My Home Project

[spike]

When loggers destroyed the road home, I had to get a way to get home. I also needed to transport materials through one and a half miles of axle-deep mud and clay.
I got a Datsun 720 pick-up, stripped it down to chassis, drivetrain and suspension. The tray (for want of a more accurate word which might border on the obscene - but then, so did the tray) was lightened, and a frame was mounted forward (glibly referred to as a roll-cage). This frame provided a work platform on which were mounted a seat, toolbox, a tiny instument panel, and protected the engine from 'bush-lash'. This pic was taken in my parents' garage.

I abandoned the steering column shifter and instead ran two gear levers through the floor attached directly to the two shift-arms on the gearbox. An open-minded person, aware of how a 720 gearbox works, would understand how easy this system could operate. One stick was low/high gear and the other was low/high range. 1st and 2nd were in the low range, 3rd and 4th were in the high range. However, most people who saw this vehicle, were either not acquainted with 720 gearboxes, or not open-minded, and veiwed the contraption with alarm. The "forest-used" was the most favourable name - I won't print the others.

Apart from windshield wipers (duh) everything else worked : lights, front and rear (front lights were fogs, rear lights mounted on the 'roll bar'), horn. She had a seatbelt and a fire extinguisher (mounted forward), radio and a CB set.

The additional power gained from no longer having to drag around excess weight, and the 720's fantastic low 1st gear enabled me to use her like a tractor, dragging logs (and Betsy, my 120y, who got stuck or slid off the road with alarming frequency). The stripped 720 shared a battery and alternator with Betsy, so rescuing Betsy involved walking home, battery in one hand, alternator in the next, tools in a pocket; bring the 720 to Betsy, drag her out; take the 720 home; walk back to Betsy with battery and alternator; install and go home - more carefully this time.

Even though the frame had some flaws due to how it was welded (if you let "proffessionals" tell you that your ideas are inferior to theirs, but they can't explain why, then you look for whatever they give you), I loved this machine. Then one dry season, I converted a storeroom at the base of a hill below the house into a garage. This worked well until the rains came. The hill turned to slush before I could get her out. Unable to climb the hill, she stayed in that garage until people wanted the parts more than I wanted her. Great vehicle, great fun, great memories.
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big red rice-eater

[wagonrunner]

i love it, and you do have a flair for writing.
narend would do well to ask you to submit some articles, if / when ever another issue of zorce is published.

[MG Man]

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I know it's so, for I told me so

[Yeo]

[spike]

"and you do have a flair for writing. " No, I don't. I have a flair for getting into the most inextricable of messes. I'm just honest and vocal about it afterwards...

"AH LOVE IT!!!!" I'm so glad that I can look back and grin - hindsight is always more amusing... Yeo, if you think that was something, then you haven't heard about flat tyres yet. When a road is built on clay, using beach stones carried by mules from over 6 miles away (more than 80 years ago), and loggers come with their trucks, skidders and peg-wheeled tractors and proceed to tear up the road - punching the remaining stones deep into the clay-bed below - you end up with a morass of mud with no bottom. (I once sank so deep, my boot remained behind when I finally got my foot out. I had to lie face down, put my hand down the hole to retrieve my boot before the hole closed in.)
To change a tyre required a plank under the 720 on which to place the jack in the axle-deep mud (I will not describe that procedure - it involved too much obscenity). Then jack the wheel high enough to get it off, AND CONTINUE JACKING as the wheel is swapped, for the jack is sinking all the time. There is no need to drop the jack, for by the time the spare is back on, the van is on the/in the road again. Besides, most times we couldn't reach the jack by then. You drive forward, then dig out the jack. Those were my tire-changing tools: wheel-nut spanner, jack, LONG jack handle, plank and shovel.
I got fed up of all the little bits of nonsense floating about in the mud that punched tyres, so I started driving around with self-thread screws, a screw-gun and a tyre pump. Instead of attempting to change tyres, I would inflate the bugger, locate the puncture, and screw in a screw. It reached a point where I would be changing worn screws and putting in bigger ones. Never took any tyres to the tyre shop after that.
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big red rice-eater

[spike]

So, MGMan, even though I laud old English engineering, doh come 'rong me wit dis bad-talking 120y yuh does do! For as bad as that road was, my 210 model struggled out and back again through that crap every day, NEVER FAILING ME ONCE. Yeah, I had to dig her out a few times, but she ALWAYS reached home, under her own power. The only vehicles that were able to drive there were my pop's Land-Rover and that 120y.

This shot is of a drop that was steeper than it looked. The top of the drop is actually a couple of feet behind my daughter's head. It seems much further in the pic.


Here is a pic of the front of mi casa. Two pals from Toco came with me back home to give a hand in storing some stuff. After living my dream here for a year and change, a change in jobs caused me to put everything on hold for a while (it's only a while, I tell you). But I'll be back.


Setting up a temporary water tank, while the tank stand was being cast...


Looking from the house down the drive...

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big red rice-eater

[MG Man]

anybody else sense an Old School Tuners lime in the making?
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I know it's so, for I told me so

[zodiaque]

[spike]

Well, after more than 15 years of driving through porridge, the road is finally being "repaired" - if levelling and compacting clay can be considered repairing... I think I being a little too bitter, let me revise that statement... the engineer has prepped the road surface for bitumen, but the trucks cannot cross the bridges. (Yeah, by now we all know that bridges in Toco are not very kosher.) So we have a wide, flat, SMOOTH road home. When it's dry, you could even roller-skate... when it's dry... When it rains, the vehicles (including 4WDs) don't understand the strange and bewildering things you do with their steering-wheel, and they go happily where they want, wandering to one side with you adamantly demanding otherwise... Think about it: a smooth, impermeable layer covered with a quarter-inch of wet clay - it's like grease on a steel sheet. On top of that, all the problem areas (the drains were never cleared - unless we did them - and water flowing over the road's surface caused all the problems) were graded sloping towards the hillward side. The reason being that a drain would be placed on that side, discouraging water from flowing along the road and over the edge, reducing erosion. No drain built yet... cars, jeeps slide inevitably into the bank... fun, fun, fun...

Yuh wanna lime, eh? How 'bout orange? It's got citrus, bananas, some mangoes and a fantastic river on the boundary- not de kinda drain ting I does see here. You can lie in the water and drink it (forgive the incontinent deer upstream), and has room to swim - swimming pool size, not inflatable wading pool size, either. That's where I grew up, and the only thing stopping me from going back home is ... NOWHERE TO RUN THE VIVA!!

If yuh comin', walk wit' yuh brushing cutlass... whacker... sharp teeth... whatever you use
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big red rice-eater

[Plex]

Very nice write up Spike...Keep in coming...

[zodiaque]

[spike]

not that kinda bush I talking 'bout cutting, yer bluuldy wankr...
You and George would be good company. Meet George (this is behind my parent's house in the next valley)


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big red rice-eater

[zodiaque]

1donkey power
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Proud member of the TME and Old School Tuners clubs

[MG Man]

I fell on my whacker
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I know it's so, for I told me so

[spike]

next time sit down while you're... ahem.... using it
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big red rice-eater