After 30 days of driving, fixing our car (and other team’s cars), long border crossings (up to 17 hours), night time drives without lights, wrong turns taking us across a river, and lots of incredible views and landscape, we have made it to Ulan Bataar.

And have made it home safely,…

Hello all! We’ve made it as far as Baie Mare in Romania and I write to you (very rapidly) from the Hope and Homes for Children project offices.

There are so many stories to tell and so much that has happened already - 10 countries, 5 days, several parties, a few running repairs and not enough sleep?! Hopefully we’ll manage to update you in more detail as we go along.

Overall though, we’re safe and well, and enjoying the experience. After today, we have far fewer time constraints (we were somewhat “optimistic” in our progress estimates…) so things should be a little more “relaxed”. Well, as relaxed as 12hrs a day in our Suzi can be?!

It remains just to say THANK YOU to all of you who have helped us get underway and contributed to our efforts. In particular it was very touching to have so many of you come to wish us well and send us off in style from Hyde Park. We had the largest cheer of the day by my reckoning… great work!

Abplas have generously sponsored us by providing the polycarbonate sheeting needed for constructing the panels of our boat tail, the aerodynamic device being attached to the back of our car. They are a plastics specialist with over 40 year experience in working with plastic materials. Visit their website at www.abplas.co.uk.

Maplin Electronics, one of the UK’s leading suppliers of electronics and electronic components, have kindly sponsored us by providing a 28W Solar Panel which we have fitted to the roof of our Suzuki. The solar panel will help us to maintain the charge of both our main and auxiliary batteries as we drive to Mongolia.

So here we are. Wednesday evening. We leave from Hyde Park on Saturday morning and the next few days are gathering a crazy momentum of their own.

Despite enormous amounts of hard work over the past few months (especially from young Bojan) there still seems to be an inordinate amount of stuff to do?!

Its hard to get all of this into a coherent form, but to give you a flavour of what remains…

Boj has spent the day today out with Mat and Bob from SJ-UK replacing the clutch cable, servicing the car and fitting the remaining parts to improve the fuel efficiency (SU carburettor, electronic fuel pump, replace wheel bearing). I’ve been winding up at work, handing over as much as possible to my (very tolerant) colleagues. In the meantime, we’ve confirmed a pair of sponsorship deals, organised insurance documents and re-planned the next two days at least twice ;)

Tomorrow we source and fit a new air filter, and get a set of spare tyres mounted while Bob fixes the throttle cable, we then re-tune the engine for optimal efficiency and head north to Hinkley. In Hinkley, Lawrence from Quinton Hazell will be handing over our spares kit, and it is quite a kit! In the meantime, we collect the boat-tail parts from Terry at Abplas, identify some handy russian and/or mongolian slogans for the car and finalise arrangements with Viking Signs for the vehicle livery.

On friday morning we’ll be printing, cutting and applying the livery in Grantham (Lincolnshire) before heading back to London, collecting insurance documents, picking up stationery donations from Imperial and then packing the car. In the meantime, we’ll have built the boat-tail, sorted out the tools to take, cleared up Branko’s garage, compiled all the necessary documentation, distributed information to friends and family, changed money (especially to dollars!), done laundry and generally put our lives in order.

Phewph. Heart-rate is increasing just reading all that…

The Friday night the fun begins with the rally party in Brick Lane, and the Grand Send Off in Hyde Park… We hope to see you there!

But please forgive us if we look tired ?!?!

We are pleased to announce that the Centre for Transport Studies at Imperial College London (www.imperial.ac.uk/cts>) has generously donated substantial supplies of paper, pens, books, calculators and other stationery as a gift the the Hope and Homes for children project sites in Baie Mare, Romania. You can read more about their efforts at http://www.hopeandhomes.org/romania.htm.

We have been liaising with the charity to organise for a group of teams to deliver useful supplies to help in their work. You can help by donating children’s books (especially atlases, dictionaries and other such items) or school supplies. Please contact us, or meet us at the start line…

One of the learning points of the 21 briidges was that when the sun shines, the inside of our “bread bin” gets pretty warm. So, like good engineers, we decided to do what we could and painted roof white. And the doors. And in fact, the whole thing…?!

It was always the plan to re-paint Suzi just prior to leaving, in order to fit in with any sponsor requests, and to give us minimal time to make a mess of it! Fortunately, Jeremy and Oli came around to help us out - a whole car, rubbed down, masked out and two layers of brushed paint in seven hours. Incuding the breaks for torrential rain, and the construction of an impromptu “car tent”.

I think the results look pretty impressive, and we now have a clean palette on which Darren and the Viking Signs crew can work their magic. Thanks to Oli and Jeremy for willingly slinging paint around - tis a properly good job!

We made it ;) Poor Ben and Dave didnt even make the start, their engine having expired a few days earlier?!

After starting the day with bacon sandwiches courtesy of Suzi’s engine griddle (Wimbledon to Walton worked well…), a cup of tea from Leila and Zari, and a chat with a lady who’d heard about our efforts on LBC news (PR really does work!), we set off on tour with Kim and Nettie from Micragolia (www.micragolia.com).

About 5 miles in, the spark plug lead fell off cylinder number 1. So we replaced it. Then it happened again. So we fixed it again. This is a bit “sub-optimal” so we’re going to be making a more permanent fix tonight?!

Thereafter, things went pretty smoothly, tooting at the locals and chatting with folks at traffic lights, until we made it to Tower Bridge… where the baked potatoes had cooked just nicely and were washed down with a very welcome beer.

At the pub we were met by a series of friends and friends’ friends and gradually took the place over. Thanks to Ian, Wendy, Simon and Judith we had a good spread of raffle prizes and were able to raise £130 towards the charities - many thanks to all of you who took part, and be sure to put those ice buckets to good use…

All in all, a grand day out, and one which served to raise the profiles of our charities while raising a little more money for them. Many thanks to all involved!

In an effort to put some “science” behind the eco-side of this adventure, Boj and I spent a couple of hours last night driving round in small circles. Armed with a straight, flat and largely empty stretch of road we did a series of “coastdown” tests to measure the combined air and rolling resistance of the vehicle, before we add on our aerodynamic “body kit”. And got a bit dizzy.

In these tests, we cruise at a set speed (in this case, 30 mph), pop the clutch in, and then time how long it takes the car to slow down to a a second set speed (in this case, 20 mph initially). The longer the coastdown time, the lower the resistance, and the more efficient the vehicle… simple, right?

For this test we were using “old school” methods, with a stopwatch and the vehicle speedo, which lead to some accuracy “issues”. We hope to repeat all this next week with a GPS data-logger, although time is now getting tight!

For the record, the 30-20 cosatdown takes an average of 14.39 seconds in the base case, and 14.13 (ie more resistance) with the windows open. And no, I’ve not yet tested for statistical significance.

Combined fuel consumption for the test was 28.5 miles per gallon, or 9.87 litres per 100km (depending on which measure you prefer). Not too bad, but room for improvement!

Updated details of Meeting Points, the Send Off Party! and most important the Challenge! Take a look.

We have great news! Quinton Hazell, one the world´s leading suppliers of automotive parts have generously offered to donate a complete spares kit for our Suzi. Not only will this help to ensure that we make it Mongolia, any parts not required for the journey will go to work prolonging Suzi´s useful working life in her new Mongolian home.

We are very grateful to Lawrence Bleasdale and his team for this offer. Please take a look at their website to see how they can help you with your automotive part needs.

To all of you who have generously responded to our email “call for support” - your donations are greatly appreciated and is helping us move towards our fund-raising targets. We´re not there yet though, so please encourage your friends to join in!

So we have been keeping some photos collecting virtual dust in our archives and we thought it would be the ideal time to show you some of them.
Please visit our photo gallery, and have a look back at the posts which give you an idea of what we were up to.

We have added the following (latest first):

- British 10k Run Support
- Solar Cooker
- Scrapheap Challenge
- Three Castles Welsh Rally
- Bearing Wheel Bearings

Avid readers may recall that one of our first issues with the car was to replace the front propshaft. In the process we became aware that the bearings on the differential input shaft were a little bit “tired” (Bob used another “technical term” that probably isnt appropriate for a family website…).

After also finding that the front CV joints clicked loudly whenever in 4-wheel drive, it was an easy decision to replace the front axle assembly with one generously provided by SJ-UK…

So, amid the occasional break for rain (s’gonna be the wettest summer on record dontcherkno) I spent a happy day working with Mat and Bob to swap the axle out - thanks for all your help guys!

As is often the way, this process revealed more problems and we’re now in the process of refurbishing the front brakes due to a “sticky piston” on the right front wheel. Still, as we seem to keep saying, much better to cross these bridges here, rather than in the middle of Kazakhstan!!

Last Sunday an intrepid group of runners took part in the British 10k road race through the centre of London, raising money on our behalf - many thanks to Leila, Diana, Virginia, Pantelis, Amir, Suket and Edu!!

After they braved the “summer” weather, Boj and I were at the finish to welcome them, cooking up a bacon-butty storm with Suzi´s new engine grillplate (it works!!) and providing drinks and chocolate (Creme Eggs of course…).

All completed the run, and we´ll keep you posted as to the evntual fundraising total. A selection of pictures are now in the recentlty updated gallery - check ‘em out!