Day 3 , I 70 saga, Wichita Kansas

I have an appointment later today with Jim Pendleton, an independent mechanic who works a lot on Land Rovers and some Defenders. We will meet at the Land Rover facility where my Defender is parked and he will evaluate it there. If i decide to go ahead with his doing the work, he will haul it over to his yard and start the work tomorrow. If i decide to not proceed with his doing the work, or he declines to do it, i will have no choice but to ship the Defender back home. It could turn out that i end up having Jim do the work and then shipping it back home, depending upon how long it takes to do the job.

The Land Rover team thinks it is the transfer case that is the problem. If it indeed is that, transfer cases just don’t fail with a loud POP, so something else happened to cause it to fail?  I will soon find out. Did i break any axle  maybe? 

I only have one bid from an auto transport company, the same one who hauled the Defender back in 2016 from Salina, Utah, for the same price. The problem is that with the roof rack the Defender is 84.5 inches high and that requires two berths in the truck.

If i have to ship it back, sometime after Monday i will rent an SUV and drive home and then have someone turn over the keys to the Defender when the truck comes.

I am sitting here in this hotel thinking about how lucky i was that this thing happened where and when it did. Had it happened just a few hundred miles back, that is, the night before, or on any number of other risky places just in recent days, things would be turning out differently.  Again, I lucked out, if there is such a thing as simultaneous good and bad luck.

In the meantime, the pace here is rather slow, not what i am used to on these trips, or anytime. The hotel is somewhat distant from everything so without a vehicle we are limited. But i will admit that this unexpected layover is a bit more comfortable than the five others i went through in the past on these trips, but that does not exactly make me a happy camper. Donner is using the time to catch up on rest, as if he did not have enough on the trip. I just may do the same.

Ed and Donner, from the road, i mean, off the road.