Well it is free isn't it.

After a week of hard work (pictures and report to follow, I've been too busy) we took the van back to the APK Keuringstation in Beesd. Here after a half hour we got the van through the test. What a relief!

All I need to do now is re-register the van which I will do shortly.

But every silver lining has its cloud: whilst at the garage I noticed that the van had dumped a rather large amount of oil on the nice clean grey painted floor. There were also spots up the back of the van. This was all a little worrying.

When I got home I parked the van outside the garage door and left the engine running. I noticed that the oil was not coming from the middle or back of the engine but from the 'front' of the engine next to the gearbox. Not only was the oil dripping it was dripping out quite fast.

I was thinking 'crankshaft front seal' or oil cooler seal. After cleaning my hands off, a quick search on the internet confirmed my suspicions. If I am lucky it will be an oil seal that has gone, if unlucky it will be a crack in the crankcase. The only way to diagnose the problem is to pull the engine out of the van and have a look at it.

As you might have guessed, more than a day's work for me.

So, the van is street legal but we will have to leave it here and fix it some time in September when I come back from Norway. To be honest I am glad that it started leaking before we left rather than halfway up Denmark whilst rushing to get a ferry. Another plus point is that now we can think about ordering a brand new engine before we move the van to Norway

Watch this space for the backlog of updates, and then in a month or so, some pictures of the engine swap.