys to make sure there ready to go. But always the night before SOMETHING goes wrong

With the otways trip just around the corner here in Victoria i'm just waiting for something to happen, but hope it wont.

Lets all share our stories on what went wrong the night before you had to leave on a trip & did you get it fixed in time.

cheers simo.

[dmdigital]

I don't know about the night before, but I've now got 6 weeks left to prepare for a 3 month holiday and it won't stop raining. Can't work on the car as its out doors and no cover, can't do anything to the Kamper either for the same reasons. Lost 3 days of the long weekend last weekend and this weekend looks like being another waste. Had over 35mm of ran this morning between 0900 and 1030.

[JamesH]

Well it is not the night before either but I wrote off (economically) my Defender in February and what with insurance, buying the wreck, having panel beater find second hand parts where possible, the panel beater taking forever, and then realising I needed a new set of tyres and wheel allignment it was actually 4 months later, 2 days before I was supposed to leave on a big trip to the NT that I finally got it over the pits.

It was passing with flying colours and the inspectors were actually working with me to get it through hearing my desperation. When they were underneath and told me the car was in great nick. They thought the "Anthing Else Is Crap" sticker from AULRO was hilarious. All good until the very end....

They looked at the seatbelts and saw the nicks where it had been slammed in the door over the years and GONG! Immediate fail. They apologised but there was no giving ground on seatbelts. I was gutted.

They told me they would get all the paperwork sorted as a pass and keep it in the office. I was to go get the seatbelt rolls replaced and race back to show them before they knocked off at 3pm and bingo they'd sign off and give me the plates.

I raced to some place out in Welshpool and begged the seatbelt people to drop everything and do my belts to get back to the pits. Job done back to the pits I race in time for an inspection. Out a dude came and looked at the belts, I must have had the car idling or something becasue the indicators were still going EXCEPT one of the side indicators which had passed the test just 4 hours before....

"I didn't see that but go get the globe replaced right now"
"Yes Sir"

Next day I pack everything in for my 4 week 9000km trip, day after at 4am off I go. The car had one about 30 km since being rebuilt. It was pretty tense but she never missed a beat and hasn't since really.

Man I hate pitting a car as much as I hate pranging it into a giant rock, well almost as much.