Sunday, May 22, 2011

Update-facebook

Hi there,

We are having difficulty accessing this blog site in many if the countries we are passing through. We are finding easier to update facebook so if you could follow us there it would be great, it's under "Dublin to Mongolia 2011" on facebook.

We will still update this ad often as we can. We are currently in turkey about 100 miles from Ankara. We are officially in Asia having crossed the bridge in Istanbul
yesterday. The traffic passing through Istanbul and indeed
the driving habits if the locals were unbelievable!

We are aiming to reach the black sea city of Samsun tonight and hopefully on to Georgia tomorrow. More pictures/videos etc are on the facebook page.

Thanks,

Daniel

Saturday, May 14, 2011

We are on route to Mongolia!!

Right where to start!

Apologies there has been no updates here for a while, they will be coming thick and fast now that we have begun our journey. We left Ireland on thursday night on board our CELTIC LINKS FERRY which was kindly given free of charge and we set sail for Cherbourg. We arrived on Friday at approx 4.30pm and have driven non stop except for some fuel fill ups and a 3 hour sleep and are currently in stuttgart Germany.


Were gonna watch the FA cup final here and then head on to Salzburg in Austria for the night. Driven over 1,100km in our first day ! We've seen the Eiffel Tower, paid over 200euro on French toll roads (unbelievable), one of which was 36.50 and experienced the weirdest toilets in the world. Video of the toilet to follow on our facebook page (which is linked from this page on the right hand side), I'm not judging because I think the Germans are innovators but this is over the top. Thanks again to Michael in Safesounds Drumcondra for the sat nav which we'd be totally lost without and no doubt will be once we leave Europe. :)


Just a quick note to also say that we will have our link for donations to Our Lady's Children's hospital fixed for tomrrow, 


Next up is the Czech republic and Bulgaria

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Thanks to Dolmen Insurance Brokers

We finally managed to secure a sponsor for our vehicle insurance for the Land Rover today from Dolmen Insurance Brokers. Huge thanks to them! This insurance will cover us for Europe and Turkey, all other countries from Georgia onwards will require us to pay for insurance at each separate border. 

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

The jeep is getting there/Massive thanks to new sponsors

It's been a while since the last update as things have been hectic trying to get everything organised! The first thing to mention is that we have a new member of the team coming with us on the trip, his name is Daniel McDonagh or "clicky" as we call him. The Land Rover is certainly full to the brim now!

Since the last update we have done the following to the jeep in no particular order; replaced all wheel bearings, fitted braided brake lines, changed all brake cylinders and shoes, fitted our new modular wheels complete with our brand new BFGoodrich All Terrain tyres courtesy of BFGoodrich (thanks again), fitted new half shafts to the rear and lots of other things in between. The new wheels and tyres combined with the Rocky Mountain Suspension has really given the jeep extra height which we will surely need when the serious off roading begins. We also had Simon from Rovercraft in Enniskerry weld the only real rust issue on the jeep which was the front left side chassis and he did a fantastic job. Jobs left to do are fit the new engine(goes in on Saturday), fit our winch, fit our diff guard, complete our interior refit and finally do a full check of the whole vehicle.

New wheels and tyres ready to be fitted

Much better!

Simon's welding on our chassis


Last Monday we paid our VRT (vehicle registration tax) which is an Irish tax placed on all imported vehicles and have now discared our UK plates for our new Irish reg which is 82 D 3182. 

We held a stand up comedy night in Na Fianna GAA club on Saturday night to raise money for the two charities and a wonderful night was had by all as well as raising a tremendous amount of money.

Celtic Link Ferries have kindly offered us free ferry transport to and from France which is a massive help in our efforts to reduce our spiralling costs so a huge thanks to them, you can access their website at www.celticlinkferries.com



Heli from heli.ie gave us absolutely brilliant handmade land rover cushions to make the trip that bit more comfortable and I would like to take this opportunity to thank Heli and also urge you all to check out her website of beautiful clothes handmade in County Wicklow.



Finally last week saw us secure our 2 month Russian dual entry visa's which was a big relief and we are now in the process of applying for our Azerbaijan, Mongolian and Kyrgyzstan visa's before we depart in early May. The embassy of Kazakhstan in London only accepts visa applications in person so given the cost of flying to London and back for 4 people we have decided to apply for our Kazakh visa's in Baku in Azerbaijan en route.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Sleeping bags

We received a very kind donation today of 3 snugpak softie 9 sleeping bags from at 53 Degrees North in Carrickmines so I would like to say a huge thanks to Rossa and all the staff at 53 Degrees.

Work on the jeep has been stalled for the past two weeks as Shane (our mechanic) has been on holiday in America. He returned last night however so things should get back on track very soon!

Thursday, February 24, 2011

New Suspension is in :)

Last weekend we managed to finally put in our new "Rocky Mountain" pro shocks and leaf springs. The job of removinng the old chassis bushes was one job we'd rather forget and took nearly 2 days! The next jobs on the list are as follows: take out old 2.25 diesel engine and put in a more powerful 2.5 diesel engine, full brake overhaul kit, change of all fluids, installation of winch and a few others. And thats before we even start on the interior! Lots to be done!

Thats all for now

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

First Post

So where to start. Firstly the purpose of this trip apart from to have as much craic as possible is to raise money for 2 charities, the Christina Noble foundation and Our Lady's Chrildren's Hospital in Crumlin, Dublin.

We bought our Jeep a couple of weeks ago, its a 1982 Land Rover Series 3 with a camper body. We have no idea about Land Rovers and would like to thank all the helpful people on www.clri.net who have been offering tips and advice on what we need to do to prepare the jeep for the drive to Mongolia and back. Today we have ordered a new Suspension from Martin at Rocky Mountain Spares and lots of new parts from Paddocks. We also got great news from Michelin who have agreed to sponsor us with 6 BFG All Terrain tyres :) So a huge thanks to Michelin!

Thats all for the first post, the work on the jeep (which leaks like crazy, doesnt always start and has the worst brakes in Europe) begins at the weekend, will post some updates then.