Tyred and Disjointed

In true 'winging it' style, the Chevy boys seem to have everything in hand, and we have a glimmer of hope for the van. To quote Quent, we're now "...talking about using a blowtorch to separate the ball joint from the chassis, and using a hydraulic press to put the new one in." If that means anything to you, then you're welcome on the trip as team mechanic.

In short, ball joints bushes and swinging arms are all being pressed into place over the weekend, and the van is booked in for its MOT retest on Monday. If the van passes the test, there's a whole four days of roadtesting. Nothing like cutting it fine.

Bit of success with the Jag tyres - collected my eBay purchase last night from somewhere a long way away, and the guys gave me six wheels in total. Two very good tyres, and two okay ones. We now have a total of 11 wheels/tyres to pick out the best four for the car, and two spares (not taking any chances -there's no chance of getting hold of these on the continent).

Slight hitch with the breakdown cover. The idea was for one of us to ring up and extend our RAC/AA cover to the continent. We thought there might be a £20 supplement or something reasonably trivial, and that one person could be covered across all three vehicles. Simple. However, the vehicles themselves need to be covered, and because of their age and the countries we're visiting, it's looking at around £85 per car. The Chevy came up with "Cannot quote online, call us for a quote", which isn't encouraging.

Good news though - we have accommodation set up for our first night. My parents-in-law have very kindly offered us their apartment for the Friday night, just outside Brussels. It's about 2 hours from Calais, so we reckon we'll get there around midnight on the Friday. This would set us up with a great starting point on the Saturday morning.