Volvo Superpowers

We’ve now just picked up our ambulance again from the Volvo garage, and the boys there had truly worked their magic! And, as a personal gift, they’ve even fixed the AC! When we’re luxuriating in cool air in the middle of a Central Asian desert, we’ll be sending grateful thoughts to the boys in blue in Effretikon.

On the more serious side, they’ve done a full vehicle service, refilled fluids and replaced consumables, tested lights and brakes, and fitted it with enormous Volvo stickers front and back. The ambulance truly has got superpowers now.

Tomorrow, Thomas will come down from Norway and on Sunday morning we’ll start driving. Stay tuned. And do like Volvo, donate.

Main Sponsor: Volvo Switzerland

Main Sponsor of Ambulance To Mongolia: Volvo Switzerland

It took many months to finally manage to get in touch with the right people to talk to, but today we had a long and fruitful meeting with Volvo Switzerland. The representative from their PR team, Alain Juon, was wonderfully friendly, and I believe that the deal was sealed when we told The Story about how my acquaintance the ambulance driver advised us that a Volvo 965 ambulance in his opinion was the most likely vehicle to both get us all the way to Mongolia and then also remain useful there for years to come. I can hardly think of a better way to reinforce the image of Volvo cars as being utterly reliable and nearly indestructible.

Volvo’s first action as our now official Main Sponsor was to book a time slot tomorrow afternoon in their own garage to give our ambulance a full service work-over, preparing it in every possible way for the 20,000 km journey ahead. (If you ever owned any car yourself, you’re probably used to your garage booking you a time slot sometime next month, if you’re lucky when you call them. Apparently it’s quite different when the call comes from headquarters.) We know that the ambulance is in good shape already, so this overhaul will probably give it superpowers enough to defeat such obstacles on the way as the ferry across the Caspian Sea, the altitudes of the Pamir Mountains and the vastness of Siberia.

Our Volvo 965 ambulance, the HMS Dreadnought

Car Keys

This is how configuring a Volvo ignition key looks like.

When we bought the ambulance, it came with exactly one (1!) set of keys. We might be looking for adventure, but embarking on a journey around ⅓ of the world without a single spare key would be more like looking for disaster from my point-of-view.


Just because the laws of the universe stipulate that absolutely nothing is allowed to be really easy when one has far too many things that need to be done, it turns out that also getting more keys for a Volvo 965 ambulance really isn’t that simple. Remember that we chose this particular model to as much as possible avoid unnecessarily complicated electronics, and relish the fact that it nevertheless is modern and complicated enough to have an ignition key in which there is a microchip, that authenticates with the on-board electronics. If the chip isn’t authorized by the car, then the engine can’t be started.


Time to get professional help. One of the larger Volvo dealerships in town is the Häusermann Automobile AG, and they were ready to help out:


– Do you have the Vehicle Identification Number?
– Sure, it’s YV1…
– Hm, that’s a strange one. It’s not in our system. I’ll have to call Sweden.


A great start! But eventually the vehicle was properly identified and keys appeared, so today I drove the ambulance to them to get keys and car configured to learn to know and like each other. I’m getting increasingly fond of driving the ambulance around town, it never fails to attract attention, and even today at a larger Volvo dealership some guys felt compelled to walk out to take a closer look.


– I hope it is a normal Volvo under the hood!


Yes, it is, the data port was right where it was supposed to be, and the keys were properly configured in a few minutes.


That was the ignition keys, that. Now, this being an ambulance, it also has a full-length sliding ambulance cabin door for which there (of course!) is an entirely different key, and such keys turned out to be something with which the larger Volvo dealership had no possibility to help out at all:


– Full-length sliding ambulance cabin doors are not a standard Volvo accessory!
– Really?
– Really.
(… dramatic pause …)
– But it says Volvo on the key. Where else can I get spare keys?
(… requesting assistance from colleagues …)
– This is actually an absolutely normal key. Mister Minit can make a copy of it!


Wonderful! There even is a Mister Minit just next to the garage where we keep the ambulance parked. He does, however, turn out to be quite puzzled when I show him the key:


– This is a special Volvo key. You must talk with Volvo about it. I can’t help you.
– The guys at Volvo sent me here. They said it was a normal key. They said you could copy it.
(… dramatic pause …)

– Hm, let me have a closer look.

(… rummages around an immense collection of key blanks …)

– No, that’s a special key. I don’t have a blank for such a key. Talk to Volvo.

(… desperate pause …)

– I talked to Volvo. They can’t help me. They were certain that you’d be able to help me.

(… desperate pause …)

– Hm, let me have a closer look.

(… rummages around the immense collection of key blanks …)

– Aha! Look here! It’ll take 20 minutes and cost 98 CHF.

Today’s adventures took a little more than 3½ hours in total and cost 383 CHF, but for that we now have a total of three (ie. one each) full sets of keys to the ambulance. Hopefully the magic rule (that stipulates that if you’ve prepared for something, then it won’t happen) works also this time, for then all three sets of keys will arrive with us in Mongolia for the benefit of the recipient of the ambulance.

Now there only are 999 problems left to solve before we leave. Good Night!

Vehicle Registration

Important news!

Our ambulance (Thomas insists we call her the HMS Dreadnought) is now properly registered with The Adventurists, approved by them to stay in Mongolia and they've confirmed that they've received the deposit we've paid to guarantee that we won't abandon it as scrap metal somewhere along the road if things would go really bad.

My good friend Fabian Wildenauer got us in touch with car mechanic Franz Lötscher (see previous blog post, Progress!) who did a careful examination of the ambulance, made a repair of a steering link (on his own expense, for the good cause! let that inspire you, too, to donate money) and wrote an assessment of the vehicle condition for the paperwork.

This means that we now are official participants in The Mongol Rally and that the most important piece of bureaucracy, that must be done before start, is done. One step closer!

To celebrate, we've ordered more pith helmets.

My brother and nephew in Sweden, admiring the ambulance.

Progress!

A few minutes ago, I got a text message telling me that my Mongolian visa got issued. This means I have my Uzbek, Tajik, Kyrgyz, and Mongolian visa, as well as Turkmen and Russian invites. I still need to get my visa for Azerbaijan and China, and, depending on how our plans in China turn out, for Kazakhstan and Russia.

I also got approval for two months of unpaid leave (a while ago, actually).

The last weeks were filled with rather unspectacular activities. We spent our time filling in visa forms, negotiating, and researching. We experienced a few setbacks: as we registered our ambulance with the organizers, we realized that by the rules, it is too old. And, after sending pictures as proof of it's good condition, the organizers asserted that it's not only too old, but also too rusty. We still think it's the best ambulance we can get, and even though we found another one that is in accordance with the rules, we believe our ambulance is superior and we will try very hard to make it work. Because none of us has the necessary skills, we set out to find a trustworthy mechanic. This mechanic needs to have the right adventurous attitude and the willingness to solve unusual problems. Finding this mechanic turned out to be more difficult than anticipated, but after some rather disheartening conversations ("I don't think we can do that"), we found Franz Lötscher from http://www.loetscher-ott.ch. He also thinks we're insane, but he will help us with our ambulance.


And then there is China. Driving through China is complicated (we expected that). We have a few offers from Chinese agencies to get the required permits, but right now we're stuck waiting for the other pieces of the puzzle to fall into place: we need to know our exact route including dates, and provide proof of hotel bookings and return flights. Right now, we still don't know whether we will be able to use the Altai border crossing, and we're still negotiating trying to avoid fixed dates.

The Ambulance

How much do you know about ambulances? The past few months have made me first realize how precious little I knew about them, and then (after promising my team mates that I'll get us the ambulance) to learn more about them than I ever thought I'd do …

The first question was: If we want to give an ambulance to a hospital in Mongolia, where do we get it from? It turns out that ambulances really aren't any different from any other light commercial vehicles, and are sold and bought just like for example pickup trucks or vans. So I started browsing second hand vehicle web sites to learn what was available on the market, but the more ambulances for sale I found, the less I knew which one to buy.

The next question then became: When there are so many different kinds of ambulances out there, which kind do we really want? I had no idea. But by pure coincidence, I then got to know that an acquaintance of mine, Peter Wärnberg, happened to have worked as an ambulance driver for ten years, so I wrote him a long mail explaining what we were trying to do and asking for his help and advice to choose an appropriate vehicle.

Peter was happy to help and answer my questions. As a one time owner of a close-to-indestructible Volvo 740, I had been looking especially at Volvo ambulances and he could confirm this to be a good idea. So last Friday, I finally found an ambulance for sale that was what I now knew to be what we wanted and for which Peter found the listing to look good and believed it to be a vehicle in which we would be able to reach Mongolia.

So we in team Ambulance To Mongolia are now the proud owners of this beauty:

Thomas insists we name her HMS Dreadnought.

The Volvo 965 ambulance is supposedly one of few ambulances on the market that was purpose-built as an ambulance directly at the factory and has a chassis especially constructed for this. (We hope that this makes it sturdier than vehicles that were converted to ambulances, after leaving the factory as normal cars and vans.) It is equipped with the Volvo Modular engine B6304S, which was developed in a cooperation project with Porsche / Weissach and produces 204 hp to make the 5.7 m long and 2,680 kg heavy vehicle move swiftly. The automatic transmission is supposedly also not the same that was used in normal passenger cars but a custom version made for the ambulance, somehow made tougher and more reliable. Our ambulance was built in 1998, making it one of the last cars ever built of the safe and exceptionally reliable and repairable Volvo 900/700 series.