The next morning, Alex had a bunch of work to do, so Mike and Hamid took the car to try and find a part. On the way, Mike had a look under the car and discovered a set of vice grips still attached to the front left brakes! This left the brake system valve open, so every time we stepped on the brakes, we lost more brake fluid!
The vice grips the mechanic left on the brakes!
We stopped off at a parts dealer who didn’t have what we needed, but was very helpful and made some calls for us. After lots of calling, he found a place that said they had it. However, as it was the Friday of a national holiday weekend, they were closed, but said if the security guard was still around, he could let us in so we could buy the part. Ten minutes later they called back, saying they were sorry but he had left for the day! So much for getting our hopes up!
After a bit more calling, he found another shop that said they had it, but it was the same story. Mike even offered to pay the guard to come back and let us in, but they said no. Luckily there was another mechanic behind the parts shop, so we took the car there to get it looked at. He bled the brakes and had another look at the coupling. The previous mechanic has caused all kinds of trouble though. Because he shrunk it while welding it, the new mechanic had to pry it off with a hammer and chisel, and then replace the four bolts holding it because they got destroyed trying to take it off.
It was a Friday, but because we were foreigners he wanted to be super helpful and stayed late to work on the car. Eventually, it got too late, and it was time for him to go home. Having no choice but to leave the car overnight, Mike and Hamid had to skip Isfahan and spend another night in Tehran.
The next morning, with the mechanic unable to find the part, Mike and Hamid went door to door at the parts shops trying to find the part. After hours of searching, they had to give up. As Alex had work to do, we decided Mike and Hamid would fly to Shiraz to visit Persepolis, while Alex would continue working in Tehran and wait for the car to be finished.
No Land Cruiser parts here...
Later that evening, Mike and Hamid went to the airport and boarded an ancient 737 for the one and a half hour flight. The flight even included a tasty in flight chicken sandwich, and was only $45/person. Good luck finding that in England or the US! They arrived late that night, and Mike met with a woman from the tour agency.
The ancient 737 Mike and Hamid flew on.
The quite tasty inflight meal.
In the meantime we got further news from London. Mike’s visa application for Turkmenistan had been rejected, so he either had to try and extend his Iranian visa by two days until his Uzbekistan visa started, or fly to Almaty and wait there for two days. It had been a bad Friday.