It was supposed to be an easy 8 hour 730 kilometer day today. Supposed to be…………………………………..
Nope. Started off fine. We took a quick cab ride to the Grand Bazaar, which is a massive flea market. It’s kind of the same thing over and over but it’s still pretty fun to walk around and see all the different things. Also the sales tactics are pretty funny. There’s a whole leather section and these guys are reeeeeally trying to sell us jackets even after explaining we’re from Texas and Oklahoma and don’t need jackets. Also it’s summer here in Istanbul so…no.
We picked up some gifts, got the car packed and hit the road. The traffic out of Istanbul was considerably lighter than when we arrived the afternoon before last. It was A LOT of fun to drive around because it appears the only rule is don’t hit anything so you can zip around like it’s a go-kart to your heart’s content. Pretty uneventful drive other than me starting to doze off – SERIOUSLY, DON’T DRIVE WHEN YOU’RE TIRED. PULL THE F*** OVER. We stopped at a road side restaurant to grab some kebabs and what not and ended up running into a German team.
Right around about half way to our destination shit started to hit the fan. It’s never good when your car makes a prolonged disconcerting sound and ours started knocking pretty fiercely all of a sudden. We pulled over to give it a better listen and discuss possibilities. Troubleshooting a car can be a lot like going to the doctor’s office and expecting him/her to know what’s wrong. Oh you have a cough? That could be 1 of 1000 things wrong. The car wasn’t overheating which is good, but it did appear it was a little low on oil. We knew we had a few minor leaks but that’s expected of a car this old, especially a fucking Italian one…. Anyway we topped it off and crossed our fingers. It felt like it was doing a little better for a few minutes. It sounded like the knocking was only happening while we were shifting now and the car still had all it’s power. Then it started making a lot of noise again. Fuck.
We pulled over and popped the hood again and to our surprise a few minutes later our Danish friends showed up! Of course we still have no idea what’s wrong. I’m leaning more towards some sort of fuel/air problem, Mitch was leaning towards oil pump and Ryan was something something something. We chatted with the Danes for a moment and they let us use their phone to try and call a local mechanic. Surprisingly someone picked up even though it was well after 5 but they didn’t speak any English and immediately hung up on me. It was still about 4 hours to our destination and there was no way we were going to press our luck so we decided to try and find a mechanic in Ankara which was only about 15 away. We said goodbye to the Danes hoping to see them later as they were going to the same place as us. Such nice lads those Danes.
The sound has gotten considerably worse so we’re basically crawling along the highway and got about 2 km away from our exit when POOF there is a very loud sound and a ton of smoke coming out of the back end. That usually means oil has made it’s way into your exhaust system (not supposed to be there obviously) and starts smoking on the way out. We pull over immediately and pop the hood where there’s briefly more smoke, and after about 30 seconds we’re all kinda thinking we’re fucked. We probably blew the headgasket and it probably happened because of another problem (likely oil pump failure) and with that amount of heat buildup there’s no telling if we’ve fried any internals. So yeah, fucked.
We spent about 30 minutes trying different methods of getting a tow truck, the language barrier and crappy loud side of highway phone connection being a problem. Mitch decided that it would be best for him to try and walk to a tow company – which was about 45 away while we explore other options – to no avail.
Mitch showed up at the tow place where there were a bunch of mechanics but no tow truck. About 45 minutes later though he’s in a tow truck with a translator and we’re getting loaded onto the back of it. We were under the impression that we were being brought to a 24 hour mechanic, which would be really promising because for some reason Turkey seems to be the Fiat Doblo capital of the world. Seriously you can’t go 5 minutes without seeing on the road, so surely parts can’t be that hard to source.
So we ended up at a Fiat dealership instead. Awesome. At this point it’s 8pm and there’s no one around, so we grabbed our bags and were told to call back in the morning. This is all happening on the fly and we have nowhere to stay yet, and as the saying goes when life gives you lemons, find the nearest bar to have a beer and figure it out. About a mile away there was a Crowne Plaza so we set out that way, walking through a relatively sketchy area – at least it seemed like that at night. On the way Mitch spotted a Hilton and realized he has tons of points, so instead of staying in a hostel he called and was able to get us a room at an insane point redemption value. Granted we’re in Ankara, but it’s the capital and when we arrived it was actually quite nice. No pool though…
Tomorrow the “how the hell do we get going again” journey begins.
