a fairground life(cyprus adventure ch4)

Jan 1st 1999
The old dynamo ran the rest of the night and into the New Year without a problem. This wasn’t really a good thing because it leads to a choice- ignore the problem or try to fix it. To fix it I needed another dynamo. Where was I going to find one three days before leaving? What happens if I ignore it? and it packs up later? Maybe when I was in Cyprus? When it comes to choices I usually make the wrong one. The smoke did subside, but you could smell the windings inside ( a sort of barbecue smell, this is something old showmen used to do before buying a dynamo, have a good sniff. It was a sure method to tell if there was anything suspect about it). I would have to worry about this later, one problem at a time.
I pulled the ride down and then packed all the Cyprus gear back onboard again, game, market stall and luggage. I had to do this, as there was no other way of transporting it away from the fair. At the back of my mind I wondered if I was wasting my time by packing it. At 4am we were ready for the road. The clutch was still slipping on the lorry, but if I could get it moving, it was only two miles back to the yard and there would be no traffic. Slowly the lorry pulled away in first gear. I kept the revs low and just crawled along at snails pace. Out onto the road I didn’t stop for give ways or red lights, I knew if it stopped moving it would probably not pick away again. Lucky it was new years morning and the country was comatosed, there wasn’t a soul about. After about 40 minutes I had completed the two miles. It was 5am, time for bed.
The alarm woke me at 8am, time to start the clutch. With the ride uncoupled from the lorry it moved no problem. I drove it to the shed on a neighbouring yard.(previously arranged) and met old Alf. Him and his youngest son were going to change the clutch with me. After about two hours we had the old clutch out. The only problem was that we couldn’t find anything obviously wrong with it? We wasted another hour trying to find something wrong with the lorry, why had the clutch been slipping?
( This brings a question to my mind that I hadn’t previously thought of—the first mechanic said it was burnt out- obviously not the case as we were holding it in our hands and it looked brand new! Some people are cowboys! ) It was now 12noon, my father appeared from out of town. He suggested a solution to all my problems, well nearly. He offered me a lend of his artic unit. A mid lift ERF with an L10 Cummins engine and here’s the BONUS it also had a 65KVA generator fitted behind the cab. BRILLIANT, I have transport and power! With this idea now being the plan, we proceeded to put the old clutch back in. The conclusion was that it needed set up properly to stop it slipping. My father suggested that if I could get it to Stirling, he know a mechanic there that would do the job and the lorry would be ready for me in April when I returned from Cyprus. I put the new clutch back into its box and prayed I would get a refund when I took it back. Old Alf and his son give me some ear bashing about how they couldn’t drink on new years night and I had ruined their new year (all in good fun of course), but I thank them even to this day as I was in a spot. But that’s what being a showman is all about- lend a hand when possible because you never know when you might need one.
This leaves only one small problem, my fathers generator is 415v a.c three phase, when I need 240v a.c and 110v DC. Ok I can get the 240v from using one phase on his generator, but to get 110v DC, I need a transformer rectifier and it has to handle 300amps to boot.
That problem will have to wait until tomorrow…