So I woke up knowing we needed to source a new fuel pump within a few hours to have a reasonable chance of getting on the ferry. As we are running an engine conversion the pump is not the same as one used in a standard engine and therefore that made it more difficult to find one. After various phone calls a company said they had one which I went to pick up after discussing the requirements with the guy on the phone. I was a bit skeptical looking at it, didn’t look like the right type, but as we had talked about it we fitted it anyway.
The van did not start. We tested a load more stuff… The van still did not start. I was sure the issue was still the pump and after googling the part number, turns out it was for a carburettor engine and delivers around 3psi, we need about 45psi to run. Fortunately a local mechanic had managed to get one in for us in the meantime so we took the wrong one off, collected the new one and fitted it.
She started!! Test drive to take the wrong part back and everything seemed fine. Now we just had to get on the ferry, which we had been told after a lot of phone calls that we had to just turn up. The staff at the port and on the phone were very sure that this would be no problem, but we might need to pay a £20 admin fee. So we left again for the port. When we arrived they wanted £99 to cover the costs, which we managed to redue to £50, still half happy to be on the ferry and half pissed off at the extra charge, we actually departed for Dieppe.
The trip is around 4 hours meaning we arrive at 5am local time after attempting to nap on the deck for a few hours. We managed to leave the ferry and drive a few minutes down the road to a motorhome car park and crash out.
The Kombi Chronicles 