Remote Wild Camp Breakdown — Our Simple Fix Turned Into a Disaster ⧸⧸ S02E06

Welcome back to Kombi Life. Let me bring you up to speed. Tamara and myself, Ben, are currently attempting to drive to Asia in our 1973 VW bus called Boomerang. However, here in central Italy, we've noticed a problem with our alternator not charging our battery. Whilst we wait for parts to arrive, we've been trying to survive off-grid on our solar power at this beautiful riverside camp. What a difference. But we are rapidly running out of power. In this episode we're trying to get ourselves out of this mess. But it looks like this time we might have bitten off more than we can chew. Let's just say things didn't exactly go to plan on this trip. Subscribe if you haven't, smash that like button if you appreciate our videos and let's get into it. We're looking for a place to charge our batteries because we're having alarms going off because we're on low battery warnings. Yeah to move. Ultimately it's still not here. I don't want to turn off the engine though. Oh I do look at that. Look at that. When you pay for a campsite it's like more of a hill than the field you were just parking in. We're the only people here though. You know what's bizarre? This is second trip first ever campsite we've actually stopped at. That is true. It's such a weird feeling I'm like five euros to have to pay. Months yeah months and months and months on the road first campsite. It's nice to know we can go this long without having to find a campsite. Let's get it plugged in. Pronto. Okay, bit of a bit of a drama. Alarms beeping everywhere but found the campsite. Very close actually. Okay, finally we can plug in. Let's get this done. That is pretty darn low. We've been having some really crappy solar as you can see. There is no sun today. Not very often that I get to use this charging thing. Particularly when you're alternating it, it's not working. I wish I caught that. You tripping up over the cable. Not used to it at all. Also just spilled a whole bottle of wine all over our sofa and bed. Red wine. Red wine. It's not been a great start to the day, but... Wine charging. It does 40 amps, but let's just put it on 9.1 until it gets a bit fuller. The place is totally empty. I think we're the only ones here. Yeah, we are. Yeah. Look at the swimming pool. Could do with a bit clean. It's a pretty cool place though. Can I get people? Find me a friend. So cute. Just like last time. Oh no stop. Well that's creaking a bit. Could be a nice campsite. We're about to do some washing and oh god found a couple of mice slash rat nests inside where you put the detergent. So yeah we'll be doing our washing somewhere else I think. It's a pizza oven. Of course it's a pizza oven at an Italian campsite. Always like damn it I'm sleeping. log five pizza oven. honestly i think this place would be so cool. yeah look at this barbecue oh my gosh that's huge. outdoor kitchen area and i think i might have seen some livestock as well actually. i think that's poultry. you think you can eat it? is it included in the price? this is such a cute farm turned camping ground. i love it. i love it so much. why are chickens so funny? funny thing was this wasn't even on the map Wasn't on Google Maps, wasn't on our map that tells us about campsites. Oh my gosh, someone else turned up. Oh my god, how? If you love travel, you're a digital nomad like us, or you're studying or working abroad, there is an awesome new data solution that we've started using called Holofly. Holofly offers international eSIMs and it's been on the market for years. They've already sold more than 15 million eSIMs. The reason we started using Holofly is that they offer unlimited data in over 200 destinations. 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I have a spare one of these in the UK but I didn't want to get it sent down because of Brexit there's no guarantee that the part would arrive but this one has arrived in, how long have we been here? Well we've been here a little while but it's arrived in a matter of days basically not Weeks. Yeah. So hopefully this is the right part. Gotta imagine. Getting our other alternator out is going to be the real challenge here because I haven't done it on this engine and I'm not sure if we can do it but we've got some tools. I'm going to give it a go. Cross your fingers. This is what we've got to get out which is easier said than done. Fortunately we do have a hatch up there and my lovely assistant Tamara is there. You mean me? Yeah I mean you. I'm here already baby. Before all you people with Volkswagen say that you can do this in an hour you definitely definitely can't with this engine. It's a bit different. Normally when you have to do this job there's only like two screws you have to do. There are screws everywhere holding this thing together. We've been at this actually for a good couple of hours trying to just get to the screws we need to undo the alternator but we can't get to them. It's really difficult, really really really really difficult. A lot of the engine has to come apart to do it more than normal so it's quite annoying. It's just silly, it shouldn't be this hard. Look at all the tools we tried, all of them, all of them. As well as these. I mean when I say all of them I mean all of them and we just we're getting stuck on so many of the screws that we can't just can't get access to it can't turn. Seized rusty screws. I think we're going to need some heat probably going to need to drop the engine. It's a nightmare none of those things we have or can do here. Over this massively massively massively over this. We need to come up up with a plan B. Really disheartened, there's a storm coming. We're basically Screwed. Mission aborted. We're not going to be able to do this here. The engine's going to need to come down. We might have to literally drill out some of these screws. We've tried for many, many hours, but we're really making very little progress. And you guys know that I'm quite determined. And it's pretty disheartening because we had, what I would say, a fairly good start to the day. We picked up our part, picked up a tool as well. A really difficult tool to find and quite rare. We found it very easily. And now... I think what we need to do is put the Kombi back together and come up with a plan B. It seems to be working. It's a bit of a nightmare situation but at least we can drive out of here on battery power if nothing else. Need to go find some help. It's end of the day, end of a long day. It's dinner time and Amanda doesn't want to cook in the combi so let's go see what she's up to. Bravo Ben. Machete. Okay that's enough. Never argue with a Serb over how to light a fire. That's correct. I think we've done pretty well to forage. Um what are these called? Chestnuts. And we foraged these beautiful yellow peppers in this courgette we got. Just found it all in the forest around here. Yeah and this onion as well. Wow we were lucky. We're getting really good at foraging aren't we? I do love chestnuts. That is a big chestnut. Like a horse's balls those are. I reckon that's ready eh? Vegetables first. Vegetables first. As my papa taught us. Need some coals? Yes please. Where do you need them? This corner. This corner okay. Thank you. I'm coming. I'm coming. Yeah you move that around with your fire pokey stick. Fire stick. What a team. There is nothing better than cooking on a fire. It's nice cooking on fire. It's 3am. Feels like 500 years later. Perfect look at that. Yeah this should be yours. So, that's what we're asking. Frietno. Frietno. Buon appetito. Buon appetito. The chestnuts are possibly my favorite. Woo, hot, hot, hot. These Italian chestnuts are banging. Martina just came and as Frank is it? Franz. Franz. Two German guys that were walking their dogs have come and lent us some tools so we may be able to have another go at this now. These actually fit what we need to do. Fingers crossed we can have another go. The weather holds out. Look at all this he's just given us. How nice is that. This is the missing piece. Which we do have but just much bigger versions. You don't normally have to take the intake manifold off to do this job but I think that that's going to be the way that we're going to try to do this. So many variables as to whether we can still do this but it's the weekend nothing can happen until Monday so start taking the engine apart. Be good to me, be good to me. This lady who stopped over her name is Martina she's very sweet and she even offered to pop by later this evening bring us food she said she's going to the shops she can do a shop for us and how sweet is that? It's pretty nice yeah always meet the best people when we're struggling and we're struggling quite often so we meet a lot of good people. That's true. Thanks to these fantastic tools we have made the progress of getting into this side of the engine. Look Now it's time for that. I think we're ready to bring this alternator out. I just want to say for a second, you are the nicest dress mechanic I have seen in Italy. Look at those nails! I'm glad you painted them last night. Yeah, yeah. I feel better about yesterday. I also painted my nails. That's why you're wearing gloves. That is why I'm wearing gloves, to protect them. Bedding driver seat. Why did you put it all the way up the back? Why would you do that? This is why it's important to travel with a small person. Now this isn't the right one, Tamara. What? It's a big boy. It's a big boy. Ben, that's not going. Too very boring minutes later. Will it? Yep. Come on, come on. You little beauty. You got all the shims? Yep. Oh sweet. Okay, good. Hello troublemaker. Does that mean it's lunch break? Yeah, I think so. Please sir, can I have my food? Definitely earned it. This is so good. That barbecue in here, honestly I wouldn't want to be broken down with anyone else. It was at exactly this moment that I made a major error. Although I didn't know it at the time, the backing plate for this alternator can go on in any orientation. However it should only go on in one orientation. If you put it on wrong the alternator will overheat and you have to do the whole job again from the start. You can probably guess which way I put it on. It's in, yeah. Well it's getting to the end of the day and uh I'm pleased to say that the alternator's back in so we can start moving forward. That doesn't sound so good. Yeah let's let's do that again then shall we? That will not do. Not at all. We can't have that scraping noise when I'm driving with a heavy right foot. Hey take two. Oh that's much better isn't it? Yeah baby. Play has been called on account of rain which is probably okay because it's getting dark. Can't really see what we're doing. And late. Not sure if that would actually help if we could see what we're doing. I'm sure you guys can appreciate whilst we're working on all this stuff. Morning by the way. Good morning. We can't vlog everything because obviously our hands are busy and often dirty but there are many things that are happening around this situation which make it an extra challenge. Here's one for example last night our oil additive bottle broke and leaked inside our carriage so We have all of this. Everything that shouldn't be covered in oil covered in oil. Cool so we'll start the day with that and then we'll get on with putting our engine back together. Quite a few people turned up last night, campers is one, two, three, four, five including us which is quite rare because it's not normally that many people and some bin people came down this morning to clean up some rubbish which was actually not left by any of the campers that have been here Over the past week. But it was left by a couple of local parties, you know people having a birthday party down here. Some locals and they left all their trash. Anyway when the bin men came they called the cops and the cops have just been around to ask us what's cracking with that little eventful this morning. Funny because as soon as we told the cops that none of us know each other and we're just here camping they didn't seem to mind at all. It was more the fact that they thought we were here all camping together having a party. That was the problem. One camper behind us. German, English, German, Italian but there is a lot of rubbish around here from the various people having parties down here and I think we're going to clean it up before we leave because we've been here for a week so you know not that we've added to the rubbish but we can always leave the place a little bit better than we found it. We're going to help tidy up aren't we? Yeah you just sit there and watch. You earn the money, you're paying for petrol. What else? Animals, plastic. This thing's It seems great at picking up the trash. I know. Let's keep going. I think half of the people camping here last night have already cleared out but the cops They've called the local council bin people in have come down so we've already disposed of three or four bags of trash already. Yeah let's see that doesn't want to be in nature does it? Is that glass? That is glass. If you go on the other side there's a door for small people. It's really good having the the cops call the local council down because it's really hard to throw rubbish away. We'd have been smart if we'd have thrown our own rubbish away. Just cleaned the whole campsite and we forgot to throw our rubbish out. Wow. Dope. That was it. What do you think? Good? Yeah I think one step closer to it. Okay nothing can get dropped down here now. shut up. when traveling it's always important to make sure that you pack everything that you need for your journey like you know snorkel surf gear gaskets for your engine six of them and see what kind of trip i knew i was coming on five hours later the latest problem you've installed a new Do the new alternator. Check. Cross is, it is rubbing against this central stand and so we inserted a washer to try and give a little bit of space there. What that has done instead is limited the space we have on the other side of the pipe. This means that for the third time we're now going to take this entire thing apart and put it back together again. I can't wait! Oh my god, push! Push, that's the only time you hear me say it. That's it. Okay. No wait, stop, stop, stop. The contractions are coming quicker. Oh we're on, we're on, we're on. Come on, let's go, let's go. Okay. Yes, yes. Okay, you can let go. It's not, yeah, like just, just. Third time baby. Third time lucky. This is the last thing isn't it really? Are you ready? I'm ready. Well we hope it is. Start the car and see if it actually runs again. After the problems we've had, I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't, to be fair. It's got to, isn't it? It's just, it's got to. I am ready to move on very far away from this. I swear, I swear we've now had two major breakdowns in two trips. Am I unlucky? Am I an unlucky thing? I wasn't counting. What do you think? Yeah, because you don't dare. Damn. Hey, mate. It's your home. Get in your home. It's where you live, mate. All right. I've got a little stir crazy, we're missing something. What came in the packet? I'd love to be able to tell you that this saga finishes here, but honestly, this whole situation turned out to be much more frustrating and challenging than it should have been. And although the finish line is in sight, crossing it seemed impossible. Silly, time-consuming things like having to make our own alternator shims out of penny washers because we didn't have enough. And then there's the test drive. Did you see that? We saw another catastrophic fail. We've got a major disaster on the motorway. A very dangerous and embarrassing fail. But we'll save that part of the story for next time. Thanks for hanging out with us. We do promise to take you somewhere interesting next time. Until then, happy travels.