Fire And Ice

So after 1.5 hours typing the blog Weebly decided to delete the post entirely whilst I was uploading the photos. This is one of the many bugs of Weebly. The developers seem unable to find any of the ones I report and ask me to send in web capture video. Do they know where I am ! If you don’t have a reasonable connection to the internet Weeby is naff but I suppose we’ve managed so far.From 35c to 0c in less than 100Km….is that fast enough Mike….I removed the seed net and its not made a deal of difference. I did replace the foam between the Intercooler and Rad as it was hardly there. Its really strange that I can run for ages and all of a sudden it runs away and gets hot. I can literally stop for 30 seconds and switch off the engine and the restart and the gauge is back to almost normal. If I let it idle for a while it stays OK or indeed goes down.  I’ve been careful to never let her get anywhere near the red. A few degrees off verticle and I stop.  The Engine block is at 109C I might add but the water is ~90c (ish). (block measured with the IR gun at just under the breather so at cylinder level I think) I doubt its an airlock as she runs completely normal almost all of the time. I’m flummoxed ! Would the block be so much higher than the water temp?? I’ve checked the rad from the front and its not clogged up and apart from a couple of damaged sections that have been there for ages, it looks OK. I’ve not done any wet work yet but that looks to be next. If we don’t go up anymore hills I doubt she will overheat again. Water pump is new and fitted in Kenya. Thermostat was in the UK a couple of years ago.Over the last few days we’ve been to San Pedro de Atacama and its a lovely vista with mountains and volcanos all around. If you Google the place you will see more than we did as when we arrived it was night and then the weather turned. Snow, Rain, Wind, Cloud…..the second day was 35c again. We decided to go to the Geysers on the bad weather day. It wasn’t really a choice it just happened. It was truely miserable and the water wasn’t as hot as it looks in the photo. Yes I did get naked for the blog…..i’m a bit of a tart. There is video of the event but that is censored and will be released when its stolen from my California apartment just like any “sex” tape). The rain brought out the flowers in the desert. After the full day of bad weather they might have been better the second day but we didn’t travel that road again. We did sleep in an old abandoned mine village. A bit spooky but I was more worried about the wall collapsing on top of the car in the night and nobody ever finding us…..Matilda got very muddy on the way back from the Geysers so we needed a wash. It was the type of red mud that sets like concrete. We got the local Copec station, which took us over an hour to find, to let us use the hosepipe for $4usd. We flooded the filling station…..they were not happy.