The mechanic had our clutch hose replaced by about 11am, and showed us the correct fluid to top up the clutch reservoir with. We then went to an auto-electrician he recommended as we’d noticed that the light was coming on that indicates the battery isn’t charging. The auto-electrician told us that the alternator needed to be fixed or maybe even replaced and that it could take two or three days. We decided that since we weren’t travelling at night and didn’t need to have the lights on and we had a new battery that we’d get it fixed in Caxias which was still about 320km away.
We finally made it across the border into Rio Grande do Sul, the state of our final destination! but as we tried to start again after stopping at the road toll, the clutch failed to work again! we couldn’t believe it, this problem was supposed to be completely fixed now and here it was happening again! luckily we’d read up the night before on how to get by without a clutch (as we couldn’t understand how the mechanic had been able to start and change gears without it) so we were able to get it started with a little push from the team at the toll stop 🙂 but the problem happened a few more times and we had to start it ourselves in dangerously low visibility conditions with huge logging trucks speeding by!
Finally we got into Vacaria, the first city in Rio Grande do Sul, after checking out 3 hotels in the pouring rain we found a nice one called ”Hotel Ponto 1” that wasn’t too expensive and had a good closed parking area spacious enough for our car and trailer, which is where we are now.
Overall we made good progress today with only about 120km left to go, but we’ll need to find a mechanic and call the one who did the work yesterday to see what he thinks may be happening. We think it’s probably air in the clutch hydraulic system and we’ll buy some tools tomorrow so we can do the clutch system “bleeding” procedure ourselves on the road if we need to 🙂
