The Mongolance is MOT'd!

Today was an exciting one! We had delivered the Ambulance to Hendy Group in Yeovil back on 5th December for a service and MOT. It was now time to collect her.

We arrived at Hendy's at 9am to meet a photographer from the Western Gazette who took some pictures of Hendy's staff handing over our new MOT certificate. We then set off directly for the petrol station but failed to make it (I still can't understand how an MOT test used 40 litres of petrol!), and had to use spare fuel were were carrying in cans. On reaching the petrol station we found it takes £106 to fill up with petrol, certainly not a cheap vehicle to run around in!

I drove her back from Yeovil seeing how well I could keep up with Dad, driving back in front. Not very well apparently! Even a 3.5 litre V8 engine isn't much when its pushing 3.5 tons of metal along with the aerodynamics of a house. 

We got home quickly enough and another trip to the petrol station showed that it had used 16 litrres for 64 miles, approximatley 18mpg. A big relief as many people had estimated we'd be lucky to get 10 mpg.

The weekend then dissappeared quickly. Saturday was spent fitting sponsors logo's, continuing to repair the vehicles rather dodgy wiring and fit cigarette lighter sockets so we can charge Sat Navs and Mobile phones. 

Saturday night saw the Mongolance's first official outing - I took some mates to Thornbury for a few games of pool and some drinks. We all decided this was a great laugh and have now started to plan an official MONGOLANCE CREW FANCY DRESS CHARITY PUB CRAWL in Bristol sometime soon!

Sunday saw us changing the brake fluid which evidently hadn't been done for years then fitting a pair of rear speakers and more repairs to wiring. 

Monday morning was spent trying to make the fancy Eberspacher fuel heater work. This clever device is supposed to burn petrol from the fuel tank to heat the rear of the ambulance. Except that currently it doesn't!

Then it was back to work for another fortnight and another 2 weeks to harass sponsors and prioritise the next weekends worth of repairs!