| Friday, March 23rd, 2012 |
| 9:54 pm |
|
| Friday, February 17th, 2012 |
| 10:46 pm |
|
| Wednesday, February 8th, 2012 |
| 8:19 pm |
|
| Saturday, January 28th, 2012 |
| 1:42 am |
Sit-Rep #8
Why the fuck are there so many cops everywhere I go? On practically every street I'm on, in every parking lot; there seems to be cops just patrolling around, staring at everyone through their sunglasses. Am I really in so much danger that I need the police here to continually watch over me? Are we under attack? I don't think so, everybody seems to be surviving pretty good, there doesn't seem to be terrorists or gangsters lurking behind every telephone pole. Canadians seem to be behaving just as they always have all these years. That punked-out homeless person is walking down the sidewalk and right towards him is coming the single mom with her kids and their bag of groceries. There isn't going to be a conflict. We're not blowing each other's brains out. Yuppie-dude's waiting at the red light in his Nissan X-Terra and everything seems to be just the way it always was. The only thing different I see these days is that everyone's trying their hardest to not make eye contact with all the cops all over the place. |
| Monday, January 9th, 2012 |
| 9:13 pm |
Link Du Jour #38
I like it when guys don't care about scraping the shit out of their vehicles and try driving over something impossible. I respect that. But the guy filming this needs a kick in the nuts. If somebody wants to drive his Range Rover up a cliff that his business. It doesn't matter that it can't be done... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR0_V6H3Jk4&feature=related |
| Monday, January 2nd, 2012 |
| 10:43 pm |
Link Du Jour #37
After wandering into the weird part of You Tube I came across this most compelling footage of the Vietnam war. The cameraman for this had such great vision to record the small details and so puts the viewer right into his world. It's actually storytelling when you think about it. It's so fortunate for us and the future that this kind of thing has been preserved on the internet. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfV9fmFIQwA&feature=related |
| Sunday, January 1st, 2012 |
| 8:48 pm |
|
| Friday, December 9th, 2011 |
| 10:42 pm |
|
| Thursday, December 8th, 2011 |
| 9:07 pm |
Link Du Jour #34
I actually freaked out nephew #1 last weekend by driving my new truck on a side slope. We were having much fun on this pretty wild trail until I broke an axle and had to tow it out with Old Smokey the next day. Long story. Waiting for parts. Here's a cool video of a Land Rover going slide ways! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYdUXsSItdk&feature=related |
| Wednesday, November 30th, 2011 |
| 10:39 pm |
|
| Monday, November 28th, 2011 |
| 10:23 pm |
Sit-Rep #7
My good buddy Tooth phoned tonight from a secret location in the Middle East. I'll give you a hint he's in a country where you're allowed to drink beer but not allowed to throw acid in your daughter's face. He's been working in Afghanistan as a carpenter and will soon be back here in Canada! On the phone he tells me that they won and I said 'What did you win? Is there a prize?' and he laughed. He said that's pretty much how they found out about the victory. Someone from our government showed up (I'm guessing the defence minister...) and tried giving some kind of historical speech for the ages and just came right out and said 'We won!...' Tooth said 'Fuck I was expecting a ticker tape parade or something...' Thirty minutes before he showed up the base was getting shelled. Unanswered Questions: Shouldn't the defence minister have said 'YOU won' rather than 'WE won'? Can we prevent some confusion in the future by starting to call this war 'Afghanistan War #1'? Will a conservative MP actually come out and exclaim 'See? I TOLD you they'd be back by Christmas!'? Can we turn the air raid sirens off now? My ears are starting to bleed. |
| Friday, November 25th, 2011 |
| 10:50 pm |
Sit-Rep #6
I got back from a bit of a holiday a few days ago but unfortunately I didn't get even one pic of my new truck in action. I spent most of my days off fixing the damn thing actually. The biggest problem was I couldn't get the clutch to work very good and a couple days into my holiday I finally got around to checking the fluid level in the clutch reservoir and of course it was empty. Fuck did I feel like a right proper twit let me tell you. So then I fill it up with DOT3 and had to bleed it. In case I've never mentioned this Land Rovers are extremely painful to work on. I think this is because they're pretty much Ford F-250's crammed into the space of oversized ATV's. And the bleeder was seized up so it started to round off even with a line wrench. Finally I said fuck it and put on what I like to call The Secret Weapon, which is my little tiny Ridgid pipe wrench. Oh yeah that got it turning. It got it turning so well it broke the bleeder clean off and left a nice little hole where all the fluid could come out. I thought well fuck that's it. No holiday up island so I went in and gave up. The next day I got to thinking and thought all I gotta do is take that broken bleeder out and run into town and get a new one. My thinking was that it's an SAE pipe thread so I should be able to get something that fits locally. So I put in my new Snap-On screw extractor and gave it a crank and guess what? It snapped off. Holy lord tunderin' jesus I goddam thought, this thing's not going to move. So then I got to thinking again because holy mother fuck I'm way too dumb to give up. Besides, this was my holiday and when I thought about it fixing Land Rovers is my hobby so I may as well keep going. I took some solder and melted it into the hole which now had the broken end of screw extractor. I didn't think it adhered to the cast aluminum slave cylinder very good but it did go down the hole and seemed to be sticking to the extractor pretty good so then I covered it with some fast-set 'metal' epoxy just to keep the solder from being pumped loose. Bleed, test drive and oh my gob it stayed in. So I actually got to go up island and meet up with my family at our campsite and got in about a day and a half of four-by fouring in the snow and drinking beer. But no time for pictures or videos. But of course once I put on my chains the old Landy out-drove everything else there was so it was glorious let me tell you. Random internet pic of where I was at: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pFmbVa8IQro/TWHT302xg0I/AAAAAAAAC40/ucNbZC5yK0Q/s1600/180407_10150417158220089_699845088_17327070_7662616_n.jpg |
| Sunday, November 13th, 2011 |
| 12:25 am |
Link Du Jour #32
Here's where I tried to make my escape from the Tokyo Zoo. As you all know I didn't get very far, and it wasn't until a year later when Amnesty International FINALLY pressured them to release me. I would have had a better chance in the first place if I didn't have to dismantle my glasses to pick the lock though. (I wasn't drunk!) I would like everyone to stop and reflect on how important our freedoms really are. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dDL7suUM_g |
| Saturday, November 12th, 2011 |
| 8:34 pm |
|
| Thursday, November 3rd, 2011 |
| 9:42 pm |
Sit-Rep #5
I've been feeling like crap for the last few days with a pretty bad cold . I think I got it from being badly chilled when I drove my new truck home. It had a piece of weather strip missing where the roof attaches and was causing a really cold and wet draft. I shoved a rag in the open space when I stopped for something to eat but I guess it was too late. Well at least it's not as bad as I used to get when I used to get sick on a regular basis. In fact this is the first full blown cold I've had since I was in Taiwan. My nose is starting to dry out now so If I don't have a fever in the morning I'll be able to go to work. I'm so glad I didn't make any posts when I was really feverish because I wouldn't have made any sense at all. |
| Monday, October 31st, 2011 |
| 10:37 pm |
|
| 8:33 pm |
Sit-Rep #4
I just drove my new Land Rover home and man am I happy. It's a right proper Land Rover and totally looks the part. It's got all the things where they should be with the exception of an electric fuel pump. Especially cool is the paint, it's the correct shade of grey I think and has been professionally painted about ten years ago. The roof actually has the original Limestone 'white' and is almost in perfect condition. There's a couple little tiny specks that have flaked off but from a distance looks almost new. That in itself is very rare and amazing. It's well insulated so is nice and cozy inside and surprisingly quiet. I think I might even put a stereo in this one. And the overdrive is such a nice thing. It engages at any speed and makes the highway driving just awesome. It kind of sounds like a jet engine when it's in overdrive but the seller says that's normal. I even had it parked at the A&W for a while and there wasn't even one drop of oil on the ground. I just can't believe my luck! Fuck! Only two things I have to do to it, I need to fix the E-brake and at the same time switch the lever over to the British side of the floor so I can have some more leg room. And adjust the clutch which pops into gear way too fast. And lower the clutch pedal if I can, I think there's a way to do that. It's got four stick shifts plus the E-brake handle which points way up in the air so it looks really cool with all those shifters. No hand-throttle though and I'll have to drill a hole through this added piece of angle iron put onto the frame so I can use my hand crank if the starter packs it in up in the bush. (the hand crank was originally in the back of number 3 when I got it, Spoon...) I think the angle iron was put in for added strength to go with the Warn bush bumper which has a place to put a winch which is deadly because I have an extra winch to put on. What a day! In a few weeks I should have some cool pictures to post... Current Mood:  bouncy |
| Friday, October 28th, 2011 |
| 11:44 pm |
Sit-Rep #3
Ol' Smokey, my 1996 Discovery is on it's last legs. The engine still runs quite good considering it's got more than 433,000 klicks on it and the body actually looks pretty good being mostly aluminum like all good Land Rovers should be. That is if you don't look at all the scratches and dents I've put on it while booney bashing all over Vancouver Island with it. And the red Tuck tape holding the RR window up doesn't help much either. Or maybe it adds character. That's what I say whenever I put in a new dent or rip some part off on the rocks and trees. All my trucks have lots of character. All in all it's been a very reliable vehicle since I got most of the sensors replaced and put in that new starter two or three years ago. I don't know if the starter shared circuits with other random systems on my truck or it was all just a dirty ground cable but since that repair it's been a really good vehicle. And I could go on about it's off road capabilities. It even surprised the heck out of me when I started learning what it could do. You hear lots of how Land Rovers are unreliable money pits but seriously that's a bunch of bullshit. I highly recommend anyone buy a Land Rover second hand. If you take the time to learn the various tricks to keep them awesome, or find a shop that specializes in British vehicles, you're going to have an extremely capable truck for dirt cheap. There's tons of fifteen year old Discos for sale for next to nothing and when you think about it, how many fifteen year old Hondas do you see out there? But Ol' Smokey is ready for that muddy old snow drift in the sky. That time I pounded my way up that slag heap and broke the frame has finally taken it's toll. It got to the point where I couldn't articulate a tire a couple of feet in the air due to that injury but now it's gotten so bad I can feel the tranny move when I stomp on it on paved road. Land Rover frames, at least the old ones, have the main-rails close together for superior articulation but the down side of that is they have very poor side impact protection. If you smash head on into somebody in a Land Rover you're going to be pretty fine. Except if the head-on collision is hitting just half of the front of the vehicle. When this happens Land Rovers tend to disintegrate leaving just a half of a vehicle and a few tons of small bite sized debris where the other half used to be. But then again who would want to live after their Land Rover's been totalled anyhow? What would be the point of living after that? Could you even call it living? No, I'd rather die thank you. But with the frame the way it is there's no way I'm giving this truck to my nephew when I'm finished with it. Seriously it's a death trap. Time for the scrap heap. So for the last few months I've been looking for a new daily driver. Of course I'm not the kind of guy who just goes out and buys the first sensible Honda he sees, I gotta have something down right wicked in some way. And four wheel drive of course for when the snow on my road gets three feet deep or I have to drive over downed trees in the dark to get to work. (note to any other Canadians who might read this: Vancouver Island has the heaviest snowfall in Canada, at least when you get above sea-level...) Here's a list of some vehicles I've looked at but unfortunately didn't buy for various reasons: 1965 GMC panel wagon. Stock four wheel drive which is extremely rare for American trucks of that era. (floor rusted out big time) 1986 Chevrolet M-1008 one-ton Blazer. Ex US Army. (front end handling was awful. Probably just needed a wheel alignment but too risky. I need a driver, not another project) 1982 Jeep Grand Wagoneer. Tough tough vehicles these are I must say. (too many things wrong. Guy was a dick too...) 1996 Land Rover Discovery. 2" lift, oversize tires. Extra set of oversize tires on rims. ARB lockers front and rear. (this truck is still on the table if my number one choice doesn't work out) And my number one choice? A 1970 Land Rover Series 2A. I've only looked at it once but the guy had to fix the rear diff before I can test dive it. I'm actually going down to his town on Sunday to hopefully finalize the deal. This truck's got a good heater that honks out hot air like an old Chevy and even has all of the interior trim. Galvanized frame, stainless steel gas tanks and an overdrive. That means I might actually be able to go 95 kmh on the highway! Won't that be fun? It's a real nice Land Rover. Old and simple and cheap parts. Luckily for me the economy around here is quite bad so I could end up getting a nice nice Land Rover for a smokin' hot price. Or it could turn out to be a piece of crap. One advantage to this is that I could end up having two Series' for drivers and get rid of my Discos. Here's a picture I drew on the DTP of my Land Rover fleet. It's kind of awkward because the drawing hasn't received one comment. I wonder if I've come across as bragging about all my vehicles or something. Believe me I'm not, not one of them is worth any kind of serious money or anything. I just really really like Land Rovers but you've probably already guessed that. http://www.ninechime.com/deep/pictures/DTP_3616.pngPS: Buy a Land Rover! |
| Monday, October 17th, 2011 |
| 9:50 pm |
|
| Thursday, October 6th, 2011 |
| 9:04 pm |
Link Du Jour #29
They're filming the Superman movie just a few clicks from where I live and I'm like fuck! I bet they need a Land Rover to make the movie better but Ratatouille is still down for the count so oh well. I tried to find a pic of the biker bar they're at but couldn't find one but eventually came across this video of some real cool ingenuity of when your truck breaks down while off-roading. I'd actually like to try this some day if I had to... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZGTt5BcaO4&NR=1In other news, I might even be buying a Jeep in the future. An old Wagoneer to be exact. But there's also a real nice Series 2A Land Rover that may or may not pan out. It's a long story. The unemployment rate in my town is so bad right now there's tons of nice thing for sale for really cheap. |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
brentos_oh_yeah's journal
