Sunday, February 22, 2009

Bafa

We eventually (and reluctantly) left Geyekbayiri and headed west to Lake Bafa. The van behaved itself impeccably and we arrived to a beautiful evening on the shores of lake Bafa. The landscape is breathtaking, but even more so if you’re a boulderer. The shores of the lake and all the slopes of the neighbouring mountains are littered with thousands of granite boulders.
Bouldering is relatively new to the area and only a few hundred problems have been documented, so if you’re a boulderer who wants to explore loads of virgin boulders then the potential is massive. Unfortunately, due to minor van issues, our stay here only allowed one day of bouldering. The boulders that we visited had some really good problems on them. It took us a little time to adapt from limestone to granite, but we soon clambered up a few problems.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Geyekbayiri Games... and 6c+...

Managed to redpoint one of the classic lines at Geyekbayiri - 'Geyekbayiri Games' an awesome 7b+ up an overhanging wall, on a single tufa. Tufas are definitely a weakness for me, so it felt like a good achievement! Claire did the route on second too. (A picture of another climber on the route.)

Claire has recently onsighted a 6c+ also - made it look easy! Almost onsighted a 7a too!

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The wonderful mechanic… (Read after ‘Free lunch’ – below)

After trying the main dealer approach we opted for the local Turkish mechanic. A friend suggested a reliable Turkish man who used a stethoscope to listen to engines – he sounded perfect. We arrived at the ‘engine Doctor’s’ garage and tried to explain the fault (via phone translation). Fortunately, the neighbouring mechanic spoke good English and offered to fix the problem. He ran an Alfa Romeo garage so didn’t seem best qualified for a VW van, but what choice did we have…? He came for a drive in the van and listened to the noise. He thought it was external to the engine and probably to do with the belts, also. We returned to his garage and he removed the steering pump belt, but the noise persisted. Alternator and water pump belt off too, but still the noise. Next he removed the drive pulley from the engine and the noise vanished! The drive pulley had some dirt or metal caught in it (not surprising when you see the roads in Turkey), and when hot it was chaffing against the engine. He cleaned it all up and the van was once again purring as all diesel engines do!
He charged us 30TL (£13) for his two hours of labour. Yes, that’s £6.50 an hour – we couldn’t believe it! We gave him another 5TL for some beer and departed…

Then, bad news… a new noise! As we accelerated/decelerated in second gear there was a loud knock/clunk coming from the front of the van. We returned to the garage and explained the new problem. The new noise was perplexing – all he had done was removed some belts and pulleys and replaced them again. One possible explanation was that something had been loosened by the force of jacking the van one side. The mechanic spent the next six hours looking for the problem. He tried adjusting something then we’d test drive, but the knock always persisted. He changed the bushes on the torsion bar; checked the steering rack mounts; checked the suspension; the exhaust. He even jacked the engine up and removed/checked the engine mounts!

One test drive was particularly amusing as he wanted to listen to the noise whilst the van was in motion. We drove to a busy three lane road and he asked me to stop. He lifted the bonnet, put his torso in the engine bay, lowered the bonnet and told me to drive! How could I drive without running him over? He became impatient and told me to just drive and to keep accelerating and decelerating in second gear. At this point I realised that he was hunched with his feet resting on the bumper and his entire torso under the bonnet. I drove very tentatively at first, but he continued to encourage me to go faster! There is no video, so please imagine our VW going at 20mph along a busy three lane road with a small Turkish man standing on the front bumper with his body jammed under the bonnet!

Even after six hours of work the noise persisted, it was truly perplexing. We had seen him try everything. I had spent over an hour under the van with him and there was no obvious explanation. We were all tired and decided to give up. We hoped that the problem may become more obvious another day and we could return to fix it then. The mechanic wanted no money for the 6 hours (I think he felt it was due to the jacking), so we set off back to Geyekbayiri.

Miraculously, the noise had gone! We don’t know how or why, but nothing persisted! This truly wonderful man had spent all of his day on our van and wanted almost nothing in return. We felt so guilty about the whole episode that we will return to give him some money to say thank you.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Free Lunch (Read before ‘The wonderful mechanic’ - above)

The van is not happy again – it started making a rather worrying noise after climbing for 10 mins up a steep hill. The scraping noise was very noticeable and didn’t sound good. We spent some time looking under the bonnet and could not pinpoint the noise – our only guess being a belt or pully…?

We took the van to VW and tried to explain the problem. Unfortunately, they did not speak English but we managed to explain with a friend translating via a telephone. VW made us wait many hours and gave us countless cups of teas. They even invited us for a free, but very bad, canteen lunch. We could see the van during the entire four hour wait and only noted one mechanic peeking at the engine for five minutes. They eventually informed us that they thought the fault was in the engine and they would have to strip the engine to pinpoint it! They then said that it would take 20-25 days to get any replacement parts! Our hearts sank… we couldn’t afford an engine rebuild or the associated wait, but nor could we get ourselves and our kit back to the UK very easily…

We decided that VW were either wrong or trying to con us out of lots of money. We know the engine very well and it sounded fine to us; there was just an additional noise external to the engine. We left VW without paying anything and drove back up to Geyekbayiri. The noise persisted, but the already poor performance seemed unaffected!

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Harry


Our friend Harry joined us for a 10 day climbing break. We showed him the local rock and we spent many days flailing around on the climbs. Harry provided lots of amusement at the Climbers Garden Campsite, as every morning he would do his yoga routine. One morning was particularly funny… He was attempting a pose near to a group of Czech students, who were enjoying their breakfast. Unfortunately, the pose caused too much pressure on Harry’s stomach and resulted in a very loud release across our neighbour’s breakfast. They seemed to find it very amusing, and Harry’s morning yoga has become a bit of a legend!