Re: BREAKDOWNS

Posted by kit carr on Nov 05, 2011; 1:29am
URL: http://sundownersadventures.385.s1.nabble.com/BREAKDOWNS-tp4544086p4965670.html

Kees van Yperen had a bus which broke down in Kabul, and needed significant repairs. This came about just after Sundowners and Capricorn combined, and I got sent out to Kabul to give a hand. The repairs were being done by a very good workshop, owned by a dutch company. The gear they had was great and the mechanics were DAF trained.

The workshop was run by a guy named "Barry" who had connections to the deposed Royal Family, and he had lived in Italy for a time. He ran a good ship, and the repairs were duly done.

Barry had taken us home on one occasion, and had talked about how things were under the current regime, and it was clear that a) he was very careful about what he could say, b) he wasn't very happy about the regime, and c) people weren't happy about afghanis who mixed with foreigners on a regular basis. He was a decent sort of bloke from what we could see.

One day he didn't come down to see the bus finished, and us leave. There was no sign of him. The mechanics were very vague, and I think genuinely vague. We took a cab to his house to say goodbye, and it was empty. No sign of anything that had been there a few days before.

I never found out what happened, but we figured it was a good time to leave, and we departed bringing a fine Seddon back to London.

They weren't the easiest coach to get on with, and I know that they were purchased because they were cheap. That effectively means that no one wanted them, and they could be bought at good prices. The chassis was OK, but the V8 diesel was not very good in that installation.

Simon Arms and Carl Capstick drove and maintained two very tidy examples, but they were the exception rather than the rule.

The Fords that Sundowners ran were a little better in my view, but not a whole lot. What they were though was simpler to maintain, except for the turbo, which caught a lot of drivers out as turbos were relatively new, and many of our drivers didn't have a lot of experience in mechanical matter.

My training in particular was exceptional:

Wilko said "can you drive a bus?"
I said "yes"
He said "good you're going to Morocco tomorrow"

At that point I had never driven a bus in my life, but had been a truck driver at home. I didn't have a bus licence, I hadn't driven in Europe at all, and had never driven on the right hand side of the road.

As I pulled the bus up to load at Hogarth Place, Wilko said your courier, Radar, is still in France, can you meet him at the Lille Station on the way to Paris. He has all the maps and information that you need".

I didn't even have a map to get out of London, let alone find Lille, and the railway station. Naturally in the finest Sundowner tradition it all worked out, but it look a long time to get to Dover.

Working with Radar was another experience. I was a teetotaller and Radar wasn't. I was lucky that he was able to take any pressure to imbibe away from me by ensuring that every item of temptation was consumed before it became a threat. I was supposed to do both halves of that Gypsy with Radar, (they ran in A & B sections), but I was taken off the trip to go to India.