Today was, in part, the day of truth.
The mechanic never came back. There are several people looking around for him, but he’s just not there. Probably got drunk at the other village and decided to sleep over.
I’m sick and tired of waiting for this guy. It was a mistake, going to someone who works alone. I should have gone to a bigger place. Luchin says he’s not back, but that he can put it back together. The boy is 16 years old, and I don’t really know what to make of it. But I don’t really have much of a choice. I reluctantly tell him to put it together.
I thought the man he was learning from would do most of the work and Luchin would just watch. But it was exactly the opposite. Luchin started telling the ‘maestro’ where all the pieces went and what not.
There was a fuel tube on the turbo side of the engine that the other mechanic had removed for no reason. Figuring out where that screw with holes inside of it went to took a long time. What took even longer was figuring out how to put the piece back in the tube. It was so old that it cracked. They tried warming it up with a candle, but to no avail. Instead, they got another tube of the same size that they had lying around and started playing around with that. The candle bit didn’t work too well, so the ‘maestro’ took it into his own hands. He clamped it down pretty good and stuck a phillips screwdriver in there to loosen it up and after a lot of twisting and turning managed to put the screw in the tube. All that because the other mechanic didn’t know what the hell he was doing and had started to remove every screw he can find to get the turbo out.
Then the hard parts. Meanwhile, Luchin and one of the other teenage mechanics were working on putting the turbo back in. They got all the screws and figured out how the gaskets fit together and all that. There were a few things that made me more than a bit anxious. For one, the turbo guy had removed a tube and didn’t package it with the turbo when he returned it to me. So they had to go and find a tube that fit, and thankfully got some clamps to tighten it. There were some tubes that were doing absolutely nothing, so it took a while figuring out what that did as well.
The moment of truth of the day was getting the car started. The car beeped twice as the battery got reconnected. Everything was set to go. I started the engine, which was still fairly cold. I needed to keep the accelerator down to stop it from stalling. As soon as I thought it would keep going on its own, it stalled. I tried again, and perhaps revved it a little higher than I would have liked it. I brought it down to a level I was comfortable with to warm it up.
But something was wrong. Very wrong. There was smoke coming out of the turbo again! All of that work and waiting only for the same results! I was very upset at this point. There was some whizzing coming out of the belts. And there seemed to be much more noise coming out of the engine than usual.
Immediately, Luchin and the other teenage mechanic said we need to go to a diesel mechanic. We went to 3 or 4 of them, all of whom said that they’re either busy or can’t help me. By then, though, the smoke had cleared. I revved up the engine, and there was no whirring sound from the turbo, but it was faintly notieceable at high revolution. But at least no more smoke, and at least the engine didn’t stall.
The oil pressure gauge, however, is somewhat acting up. It’s playing around between level 1 and 2, and I’m not quite sure what to make of it just yet. Before, it acted like the RPM. After the accident, though, it’s never been the same. I don’t feel too great about it right now. It still looks like it’s acting like the RPM, just not as ferociously as it did before.
Which is why tomorrow’s drive is going to be so pivotal. Will I have done enough to the car to last another month? I don’t know. If the car lasts till Arequipa tomorrow, then I know it almost certainly will. Meanwhile, the windshield is cracking even more. I think the change from warm to cold is having a dramatic affect on the windshield. At least the automatic windows seem to be working better now. And the brakes, for one reason or another, seemed to work somewhat better. Perhaps I was just so worried about the other things.
I headed up back to Cuzco, already fairly familiar with a couple van routes here. I met John again, who was upset at my situation with the missing mechanic. He leaves to work somewhere else and comes back at 5 PM. I used the internet then to call my mother and Matt McK. I also call IBM to get some relocation things in order, and I call sprint to pay for whatever amount is past due. I also call Mike Vrooman, who is ever so helpful. I cannot say enough good things about this man. He always takes time with my phone calls and never seems to be bothered by it. He even asks how I am enjoying the drive, and I tell him about how stressful it is and about the missing mechanic that went to fix a tractor. He laughs at the story, and replies that he would have weighed down the car with all the tools he would have packed up. He reassures me, though, that the car seems to be good to go and all the noises are normal. In fact, the faint noise coming from the turbo is indicative of the very fact that it’s working and working properly.
When I had to pay the mechanic, though, I had to go through another one of those ‘you’re a tourist so we’re going to rip you off more than what we have everyone else pay here’ drama. The ‘maestro’ started asking the teenagers how much they should charge, and everyone went around until it got stuck with Luchin. He asked me how much it would be in United States, if it would cost me $100. And it probably would have, actually, for about an hour’s worth of work if you knew what you were doing. In fact, to take it out, fix it, and put it back together would have probably cost about $500. The fixing part here cost 450 soles or $150 bucks. So he said all together, 100 soles. And I know he would have probably charged 20 soles or something for anyone else. But I’m just glad it works, and I tell him that I will give him 100 soles, 70 for him to keep amongst his group of mechanics and 30 for him to give to the original mechanic that took it out when he comes back. I give him 50 soles on the side, just for him. He was a promising young man with very little to go by and he did his duty of hiding it fairly well.
So tomorrow is another big day, at least in terms of anticipation. Will the car blow up after driving 350 miles? Or will it function just as well as it did before the accident? I will know for sure by this time tomorrow, either in the middle of the mountains or in the middle of Arequipa. Let’s hope it’s the latter.