When we arrived back at MaRe and I was very happy having gotten my needed spare parts parcel hand carried by Nohea, Tevai’s charming cousin.
I opened carefully the parcel.

I got a shock!!!

2 of 4 ordered spare parts were not in the box.

The two in the box were damaged.

The exhaust gasket was pretty bent.

But much more severe, the filler neck of the muffler was on both sides badly bent. So bad that I thought for a moment I have no chance to bent it back and have to wait 3 – 4 weeks for a replacement. At the end I accepted the adrenaline push, used a screw driver and a hammer to bent the top of the filler neck until I could attach and remove the radiator cap. This problem appeared to be solved. However do the 2 rubber sealing inside work fine? To see this I need to run the diesel engine for about an hour.

The badly bent exhaust gasket I could carefully get back into its normal flat shape without it getting major cracks.

Among the 2 missing spare parts, which are included in the ordered muffler assembly, the main problem was the gasket between the engine block and the muffler. This gasket needs to be replaced always. Fortunately I could very carefully remove the old one. Now, I have to keep fingers crossed that this gasket lasts until I reach NZ in few months.