Thread: The book, An introduction

just a quick one.......

Fozzy fixed himself yesterday afternoon while I was doing my "deliver the xmas hamper that we promised the QT help a family at xmas deal" that we'd subscribed to but for some stupid reason they made the drop off times times that every normal working person works during"


one stall and out of control 2 wheel lockup (still havent put the front propshaft on) followed by a clutch start when whatever the hell stopped me gave out with a BANG and its a case of "Fozzy Heal thyself"

no noise drives like a charm.

dropped the oil and theres half a syncro ring in the bottom of the box half hanging out of the drain hole... oh and Ive lost 3rd gear syncro which since I double clutch all the time bothers me about as much as keeping a promise bothers a politician post election time.

A quick drive past to the bloke whose been rubbishing fozzy and he wants to know how I fixed it so fast. Told him I asked nice and it fixed itself, Landrovers are like that, Reliable when you need them most. Got told unkind things when I asked how much longer it was going to take him to get his car fixed.

Dave,
I think these episodes are wonderful. Not perhaps so much the events, as your reaction to them and the way you describe them.

However, seeing that Ron seems to be missing in action, I will have to do his job for him.

Pagent - I think you mean - pageant

pageant = 1. A brilliant spectacle

arian - I think you mean - Aryan

Arian = an adherent of the doctrine of Arius of Alexandria
Aryan = 1. A member of the peoples speaking any of the languages of the Indo-European family. 2. (in Nazi ideology) a Caucasian not of Jewish descent.

John

judging by what I saw today there is no way the human race is ever going to survive any kind of global climate change...

from home, to the tip to alex's kindy and back home a round trip of lets say 50K's to be generous and including stops, the time at the tip and picking up alex a total of 2 hours worth of time I spotted 17 cars on the side of the road with their bonnets up with the drivers looking at the engine scratching their heads.. I managed to help 3...

the 4 that I stopped for all had over heated, one had siezed the first one I stopped for had pulled over and was checking his battery.. I pulled up to help and asked him what the problem was he said the battery went flat and the engine stopped... I got him to jump in and try to start it. At this point the masses of heat coming from the engine lead me to believe otherwise I could hear the starter engage but not turn over... a quick what lights are on on the days and whats the temp gauge say reveals the engine temp light is on the temp gauge is buried in the red...

sorry mate, its seized solid, nothing I can do. and its at this time that the cops show up wanting to know who hit who which was weird cause I was parked a good 10 meters up the road but apparently there was an accident where a small car hit a 4x4 with a trailer on this road but with the cops satisfied Id just pulled over to help out we were all on our way. Well most of us were.

the next 3 that I helped followed the usual pattern a car stopped with their bonnet up with somewhere I could safely pull up and yep over heated, low coolant so I just tipped in some water from the jerry to get em moving to a servo or at least more out of harms way and after the 3rd car that I could help there was no point in me stopping I was out of water, 22l's worth.

2 cars had the ominous puddle of coolant making its way down the kerb from a blown hose/tank/radiator/plug.

if a slightly hotter than normal day in summer which is a season that comes round every 12 months or so puts that many cars off the road from poor maintenance how the hell are we supposed to believe that we can survive a permanant change in the weather....


Does make me wonder tho, whats the worse sign of impending doom by ignorance, the sauna of the steaming radiator in summer or the ballet of the bald tyres on the slippery roads with the first rains of winter?

Temp gauges....

ok, for those of you who dont keep track, Im into old school engines... eyeball it around here (aurlo.com) for a bit and you'll find plenty of comments mentioning old school engineering in the days before down to a cost and computer modeling. Engineering based on the principal of “hey jeff do you think that a 2 inch thick chunk of steel will be up to what we're about to try?”, “nahh Bob, better make it 3 just to be sure.” Now admitedly this kind of engineering is rarely efficient, usually its not cheap and it definitely is not anything along the lines of streamlined.

A real life example, I drive both a 1970's series III and a 2003 Td5 defender.... now they are both capable of around 10k/l both take a ton in the back and both go cross country better than any other 4x4 out of the box for their class. The series III being from the 1970's obviously predates computer engineering and being designed well before the 70's was more hewn from a slab of granite than it was built. Its big, its heavy, its slow and it rides more like a tractor than any other thing on four wheels thats ment to be used for transporting people. My kind of vehicle.

Then theres the deefer, same shape, its heavier goes faster and does all the same fabulous things that the old series can do and does it all using about the same amount of fuel. It also does it riding and handling more like a car than a tractor which, allow me to assure you, pleases my wife no end. It does this due to the wonders of the progress in the fields of metalurgy and computer design. The engines about the same physical size, made from lighter metals, less of them and has all kind of white-man-magic that lets it do the whole more for less thing. The gearbox has more gears and strength for about the same weight, you get coil springs and well youve all seen the wonders of progress.

But theres two gargantuanly hugely important things that dont come with this progress the first of which is the cost of some of the parts when they let go, doing the head and injectors on the old series would set me back maybe $600, I know Ive done it for that. On the Deefer $7000 maybe more. Thats a lot of fuel even at the rediculous prices we're paying for it today. Now I dont mind that, IF I look after it in theory I never have to rebuild the head on the deefer if I never have to rebuild It I dont outlay the 7 grand and Its all win win.

The donk in the series, I have no idea how many k's were on it before I got It, its done several thousand more since Ive had it and it was well over 30 years old before I gave it its first rebuild, I know it was the first rebuild because everything was worn and the machining involved took everything to the first oversize, which is the first rebuild size. Heres where it gets interesting, Having been made before the days of computer, everything down to the minimum and cheapest cost engineering the things got reserve.



That was taken after it had come down a full needle width but before I climbed the last big hill that had the needle firmly pegged into the red

Lets see you get your td anything that hot and have it live on... and no, its not dead and the gauge isnt reading wrong once I got the vehicle I was trying hard to recover out of the crappy spot it was in and got to the top of the hill we needed to be up I pulled it over and put the thermocouple for the multimeter on the radiator under the joint for the top hose.... 135 degress centigrade and it was just starting to punch the coolant out of the cap into the recovery tank. Once it had cooled down and I was game enough to pull the cap and eyeball it there were no bubbles in the coolant and it was still full...

sure ally engines are nice but give me a chunk of cast iron with some holes drilled in it any day.

next up I'll do a write up on how the trip drom the switch to wagga went and no, none of the other pictures worked out very well, the cheapy aldi camera either doesnt take good photos when its on the move (but it does take quite good photos of things that are moving) or I just cant drive it.

Its trips like these that make having to put up with living in ipswich almost bareable.

1400 odd K's to run in 3 days with a belly load of fuel food and water in Fozzy, Country music and HHGTTG on the MP3 player a course to go do thats got the potential to make me more employable outside of my current job with the ADF should I ever want to get out. Not only do I get paid for this, I got a bonus......This ladies and gentle men is living and could life get any better, only slightly, and I mean that in the kind of way that winning a free car would only be slightly better if only the colour was the same as your SO's nail polish. IT would have been nice if some of the tracks that I was trying to go down hadnt been illegally closed some 7 or 8 ks from the only access point to the track. But taking the good with the bad, IF they hadnt been I might not have done and seen some of the things that happened... a lot of them I wish ID remembered that Id left the camera in the electronics bag for. Lets start with the bad, the inevitable breakdowns that your landrover is always going to have and leave you stranded in the middle of nowhere to die a horrible unsightly vulture feasting death.....

The exciter wire came out of the spade connector for the alternator............


ok so now that my 1970's doomed to fail and kill me landrover has failed to get on and forfill the predictions of all the mitsoyotasan drivers I can get on and talk you through some of the fun stuff things I havent done in years and some things Ive done as recently as just before chistmas.

I saw bueatiful sunsets with cloud lightning in support not once but twice, I recovered a nufty who forgot to engage his freewheeling hubs after the inevitable “how did you get up here” conversation had an escort by a flock (what is the collective noun for galahs?) of galahs, did the whole drive stop open gate shunt forwards, stop, close gates, drive on and repeat at the next gate thing, followed a track so disused it was little more that an occasional hint of rut and gap in trees, did engine bay cooking, had jaffles and coffe for breakfast, tortured the donk a bit, woke to bird calls and sunrise generally had a damn good time and a lot of “Alex would have loved this” moments.


One of the first moments that Alex would have loved was the flock of birds incident, I was zapping along one of the backroads between a pair of paddocks on fairly open flat ground sort of half watching the road I was on and sort of half watching a cloud of galahs that were doing their thing just up ahead of where I was I spotted the drop in the road where a small creek ran through it. After working out that the road through and beyond the causeway was straight I let my attention wander to the birds... and just as I was thinking how well Fozzy cruised through the causeway I spotted the dead roo in the middle of the track, slammed it and kept on going...

Next thing I know Ive got an escort of whats essentially a whole flock of galahs which went for about 8 minutes with a couple of them staying fairly close to the front of the vehicle but just above the height of the roo bar. Magic nice shady trees on a bright sunny day birds in escort and everything running just right..



The next big event was the first of the 2 “disabled” vehicles I got to. Again back in the middle of no where on some “sort of” road quiet unexpectedly I came across a running stream going over a causeway, not real deep, maybe 40cms or so not a real drama, brakes, gears select first walk it through and keep on going, about a K later after a fair down grade run, the “sort of road” became “sort of less” road and more “sort of” mud. Not enough to be problematic just enough to make the steering somewhat less accurate than usual so slowing down to maintain control was the order of the day.

At this point Im comfortabley plugging along in second high 2wd when lo, what whiteness off side of road has broke, Tis a toyota and with a rear wheel in the air. Doing the righty I pulled up and asked if he needed help, he did so I did and once he was out of the drain I asked what the deal was and apparently a dams broken and the road is impassable because hes been having all sorts of trouble getting through. I asked what the roads were like and he said they were much the same as this slippery as all hell and he was here to close the road for a couple of days this kind of puzzled me and I had time to spare so I did the usual Q/A thing.

Turns out hes from the council and he was sent out to make sure the roads in the area were ok and to close them if they werent which he wasnt happy about because hes now got to put up the road closed sign on this end, drive the long way back to the other end and put the road closed sign up on that end and then come back the long way. Sensing that opportunity was about to knock I made a suggestion. IF we were to team up, we could both drive to the other end of the road, he could place his signs, drive back the long way put the other sign up and then head back from there. Yes hello, opportunity, Come right in, grab a beer make yourself comfortable. He agreed that was a marvelous idea and we set off, for about 30m...

once again yota in drain. Hrmm thinks I, somethings not right here.... I reversed up pulled him out and started to pay attention to the vehicle and the tyres.... H/T's on the front, A/T's on the rear and freewheeling hubs in the unlocked position and road pressures in the tyres. Deciding not to drop the pressures as the track was only covered in an inch or 2 of mud and any wheelspin generally dug the tyre down to the hard stuff in short order I locked his hubs and away we went. Some 10k's and plenty of damp causeway crossings later I was treated to the whole flashing of lights thing, we pulled over he thanked me and mentioned that he wasnt going to close the roads and to have a nice day.

Suited me so off I trundled into the sunset to find a place to swag up and call it a night. In all typicality I found a nice place, swagged it up had a great nights sleep with the all the sounds of the isolated bush to keep me company in the swag with a sky full of stars to lull me to sleep only to wake the next morning do the breakfast thing, drive 300m and find a designated camping place with toilets and tank water. Duh... Thinking back on it at worst the mud seemed to be right where I found it in the natural low of the land and a little bit on either side of the cause way crossings where the creek had obviously carried the water.

The next day bought about the next recovery and a lot of running on farm access tracks, the kind that dont have grids but gates, Im not going to bother describing them, Im sure youve all done one or 2 at one stage, if you havent, picture it as a rough dirt track a single vehicle wide and often just a set of wheel ruts and where you'd epxect to find a grid theres a gate that you have to open, drive through, stop, close and drive off.

The second recovery was somewhat more stressful, I'll admit Im not much on being able to identify vehicle but the stuck vehicle was a fairly early type of ute sort of like a rodeo but older anyway this thing was stuck in the middle of the sandy bit of track I was on and had been overnight. It didnt seem to be bogged just motionaly uninterested could I give him a tow... Easy enough it was only 20k to town. I know what you think Im thinking and no, I dont know why if he knew where the town was and where he was that he didnt walk the 20k to get help and to be honest I didnt think of it at the time, so tow rope on and away we go.

For those of you who read the other post this is the one that toasted the donk. It only took about 10 minutes fo dragging that thing through the softish sand and uphills to get it to happen but like a trooper Fozzy soldiered on until I stopped him at the top of the hill to let him cool off and check him over. I think but cant confirm that the reason it happened might have been that ole mate in the ute had been riding the brakes to keep the line taught tell the truth Im not real worried about it I learnt that even when I push harder than I like that the donk in Fozzys got more heart that I have any right to ask it to have.

Which leads me to the last bit thats really worth mentioning on for the trip down, The kangaroo escort.

Now we all know that driving while tired is a bad thing, your reflexes lag, your judgement isnt as good and thats how people die. That said its not an on off thing you dont just feel all perfect one minute and then fall asleep you tend to gradually get more and more drowsy and less alert. If you know what to expect you can feel it coming and its time to do something about it. Personally when I feel it coming I slow down and start to look for a good place to pull over, have a rest, change drivers or camp for the night if Im going solo. Usually I slow down to the point where Im comfortable that my reaction time is sufficient to let me avoid nastyness If I get to the point where I have to change down gears Its stop time.

The other big indication is when I see a roo bouncing across the same paddock as Im driving through and its coming in on the drivers door turns in the direction Im travelling at the last minute and runs a parallel course to me. Thats what happened, less than 10 feet away in line with my drivers door bounced said roo I swear it was looking at me and if it could have talked would have had a conversation with me before chunking up its paw and waving before veering off into the paddock...

IF you EVER get so tired when your driving and youve slowed down to the point where a roo can not only catch up to but intercept and bounce along side of your car AND you think the kangaroo waves good bye before veering off but after failing to have a converasation with you because you cant speek kangaroo pull the car over, shut it down, get out the swag and have a sleep.....

Well this weekend while interesting was for me an utter disaster but that pales....

First let me tell you about my weekend

After heading out to albury to visit the locals and have a few beers I got the call to head out and do some spanner twirling and car checking. Since the bloke who needed the spanners twirling was the one who was giving me fuel I was happy to do that.

Being in the mood for some country running again I decided to take the back routes, it was going to save me 40K or there abouts and was bound to be more interesting than the highway, It certainly was that.

after I got off of the bit of highway I couldnt avoid and onto the tracks I wanted to be on it started going south tracks that were ment to be there were closed and had detours and at one stage on what was marked as a main road I was down to 1st low complete with axle tramping to try and make it up one of the hills after an intersection only to have it turn back to main road black top and all less than 40m after I cleared the crest. Add to that the frustration of having to back track to take alternate routes because of detoured or closed roads adding up to over 7 hours of driving to cover 240ish K's and then after rolling in at about 0500ish to find that the cars fixed itself after some fault finding I wasnt impressed, IF I'd known the car was right ID have waited till the morning to head out I might have made better time in the daylight.

But that happens so it frees up some time for sorting out the WVO Which was something of a mission, taking about 5 hours to sort out a total of about 110l of fuel including all the first level filtration to get it to the point where it wasnt likely to compromise fozzys fuel system. So 1500ish and Im on my way, for about 50K when yep dead, gradual loss of power for a total stop, every symptom pointing itself to an injector blown out and back feeding combustion gasses into the injector pump. Bloody great, my first run of questionable oil that my muliple filtered and heated fuel system was ment to deal with and its rooted itself. 2 hours on the side of the road and not one person stopped to help hood up and everything, so much for Karma.


For those of you who've worked on cantankerous cars before you know when youve been cranking and cranking and starting and stopping and the batteries down to its last shot at a start? Thats where I was I had maybe one good start left in the battery so I sat myself down and had a damn good think and jury rigged the fuel system so that the resrtictions in the return lines were removed and the pumps work working in parrallel to flow the maximum amount of fuel possable through the injector pump. I was just climbing back in to roll the dice on my last crank when someone finally pulled over to find out If I needed help. Murphy played nice I got a start and the bloke followed me to the next town.

Bare in mind that I have no radio in Fozzy so at this point Im about as situationally aware as paris hilton.

Roll back to Albury and by now its nearly 2200, between traffic accidents, maps that dont go quite as far as they should and the gps spitting the dummy It was 2300 before I got to where I was ment to be. Oh did I mention it was so hot during the day that when I was broken down I had to put my boots on just to walk around? thongs and sneakers just werent going to cut it and no, Im talking about footware thongs, not Gstrings, No-one wants to see that. I should also mention I dont like heat, I like it cool.

So I finally get to where Im going and The BBQ has been canned not because I was late but because everyones off fighting fires.

Now let me just summate other peoples problems, Just from a broadcast I've just heard on the radio.

When I Started back to Wagga 40 people were confirmed dead, After Id arrived, done the shower, watch movie, some other little stuff the toll was over 100, 400 odd houses destroyed, cars burnt, animals burnt, who knows how many acres of land rended useless and how many families disturbed with parents or siblings out fighting the fires or not knowing where their relatives are or if they're safe.

Made my hassles seem insignificant.

Ok IVe finally calmed down enough......


ANZAC day, pretty important. Apparently not to a couple of our shoe leather coloured brethren. Apparently it is a display of force, of oppression, of course Im not going futher the language gets rather more slurred expletive laden and abusive.. Let me be subtle.

if you are one of those dim witted bean brains (the forum wont let me use the full range of my derrogations) Dont bother to turn up at anzac day, Stay at home and addle your brains with whatever rot you use to make your excuse for existance bearable. Let me explain.

We at the parade are there showing respect to those who did their bit to ensure that we now speak english and not some freaky jibberish (although I could handle german, they have a very very precise language with lots of really good defiinitive engineering and mechanicing terms) The fact that they did their bit means that you can normally comfortabley sit at home and get free money every fortnight or free cars or whatever else it is you leech out of society. Without the efforts of those that did what had to be done and gave what had to be given youd most likely not be here or if you were by now youd probabley be in prison or a pine box.

Again if you are one of those idiots that turn up to ANZAC day with the intent of not going with the theme of the day and you're reading this (or more likely having this read to you) I do not need my day of reverence disturbed by idiots Given my way you and your kind would be silenced in swift and brutal fashion and given that so far even the media havent had the audacity to display so much as one frame of your actions I think that it should be come apparent that even if my desires were enacted you wouldnt be missed.


Morons.....

Speed limits, ok so they arent really a real limit or law of life, not like gravity or the speed of light, sure you can go faster than them but, as a word of warning for those rice boys who have exhaust diameters higher than their IQ's


If you're going to get into a drag race from the lights with someone who knows the traffic patterns and is timing the lights so he doesnt have to stop for them or slow down below 40. make sure you know where the speed trap at the top of the hill round the blind corner is as well as how much further up the same road the chase car is.

That way when you blat past me doing chirpies and puffing your blow off valve, get flashed by the speed camera guy and pulled over by the cop further up the road I dont have to worry about slowing down and steering wide of the officer writing your ticket.



Wet morons..

As much as we wont survive global warming we're not going to make it past much rain either.

For those of you who dont know today was the aftermath of what was described as "a rain period" which as near as I can tell is what someone at the weather station tells the weather guy when he really means "god wants to see a new ocean"

aside from the long delayed "bridge that wont go under water" going under water (again) causing me to go the long way round to work I should have figured that it was going to be a bad day after the ricer cut me off on a round about. When he then caused an accident not more than a k later by trying to cut up the inside of me on a right hand turn at the lights forgetting that there might be other cars on the road while having a severe lack of talent I should have been well and truely dialed in to how bad the rest of my trip to work was going to get.

when Id gotten out of that and was crawling along on a back road lamenting how I should have stayed home for another 5 minutes and had another coffee how much better my life would be when I noticed the unmistakable trajectory of a car doing the no traction descent down the hill towards the stop sign which was followed by the charming sound of rending metal as the car spudded into the vehicle in front of me.

more sighing, more handing over of details more reversing and keying the GPS for an alternate alternate route to work.

slow traffic again, but its moving and its all going the same way... Nothing can go wrong now Cmon admit it you'd think the same thing wouldnt you, cut off, miss one accident, miss another NO way can there be another accident to slow me down today.

WRONG, Wronger than chocolate coloured edible undies with licorice shavings.

Instant brake lights 2 cars ahead, mash mine and BAM the car 1 in front of me has ploughed into the back of the car in front of it thats pulled up hard to let one car out of a carpark so the lead car in the following cacophony can park. Which shortly he'll be able to do really easily because his car is now a good 6 inches shorter after the car in front of me finishes tail ending it. Being the concerned driver that I am I used up as much space as I could to come to a halt with the indicators on. Cue Crunch. The car 2 behind me has hit the car immediately behind me which has come to a stop about an inch clear of my back chassis member. Not as in horizontal distance as in Vertical as in If I hadnt taken the tow plate off with the foot and tow ball Id have a nice new shin protector in the form of his radiator.

With a turning circle thats only envied by super tankers and less than about a foot of free space do you want to know what I did? I went and had a coffee from the shop whose door was adjacent to my now gridlocked rover. I even got to give the idiots involved the "NOT till Ive had coffee" line..

it really was one of those days wasnt it dave....

tell me, how was that coffee?