It was time to head to the Mid-West and meet up with friends who used to live in Switzerland but moved to Kansas City end of last year.
The weather was quite hot and the drive wasn’t that spectacular anymore, thus I decided to speed things up again and do a 560 Miles drive in one day to KC.
Since starting the trip one of the things I checked daily was the coolant water level. A few days ago I noticed some spills off coolant on the cap of the expansion reservoir after the warm day but nothing serious. However there was also a tiny water spill under the car. The day after, there were no additional traces on the cap but the spill under the car got much bigger and I had to refill some coolant. On the third day, I was already in Kansas City, the spill was really big. Luckily there’s a Land Rover shop in KC (Aristocrat Land Rover). I went there on Saturday morning. They confirmed what I suspected was the culprit: the water pump is leaking. Fixing it will take a bit of time but nothing dramatic, however getting the right parts is another question. Unfortunately, on Tuesday was the U.S. Independence Day, thus things got delayed even more, turns out, getting all the parts over Rovers North would take up to 7 days. Luckily Ruedi from Switzerland (Overlandtechnics) had everything on stock and sent the package on Wednesday. Due to some miscommunication and time zone issues, a second package had to be sent with additional parts which arrived Monday afternoon.
Luckily I could stay at my friends place and they took me to all kinds of amazing food places. I just hope I’ll still fit into the Landy when everything is working again. I can’t thank enough Becky and Ronnie for let me crash at their place, showing me KC, and feed me all the awesome food!
Land Rover enthusiasts are everywhere and I got invited by Dave and his family for dinner. They saw the Landy at the Land Rover shop and got in contact with me. I spent a great evening at their house, chatting about Land Rovers, travel and the world. Because the Landy was in the shop, they couldn’t look at it, thus when I finally got back on the road I went to their office. The office is in Gardner City, which was on my way to Colorado. A big surprise was waiting for me there! They are running a sign company and they made decals and a custom Yeti cup for us! Now I wish I’d spent more time designing the logo 😀
Once more, thanks again, and if you ever make it to Switzerland you are more than welcome to stop at our place!
Since I have to be in Seattle by August 6th this delay will cut my plans a bit short, thus from here I will tackle the way to Colorado Springs and then up via as many off road trails as possible to Rocky Mountains, Grand Teton, Yellowstone and Glacier NP.
