Day 138: Land Rover Repairs
Soutpiel Safari
John & Jenny
Tue 22 Mar 2011 18:10
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Day 138: Tuesday 21 March 2011. Quiver Tree Camp Site,
Keetmanshoop, Namibia. S26 28.934 E018 14.649. Distance driven 162
km
A persistent squeal from the rear right wheel had been
bothering me for some time. Yesterday in Windhoek we had visited a Land Rover
specialist (Eastern Motors) but they were not working because of Independence
Day, they referred us to Steinfeld Motors (Johan Strauss) near
Keetmanshoop and this also correlated with a recommendation from Nick and Vicky
of Langebaan Sunset. We were surprised, when we found it on T4A, that it was 71
km from the camp site. We left Keetmanshoop on the B1 and soon turned off
onto a gravel road the D608 which took us some 50 km into the bush. It was
a delightful drive through grass scrubland with mountains in the distance and
incredible rock formations on all sides. With all the recent rain, the
grass is long and blows in the breeze. We finally reached the end of the
driveway to Steinfeld Motors with still 5.9 km to go!
We finally reached a group of houses, a workshop and a
yard full of Land Rovers. We had reached the Namibian LR
expert!
The problem was soon diagnosed to a badly disintegrated
outer wheel bearing and this was replaced and they also checked the other 3 and
re-packed them with grease, as well as noticing that the steering drop-arm was
loose on its splined shaft and tightened this.
By the time they had finished it was 1700 so we drove
back into Keetmanshoop, had dinner at a Wimpy and returned to last night's camp
site where we put up the tent just as it was getting dark and beginning to
rain.
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