Tag: car issues

Lovely mechanics, finding a car garage for a Peugeot Boxer and reuniting old friends (August 2023)

Before I got Rosinante, I had been living in a huge Pössl (a big transporter transformed into a camper by a well known company).

For my world journey/ nomadic life I switched into Rosinante because I thought it’s a good idea to have a stronger, robust, medium off-road capable car which can be repaired everywhere. And it turns out that all the car travelers are pretty right: it gets very complicated to find spare parts and mechanics in a lot of countries. So I’m happy with having chosen a Toyota Hilux which got sold most over the world by one of the companies with the best service and spare part network.

But with Thor, Cindy’s camper van it was very different. For weeks he did not start. Tegeta, the biggest car service company in Georgia, did not find the issue and said that they are not familiar with Peugeot Boxers. But they made an appointment in a second garage. The guy there was too afraid to deal with an unknown car and postponed the appointment again and again.

So we asked everybody we asked Facebook groups, a whole lot of garages we found online and everybody we knew in Georgia, for help. In the meantime Zdenko had started working in a super nice hostel and the husband of the owner said he would help us. He was so lovely and helpful! One day he drove us from car garage to car garage explaining Thor’s issue to the mechanics again and again, not getting tired of it.

Together we went to Tegeta to talk again with the mechanics there. Especially one mechanic there had helped us so much and when the husband of Zdenko’s boss met him there was a big surprise: they were very good friends from the past and had not seen each other for more than ten years! They had lost contact and were now happy to be reunited again. It was awesome!

Before we left Tegeta another mechanic gifted us a wonderful, little wooden heart because we had so much trouble with Cindy’s car and they could not fix it.

Together with the two reunited friends we brought Thor to the third garage. This time with an appropriate towing truck. The guy at this third garage was optimistic that he would fix Thor.

This tow truck is ridiculously small for Thor (July 2023)

After climbing we went back to Cindy’s friends who were living near Batumi to get Thor and continue our travels with both cars to the eastern part of Georgia.

But when Cindy started Thor up, his engine just stopped after driving two meters. For car travelers this is most likely the worst that can happen. The source of nightmares for some.

And especially when you love your car, your home as much as Cindy did. But Cindy was very brave. With the help of her friend we organized a tow truck. Cindy’s friend talked in Russian to the guys from the towing service to make sure that they understand how big and heavy Thor is.

But still they came with a small truck. For me imagining to put Thor on the back of this small truck was just a ridiculous idea.

In the beginning the guys from the towing service looked confident. And they did a very good job to pull Thor from his parking spot to the narrow street.

But then they started to pull Thor up on the back of the small towing truck. The small winch was crying and screaming while it pulled Thor up and my heart beat got a lot faster. Cindy started to laugh a lot more than usual and I got the impression she tried to calm her self down a bit that way.

When Thor was half way up on the towing truck the front wheels of the towing truck lost contact with the ground and the whole truck started rotating a bit to the side. It was ridiculous and interesting at the same time.

The guys from the towing service got less confident but after some adjustments they continued. The winch was screaming in almost surrender but finally the front wheels of the towing truck reached the street again, Thor was on the back of the towing truck and the wheels of the towing truck looked like they were only half way inflated.

The guys called their boss to make sure that they could drive that way. After a pretty long video call with a lot of pointing on the tyres and the towing truck with Thor on its back, we started our 40 kilometers trip following Thor in Rosinante.

It looked ridiculous. Even for Georgian standards. I mean these guys put a lot on their cars in very creative ways and nobody really takes notice of that anymore. It’s normal. But Thor on that truck caught some eyes in our way to the car garage.

The two guys from the towing service were super happy when we had reached our destination. And after half an hour of explaining what a receipt is and why we needed one, they left.

At the car garage they started analyzing what was wrong with Thor. But they did not find any reasons for Thor not starting up. But they contacted another car garage specialist on fuel lines and the whole fuel system. They made an appointment for us in about one week.