August 22, 2009
Hurrah! The past week has been more than a bit stressful as we've been nursing the Fuso along until we could get to a Mitsubishi Fuso dealer in Germany to work on our front end. The quick version of the story is that we developed a rubbing/grating sound coming from the left front wheel when we drove, although strangely enough it stopped when we locked the 4x4 hubs. The sound ended up coming from a part called the center ring plate. This piece holds the 4x4 hub in place on the axle. What happened was that we had a mechanic who reinstalled this part improperly so that it was not straight, whereby the weight of the axle broke the ring part off of the mounting plate.
Now for the long version.
Back at the end of June when we hired the Renault Truck Dealer in The Netherlands to replace the front brakes on the Fuso, their mechanics apparently failed to take the time - although they did insist on charging us for 8 hours of labor - to properly reassemble the 4x4 hubs when they put the brakes back together. Over the next 4,000 miles we were aware that the Fuso just didn't feel right. We know there were front-end alignment issues, which we finally were able to take care of in Finland which we hoped fixed the problems, but didn't.
Then when we couldn't drive without the scraping sound, we looked for and visited a Fiat dealer, a Mercedes dealer and a Volvo truck dealer hoping for someone to take apart the wheel and discover the problem. There were no Fuso dealers in Sweden. Much to our surprise and dismay, none of the dealers or mechanics were willing to work on our truck, even though we have a service manual and even though the dealers all work on 4x4s. So we searched for the closest Fuso dealer, which turned out to be back in Hamburg, Germany. So we had to cross our fingers and hope we didn't damage the truck as we drove the 250 miles across Sweden to the the ferry port of Trelleborg where we would catch the boat across the Baltic Sea to Sassnitz in Germany.
Of course we arrived back in Germany on the weekend so nothing could be done immediately, although we were able to get a service appointment in Hamburg for Monday. As we waited for Monday, we slowly made our way across Northern Germany as we drove with our front hubs locked in four wheel drive and driving at a blustering slow pace of 35 mph so that we wouldn't overheat the front axle.
Traveling so slowly, we had no choice but to stay on back roads even if they added additional miles to our route. This did have the advantage of taking us past great old towns and villages that had beautiful 14th century brick churches. We wondered why this part of Germany was so much more interesting than our route north back in July when we realized that this area was part of what used to be East Germany. Here are some photos from Schwerin.
Our route took us through places that we had never heard about, places like Stralsund and Schwerin with castles, lakes, old town centers with 16th through 19th century buildings and quiet walk streets. We even found fields of ripe raspberries free for the picking. In the center of town there is a statue, for what purpose it is unclear, but obviously the artist had an attitude. See for yourself, butts?
Then on Monday morning when we arrived at the Mercedes/Fuso dealer in Hamburg we got a very rude surprise. Despite the fact that they were a Fuso dealer, the mechanic refused to work on our truck. Even the supervisor couldn't get the mechanic to do the work. The fellow had a real bad attitude, so we told the dealer to forget about doing the service, and Don went online to locate yet a different Fuso dealer. For some bizarre reason, none of the authorized Fuso dealers in Hamburg would even touch our truck. All of this talk about "German Efficiency" we felt was nothing but hot air. We did manage to find one dealer about an hour away, yes even on our route, that agreed to work on the truck the next day.
This turned out to be a small family run business that repaired mostly heavy duty trucks including military 4x4s and 6x6s. So with our service manual installed on their computer, they had the wheel off and the hub and brakes removed in less than an hour. Then come the discovery about the cracked and broken center plate. Being a vehicle that isn't sold in Europe we figured that we were effectively "dead in the water" until we could get the part rushed from the USA, but here we were really surprised. George, the owner, took the broken plate to a local machine shop where an hour later we had a brand new, custom made replacement. One hour later the truck had been repaired and we were ready to continue on our way. George and his mechanics restored our confidence that had been tested by the refusal of so many mechanics to even try to fix our truck. After all we reasoned, never before had any mechanic in any country, especially in developing countries where our vehicle is completely unknown, ever even thought twice about helping us. Always they worked on our truck, even the simple mechanic who worked under our Fuso while lying on a piece of cardboard on the street.
But like we said, HURRAH! All was repaired and we were back on the road.
Later that day we made a stop to visit and be humbled at the remembrance park and memorial at the location of one of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps - Bergen-Belsen. The center had exhibits detailing what happened in this camp together with films made by the British when they arrived and liberated the camp. The films were graphic - the people, the conditions, the death, the bodies. Even though we have seen similar information in other places -The Holocaust Museum in Washington DC and at Yad Vashim in Jerusalem, it is still stunning like a fist in the stomach, what man is willing to do to other men, women and children. All in all, some 25,000 soviet prisoners of war and 50,000 men, women and children were killed here. Some 47,000 of these victims died in just the first four months of 1944 before the camp was liberated. Around the grounds of the park are huge mounds covered in purple heather. These mounds are really the mass graves where the British buried the dead that they found at the camp. Each mound has a number on it which represents the number of people buried within - 800, 1000, 1500, 2000, 5000 - totaling over 50,000 innocent humans!
Along the way we visited two more great small towns, Luneburg and Celle, both filled with 16th century buildings, many tilting and off center due to shifting ground as well as just plain old age. We couldn't believe that the buildings were not condemned! Some fronts were cracked in half, others had facades that were appeared to be falling backwards into the buildings, while others seemed to be leaning into each other as if trying to hold each one up. Really incredible to see.
While we were at the Fuso dealer having our vehicle repaired, we emailed two of our traveling friends who live in Germany. We weren't sure where Eddi and Gisela lived, but we knew they were temporarily home from their travels. When we received their reply, we were floored to find that they lived only about 30 miles away from where we were. So we made a bee line to their home and here we have been for the last two nights.
| Here's a strange thing that we see, on every bridge in Germany are signs showing speed limits for trucks as well as tanks. Tanks? Why are speed limits for tanks even necessary. |
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