The Warrant of Fitness test

In New Zealand, cars older than 5 years have to get a Warrant Of Fitness test done every six months. The WOF is a safety test, to make sure that your car is safe for the road, both for you and other drivers. After owning Big Blue for a few months, our warrant was up and we headed south to the largest city around, Invercargill to get it done. Like most travelers, we wanted to get the warrant passed and on our way, no hassles, nice and easy. We found out about an easy garage in the middle of nowhere that was perfect, but he was in a spot of trouble and couldn’t do any warrants, so we had to look into other garages. After having no luck with getting a warrant on the same day, we happened upon a garage that could do it right away. They turned out to be a very strict garage and were quite nice to come up with several things wrong with the van that had to be fixed in order to pass the WOF.

Luckily Invercargill is a big city and after checking out some repair places, we found a place that could scramble up everything we needed, from welding some cracks, getting a new seat belt cover for us, changing brake hoses and a few other things. Unlike the 500 dollars quoted at the strict garage, we were able to get the work done for pretty cheap, paying not even half that amount.

Allan, the repair/salvage yard owner, was a genius with cars, but had to do all the work as he hired 3 braindead people to work for him. Things took a while there, but after 2 days, everything was set, and we passed our warrant. The delay gave us time to see Bluff, famous for their oysters and windy hills, plus good views of Stewart Island.

We drove on the beach where Burt Munroe raced his famous Indian, as seen in The World’s Fastest Indian. Not bad for an old timer to be setting speed records in a self modified 1920s motorcycle. We spent the night on the beach, hoping the high tide wouldn’t be too high and sweep the van away. In the morning, with just a couple tiny islands in between us and Antarctica, we went for a swim. The water was mighty cold, refreshing, and rejuvenating. Clean and ready to rock, with a safe van, we were able to leave the southwest of NZ and move on to the east coast.