With all the changes that we’d had made to the car in Hillcrest completed, we were on our way back home to pack the last few bits and pieces before heading on up the coast toward Mozambique when disaster struck.

We’d stopped in Pinetown to buy a tyre pressure gauge and on starting the car up again we smelt burning plastic and then saw a cloud of grey smoke pour from engine. The smoke seemed to be coming from the second battery so we called Floyd, the auto electrician who had been working on the car, in a panic. After instructing us to disconnect the battery he jumped in his bakkie and came to the rescue.

It turned out that the core set of electrical wires that lead off of the main battery that powered virtually all the important bits in the engine (notice my clever use of technical jargon) had been placed underneath the bracket that supported the not so light main and secondary batteries (really brilliant that). Thus, over a relatively short time, the bracket had cut through those cables and caused a serious short circuit that, had we not seen it when we had, would have caused an electrical fire in the engine.

And all this on the day before we’re due to leave!

Over the next 3 hours Floyd managed to rig together a short term solution to get us home and we returned to the workshop the following morning, and decided that rather than risk something like this again, to have all the electrics rewired. Not a small task.

When looking back, we were really lucky that we had been delayed long enough for the bracket to have done its foul work when it did so that it happened where help was on hand and not somewhere hundreds of kilometres from anywhere. Floyd to the rescue (once again).