Step ten. Ok, back on track.

After a low month of incessant, verging on compulsive, TradeMe trawling rendered up an 'Ooo, should go see that!' in New Plymouth. It was a new listing and a couple of other trucks I thought might do vanished within a day or so of their going on the market. So a phone call later and a trip to the upper Waikato was on for 1st thing next day.

Three and half hours after an 8.30 start saw Pop and I looking over this.

Oh my! Well hello! An '89 Isuzu Elf in nicely tarted up condition. It was sort of karmic tho, it was supposed to be the daughter's horse truck, Daddy being of means and inclination picked this up in less than lovely condition. A well used delivery trick with rust and generally ickiness. It started life with a 5 speed automatic gear box that was replaced by a 5 speed manual item by Daddy. There is a whole christmas tree's worth of now non applicable lights on the dashboard. No a/c or exhaust brake either, sadly.  24 Volt. Went for a short drive, seemed to go ok.
 
On the bright side, daddy's panelbeater cut and welded all the rust then painted it a nice nondescript white. The cab upholstery was redone in red paisley and a huge tray and solid tow bar added. The deck is huge , 4550mm by 2200mm. By my measuring it'll swamp the camper body by about 90mms a side. More on this later.

Some brake and injector work later and it was given to Daughter. Dad, it's too slow, I want a faster one. So a short deal later it was all mine.

Dad was a nice guy, an earth works and transport contractor as it turned out. Now the truck was mine, how to get it home...

My original plan called for leaving it there and coming back a couple of days later with a driver. Dad's wife Mum (nice lady too, must be something in the water.) worked for a car hire company. She had it figured that I could pick up a rental for delivery in Wellington, drive it to New Plymouth, pick up the truck and drive home. Long day in the saddle but well do-able.

Or.....


We could put the station wagon on the back of the truck......ooooooo..... 'Oh sure,' said Horse Truck Dad, 'no problem.'  Oh right, there will be a ramp here some place. No, better.

Oh yum yum! Daddy's drive, a nice new Volvo flat loader. Back the Honda up the ramps and...

The man carries dozers and diggers and stuff, of cause my Dad's Honda'll fit...just drive straight ahead and think happy thoughts...

I've paced it out, I'm sure it'll fit, but that deck doesn't look very big even so. This is silly, I'm less than a meter up and I feel like I'm on stilts, harden up!

Tahdah!

I was all set to buy a bunch of rope, but no, good egg that he is, Horse Truck Dad came to the party with 4 large ratchet tie downs and in less time that it takes to tell, Honda was hog tied to Isuzu. Hope they get on. I offered to courier the tie downs back, but no, they were a present. Thanks! Nice guy.

I figured the Honda for a bit over half of the Isuzu's max loading, so no strain there, certainly it didn't feel funny once we were under way. I could see what the daughter was on about, though, no land speed records here. Patience and spacing the 5 gears eventually resulted in a comfortable 85-95kph, unless there was a hill. For a 3.3 liter diesel it seemed pretty relaxed about the whole affair. Still. Go it did, and in adequate comfort and handling. Not as loud as some I've driven, a conversation with the passenger is easily possible but I dont think I'll be fitting a stereo anytime soon. There is one, an A.M only radio in the dashboard hooked up to a single speaker someplace buried. OK when you're parked or in traffic. The thought didn't escape me that the Transit was easily as fast and a lot nicer to drive, But that's ok, all in all apart from the slightly hunched seat it's a running thing. A couple of hours later the hunched seat thing started to really piss me off. I was sure the seat was as far back as it would go, or at least that's what I thought. A tug on the seat slider and the seat lurched back another 6 inches, oh better! A grope and pull on the back rest adjuster and I had optimum driving configuration, yeehah! Now why didn't I do that right at the beginning...

Leisurely pace not withstanding, the trip home was nicely uneventful. Now all I had to do was figure out how I was going to get the car off the back of the truck once we got home. Hmmm. Just as we drove into Shannon I vaguely recalled seeing a loading ramp in the rail yard near home. A quick investigate and success!

Job done! Home was a 2 minute drive away and all had gone swimmingly! I like the truck, it's easy to drive (idiosyncratic gearbox not withstanding. Gear changes need to be lined up with some care if you don't want to be left hanging in the middle of an intersection in Wanganui, eek!), all in all I think might have got lucky! Time to start thinking about the swap over.

A musical interlude.

It's been a long month, the truck rust thing was weighing on my mind, TradeMe lists were scrutinized  and deliberated over and over. Time for a break.

 I've been going to Sanctuary Sounds Music festival near Waipawa  in Hawkes Bay for the last couple of years, a pleasant little event on a lifestyle farm. They keep ticket numbers to 300 per year, a cunning move in my opinion. I was itching to take M-B but alas...so I tossed some camping gear into the folk's station wagon and kicked off. The drive was nice in early summer sunshine, a couple of hours and I was there. Flash my ticket at the gate and park under some trees. It was only just lunch time, still lots of camp sites, so I grabbed the tent and headed off to get me some real estate.

This looks good! The tent is a milsurp item from the NZ army. No flyleaf or floor and many peg loops and guy ropes as well as neat lil 5 piece ali poles. Quite sturdy and in one of my favorite camos schemes. Once the tent was up I just spread a tarp inside and tossed my therm-a-rest on top, home! It's a good size inside, 3 blokes and all their junk easily. It has a tape running from end to end, so stretching  it into shape is quite safe. Well made!

Tentage achieved, it was time to wander off. A very short stroll brought me to the stage area.

This is the porch/stage at the back of the owner's house with people standing around on his lawn. I'm leaning against the sound booth at the back of the lawn. The quality of the sound is very fair, good gear and a competent sound guy made for good balanced sound. Things were looking good for a noisy night :-)

In one of those cosmic coincidences, I bumped into the chap to whom I sold my furniture truck about 3 years ago. Interesting bloke by the name of Gypsy, he used to own the Shannon second hand store, a place my Mum loved to go to buy books and knicnacs as well as talking up a storm.
It was just a bare luton box body sitting on a Mitsubishi L300. I loved driving that truck, it's lil 1600cc Lancer petrol motor buzzing away at a sedate 85 kph. Sadly tho, the whole deal was a bit ruined by my not being able to stand up straight in the box. I thought about lifting the roof, but sheesh! Too hard for just 4 inches and would look top heavy anyhow. So, that never happened, the truck was sold and I got a Nissan Sentra instead.

Fast forward 3 years.

He's done a solid job of the conversion, not his first.

Very comfortable! Easily my favorite part was the neat lil wood burner stove Gypsy and a mate constructed especially. It's about the size of a shoe box on end and runs of pine cones and small bits. Very cool!

Even a trivet to cook on! I could sooo see something like this in M-B, might have to give that one some thought...nice lil truck.

The afternoon rolled on, the stage and the bar  both opened at 1pm and 1st acts go under way. The ladies singing acapella and being served tequila shots as they sang, funny stuff as they got the 4th or 5th one down.

As the afternoon wore on, I thought I'd get the sleeping bag out of the car and put it in the tent all set for the night in case I was a bit the worse for wear. Got back to the tent and discovered my peace and quiet had turned in to suburbia.

Argh! There goes the neighborhood....oh well. Layed out my sleeping bag and headed back to the stage area.

Eventually got dark, the bands got louder, people drank, danced, hung out and a good time was had by all. As a family event there was a double handful of kids running about the place and having a good time, it's good to see that sort of thing. Even the couple of obvious drunks were well behaved and we partied into the night.


Eventually the stage closed at 1am, most people had quit for the night and it was no struggle to wander off to the tent, crawl into bed and just close my eyes and fade.
Wasn't boozed worth the mention, so work up in the morning feeling like a coffee would set me up to face the morning nicely. Wondered over to the coffee stand and discovered they were out of milk. Oh the horror! So pausing only to roll up the tent and load all my junk back in the car, I flounced off back home, stopping at the 1st coffee cart I came to. Another excellent weekend, would have been better if I had M-B, but there is always next year....

Step nine. The hunt continues and some random rantage.

Still looking for a truck. Been to see a Toyota Dyna that would have done, nice big deck (the deck is going to stay and a 4 meter one will leave me room for my cunning plan...) but had too much floor pan rust the owner 'didn't know about'. Pity. It ran and drove nicely. The search continues. There are some good'uns about but none in my general location. Just have to stay on the case.

Now the rant.

New Zealand has had a horror week for cyclists getting squashed by car, and in one case, truck, drivers. 5 Since last saturday. Ok, maybe for China or something this would be unfortunate but statistically ordinary, but here, not so much. Let me be clear, I have no particular axe to grind for or against cyclists on public road, I've been a daily peddle hound myself at several points in my life. Good exercise, cheap transport (if you don't mind riding a budget cycle) and yes, that wonderful catch cry Good For The Environment. Seems to me tho, that all of that is wasted by just one solid stay in hospital as the result of a bike crash.

The general hue and cry seems to revolve about road users (vehicle's other than cyclists, that) should be constantly aware of cyclists, pass them with a minimum of 1.5 meters clearance, look around more at intersections  etc etc. All sound and sensible advice, I'm not arguing with any of it. After all, they have a just as much right to the road as anybody, huh?

No.

They are the only regular road users who don't pay to use the roads. Trucks pay, quite a lot. Ordinary cars pay. Motorcyclists get royally reamed. Anyone who uses diesel has to pay road tax by the kilometer.

This is the part where the arguments of 'cycles don't pollute and use road space much more efficiently.' get trotted out. Yes and yes, not arguing them either...well not exactly.
 In order to pass a cycle on a standard road with 1.5 meter clearance and not cross the center line, the cyclist needs to be on the extreme left hand edge of the tar seal, something which some, but by no means all, do. More likely the only way to pass cleanly is with your wheels on the center line. Ok just as long as there is no one coming the other way. Like a string of traffic, for instance. Then you get to choose between missing the oncoming traffic by passing nice and close to the cyclist, or missing the oncoming traffic by less then might be good practice. But that's ok, these things happen.

All this is assuming that there is only one cyclist, or several that are in single file. Trouble is, the inconsiderate dicks will not uncommonly insist on riding two and, occasionally if you are lucky, three abreast. I've seen it. Then what? Miss both the on-coming traffic AND the cyclists by a coat of paint?  I'm staggered there hasn't been a massive pile-up caused by just this situation. Single file at all times should be the enforced rule.


The lack of consideration continues. Here is an individual exercise for you, dear reader. Find a comfortable cafe in the mid-city some place, pick a window seat and for the next fifteen or twenty minutes count the cyclists flouting road rules in a manner that would get any car driver locked up in prison.

Jumping red lights, diving through gaps in the traffic, one way streets in any direction, you name it. Don't even get me started on cycle couriers. Then when they get knocked off they piss and moan about how dangerous cars are.

At best they are non-paying guests on the public roads the rest of us have to pay to use, and like all good guests they should remember their manners.

It would be easy to think at this point that I want to see push bikes banned from our roads. Not so. They serve a useful function and I'm all in favor of cycle lanes, by-ways around narrow bridges and tunnels etc. Lower the speed limit on some inner city roads to make then safer for everybody, I never did like the 'one size fits all' New Zealand approach to speed limits, the standard 50kph is far too fast on many inner city and not a few suburban roads just as 100kph is too slow on some highways.

So I think it comes down to this. Road users generally should be aware of the fragility and frequent unpredictability of cyclists who in turn need to understand that they are also bound to and by the rules of the road the rest of us have to abide by. I'm all in favor of care and courtesy, but, if you will forgive the pun, it has to be a two way street..

Here endeth the rant.

Step eight. Rust never sleeps.

It's been an interesting day. Found a local engineering firm who does the major steel work for a paint and panel business who specialize in restoring old cars. Perfect. Well, kind of. The feller got underneath, prodded and poked, mumbled a bit then said yeah, he could fix the chassis rails for about $600 but the cab was full of rot that, pending a full strip and restore, would always be a problem. Reluctantly I have to concur. Here's the problem. Spend $$$ now getting to warrant-able standard, then spend the rest of the time I own it chasing the rust in the cab. No.

Some research on TradeMe turned up a good number of likely light trucks in the NZ$2500-5000 range, cheaper if I settled for a petrol powered item. If I'm going to go the the trouble of re-trucking it, I might as well get one I want as opposed the cheapest one that would do at a pinch.

I had a good hard look underneath at just how the camper was fixed to the chassis, 4 large bolts and 2 stirrup straps by my counting. After that it slides off. That doesn't sound like many fixings but the camper probably only weighs half a ton or so. Taking it off will look impressive, but really no harder than removing a flat deck. Well do-able.

It's going to be an interesting time, folks, but luckily there is no need to go rushing about the place.

Step seven. Martin-Baker rusting....

'No reason not to get a Warrant of Fitness and start driving.' The Gods of the Road put their heads together and had a snigger then plotted against such hubris.

Drove M-B to the garage for a warrant check, went back to pick it up expecting to have to sort some niggling lil details such as the missing bolt from under the front passenger seat I didn't know about.

What I WASN'T expecting was to be told the sub-chassis and front spring mounts were full of rust and needed sorting before any hope of a WoF. There is also a starting amount of rot in the front guards I knew about but wasn't worried about, figuring to have that cut out and covered later.

This is a biggie, people. My options are 1: Sell it now and recoup what I have a spent plus a few bucks. After all the work I've put into it? Not if I can help it! 2: Re-truck it, ie remove the Transit from underneath and put something else in it's place. The expensive option but would end up with something much more modern and diesel. 3: The one I'll probably take. Take it to an honest panel beater (oxymoron?) drop my pants, bend over and invite him to climb aboard. This will most likely be the 'cheapest' option and, if nothing else, I'll end up with a rust free and ship-shape vehicle.

I'm consoling myself with the fact that at least I'm doing this now while I have the time, resources and, to a certain extent, the filthy lucre to make this last happen. To have to go through this while I was on the road and tripping from short time money maker to short time money maker would have been a dream killer.

I'm going to have to take a few days do some research on this one. I'll keep you posted.

Step six. Keeping my cool.

Son of a *&%#@! Parking M-B back in the garage I noticed a pool of steaming water under the front end... ok, no panic, could be a few different things, just take a look.
Ah. Broken hose clip allowing the return hose to get loose. Bound to have another clip here some place. Huh. That's interesting (disturbing), the radiator is being held in by 3 bolts instead of 4, the bracket for the 4th has rusted clean away. It's official, radiator comes out. A spanner and a screwdriver later and it's on the ground. As much as I curse this thing some days, no one can accuse it of being hard to work on.

OK. The front of the radiator is all munted, whole sections of fins missing. Nothing for  it now, needs professional help. Looking at the fan, I noticed it had 4 blades instead of 6, 2 (opposing) blades having been snapped off. Icky! That'll need replacing too, but that will be easy.
A trip in to Levin to the only radiator fixer in town and the good news just keeps on coming. The guy behind the counter took one look at it and said 'It's leaking there (point with ballpoint pen) too.' Yup, sure is, even I could see that.
Overheating is a total drag, so I just nodded when he said it would need a complete re-core and recondition. NZ$368. Ouch. No point wailing about, has to be done.

6 Days later, go and collect, pay the nice man (fair's fair, it looked like new, bracket neatly fixed and the whole thing repainted, even threw in a new pressure cap) and go to leave. Oh yeah, might as well have new hoses while I'm at it. It was at this point old demons came back to haunt.

Remember the engine had been replaced? The radiator hadn't and standard hoses didn't even come close to fitting. Compared the old hoses to what he had on hand and nothing matched. Still, directly across the road was a Repco outlet, surely they would have something to suit. Trot over, collar one of the counter jumpers and hand over the old top hose (turned out the bottom hose was ok, that goes back in), the guy tapped on his pc a bit, looked thoughtful and wandered off out the back. 5 Minutes later he's back with what looks like a brand new hose, you beaut!

Back home. In one of those moments when karma flicks you one, hanging up in the garage and left over from the property's previous petrol head owners is a brand new generic cooling fan. Once I reamed out the pilot holes it was a dead fit if about 20mm thicker than the old one. No sweat, the fan bolts had thick spacers on them anyway, just ditch them in favor of a regular washer each and all went together easily. Drop in the new radiator, the extra fan width proving no problem, reinstall the 3 bolts left over and find a forth from the bolt box and all looks impressive. Bottom hose with new clips on and tightened, top hose.......is about 70mm too short! Rude words. More rude words. Swear as I might, there was no way the new hose was going to work. Contemplate putting the old hose back on and hope the split I noticed starting doesn't blow through at an awkward moment. No, wont do, has to be a new one. Hmm.

The obvious solution here is to cut the hose in half and put in a metal tube spacer. Not what I hoped for but not the end of the world either. Just need to find a piece of pipe. Hunt high and low in the workshop. Nope. A piece of exhaust tail pipe from M-B would fit (store that lil snippet away for later, you never know.) but I don't want a steel spacer, has to be stainless steel or copper.

Next trip to Levin for groceries and I also cruise the main drag for a plumbing shop. There's one! Plumbing World, sounds perfect. A quick peruse of the pipe rack, and there in the odds and ends collection is a meter length of thick wall brass (!) pipe exactly the right diameter! Sure, the counter guy said, there's a hack saw, cut off what you need. Cut 6 inches off the end and guy tells me not to bother paying him, he can't be bothered working out what it would cost. Thanks, good karma to you!

Back home, spacer in with 2 new stainless clips, fill the radiator with anti-freeze and water and start up. As usual the last air bubble didn't want to come out, but some hose squeezing and engine idling later it burped a couple of times and all was well. A trip around the block showed the needle hold nicely just under halfway and I'm feeling better.

No reason not to get a Warrant of Fitness and start driving!

Step five. Up on the roof.

Enough fun and frivolity, it's time to assault the job I've been putting off. The (quite leaky) roof.
Inside there is evidence of several historical leaks, the ceiling lining is stained and cracked in a few different places with little sign of any attempt to fix. The outside top of the back window is under about a centimeter of layers of goop where it has obviously been leaking but as fixes go that's about it. The window seal I'll have professionally fixed sometime soon, but not now.

Step one, let's get up on the roof and look it over. It was encrusted with years of dirt, dried mud etc so a stiff broom was called upon to do it's thing. Once that was done it didn't look to bad, but then it only takes a tiny crack to stuff the whole arrangement so I wasn't fooled. What was obvious was that at several points in it's life the poor thing had been driven into, and in one case under, things it's shouldn't have.

On the roof over the side door were a set of dents evenly spaced and running most of the length as if someone had tried to park under a just too low garage or carport and missed by an inch. The front right had corner damage at bed height (remember I said there had been a leak in the bunk?) a good biff that had sprung the sealing strip and embedded bits of bark and wood between it and aluminium sheeting. Solid suspect! Ditto the right hand back corner except that one looked more like something rather more solid. Poor thing!

I also strongly suspect it's been tail ended traffic style at some stage, when I was fixing the back wall inside there was quite a lot of what looked a lot like stove damage, like as if it had had a good whack at tail light level. Poor thing!

Sweeping and initial survey done, it all looks fixable.

Set to work with a wire brush and a screw driver carefully prying the edging strip out a few millimeters and scrubbing out the accumulated dirt and paint flakes from behind. I'll just do the roof for now, the sides are easily reached to be done later. to make my life just a little easier, the edging strip was aluminium and nailed through to the wooden frame underneath.

Worked my way right around the edge of the roof, prying and wire brushing as I went, it didn't seem too bad, or at least not the horror show it could have been and I was (dreading) half expecting. Only took a couple of hours. Found a couple more places where it had backed into stuff or tried to be driven under tree branches etc. Poor thing. Mental note to self: Be paranoid about roof and corner clearance! Took the opportunity to measure the total height including roof ventilator (another leak source...) for later reference, 2.8 meters would clear with nothing to spare.

Set to work with a big tube of industrial silicone sealer, a small piece of stiff wire and a hammer. Squirt in the silicone, use the wire to make sure it was right in behind the sealing strip then hammer flat with...well...the hammer. It was somewhat of the pleasure to watch the silicone vanish behind the strip, then some (but not all) of it reappear as I hammered the strip flat again. Take that, damned leaks!

Go right around the outside edge twice, just to make sure, then the 3 joins across the roof where the aluminium sheets came together. These didn't *seem* to be a leak problem, but the sealer gun and I here, so why the hell not. Used up a full tube of silicone and started on a second. If I didn't know better I would swear it was soaking the stuff up. As I was working my way around the edges it was apparent the sides were going to need attention, too, sprung rivets and the like. That's ok, get to them later.

Had a good hard look at the roof ventilator for possible leaks, it was easy to see someone had replaced the whole thing at some stage (well it is 30 years old) and then epoxied the bolt heads at some point after. Suspicious. Didn't silicone it, I have other plans for that.

This all took a couple of days in easy stages, the smell of drying silicone sealant was fairly potent at night but I told myself that was the smell of dying leaks. Probably about a spoonful was actually killing of the old leaks the rest being decoration. Ah yes! you say, but which spoonful? Whatever, it's all done now, which means I can.....

Paint.


Hmm, paint. Which one? Visited a couple of camper dealers for ideas and came away short on useful info but with several offers of  'Sure, we can do that for you.' Not bloody likely! Not on my budget, anyhow. My first thought was a good quality latex roof paint, thick and flexible as well as easy to put on and clean up. Campers by their very nature shake and rattle in Transit (badaboom!), it seems logical that a paint that could flex a bit without cracking would be a good thing.   A couple of nights cruising the internet for classic camper and caravan restoration sites increasingly showed this to be a solid option. Easily do-able and simple to maintain. A plastic screw top jar of pint and a brush stowed on board and you're laughing.

Granted, a professional 2 pot automotive paint job would look great but not on my budget and I have real doubts about it's flexibility anyhow. Roof paint it is then. While out shopping for fabric in Palmerston North I noticed a huge paint shop (Resene's) with a small shop attached to one side marked Resene Automotive....oh yes!

Stopped in, had a deeply useful chat with one of the sales guys about what I was doing and how best to go about it, preparation of aluminium for painting etc and came away with a 4 liter tin of best quality white plastic roof paint that would comfortably stick to both aluminium and silicon sealer. NZ$96.

Turned out preparation of the surface was wire brush away dirt and loose paint flakes, sponge clean, allow to dry then paint. I can do that! Last thing to do was to take a hot air gun to the 'Goldies' sticker on the front then wipe with meths and a rag to remove the last traces of glue. Sailors would have you believe it's bad luck to change the name of a ship, but A: it's not a ship, at least in the strictest sense of the word tho the similarities are not to be denied, B: Goldies referred to the then owner, not the camper as an entity and C: I'm not that superstitious anyhow. I like black cats, 13 is just a number and walking under ladders just means looking up to see if there is anything up there to fall on you. Granted, some superstitions have basis in fact, like being bad luck to light more than 1 (or is it 2?) cigarettes with the same match. This came about from WW1 when snipers would watch at night for the sudden glow of a match, take aim and...well you get the idea. Bad luck indeed. I don't smoke.

By this stage the silicone was good and hard, so it was pour some paint into a small jar and up the ladder with an inch brush to paint over the sealing strip and a couple of inches down the sides.
Nice paint! Not quite as thick as yogurt and amazingly sticky to boot. Slather it all over the places I resealed. Give it an hour to harden then do it all again. And again. Good stuff! Leave to go off properly over night.

Next day, back on the roof to do the roof joints and ventilator. Remove ventilator lid to expose the combing. Assault with small brush and lots of paint. 5 Coats. All over the place, right up to the soft seal, making sure to swamp all seams, joins and bolt heads. In between coats I ran a couple of coats over the roof seams as well. Up till now I had been clambering back and forth across the roof on a ladder laid from side to side to give good access to the ventilator and cross seams, the ladder was taken down and a 5 inch brush was firmly fixed to a broom stick long enough to reach the middle from a ladder leaned against the side. Paintpaintpaint. 3 coats in 2 hours with a liberal dividend for the edges I painted yesterday. As a rule I don't like painting but this was fast and easy, 2 of my favorite things.

 

Byebye Goldie! The front panel got 5 coats. Seems only right, that's the bit that will get pounded the most.

I wont know until the 1st decent wetting, but I strongly suspect I've killed off most of the leaks. Hope so......water is insidious stuff, the least gap and in it comes. M-B has been under cover for nearly a year now, it's as dry inside as it will ever be and I want to keep it that way. Generally the first indication you have of a leak is the stuff actually oozing/dripping inside, by that stage the insulation in the walls/roof has soaked up as much as it's going to already and fixing the leak is retroactive at best. Better, I think, to go to some pains now and hopefully not have to fix a leak at all. A camper that won't shrug off a dousing is called a sieve.

All in all I'm feeling a bit pleased with myself.