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.