The car is a 21 year old, left hand drive, Renault 5 automatic. We have to take a left hand drive car because The Gambia bans the import of right hand drive cars. No problem if you're from our neighbouring European countries, but a little difficult in the UK as they are as scarce as rocking horse manure. The recommendation is to take a diesel, manual model, but ours is an automatic, petrol job. The rules also state that the car should cost no more than £100 and we should only spend £15 on essential repairs before leaving. We all know rules are made for breaking, and we've broken the first two rules already!! After several weeks looking we bought the car on ebay for £420 and we've spent about £100 on doing essential maintenance. The good news is that it has an mot until January 2009 so we'll be long gone before it needs another.
The drive home was uneventful, though it felt a bit twitchy on uneven roads. Anyway, first it had a good clean, as it looked like it had been used to carry animals and feed. Then the twitchiness had to be sorted, so we called on the services of Richard Long at Impact Motorcare, Pool-in-Wharfedale (0113 284 3034). He did the tracking and put a new track rod end on with no improvement. We then discovered it had been in a shunt and the off-side front wheel was 2 cm behind the near side wheel. Everything attaches to the front sub-frame which had been pushed back in the accident. Fortunately, it was not damaged beyond repair, and we reasoned an equal on opposite force would rectify it. Then followed a highly technical operation to straighten it out. Tied a chain round the offending side of the sub-frame, fixed it to a stout pillar and reversed at speed pulling the sub-frame square again. Result, car now drives like a dream. Thanks Richard.
Next we found that we were missing a serious component. No stereo. Can't possibly travel 4,000 miles with only each other for company. Twenty quid found us a nice CD player at a car boot sale. Hooked it all up and switched it on. Nothing save a squeak from one rear speaker! 10 minutes of fiddling got that to work then attacked the other rear speaker. No wires here, so another 10 minutes of fiddling to get that working. Still nothing from the front end, so after checking and re-checking all the wiring decided the problem must be the door speakers. Off came the door panels to find that there were no speakers, and never had been. We know it's a cheap car chaps, but come on! Installed two new speakers which work perfectly, so now we're ready to rock'n'roll.
It's going to be hot in the Sahara so we next looked at the cooling system. A back flush of the radiator and engine block proved that it was mainly being cooled by rust, and the pipe to the expansion tank was completely blocked. Thoroughly cleaned out and with fresh antifreeze we are now fully confident our little Gallic charmer will carry us all the way.
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