Heat Wave On The Simplon Pass! At 31° It Was Hotter Than Summer

CROSSING THE SWISS BORDER AT THE SIMPLON PASS

We knew before we left Lake Maggoire that the Simplon Pass hadn't opened for the season yet, and that we would have to take the train tunnel to the other side.

Again, the heat and the effect on the vehicles was unexpected. "No one was expecting overheating," said Dale. "I was evern worried about not having anti-freeze in the engine." Others came prepared. The sight of the snow piled up on the side of the road while the vehicles were overheating and their occupants stripping down to cool off was strange. People were sunbaking in the snow. Dale even spotted a couple of pairs of white pointers!

Before we set off, in his vague way Lang said, "You can't miss it, there's no turns. Just don't go on the autostrada or take the 42 km tunnel or you will come out at the other end." Our convoy, and the Wards, both got lost 4 times again trying to finding our way out of Lake Maggoire! Hitting the Pass later in the day magnified our overheating problems. The convoy had to split up to get a run at it.

We were expecting cold, rainy weather and most dressed appropriately. It was so hot that most of the trucks had trouble getting up the pass. Even Lang boiled (pulled over, stopped and boiled). Vapourising and overheating was an all day ordeal for most.

We couldn't get started at an earlier rest stop. Jim Sewell towed us with the fisherman's rope we "trophied" from the beach at Crete. "It seems to be charging all over the place," says Dale.

Towards the top of the Simplon Pass, Tony and Marilyn's jeep developed fuel starvation problems. Dale and Tony tried everything to get it going, finally having to put on a replacement fuel pump. Alas, it was still vapourising. Marilyn was pouring water over the fuel pump to try to cool it. We heard Tony say "Not on the manifold!" The other Kiwis in the half ton Dodge were also waiting around to help.

The next time it failed on a switch back the four Kiwis uncoupled the jeep trailer and shoved it uphill for Ray and Jenny McKinney to tow it. We took the jeep under tow, uncoupling for the downhill runs and recoupling for the uphills. Dale had said it would be freezing and to rug up but we reckon it was 35 degrees and all of the vehicles were in trouble.

All the while we knew we weren't last. Nigel was also having trouble making it up the pass. Michael and Bob were waiting for him further up.

The train ride through the pass was fantastic, like a ghost train, just drive on and sit there in the darkness for about 20 minutes.

THE PRETTIEST VALLEY YET

I keep thinking that this is the prettiest everywhere we go, and once again I felt like it was today.

Onwards again down the pass to our campsite, and the jeep once again couldn't get fuel so Tony and Dale decided to pull the carby apart and found a sticky needle and seat and removed a small fleck of plastic. He's had no problem since.

From the time Jim tow started us, we realised we had a charging problem and had to find the source. On arrival at the campsite, we pulled the generator off and found the brushes not sitting correctly on the comutator. We fixed that but it was still erratically charging. We now appear to have a faulty "new" regulator and will have to look for a replacement. A rebuilt generator and a new regulator were installed before we left Oz to ensure that we wouldn't have a problem.