Day 93

01/10/2009

Before checking out of Hotel Timor we drove around the area to see what else was available and liked the look of Hotel Dili. The rooms weren't brilliant but they were all at ground level and within a short walk of the car park. Ideal for our needs. The price was still not good, but it seems there isn't a great deal of budget accommodation here.

Spent the entire day cleaining the van. Emptied the interior then drove out to one of the many car wash places you find in every town in Indonesia and asked them to wash everything inside and out. Explained that the van was going to Australia and needed to be spotless, but their definition of spotless is nowhere near what I expect the Australian customs guys to be using.

When I lifted the engine cover I notices a large blob of black goo below the ignition coil - the coil had cooked itself at some point and spilt some of its internal insulation out. It was still working apparently OK but needed changing when we got back to the hotel.

Tried to clean dead insects from the radiator but this is a near impossible task on an old radiator as fins get bent and stop you blasting water through it. The T3 radiator has very limited access from behind and would need to be removed (and possibly re-cored) to clean it properly. Perhaps we'll need to do that in Darwin.

On our return I changed the coil and removed the luggage rack from above the front of the van. There was several years of German forest debris lurking beneath it, so definitely a good move.

As the day continued we started re-loading the van, trying to clean as much as possible as we went. Even fitted a new air filter as this is one of the things I know customs will look at.

Lat 8 33.09 S
Long 125 34.90 E
Town Dili, East Timor