Reilly Traveling Circus

Lest you think all of the woes are confined to the Porsche teams, I share with you the recent travails of Keith, Harry and the Celica. Celica, by the way, is pronounced differently over here than it is in the US: “Sell Eek Ah” rather than “Sell Ick Ah”.

I had previously posted about issues they were having with their steering column. While in Almaty, they hired a local garage to address those issues, rebuild the front shock absorbers, replace tie rod ends and some other miscellaneous repairs. After picking up the car at midnight, we saw them off the next morning with high hopes. Several hours into their drive out of Almaty, a steering bracket sheared off and they were immobilized at the side of the road. The resourceful mechanics from the rally improvised a repair and discovered that the Almaty garage had inadvertently (hopefully) welded part of the steering assembly to the bracket.

Back in action, they drove to catch up with the rally. Nearing the hotel, they made an unfortunate discovery: the rules for rotaries in Khazakhstan are not the same as they are in the US. Rather than the vehicle in the rotary having the right of way, the vehicle entering the rotary has the right of way. This resulted in the Celica being hit (or hitting) two trucks entering the rotary from the right. Fortunately, no one was hurt. After settling things at the scene, which involved paying a fine to the police and having a mechanic come and estimate damages to the trucks, the Celica was off to a local garage. 4 mechanics worked on it overnight and produced a startling transformation (see below). Unfortunately, driving it the next day for 75 km demonstrated unacceptable flexing in the front of the car leading to excessive tire wear and an inability to align the front suspension. The Celica was then loaded to a flatbed for the remainder of the trip to Aktau. Keith and Harry then had to fly to Almaty, spend the night, then couldn’t get a direct flight to Aktau and had to fly through Astana. They joined us here about 36 hours ago and spent much of yesterday traveling to the port to hand over their registration for the ferry/border crossing and paying off the flatbed driver. Hopefully, they will get things repaired in Baku.