Africa here we come... not yet

Lots of "help" from the neighbors

November 23^rd, 10 am, everything packed, Rosana already sitting in the cab. Marc turns the key and..... nothing. Duma doesn't collaborate.
Do we have an issue with the starter motor or with the batteries ? Can we jump start it ? Duma’s battery is 24Volts and all other regular cars are 12V. We finally had some jump start cables and another car standing right next to the batteries. We’ve tried to jump started it without any luck.

How about “AAA” ??? The only thing they could do was to send a tow truck. What kind of tow truck would we need?

In the end we got a mechanic to come to the campground. He took the batteries to be charged overnight. The next day at 10:30 am, as promised he was back with the batteries. Wow, the Spaniards were finally surprising us. Later we found out he is from Venezuela. The batteries were put back and Duma was happy again.

Good news !!! It looks like the issue is not with the starter motor !!! Now we just need to get new batteries and off to Africa we go. No, wait a minute. The issue could be with the alternator and/or the regulator and not with the batteries. We need to get it checked.

Found a place to get it checked. It looks like they have the right equipment. The apparatus used actually said “alternador defectuoso”
What to do ??? Wait until Monday to go to Mercedes to double check (oh no, not that dealership again… ), then order the alternator, wait a few days, have it fixed and then off to Africa.

Nothing could be done on Sunday so Rosana decided to try her 3^rd recipe for baking bread.

It actually worked this time.



Fresh bread every morning

 

Reconfiguration of the passenger's seat
to fit the new batteries

Monday 10am at the Mercedes dealer. Explained our issue (in Spanish or sort of) and we were told by Javier (remember him from the previous post???) they were super busy and he had to ask the "Jefe" (yes the same supervisor that wanders around) if they could diagnose the issue. He came back saying today was going to be impossible they were too busy. After reminding them that last Monday they had us wait the whole day and Rosana's best arguing in Spanish we convinced the "Jefe" and they were going to do it sometime in the morning.
11:30am - Surprise, Surprise, they were going to start.
12:30pm Diagnosis done ! Alternator and Regulator good. 1 battery good and 1 battery bad. Ordered 2 new batteries from a shop just around the corner.
1:30pm Siesta time and no batteries yet.
3pm With batteries handy it should be done in 15 minutes. Wait a minute, the batteries don’t fit… The iron box need to be cutout and re-welded to give another 15 millimeters of space
4:30pm !!!!! Batteries in, Duma happy!!!
5:30pm After some more trees were killed by our amigo Javier, the paperwork signed and the bill paid we head back to the campground. Tentavive plan is to leave for Morocco on Wednesday/Thursday so we have two more days in Spain to make sure the problem really was the batteries