Category Archives: Cars & Trucks

Last of the wood piles

Posted on by
Reply

After five long years, the last of wood piles are gone. I finally got up the nerve to take the pickup down into the woods… and get her back out. This opens up lots of possibilities. Instead of hauling bags of mulch in a wheelbarrow, I can drive the entire load to where it’s needed. Same for firewood.Couldn’t have done it without the pickup and, sadly, it did not come through unscathed. You really can’t see how big the dent is in these photos. And, ironically, the good steel in this older trucks makes is more difficult to remove some dents.

UPDATE: The guys at Xtreme Body managed to fix the dent and put the trim back on… all for $120.

Haulin’ logs

Posted on by
Reply

During the 30+ years we’ve lived in our home (on 3 acres) we’ve thinned out a lot of trees, mostly scrub cedar. Woodsman that I am, I chainsawed them into logs and stacked them, thinking someone would want them for some purpose. Wrong. They’ve been sitting where I stacked them for years.
Today I started getting rid of them… with the help of Minty Fresh, the family pickup truck. It was always my hope I could drive the truck down into the woods and haul shit out with logs at the top of the list. But having no experience driving off-road in a four-wheel-drive vehicle, I’ve been reluctant to tackle the rough terrain and steep-ish grade. Until today.I flipped the lock-out hubs to LOCKED… put the low-range gear lever in “granny low” and eased down the hill. I scraped a tree once or twice but the pickup is so beat up you’d never find the spot. I loaded up the extra-long bed with logs and made it back to the road without a hitch (although I do have a hitch).
Aside from my lack of off-road/4WD experience, the big obstacle to this project was nobody wanted the logs. But as (bad) luck would have it, my friend George has some big-ass brush piles as a result of last spring’s tornado… and he offered to let me add my logs to his piles which he will safely burn.I’ve got maybe half a dozen more truck loads but it’s a labor of love and great exercise. And if I role the pickup… a great blog post. [Photos]

JLTV: Humvee replacement

Posted on by
Reply


From New York Times story: “The new truck, which began arriving at military bases in the spring, is faster, smarter and safer. It is powerful enough to bound through rough terrain, despite carrying armor so thick that the truck has to automatically level itself when parked, so that troops can swing open its 400-pound steel doors.”

“And unlike the stripped-down Humvee, the JLTV — which is far costlier than the latest Lamborghini Huracan — comes with a few conveniences, including a backup camera, phone-charging plugs, and not just one cup holder, but two.[…] It has seats designed to fit the bulky body armor and backpacks that soldiers now wear, and unlike the underpowered Humvee, it has air conditioning that actually worked.”

“The truck also comes packed with technology, including electronics that can communicate with fighter jets, drones and other military assets around the globe. In place of a sun visor mounted above the thick blast-resistant windshield, the JLTV has a fold-down night-vision driving system.[…] The JLTV also has a combat override switch that the driver can use to take all control away from the computer.”

Via Henry Domke

Ron Bandelier

Posted on by
Reply


In this five minute video Ron Bandelier gives me a peek at a few of his vintage vehicles: Berkeley B65; 1937 LaFayette Nash Twin 8; 1937 Nash Ambassador Cabriolet; 1927 Model T Ford. The video is pretty janky because I wasn’t expecting to meet Ron and wasn’t prepared for his treasures (only a few shown here). I just whipped out the phone and started recording and snapping photos.

Traveling Vintage Bus Mechanic

Posted on by
Reply

My friend George has a thing for old buses. He has two, one in better shape than the other. But both need work and they are not the sort of vehicles you can put on a trailer and take to the shop. So George called the “Bus Grease Monkey.“Scott travels all over the country, working on old buses. Appropriately, he travels in an old bus (below). Don’t miss his “How I got in this business” video.

During the time I watched they were working on a wheel. Lots of phone calls trying to find parts for these ancient beasts. And everything is heavy.

I’m old enough to remember when a Greyhound or Trailways bus was a pretty nice way to get somewhere in a time before every man, woman and child had their own car. There are still a lot of these old buses out there. According to traveling bus mechanic, they built them really well until someone figured out they could sell more buses if they engineered in some planned obsolescence.

Update: Okay, I find this amazing. Scott has a very $ucce$ful YouTube channel. And after working his ass off yesterday in the mid-Missouri heat, he uploaded a couple of videos recounting the work he did on George’s video. And I think he was taking question live while streaming the video! Which is very detail and runs 30 minutes. This, my friends, is how you build a huge YouTube audience.

1960 Continental Mark V

Posted on by
Reply


Paul Bandelier’s latest project is a 1960 Continental Mark V. The Wikipedia entry confused me because it said the Mark V was made between 1977 and 1979. Car nerd that Paul is, he immediately provided the following explanation:

The 1956 Continental Mark II was it’s own unique car company that was supposed to capture the glamour of the 1940’s Continentals. The Mark II was the most expensive car in the world short of a certain Rolls Royce model.

After 1957 the Continental car company was liquidated and and for 1958 in an attempt to sell more cars the top of the line trim level was a Mark III. The same top tier trim level applied to the 1959 Mark IV and 1960 Mark V. This move may have sold a few more car but it also diluted the uniqueness of the 56/57 Mark II that was it’s own car company.

Fast forward to 1969. Lincoln says, we were just kidding about those big old 4 door boats being the exclusive Mark series. We’re going to start over and make the Mark series a unique 2 door personal luxury car again. Sooo in 69 we have the Mark III. That lasted until 71. In 72 there was a restyled Mark IV until the next body style change over and so on.

These photos don’t begin to capture the size of this monster. The seats are like large, living room sofas.

Paul shared another bit of trivia about these slanted rear windows but I can’t recall it.

I asked who might be a buyer for this baby when he gets it up to snuff and was surprised to learn the Scandinavian countries are the top market. For some reason, they love big old American cars.

New door panels for pickup

Posted on by
Reply


The driver-side door panel on the pickup was falling apart when I bought the truck so a few weeks ago I just took it off. I thought I’d just leave it like that but there was no place to rest my elbow so I ordered a set of after-market panels. They came with little attachment gizmos that I couldn’t make work so I just drilled some holes through the plastic and into the metal of the door.

Next enhancement is replacing the driver-side shoulder harness with a simple lap seatbelt. Never cared for the shoulder harnesses and the Land Rover doesn’t have them, so…