Discussion
Thanks for your comments guys
RE: Insurance - not going to get into tit for tat on a forum about insurance and mods etc, all I will say is my insurance is my personal issue to deal with and I believe i'm suitably covered. In Tunisia it was naughty to drive 40 km without it, but we just wanted to get to the hotel. We know now the full process and some contacts there, so next time we go to Tunisia on the next challenge, we will get it sorted at the port.
Day 1 of the Tunisie Challenge then!
Good photo of us prepping the car the day before from the on-tour photography team. You had an option to pay a premium package and get extra coverage of your teams adventure - we decided not to do this, but still ended up with good photos!
388KM for the first route, 50/50 on and off road for the first day purely because the organisers want you to get far south as possible on the first day. The start of the stage was 24KM down Hammamet beach which was both exciting and very daunting...!!
Some of the other competitors cars and a view down Hammamet beach, which is a public beach with loads of fishing huts, boats, people milling about etc.
Papped
The briefing then took place on the beach, which was in depth and kind of confidence inspiring. Andy, the UK expat and one of the main organisers took care of any english speakers as Rui the owner of the company juggled between Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese... pretty impressive stuff.
Wil and I then watched the departures take place. Due to the big RAID vehicles and full size SUV being more capable / faster (in theory) they were the first to go, with small SUV and then us, and then finally the Pandas to go last. Andy expressed his differences with this method and we soon saw why - the entrance to the beach was getting more and more churned up, leaving huge ruts and walls of sand in place. Some of the bigger cars - Shoguns and Cruisers - were even getting stuck, albeit we think due to operator error. None the less, it was a stressful few minutes.
We had already lowered our pressures to 10psi, jumped in the car, turned off all traction control and awaited our turn. Annoyingly Wil got loads of the above on video on his INSTA360 but then lost it on the beach - a gift to Africa... So you will have to make do with my pretty bang average description.
We patiently queued in a line of smaller cars and made our way to the start line. When the flag lowered and our timing system went live, I gunned the throttle in first, then second and kept my foot planted at Wil's instruction. We entered the deep sand of the beach and crashed straight through a sand "wall" that had been made by the bigger vehicles, we found a line quickly and kept the turbo on song in 2nd - around 2500rpm / 40kph. Wow, this Yeti could cruise through the Sand! We were grinning like cheshire cats as we held a steady speed on the turbo power band. Two slower moving cars ahead soon came into view and we observed the very strict rules of the event - you must gain permission using your Stella 3 unit in order to pass another vehicle.
See below some instructions of how this system works. It also uses Iridium to keep our position on the map very clear to friends and family at home, as well as in case of breakdown or emergency so that the organisers can attend asap.
We approached firstly Dirk and Vincent, the belgian father and son in their Shogun who had bogged down at the rear, we got permission to pass and went about. As the event would show as we got more confident, you don't really need to ask for permission from a stopped vehicle unless they are in dire straits when you are duty bound to stop. It's only really for moving scenarios.
The second vehicle was Vali and Bobby in the Romanian Duster. Vali's mentality was "first, everywhere, I drive like hell" - and that was apparent as we passed and even with the windows shut could hear his 1.6 petrol screaming away at 30kph.
As we passed these two, we noticed the engine temperature climbing on the Yeti.
We were 5KM in. 5KM! I slowed the throttle to take the turbo just under the boost power band and sure enough the temperature immediately dropped.
Panic over. For Now.
Exiting the beach at the quite narrow exit - 24km of beach driving - done!! You can see the mounting point at the rear where Wil's insta360 used to be.
Heading through the mangroves towards the end of the first part of this stage, and just before discovering our first problem.
As we got to the end of the stage, we could see our friends in the Shogun Sport adjusting their pressures ahead along with "Vitara Mat" from Maidenhead. Mat immediately waved us down - "guy's water, from your radiator, water!"
Ah. f
k.
Naturally assuming we had bust the rad at the start of the stage we took a look underneath and sure enough a lot of water was pouring out. fks sake. One stage, not even 10% of the way through. oh well. No sense in sitting around moaning. Paul had a few bottles of radweld in his car and we had a spare bottle of coolant. We nicked a few bottles of radweld, poured one in and chased it with 5 litres of coolant. Ran it for ten mins with the heaters on - no drips so far, fk it time to crack on - it's a time trial after all.
The next 150KM went fine. Engine temp was normal, getting up to speed fine, car was phenomenal on the salt flats and on the rock climbs we had to do that day. Sorry, again no photos.
our friends in the Shogun passing through one of the many small villages that we got to see on our journey on the first day.
We had stopped in one such village and bought 15 litres of water just in case. That was a prudent choice
Nice view.
Ah bks.
Sure enough, the leak had re-sprung and our engine temp had soured on the cruise up this mountain pass. We had somehow managed to get ahead of our friends in the Shogun though and we had signal so they knew where we were and woudl be with us soon enough with some more radweld.
Fingers crossed.
We were now managing about 20-30km between fillups. So clearly the leak was not getting anywhere and we just needed to get to the hotel, if possible.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/l_PMqQMm3EI
It was kind of daunting, kind of liberating at the same time. Helps being on a nicely organised tour though - but still doesn't take away those natural anxieties.
Shortly after this, we passed Dirk and Vincent again - this time they were rebuilding a shock that had broken and luckily they had 5litres of coolant as we had used our last water other than a few litres for drinking. We were losing the light, we'd missed our target time, racking up penalties by the minute so we decided to get the 5 litres of coolant in and see how we got.
I decided to take a leaf out of Vali's book and for the last 20km of the stage which was a dusty/sandy trail through the starts of the desert, I "drove like hell". Petter Solberg i am not but damn it felt good. The car has a decent front rear bias through the haldex and I was able to get some decent sideways action, it really goes well.
We passed the final way point and immediately the temperature started to climb, we were in the middle of nowhere with no signal at all so we had no choice but to press the SOS button on the Stella and await assistance.
I mean. Worse places to break down? I broke down on the M40 the other day. I can confirm that's worse than here. We were in the middle of nowhere with a few farm shacks nearby and that was it. Moments later a pickup truck with four Tunisian dudes turned up and they stopped, we exchanged some french and they just wanted to make sure we had food and water. Such hospitable people. They have barely anything, but were willing to help.
The Stella started ringing and we had a conversation with the sky. It works by sending yes or no answers to the central control place (in Spain), who then relay the collated messages via satellite phone to the organisers who bring up the rear of the event every day to make sure noone is stranded. After a few messages back and forth, the reassuring "HELP IS ON THE WAY!!" showed on the screen.
Sure enough 10-15 mins later, the two Javea Auto Sales sponsored Cruisers with Andy and Roy at the controls with their flashing yellow beacons appeared over the dusty horizon and were roaring towards us. What a beautiful sight.
Big Nath - the organisations own mechanic - had a quick look over the car and quickly saw why radweld hadn't fixed it. This car has a radiator pack comprising the AC condensor / cooling radiator and a third radiator which is the water intercooler for the turbo pack. The left hand side mount which holds the entire pack into the car is actually plastic formed and attached to the intercooler. It had snapped clean off, exposing a hole about the size of a pea - under pressure and this was spewing coolant out. The good news was Nath reckoned if we could get the rad out for him, he could epoxy it back together at the hotel.
Luckily the lads had plenty water so we refilled the car and limped it - hoping to make it some of the way to the hotel (75km on road).
The Lazers at work with the two cruisers bringing up the rear, we were lighting up the sky. Also a good shot of the normal readout you get from the STELLA 3. It will also shout at you if one of the waypoints is marked as dangerous - can be quite a noisy affair in the car at times.
Made it to Tozeur, refuelling and buying coolant and water before heading to the hotel to crack straight on.
Now before I go on I should state that we were not expecting even this kind of assistance (an escort). The organisers lay out expectations rather brutally that you can expect to be towed to the side of a road whereby it's your own responsibility to find onward recovery or travel. What we experienced in terms of mechanical assistance and advise over the course of the evening that followed and the subsequent days was absolutely unbelievable.
Wil and I wrestling with the (very heavy!!) under tray and locating screws for the bumper.
At this stage, Nath and his lad could see we were game happy to graft but we were not as mechanically clued up in the head as he was. I genuinely appreciate his approach with this. He barked instructions and shouted tools, spanner, socket, do this, do that. We carried on, appreciative of his guidance and help - it probably saved hours.
One of the Javea cruisers drafted in for workshop light. Thankfully we had brought a 200 piece halford set which was more than ample for everything we needed on this evening.
The main man Big Nath himself helping with the fiddlier bits. With his and his lad Tyreece's help, we managed to get the intercooler out without removing the entire rad pack.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/894PTS0NB6Q
Preparing the rad pack for Epoxy and letting it dry.
Midnight - Wil taking a candid photo of me covered in grit, oil and coolant waiting for the epoxy to go off before we could get it back together. Nath and Tyreece helped us until half ten at night. I mean, what lads. Wil and I got the car back together just before 1am - holding coolant okay and albeit with about 6 or 7 screws that we hadn't manage to find corresponding holes for - we headed for bed. It was a 8am briefing the next morning at Mos Espa (star wars) which was 40 minutes drive away.
What a day it had been, a hell of an introduction into the Tunisie challenge and an eye opening reminder of the fragility and built in obsolescence so often occuring in modern car design.
RE: Insurance - not going to get into tit for tat on a forum about insurance and mods etc, all I will say is my insurance is my personal issue to deal with and I believe i'm suitably covered. In Tunisia it was naughty to drive 40 km without it, but we just wanted to get to the hotel. We know now the full process and some contacts there, so next time we go to Tunisia on the next challenge, we will get it sorted at the port.
Day 1 of the Tunisie Challenge then!
Good photo of us prepping the car the day before from the on-tour photography team. You had an option to pay a premium package and get extra coverage of your teams adventure - we decided not to do this, but still ended up with good photos!
388KM for the first route, 50/50 on and off road for the first day purely because the organisers want you to get far south as possible on the first day. The start of the stage was 24KM down Hammamet beach which was both exciting and very daunting...!!
Some of the other competitors cars and a view down Hammamet beach, which is a public beach with loads of fishing huts, boats, people milling about etc.
Papped
The briefing then took place on the beach, which was in depth and kind of confidence inspiring. Andy, the UK expat and one of the main organisers took care of any english speakers as Rui the owner of the company juggled between Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese... pretty impressive stuff.
Wil and I then watched the departures take place. Due to the big RAID vehicles and full size SUV being more capable / faster (in theory) they were the first to go, with small SUV and then us, and then finally the Pandas to go last. Andy expressed his differences with this method and we soon saw why - the entrance to the beach was getting more and more churned up, leaving huge ruts and walls of sand in place. Some of the bigger cars - Shoguns and Cruisers - were even getting stuck, albeit we think due to operator error. None the less, it was a stressful few minutes.
We had already lowered our pressures to 10psi, jumped in the car, turned off all traction control and awaited our turn. Annoyingly Wil got loads of the above on video on his INSTA360 but then lost it on the beach - a gift to Africa... So you will have to make do with my pretty bang average description.
We patiently queued in a line of smaller cars and made our way to the start line. When the flag lowered and our timing system went live, I gunned the throttle in first, then second and kept my foot planted at Wil's instruction. We entered the deep sand of the beach and crashed straight through a sand "wall" that had been made by the bigger vehicles, we found a line quickly and kept the turbo on song in 2nd - around 2500rpm / 40kph. Wow, this Yeti could cruise through the Sand! We were grinning like cheshire cats as we held a steady speed on the turbo power band. Two slower moving cars ahead soon came into view and we observed the very strict rules of the event - you must gain permission using your Stella 3 unit in order to pass another vehicle.
See below some instructions of how this system works. It also uses Iridium to keep our position on the map very clear to friends and family at home, as well as in case of breakdown or emergency so that the organisers can attend asap.
We approached firstly Dirk and Vincent, the belgian father and son in their Shogun who had bogged down at the rear, we got permission to pass and went about. As the event would show as we got more confident, you don't really need to ask for permission from a stopped vehicle unless they are in dire straits when you are duty bound to stop. It's only really for moving scenarios.
The second vehicle was Vali and Bobby in the Romanian Duster. Vali's mentality was "first, everywhere, I drive like hell" - and that was apparent as we passed and even with the windows shut could hear his 1.6 petrol screaming away at 30kph.
As we passed these two, we noticed the engine temperature climbing on the Yeti.
We were 5KM in. 5KM! I slowed the throttle to take the turbo just under the boost power band and sure enough the temperature immediately dropped.
Panic over. For Now.
Exiting the beach at the quite narrow exit - 24km of beach driving - done!! You can see the mounting point at the rear where Wil's insta360 used to be.
Heading through the mangroves towards the end of the first part of this stage, and just before discovering our first problem.
As we got to the end of the stage, we could see our friends in the Shogun Sport adjusting their pressures ahead along with "Vitara Mat" from Maidenhead. Mat immediately waved us down - "guy's water, from your radiator, water!"
Ah. f
k.Naturally assuming we had bust the rad at the start of the stage we took a look underneath and sure enough a lot of water was pouring out. f
ks sake. One stage, not even 10% of the way through. oh well. No sense in sitting around moaning. Paul had a few bottles of radweld in his car and we had a spare bottle of coolant. We nicked a few bottles of radweld, poured one in and chased it with 5 litres of coolant. Ran it for ten mins with the heaters on - no drips so far, fk it time to crack on - it's a time trial after all.The next 150KM went fine. Engine temp was normal, getting up to speed fine, car was phenomenal on the salt flats and on the rock climbs we had to do that day. Sorry, again no photos.
our friends in the Shogun passing through one of the many small villages that we got to see on our journey on the first day.
We had stopped in one such village and bought 15 litres of water just in case. That was a prudent choice
Nice view.
Ah b
ks.Sure enough, the leak had re-sprung and our engine temp had soured on the cruise up this mountain pass. We had somehow managed to get ahead of our friends in the Shogun though and we had signal so they knew where we were and woudl be with us soon enough with some more radweld.
Fingers crossed.
We were now managing about 20-30km between fillups. So clearly the leak was not getting anywhere and we just needed to get to the hotel, if possible.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/l_PMqQMm3EI
It was kind of daunting, kind of liberating at the same time. Helps being on a nicely organised tour though - but still doesn't take away those natural anxieties.
Shortly after this, we passed Dirk and Vincent again - this time they were rebuilding a shock that had broken and luckily they had 5litres of coolant as we had used our last water other than a few litres for drinking. We were losing the light, we'd missed our target time, racking up penalties by the minute so we decided to get the 5 litres of coolant in and see how we got.
I decided to take a leaf out of Vali's book and for the last 20km of the stage which was a dusty/sandy trail through the starts of the desert, I "drove like hell". Petter Solberg i am not but damn it felt good. The car has a decent front rear bias through the haldex and I was able to get some decent sideways action, it really goes well.
We passed the final way point and immediately the temperature started to climb, we were in the middle of nowhere with no signal at all so we had no choice but to press the SOS button on the Stella and await assistance.
I mean. Worse places to break down? I broke down on the M40 the other day. I can confirm that's worse than here. We were in the middle of nowhere with a few farm shacks nearby and that was it. Moments later a pickup truck with four Tunisian dudes turned up and they stopped, we exchanged some french and they just wanted to make sure we had food and water. Such hospitable people. They have barely anything, but were willing to help.
The Stella started ringing and we had a conversation with the sky. It works by sending yes or no answers to the central control place (in Spain), who then relay the collated messages via satellite phone to the organisers who bring up the rear of the event every day to make sure noone is stranded. After a few messages back and forth, the reassuring "HELP IS ON THE WAY!!" showed on the screen.
Sure enough 10-15 mins later, the two Javea Auto Sales sponsored Cruisers with Andy and Roy at the controls with their flashing yellow beacons appeared over the dusty horizon and were roaring towards us. What a beautiful sight.
Big Nath - the organisations own mechanic - had a quick look over the car and quickly saw why radweld hadn't fixed it. This car has a radiator pack comprising the AC condensor / cooling radiator and a third radiator which is the water intercooler for the turbo pack. The left hand side mount which holds the entire pack into the car is actually plastic formed and attached to the intercooler. It had snapped clean off, exposing a hole about the size of a pea - under pressure and this was spewing coolant out. The good news was Nath reckoned if we could get the rad out for him, he could epoxy it back together at the hotel.
Luckily the lads had plenty water so we refilled the car and limped it - hoping to make it some of the way to the hotel (75km on road).
The Lazers at work with the two cruisers bringing up the rear, we were lighting up the sky. Also a good shot of the normal readout you get from the STELLA 3. It will also shout at you if one of the waypoints is marked as dangerous - can be quite a noisy affair in the car at times.
Made it to Tozeur, refuelling and buying coolant and water before heading to the hotel to crack straight on.
Now before I go on I should state that we were not expecting even this kind of assistance (an escort). The organisers lay out expectations rather brutally that you can expect to be towed to the side of a road whereby it's your own responsibility to find onward recovery or travel. What we experienced in terms of mechanical assistance and advise over the course of the evening that followed and the subsequent days was absolutely unbelievable.
Wil and I wrestling with the (very heavy!!) under tray and locating screws for the bumper.
At this stage, Nath and his lad could see we were game happy to graft but we were not as mechanically clued up in the head as he was. I genuinely appreciate his approach with this. He barked instructions and shouted tools, spanner, socket, do this, do that. We carried on, appreciative of his guidance and help - it probably saved hours.
One of the Javea cruisers drafted in for workshop light. Thankfully we had brought a 200 piece halford set which was more than ample for everything we needed on this evening.
The main man Big Nath himself helping with the fiddlier bits. With his and his lad Tyreece's help, we managed to get the intercooler out without removing the entire rad pack.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/894PTS0NB6Q
Preparing the rad pack for Epoxy and letting it dry.
Midnight - Wil taking a candid photo of me covered in grit, oil and coolant waiting for the epoxy to go off before we could get it back together. Nath and Tyreece helped us until half ten at night. I mean, what lads. Wil and I got the car back together just before 1am - holding coolant okay and albeit with about 6 or 7 screws that we hadn't manage to find corresponding holes for - we headed for bed. It was a 8am briefing the next morning at Mos Espa (star wars) which was 40 minutes drive away.
What a day it had been, a hell of an introduction into the Tunisie challenge and an eye opening reminder of the fragility and built in obsolescence so often occuring in modern car design.
- 1,000 thanks for sharing 
Bonefish Blues said:
Excellent stuff! Also interesting to see/know what cars other people were running
Full list here:https://www.tunisiechallenge.com/competidores-wint...
lots of pandas
some people went to town with prep on their cars, others - like our friends in their shogun - went completely stock with no prep whatsoever.
Will get another update up hopefully today, then off on hols for a week and will get the rest of it written up and loads of videos etc posted.
idealstandard said:
Full list here:
https://www.tunisiechallenge.com/competidores-wint...
lots of pandas
some people went to town with prep on their cars, others - like our friends in their shogun - went completely stock with no prep whatsoever.
Will get another update up hopefully today, then off on hols for a week and will get the rest of it written up and loads of videos etc posted.
Excellent thanks - plucky little Pandas very much in the majority https://www.tunisiechallenge.com/competidores-wint...
lots of pandas
some people went to town with prep on their cars, others - like our friends in their shogun - went completely stock with no prep whatsoever.
Will get another update up hopefully today, then off on hols for a week and will get the rest of it written up and loads of videos etc posted.
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