The photo above is just before we left. The van is packed with everything, and isn’t liking all the extra weight. Sheryl is waving from the back seat.

Over the past couple of weeks, the van has gotten all kinds of attention. New wipers, leads, plugs, and an air filter. I also found out that something was wrong with a bearing in the stearing, and I had to take the van to a mechanic to have him put in a new part. Finding the part was not easy, and we were thinking we may not be able to leave for a few days. Luckly the part came in after only one day of waiting, and we were able to get out of town only one day late.

I think I am starting to relate to how my father must have felt when we had our van and it begain to require lots of servicing. Owning an old van is an adventure every day! And this van is only a few years newer than the van we had when I was 6.

So for quite a while now, occasionally the van will have difficulties under stress. Something will get in the carburetor and then when going up a mountain (which is a common enough scenario) the van will start to lose power and lurch back and forth. Our general solution has been to pull over and flood the carb with carb cleaner. This generally gets the junk out of there, and then we are able to go again.

I took it to a mechanic in Auckland to look at the problem once, and he said he couldn’t find any problem, that the carbs just needed a cleaning. After going to this place twice, I have decided to not go back. 117 point check of the van that somehow didn’t notice nasty plugs and dirty air filter which I then changed myself.

Well, we were having the same problem on our way to Tauranga, so I asked a few mechanics, and one suggested I may need a new fuel filter. The others I talked to seemed to agree that that could be the problem.

I couldn’t locate the filter in the engine, so I found a local guy to do the work here in Mount Maunganui. He was helpful, and seemed shocked at how old (surely not the original from 1990?) and nasty our fuel filter was. He seemed equally shocked that the guy in Auckland hadn’t replaced it in our tune up (again, I’m not going back there). The work wasn’t expensive, and hopefully it will help the performance of the van.

The van has been doing great since replacing the fuel filter. This makes me both happy and angry at the same time. Angry because they should have fixed it months ago when I had them look at it. Oh well.

Van got a flattie today (flat tire). We were driving on some wash board dirt roads and I didn’t even feel that we had blown the tire. We found out because we could smell it. Got it changed and paid my first visit to New Zealand Firestone. Got things sorted out and back on the road without much hassle. Had to buy a new tired though.

Oh, you mean the one on the van? Yeah we used it to get to Wairoa (or something like that). Then we got the new tire. Is flattie an acceptable kiwi nomenclature?