← Walkabout

Atak Garaj

September 9, 2022

Blue Seat Arosa with its door open outside the Atak Garaj workshop in Kadıköy, Istanbul, two men beside it
Seven hours, three blown fuses, and in the end it was the trailer's side light.

Day one hundred and fifteen, Turkey. Today I go on. Georgia next.

I am about to pull out of the Kuşdili parking yard in Kadıköy when the engine warning light starts blinking. Not good. I go looking, and notice that the brake lights are on permanently. The handbook suggests the brake light switch. So: the garage.

Vulcan at the Atak Garaj finds the first of several faults. Seven hours, two visits, three blown fuses and a very long search later, I finally get away in the late afternoon.

After a hundred kilometres the light comes on again.

In the evening I call Thomas at the classic car workshop in Bad Oeynhausen, the people who made Susi roadworthy before I left.

“That'll be an earth fault. Probably the trailer.”

Next day I go hunting, and there it is: the trailer's sidelight is shorting. That is where the fuses went. I disconnect the cable and everything works again except the rear left sidelight, and a few days later I have that too.

It is a pleasure that this old machinery can be understood by a man kneeling on the ground with a torch.

Letters from a Parked Car. About once a month.

A list kept by hand. One word, “remove”, and your address is gone.