PART 16: The Great Medellín Patrol Repair - January 2015
Time had come to fix this Patrol up for good. It was the agreement with the buyers that we would take care of the repairs before they arrived in Colombia. It turned out to be a lot of work, but we were happy to do it. It was great to have the opportunity to get the Patrol in good shape so that the next couple of travelers would not have all the problems we had had. It was also a way for us to put to use all the stuff we had learned over the past year about the Patrol.
Medellín is the second city of Colombia with a population of about 2 million people. It is probably best known for being the hometown of the notorious Drug King of the 80's, Pablo Escobar. Now a days, things are more quit here. Aside from cocain, another thing that is abundant in Colombia are the Patrols, even if not so much in a big city like Medellín. But we were still more optimistic about getting a good mechanic than in the other countries we visited. And we had a stroke of luck to find some local assistance. A girl at the hostel we stayed at was going out with a local guy, Alejandro, who was the daily manager of a bus company. He was also responsible for keeping their vehicles in running condition. So he knew many mechanics, knew his way around and how the whole thing was done in Colombia.
If there is one thing we have learned during our travels, it is that mechanics are a special breed of men. They have their own dialect and their own set of customs, and you better know your way around if you are to get a decent job done. Of course, we had the worst-case scenario from Argentina, where a lazy crook and an incompetent machinist gave us problems that would last for the entire trip. But even the good ones need to be approached in a special manner. You have to be very attentive and have the mechanics show you everything they do so that you can be sure what is actually being done. We learned a lot from watching how Pancho handled the mechanics in Quito.
Alejandro, our new friend in Medellín, gave us a good lecture on how to do the repairs, with many of his points echoing our own experiences. You have to go to the shop every day, he said. Check everything they do. Have them keep all the old parts so you are sure they actually replaced them with new ones. Also, you should buy all the parts yourself so that you don't get screwed on the price. And so on...
It was great to have Alejandro on board. It meant a lot to us to finally get the repairs right - to fix up the problems that lingered from Argentina at last. In Alejandro's car, we drove around Medellín, visiting several mechanics that he had tracked down, asking around for people who had experience with Patrols. We got their price estimates and also visited various parts dealers to get estimates for the cost of the spares.
After a week or so, we found our guy. Javier is a 60-year old mechanic in a small shop on one of the hillsides of the city. He had the experience we needed, and gave a good price as well. We sent word back to the buyers and got the whole thing started.
Javier, working with his son and brother-in-law, got the repairs rolling fast. We dropped of the Patrol at the shop a few days after New Year's, and he told us to come back the next day. When we did, they already had the transmission and the engine on the floor, only a while away from having the whole thing split to pieces. It was fantastic watching him work. His hands moved seamlessly from one bolt to the next, grabbing the needed tools without looking, like he had done it all a hundred times before - which he probably had. Our Patrol was in good hands, at last.
Once taken apart, we could properly asses the state of the engine. It was not as good as we had hoped. Aside from the crankshaft axial play and the bad bearing shells, we found problems in the engine head as well. The pistons rings were bad, as was the admission valves. The camshaft bushings were worn and needed replacement. It also turned out that the cylinder linings were not in the best condition. At the top, several of them were uneven.
We talked with them back and forth. How bad was it? They said we could do without relining cylinders and replacing the pistons, but it would not be optimal. We left it up to the buyers. They would decide if it was worth paying an extra $200 or so to get the best job.
We were happy when they responded to go ahead with it. And so were there guys in the machine shop. It was the shop that Javier always used; he actually insisted that we used that machine shop in order to be able to guarantee the work. Alejandro agreed that it was a good place when he saw it: they had all the right machines for the job, which is not a given. Of course, these guys had also seen their fair share of P-engines and did not give any of the "wow what is that"-outbursts that we were used to from other countries.
With the car sent to the machine shop, the next step was buying parts. After searching through a couple of neighborhoods, we found a good parts dealer in the Barrio Triste neighborhood, a place that is exclusively for auto-related shops. He was cheap - actually so cheap that even Colombians we talked to were impressed by the prices we got. And he had first-hand experience with the 60s Patrols, having owned four of them himself. Of course, that's what you like to hear from your parts dealer. But it was one of the only things we heard from him - his mumbling Paisa-dialect was so difficult to understand that we hardly understood a word. Luckily, it did not prevent us from making sure that we got the right parts. When we asked him if the bearing shells his assistant had gathered for us were indeed for the P-engine, not the P40, explaining that the two use a different shell for the first connecting rod, he just signaled that he knew exactly what we meant and replaced the shell-set with a different one. The right guy, indeed.
Overall, it went well buying the parts. If there were something complicated, we would just bring the used part to show them in order to be sure we got what we needed. But the whole thing also meant a lot of hassle for us. Especially when the machine shop and the parts dealer could not agree on which valve seals should be used. We went back and forth three times, as the machine shop rejected the parts we brought them each time. And whenever the mechanic discovered that another thing was needed, small or big, we had to go all over town to find it. And during the whole process, we kept visiting the mechanic every day to make sure everything was okay. We spent a lot of time in taxis. But it was nice to always know what was going on with the repairs, always being able to do something ourselves if there was a problem.
With all the parts bought and the engine at the machine shop, we could only wait for it to return to see the results. But we had the mechanics do a few other things as well. Since the transmission was taken down anyway, we had them put in the synchronizer rings that Pancho had given us. They even painted the case for good measure. This also gave us the opportunity to confirm that the repairs done in Lima were holding up.
We also had them replace the locking hubs, now with mechanic ones that should be more durable, and give the breaks a check-up (a few seals were replaced; there were no problems).
During the whole time, we had a lot of contact with the buyers, keeping them posted on the repairs. They are called Travis and Tarah, living in Arizona, and they were soon going to arrive in Medellín to start their travels in South America, going back down south the way we had made our way up during the last year.
To be continued...