Saturday, 23 November 2013

Water in the trunk - Toyota Auris


A couple of days ago we found an "aquarium" in our trunk, about 5 cm deep, in the "bowl" where the spare wheel is located. After some internet explorations we learned that most probably it is a seal around a trunk ventilator or a seal around rare laps that let the water leak inside the boot. We decided to try fixing the problem on our own.
Thank you google and all the people who share their experiences and solutions to different problems at various fora! Although we found a lot of useful tips, I decided to write a short post and include pictures - maybe this will make someone's life easier...

Removing the trunk carpet was the first thing to do. After removing 4 screws at the bottom of the trunk, the carpets are just held by several pins (Figure 1), distributed along the carpet edge (Figure 2).

Figure 1


Figure 2

You need to pull the carpet firmly to get the pins out of their place. No worries, they must be pretty robust because we did not break even one :-)
With the carpets removed, the access to the ventilator is much easier (Figure 3).
Figure 3

Once we got to this point I "volunteered" to jump into the trunk and observe where the water was coming from while dr TBBE was pouring water on our car trunk. 
The leak was clearly visible at one side of the ventilator (Figure 4). 

 Figure 4

Sealing the ventilator around solved the problem :-)




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Tuesday, 22 October 2013

Who said that weather in Belgium sucks?

21 C on 22 of October? Not too bad, huh?

Several pictures from our recent bicycle trips around Mol:








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Monday, 7 October 2013

Sunday, 29 September 2013

Project Belgium - first 2 weeks in Flanders


Things are going smoothly so far:
- most of the admin stuff like: registration at the Commune, getting a new bank account or mobile SIM cards are solved already,
- all of the furniture is re-assembled again - my last year's birthday gift rules!!!
- most of the boxes are unpacked and the flat slowly starts to feel "like home".

On Friday drTBBE joined me here for a couple of weeks and he will do teleworking for the Danish employer - I love Scandinavia and their way of treating people! It looks like we could keep going like that for several next months :-) Simply great!!!

And it seems like my new job is going to be interesting... very promising so far :-)

There are still a couple of points to get used to:
a) surrounding of our house is pretty deserted (the buildings next to ours are not inhabited) and I suspect that people who developed Fallout (a video game) could have been inspired by this area,
b) every day at 5 p.m. there is a test of nuclear alarm sirens... Believe me or not, this sound doesn't make you feel comfortable...



Our new address:
Building to the right,
Middle of nothing,
Belgium




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Saturday, 14 September 2013

the heavies and the biggest 21m3 ever

Viborg, 12 September:

  

 

Mol, Belgium, 14 September, 3rd floor:
 
 


 

Was that the heavies and the largest 21m3 ever? Or am I just getting older?
L. - thank you for carying our stuff up for 4 hours!


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Friday, 6 September 2013

Packing and painting...

6 days to go...
 

Do we really need all the stuff that we own?

That is a very valid question, especially when your new flat is on the 3rd floor with no elevator....

 

 

 

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Saturday, 31 August 2013

Goodbye Bergen!

And so my 4 year's experience with Norway finished yesterday... At least for some time :) Great time, very nice people and a beautiful country! Definitely a very positive time, full of challenges and new things to learn :)

I hope that the challenge level will be equally high in the new job....

We start packing on Monday already! Moving to Belgium in 13 days!

 

P.S. 5.5 months after the defense I received my official PhD diploma :D right on time!

 

 

 

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