Angola is an interesting place, has many natural beautiful spots but also still has a lot of povertry brought by the Soviet-oriented civil war after the decolonization. I considered a bit odd to see some Brazilian-assembled Mitsubishi pickups here, recognised by their distinctive round headlights. What caught my attention the most was a fiberglass replica of the Jeep Wrangler, known as Troller and fitted with the engine from a South-American version of the Ford Ranger.

After the ship got unloaded I'll get a meal before I go to Africa one more time. Today's menu has some breaded fillets of random small fish caught by me in the middle of the Atlantic, a cup of cassava flour seasoned with onion, parsley, pepper and then pan-fried with a bit of oil (that's a Brazilian side dish, they call it farofa there), a slice of fresh pineapple, 3 deep-fried sliced bananas, 2 cups of rice and a cup of corn, with orange juice. All the waste cooking vegetable oil and animal-sourced baking greases from the ship will be turned into biofuels.

On a sidenote, I had the chance to collect a good amount of orange skin oil, which has a good performance as a natural ignition improver to the usage of ethanol into compression-ignition engines.

Getting in with used cars and machinery, and out with refrigerated containers full of tropical fruits.

Petrol engines are definitely not my favourites, but I have been overhauling a handful of them since arrived in Suriname about 2 days ago. To the Opel C24 still available in the Isuzu D-Max we can use parts from Brazil where the engine is still made and available in their version of the Chevrolet Colorado, badged S10 instead for market reasons. What I really didn't expect to spot was a Toyota HiAce with the 2.7 VVT-i engine, a JDM second-hand import, not really so great to work as a diesel.

A bowl full of garlic-fried rice and fava beans with slices of steamed potato and chopped carrot, a pair of barbecued sardines and a bread roll with a cup of orange juice might not be the most luxurious dinner, but after some hours of labor that's a great meal to enjoy aboard of a ship. And today I got even a white Kit-Kat for dessert. Great.

Fishing is still one of the best activities to do while in a boat. At least some sort of animal protein is granted for the next meal, and it's fresh. Got sardines and a nicely-sized tuna.

electronics are a pain to overcome, but it's time to do some ECM reflashings

It's still not the most comfortable job for me to reflash those electronic modules into some Citroen and Peugeot HDi engines into used vehicles to be shipped from Singapore, but it's required to clear and prevent error codes from an EGR and DPF removal to ensure they're gonna still work properly after their arrival in Suriname alongside a bunch of Corollas and even a Prius. I'd rather replace everything with some all-mechanical injection systems for increased reliability, but altough electronics might still raise some concerns regarding their reliability under extreme environmental conditions and lower quality fuels it would be an even more complicated job to take all the secondary electric functions and controls to remain operational.

But what surprised me the most is a Citroen C5 Break converted from diesel to dedicated CNG, which looks kinda stupid from a technical standpoint and would require an extensive work to be a profitable deal.

Japan surplus Mazda RF turbocharged engine recently arrived, I tested it with pure biodiesel on the stand and it ran great. This is predicted to be adapted into a Chevrolet Venture, just need to figure out how to set the automatic transmission for it.

Altough a petrol engine is cheap enought, Palawan tricycles would be more fun with a diesel engine. Maybe that 400cc single-cylinder Kubota used in tricycles in India could be a good match...

Replaced the turbo of an Isuzu Crosswind this afternoon. Throwing a twin-scroll with ceramic-coated hot carcass into something so old-school as the Crosswind might sound weird, but it reduced the visible smoke belching measured thru a Ringelmann chart at any RPM range, even before the injection pump tuning that followed it.