The Car Parts Market

by Sheila on 04 Sep, 2014 - 2 comments

After passing out in the middle of nowhere just beyond the Uzbek-Kazakh border, we made our big push towards Almaty. Why on earth is Kazakhstan so darn large?!

The drive followed the southern Kazakh border with the Pamir Mountains all the way east. While the mountains were wonderfully scenic, we only had to glance left to see what Kazakhstan held in store: flat grasslands to the horizon. I have never been to Kansas, but Mom tells me that the plains of Kazakhstan are just as flat and, somehow, more featureless.

We had our lunch break in the town of Taraz, in a nice cafe that gave Mom free coffee! This was our first full meal in over 24 hours, so we inhaled everything we could get our hands on. We also attempted to find a bank to exchange our Uzbek Som into Kazakh Tenge only to be snorted at, implying that our Uzbek Som was worth less than toilet paper. It wasn’t an entirely fruitless venture, as in our search I instead found a real! Western! toilet! Such a luxury.

After Taraz, there wasn’t much to the scenery but exceptional flatness. The main highway we were on was in much better shape than any of the roads in Uzbekistan, so we were making decent time to Almaty. Until we weren’t.

As the sun was setting, Mom noticed that the car’s engine would suddenly shut down, only to quickly restart on its own while we were in motion. Thinking this was more of a freak incident & praying just to get to Almaty, we decided to ignore it. Apparently, engines don’t like being ignored when they have a problem. The shut down/restart began occurring more frequently until, near midnight in the pitch dark of the middle of nowhere we were at, the car engine refused to start again. (Insert epic Darth Vader “NOOOOOOOOOOOO!” here)

We coasted to the shoulder (thank goodness there actually WAS a shoulder on this part of the road), and there we stopped. We had absolutely no idea why the engine had behaved the way it did. A cursory inspection by flashlight confirmed that the necessary bolts and belts were in place, we had more than sufficient fuel, and a couple of test ignitions confirmed that there was battery power, but the engine refused to start. Reluctant to waste the battery we had, and entirely flummoxed by our situation, we decided to flag down motorists for assistance.

The first car to stop was a small sedan loaded with a family. As the entire car emptied of family members to surround our car, the driver came towards us and made the international hand signal for “give me money.” He knew immediately that we would ask for a tow, but dismayed by his attitude we waved them off.

The second car to stop was another sedan with young guys. They didn’t immediately ask us for money, but they did say that they couldn’t tow us as their car was automatic transmission (it is unclear to us why this was an issue, but oh well). They did appear regretful that they couldn’t help us out, but they left anyway.

The third car to stop was in fact a truck. The driver immediately set out to determine what was wrong with our car. After a quick sign language discussion with Mom and another test ignition, he dove right into our engine and pulled off the distributor cap. “This is problem,” he said, and pointed to the inside of the cap. The rotor inside the distributor cap had the tip sheared off; this is not the kind of breakdown we expected to have! With the rotor non-functional, the spark plugs do not get the necessary electrical charge, and thus no successful ignition. Knowing now that this was an issue that couldn’t be fixed on the side of the road, we asked the truck driver for a tow. He noted that his truck was too high and our car could easily slam into the back of it, therefore he couldn’t tow us into Almaty and so he left, leaving us in the dark holding our ruined distributor cap.

After failing to flag down any more cars, we figured we had no choice but to tuck in for the night. After enduring a couple weeks of intense desert heat, it was shocking to experience the frigid chill of the Kazakh plains at night! Sleep was fitful at best, and we woke up bright and early to try to get to Almaty one more time.

The first car we flagged down in the morning was another group of young guys who again mentioned that they couldn’t tow us due to their car’s automatic transmission. Even so, one of the guys had a better grasp of the English language and told us to hang tight, that he would call for a tow truck to retrieve us as soon as they entered Almaty.

It’s worth pointing out that we didn’t have a full grasp of how far we were from Almaty. Flatlands can be deceptive that way, especially in a country as large as Kazakhstan. Looking at the road map, I had figured that we were about 50km from the city.

After waiting for a couple hours with no tow truck appearing, we decided it was unlikely that the guy had/would call for a tow truck, so we resumed flagging down cars. To our surprise, my first attempt of the morning attracted a shiny new black Mercedes G-Class! Inside was one guy, and we asked him for a tow. Again, he noted that the height difference between our two cars would make it dangerous, so we then decided on a new course of action.

Instead of waiting by the side of the road, we asked the driver of the G-Class to take US (and some of our luggage) to Almaty instead, where we would then find a tow truck and a mechanic independently. He kindly obliged and we loaded our things into his massive SUV and left our little Polo in his dust.

At this point, we realized just how far we actually were from Almaty. Instead of being 50km away, it was closer to 150km and it took over an hour before we saw the outskirts of the city. Arli (the name of the driver and our saviour) was immensely helpful, taking us all the way to the Holiday Inn with no complaint and gave us the numbers for a tow truck and a Volkswagen mechanic in Almaty, all the while using Google Translate on both his iPhones to communicate. We owe him so much thanks!

We informed the front desk at the hotel about our situation, handed them the numbers and info that Arli had given us, and the guy at Reception set out to arrange a mechanic for us. Excited by the prospect of my first shower in over a week, I jumped in while Mom waited for the front desk to give us hopeful news.

Half past noon, the front desk called to say they had a mechanic who could help. It turns out that the mechanic was in fact a personal friend of the guy at Reception, but it was better than nothing. After agreeing on a fee, he drove with Mom out to buy a new distributor cap, and then to the Polo to retrieve it.

On the shady outskirt of Almaty, there is a market where only car parts are sold. It is MASSIVE. It is positively larger than most shopping malls, and the entire market was outdoors. “Shopkeepers” hawked their parts outside of shipping crates, which were stacked on top of each other. The mechanic weaved in and out of the packed crowd, Mom trying to keep up, to find that he somehow found the primary Volkswagen crate/parts shop in the market. They bought a new distributor cap for a few thousand Tenge (under 30 USD), and set out to find the Polo.

When they arrived at the Polo an hour and a half later, Mom found a business card of a tow company on the windshield. The guys from earlier that morning had actually called a tow truck for us!! We both felt bad for not trusting them, but it was too late by then. The mechanic popped on the new distributor cap and Mom tried turning the car on. It was a no-go. Confused and dismayed, the mechanic then removed the entire distributor and found that a metal ring between the rotor and the distributor shaft was warped. This did not allow the rotor to spin in time with the distributor shaft (which is driven by the camshaft) and therefore the engine could not start. The entire distributor would have to be replaced.

The mechanic hooked up the Polo to his car, and together with Mom they towed it all the way back to Almaty and to the mechanic’s front yard. By the time they had returned, the car parts market was closed for the day so Mom came back to the Holiday Inn. Meanwhile, I had found a Burger King with wifi and spent much of the day enjoying an actual Whopper and seeing the Belorussian men’s national water polo team!

The next morning, Mom set out with the mechanic again and back they went to the car parts market. Unlike the day before where the mechanic zoomed to the Volkswagen parts “dealer”, instead he held the distributor in his hand and yelled, “VOLKSWAGEN POLO! VOLKSWAGEN POLO!” while walking through the market. If a dealer nodded their head acknowledging that they had the part, the mechanic would go over and haggle. Mom refused to pay over 5,000 Tenge (numbers in the Kazakh language are the same as in Turkish, so Mom could at least argue the price!), so it wasn’t until the third “dealer” with his crate three stories up that they found a complete used distributor for the Polo at a good price.

Mom and the mechanic headed back to the Polo at the mechanic’s house to fit the new distributor on. One turn of the ignition later and voilà! The Polo was alive again!! As the distributor was used, Mom asked the mechanic why he didn’t install the brand new distributor cap they had bought yesterday on it. The mechanic pointed to the new cap and said, “This Chinese made, no good. This,” pointing to the used cap, “is German. Much better!” Not willing to consider how and where the used German distributor was obtained, Mom drove off victorious back to the Holiday Inn.

It is during all of that when Dad had insisted on providing us with some long-distance assistance. Calling an old acquaintance who had a daughter-in-law in Almaty, they had arrived at the Holiday Inn at Dad’s insistence to lend us a hand in finding a mechanic. I met with Deniz and her husband to explain that everything was under control and the car was fixed, but we compromised by letting them take us out for lunch (another meal, how luxurious!).

Almaty is apparently one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in, more so than Toronto. This showed in downtown, full of exclusive stores, beautiful tree-lined avenues, and luxury cars everywhere. Deniz and her husband took us to a lovely restaurant for kabob that was better meat than we had had in a long time! It’s a shame that we couldn’t stay longer in Almaty, but we had lost so much time up to that point and we needed to get to Mongolia. Using Deniz’s knowledge and our unwillingness to put up with more crap roads, we asked her about the state of the route to Semey. The apprehension in her eyes was obvious when she recommended that we head north to Astana instead, and turn east. The route was longer, she said, but more in one piece. This was confirmed by the hotel reception, who also shook their head at the idea of going to Semey from Almaty, and recommended the route to Astana as an alternative.

With our rejuvenated Polo, we said goodbye to Almaty and prepared ourselves for the unending nothingness of central Kazakhstan.