With our temporary fix for Rosinante’s front differential, we made it to the volcano. But we did not take the offroad track because our friends Tanja and Marcel, who had taken this route about a week ago, told us that it’s pretty offroad-heavy and 4x4 with low gear would be good to have.

The volcano was beautiful, and the surroundings were very interesting as well.

There were lots of stone formations.

And still, after thousands of years, you could see the big lava field from the last eruptions of that volcano.

But the topic of Rosinante’s front differential was far from solved! After we had accomplished our temporary fix (see the last post), we felt really good about it, were happy, and thought we had done the right thing! We had sent photos of our temporary fix to our mechanic friends and all seemed very good. But then one more guy replied to our Reddit post and raised the point that without the outer CV joint, our whole wheel could basically fall apart! After more research, we came to the same conclusion as he did. So, our temporary fix could have really killed us.

I felt very, very bad and mistreated by the universe.

From the parking lot at the volcano, it was only about ten kilometers back to the next village. But that track was almost entirely a Mongolian construction site, and I felt very bad about driving it again. But putting the whole CV shaft back together was not possible with only one car jack—at least not for us. We thought about what to do next: asking other volcano visitors for a car jack, just going back to the village, burning Rosinante down…

In the end, we drove very carefully back to the first garage we had seen when we took the track for the first time. Even Priuses die at some point.

At the garage, we were happy that we had made it and that there was no obvious damage to Rosinante’s wheel bearings, etc. We put the CV shaft back in, but did not feel very good about it because even driving in 2WD will spin the part that had the play. Nevertheless, Racki and I worked very well together. Almost like a pit stop.

So we continued via the shortest route to Ulaanbaatar to find a good mechanic and spare parts there. On the way, we came across this beautiful canyon.

Racki managed to get a…

…respectable fuel consumption rate of 9.9 liters per 100 kilometers.

And then we reached Little Gobi. It’s a pretty small area that looks part like a savannah and part like a desert.

There were some camels, and for us it was perfect: close to the main road, no 4x4 needed, and it was beautiful!

Like the birds!

So we enjoyed our savannah time.

And did a small hike to the real sand dunes.

The dunes were nice, and Racki made a Bendy heart.

Some dunes were quite steep, so we ran and slid down them. We met some other tourists who lent us their sandboards, and we had great fun.

Back at Rosinante, we had another goat and sheep invasion.

After Little Gobi, we continued to Ulaanbaatar. This city… I guess it will never become my favorite. The traffic was almost painful after we plunged into it for the third time in search of a good mechanic and spare parts.

We found a fitting inner CV joint, the part that had play when touching it. But we decided to ask around a bit more to get a second price and a second opinion about what was causing the play.

A real, big supermarket after weeks of Mongolian remoteness.

We went to the local Ironman shop and picked up some bushings for free. I had asked where to find these bushings in Mongolia via official Ironman support, and that went really well. Support gave me the contact for the shop, and the shop offered to give us the bushings for free.

We got contacts for other mechanics and searched and researched more. Communication with one of the mechanics was especially unique: super friendly, but extremely confused… We went to different Toyota shops and garages, but had no luck. In the end, we went back to the first garage where we had found the spare part and had them start the repair.

It turned out that the part we thought was causing the play was almost perfectly fine! I was not happy about that, because it meant that we had to deal with the differential itself. And that did not sound good to me at all.

So we checked our options. The garage did some “whatever not so good” diagnostics and ultimately proposed swapping the differential for a used one for about 2,400 Euros. They were of the opinion that the pinion inside the differential was causing the play, but they were not able to get spare parts. So their only option was swapping the differential for a used one with a completely unknown level of wear.

We did not feel good about this at all! Our differential had this play, which nobody was sure how bad it really was. And swapping this for a 2,400 Euro black box?

Another option would have been to have the Mongolian mechanics open our differential for a proper diagnosis, but we did not feel good about that either. Having no way to get spare parts in time, combined with our experiences with mechanics so far and what we had heard from other travelers, kept us from doing that.

We had had enough. This time was not easy. I got more and more frustrated with the situation regarding Rosinante’s front differential… Racki got more and more frustrated with me being frustrated…

So we wanted to clear our heads a bit and do some rock climbing. We had found some tiny rock climbing sectors in a national park close to Ulaanbaatar and checked them one after another. But none were climbable. Most of them were on private property and not reachable.

We found half a climbing route on this so-called Turtle Rock…

…where some visitors get a bit stuck.

But all in all, this national park was just not nice for us. No climbing, everything was packed with yurt camps… This photo was one of the few possible ones without any hotel, yurt, or other attraction.

So we decided to keep going—and boy, the next decision I made was one of the worst so far!

From Khuvsgul Lake we went south and to Murun again. There we found some friendly Mongolians who filled up our gas bottle, which was not that easy in the beginning, but when the guys saw that we had a lot of adapters for our bottle, they got curious and in the end, together we managed to fill the bottle up and had quite some fun doing that.

From Murun, we took another offroad track to a lake. The track was absolutely Mongolian, but we felt pretty used to it at that point and so it all went quite easily. At the shore of the lake there were billions of insects…

…and so we parked a bit away from the shore on a small hill where the wind was a bit stronger and there were fewer insects.

It was a beautiful lake, but we stayed only one night.

When we continued, we came across a regional Naadam and took a look around. I liked this game in which the players flicked pieces with their fingers to hit some targets.

Every player had a nice leather bag especially for his slide and stones.

There were plenty of opportunities for snacks, mostly served from small shops like this one.

The kids were playing some lottery games.

And the older people shot bows, which Racki and I felt to be very interesting and nice, so we said again that if we came across a nice bow and arrows, we should maybe get them.

Of course there were beautiful horses.

And the traditional wrestling.

The atmosphere between Racki and me was a bit tense. I’d say for no proper reason, but just because… of reasons. As can happen sometimes…

When we took a small corner just a couple of kilometers before our destination for the day, we came across some very drunken Mongolians who had somehow managed to crash their mini transporter against a pole at the side of the track and then crashed in reverse up a stone pile. We got our recovery stuff out, some sober Mongolians joined the party, and together we got the mini transporter back on the track again. The drunken guys were very happy and able to continue their drive.

Since we’d entered Russia, I had the impression that I was hearing and sometimes feeling a clonk sound when driving Rosinante, especially on little bumps, rocks, or corrugated tracks. At one moment that sound got more intense, and we stopped to have a look.

From previous sound diagnostics, we had learned to first remove Rosinante’s underbody armor because that useful but sometimes very annoying thing had misled our diagnoses quite a few times. While removing it, the thread of one of the screws fixating the body armor broke again. But that could not have been the source of the sound we were looking for.

Again, I tried to find the reason for that sound lying under Rosinante, and then I found it! It was the inner end of the driver’s side front CV shaft that had play—the part that was sticking into Rosinante’s front differential. I was not amused, and having this tension already between Racki and me, the first minutes after finding this on a very small track in Mongolia were not easy for me. We already knew how demanding the tracks were and how difficult it could be to find spare parts and have things repaired, based on experiences from friends who had visited Mongolia in the past.

And a damaged and maybe soon broken front differential—meaning no 4x4 and no low gear in Mongolia—sounded not good to me at all.

But just a couple of hundred meters away from where we found the source of the sound, we found a nice camp spot by a river, and Racki and I calmed down and started a constructive dialogue about what our options would be.

Meanwhile, the yaks enjoyed the refreshing water of the river and calmed down as well.

Racki and I contacted all the mechanic friends we had, and I started a topic on Reddit (you can read it here, but be warned, it contains some spoilers for future developments on that topic). After that and some more research, we got various opinions about the issue ranging from “I would not drive like this, could destroy the front differential” to “I’ve seen worse on a brand new Hilux” As always with car topics…

We decided that we would try our luck with the mechanics of the nearby village.

The people at the first garage were absolutely not motivated to deal with us and the translator app to have a look at our issue. The guys at the second garage were motivated and had a look, but lacked the right tool to investigate further. We needed a 36mm socket to proceed with our diagnosis. But one of the Mongolians told us via translator that we could go to his home and check if he had the right tool.

This guy was absolutely lovely. At his home, he had an old small truck with lots of used and some broken tools, and he had the right socket. So we decided that we would try our luck and check the issue with the help of that nice man.

We removed the CV shaft and found that the play was definitely at the inner part sticking into the differential. So we decided to detach it from the wheel to not stress it further and have it checked in a proper garage. In this photo you see the result of our work, and at that moment we felt very good about our decision. But oh boy, this will change soon…

The whole family of our new friend was super nice, and they showed us their beautiful Mongolian house. They gave us snacks and a very Mongolian drink that had been boiling all day on the stove: Mongolian tea with milk and vodka.

The father was very proud of the prizes and medals he got in horse races.

A friend or uncle, pretty drunk, joined us as well. It was super nice, and we felt very grateful that this man had helped us and that his family was so welcoming.

We decided to change our plans, take another potentially less demanding route to the volcano we wanted to visit, and then continue our way to Ulaanbaatar (the capital of Mongolia) to have Rosinante fixed. And if there were a nice garage on the way, we would maybe check Rosinante’s issue with them.

On the way, we came across these magnificent vultures.

There were quite a lot of them.

And we found these nice feathers.

And we met these guys, maybe searching for front differential topics for their cars, maybe TikTok, maybe Pornhub… Especially the fellow on the left impressed me with his elaborate technique for resting his head while eating and using his phone.