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Video from our Morocco 2014 trip


Turbocharger

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I've put together a video of our trip to Morocco, cramming the two weeks into four minutes.

Brief : take a Ninety and a Nissan Patrol to the desert.

Actual: mooch about northern Morocco enduring wheel bearing failures on the Nissan, burning lots of time but not much money. Then through some awesome rocky gorges, over the Atlas mountains, into the desert but no time for dune - bashing.

Brilliant trip, I want to go again next year if possible.

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It was a fantastic trip, even if it didn't go perfectly to plan - our interactions with the locals to find mechanics, recovery trucks etc just made the whole thing more memorable, in hindsight. Of course, that hindsight wasn't so evident when we're looking at a seized hub, 10km from anywhere, it's going dark and we've nowhere to sleep that night...

As well as a holiday it also showed us all that your comfort zone gets bigger when you push at the edges. Before we went, Morocco was a big thing. Crossing to Africa on a ferry was a huge step. Coming back, it felt like using the Tube in London - we'd been there, we'd done it and it was easy.

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It seems that the vehicle was 'checked over' rather than serviced before leaving.

When the first one failed we replaced it with one bought from a roadside shack in Tetouan, not held in stock but sourced within the hour for £30 a side (proper Timken part too). It had failed because the grease had turned brown and gritty - at that point there was no movement or roughness in the other side but we bought a spare pair of bearings anyway. Sure enough, the other side failed within 100 miles with the same issue, but this time it seized onto the stub (hence the beavertail, man with oxyacetylene, a night camping in a scrapyard etc).

After his subsequent freewheeling hub failure, his seized brake caliper and (for balance) my front prop which was removed on the return leg because it was making a funny noise, we had a good trip mechanically. Of course, at the point when you're looking at your second seized wheel bearing you're thinking that there's two more on the back of the truck, but they were fine...

Looking back, we'd have been in much darker financial straits if we'd seized a wheelbearing in Portsmouth on a Jap grey import truck on a Sunday evening...

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  • 1 year later...

I and my wife travel the world to produce awesome videos. Creative video is our passion. In 2014 we filmed across 8 countries on 4 continents. We're also bloggers and photographers. We were recently in Morocco, where we spent 3 weeks working on a non-commercial project. From the Jemaa el-Fnaa square buzzing with life and mystic mosque towers of Marrakech, to Berber stone villages lost somewhere in high Atlas and moon-like Anti-Atlas sights, along with the Sahara desert and Erg Chigaga dunes - this trip has helped us rediscover a lost, but very vibrant world, which in a sense hasn’t changed for thousands of years.

Hey mates visit my page..

http://www.barizaholidays.com/

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Somewhere back I did a thread on the spare parts and tools that I carry. Before I go into the desert I spend a good week doing a total service on the Disco - and then get the local service station to go over it, it's amazing just what you miss and is noticed by ba second set of eyes! Totally essential if you go solo !

If you don't the chances are that you end up like my mates Nissan GQ that he had to abandon in the Great sandy Desert.

[sharedmedia=gallery:images:12640
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When I went across Australia, I was very lucky because I based myself in Melbourne to prepare. The old family friend I stayed with used to be chief engineer for Australian Airlines and he wouldn't let me leave until we had been all over my 22 year old Range Rover. It took weeks. Talk about fussy! Even then, I had a bit of trouble with the odd bit - a clutch seal, carb diaphragms, that sort of thing. Overall all, though, the reliability was great and I was super-grateful for the preparation when I was on roads that hadn't been used for many months.

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  • 4 weeks later...

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