Northern Auto Tech - ECU and Blue & Me Repairs

Technical Crossing Africa in a Panda Twin-Air...

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Technical Crossing Africa in a Panda Twin-Air...

Great write up Philip!

It sounds like an amazing journey, and following the progress blogs on your site was awesome! Loved the part when the armed escort 4x4 got stuck in the sand trying to keep up with you and you offering to tow them out. :D

Watching the tracker was addictive. The speed of progress amazing.

Glad the car performed it the way it did. There's a thread in the 500 section at moment where some think oil consumption with the twin air is a problem.
I don't think there are many situations you can put a car to an ultimate test, but boy did you guys do it!

Welcome back to Britain, glad you arrived safely and congratulations on getting the world records :worship:
 
Its a truly fantastic engine. We used not a single drop of oil (or water) in the 10,300 miles, BUT we did run-in the engine very carefully. I wonder if those who report oil consumption problems are not bedding in the piston-rings, honing the bores.... if the oil is so good (and just about all synthetics these days are brilliant), then its just possible that the engine is not sealing with a good bedding-in process. I can only report on my experiences (I knew nothing about Fiats and Pandas until we came across the Autocar report and went to various dealers for test-drives of several different small cars - including MINI giving me a guided tour of the Cowley factory watching their cars being made). We got the right choice!

Ive reported on the oil issue in the Technical chapter of this forum, where there was a lively debate. We dropped the oil on taking delivery of the car and re-filled with Comma running in oil - the dealer was aghast at this. We ran it for 600 miles, and refilled with ordinary mineral oil, and rang that for over a thousand miles before filling with synthetic. Most owners report that the engine frees up after 2,000 miles - we felt it was just getting steadily better all the time, we had just over 3,000 miles on the clock when we left Cape Town.
In running it in, we tried to keep below 2,200 revs for the first couple of hundred miles, and then moved the limit to 3,000, it was nursed painfully from Didcot,( Oxford ) to Dover and back again on long easy motorways, and then amost back again, changing the oil at the Lenham Motor Co south of Maidstone (sportcar dealership as old as the Ark), who wondered if we were nuts after looking round the car on the ramp...
Perhaps a reader on here can report this back to the 500 mob.
 
Philip, fantastic achievement!

Out of interest, do you have an overall MPG figure for the whole trip, calculated by either the actual fuel used or Trip A/B?

Vic
 
We didnt keep figures. The conditions varied too much. But its a good question. Given we had a nicely sealed engine from the very careful running in process (why we didnt use any oil, at all), see above earlier threads on the technical-chapter, we were going well with the fuel consumption.
The engine as "happy" at 3,200 revs and it gave us around 70 mph which it was doing hour after hour most of the time.
I will get a consumption test organised and report back on here next weekend, or so, at the moment the car is back at Tony Fowkes Autos having a wing mirror repaired and the tracking sorted.

We got over 60 mpg out of it when in Ethiopia, the highlands were indeed hilly but we crossed the country on one tank full, dipping the clutch, flicking into neutral on the downhill bits, but of course having to go up hill under power, but this is where we pushed the ECO button, cutting the use of the turbo.

The car was great. Nothing rattled lose, nothing fell off, nothing broke, cant speak too highly of it - it coped with dreadful conditions and apart from borders and the ferry stops, was running the whole time. To do 1,000 miles a day requires a reliable and comfortable car, it was great.

TWO pages in the current issue of Autocar. Five pages in the latest issue of Octane magazine, out on the shelves now. Bag a copy and show the dealer. The Ashford dealership knew nothing of the run....how odd is that!
 
Fiat's Marketing Dept. tell me they have spotted this and are going to correct it ....keep an eye out!
The Record Breaking car is going to them and will be going around the country on display in Fiat showrooms, and a special poster and commemorative booklet are on the the cards.
 
This is the press release that was issued a few days ago..


Record-Breaking Panda returns to Fiat HQ
The Fiat Panda which broke the outright world record for driving non-stop from Cape Town to London has been given to Fiat UK for use in future events and museum exhibitions.

Philip Young, the adventurer who, with co-driver Paul Brace, drove the 10,000-mile journey in a record-breaking 10 days, 13 hours and 28 minutes, has handed the Panda to Fiat UK. In return, He has been given a new Fiat Panda Trekking to use on his round of speaking engagements and public appearances.

"The Panda that Philip drove to the world record will always be a famous car now, and we are delighted to have it," says Rob Lake, senior product manager, Fiat Group Automobiles UK. "We have plans to display it at a number of events and we have even been talking to some car museums."

To complete the trip in their target of under 11 days, Philip and Paul had to average 1,000 miles a day at 40mph, a task they felt confident of completing in the 0.9-litre TwinAir-engined city car. The hatchback was showroom specification apart from a few vital modifications, such as extra fuel tank, sump guards, stronger springs and shock absorbers, and an air intake moved to the top of the engine bay.

The route to Britain wound through South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia before the pair crossed the Mediterranean for the final run up through Italy and France to London's Hyde Park.
 
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