Offroad-Express

Oh well my turn first.
Spent the day pulling the engine and gearbox out of the playdoh....
Had an oppps, the auto / transfercase slid off the trans lifter and landed on its side. Ended up breaking the housing for the vacume actuator for 4wd.. Lucky a mate has one hes not using.
Next step is pull out the running gear and start mocking up everything on the replacement chassis.

SV1K popped over and dragged away the falcon for its motor...sounds like a PROJECT

Honed out the taper holes on my hubs for the larger 18m tie rod ends, wired up the controls for the winch on the center console installed me new shocks.
Adjusted up the hand brake and a water blast for WOF.

Finally got my surf muddy. Went up to woodhill with some guys from work. Had it in a couple of fairly gnarly buts, had to get the spade out a couple of times, but it went really well. I was very happy with itconsidering it was both my first and the trucks first time out off road.

picked up a spare parts truck today it's a 2.8 Nissan spirit with blown head gasket.next weekends mission is to swap out the diffs and the steering box as it has 4.625 diffs(good ratio for 35's)and the bigger steering box

Installed a new lsd in the rear and replaced oem muffler with new performance one. Super productive, nice tune now too

Attempted to get to Possum Palace wity Andy3542 to do final prep for the comp... stopped halfway when we were in a small puddle with the carpet getting wet, went to reverse out and trailer brakes came on. Had to climb through truck open the back door and look for a trailer that had vanished under water to flick brakes off so we could back out

Slept in the truck on side of road, LWB safari with 3 people and 2 dogs got kinda interesting, woke up went for a drive past dargaville to try a different route only for the torque converter to let go in the tow wagon, starter motor on my truck was dead so couldnt unload it off the trailer and tow the lwb back to civilisation.

Was an interesting adventure, got a very busy weekend coming up to get comp prepared... nothing like a good challenge

2nd time down to Porters Rd and all was going well until I decided to slide into a rut and smash the guards (Oh well they are only fibreglass) and snap the ball joint on front parnard rod on the jeep. Bush fix coming up involving rope & mud (It always happens in the mud doesn't it??? - Finally got to use those knots I learnt at Scouts 30 odd years ago).
Crept out to somewhere I could be rescued. Thanks to all the guys in the Cozzie 4x4 Club. Especially Ken who came over from Hamilton to rescue & trailer me home.

Had an awesome day down at porters road on sunday. I love my wee Jeep! She has a few battle scars now though, including pretty good scuff marks on both corners of the front bumper, also lost a mud guard (which I was going to remove anyway), broke a number plate surround (who needs them anyway?) and knocked a tire off it's bead ($10 fix). Bugger lol.




Then went for a drive along the coast at Raglan today and found a wee track up a hill that I decided to explore. Took my dog for a run on the beach on the way home.



Then I washed the truck (she's all shiny again now!) All in all a very productive weekend

Sounds like it was a fun day down at Porters Road.

Had a winch training day down at the club rooms by Lake Wairarapa, tried various ground anchors ( even the spare tire )and Rod then showed us how to winch out backwards should you need to, and did it with 4 snatch blocks to show the power of 4:1.
Then some friendly local dropped a doz flounder off for us

sounds like more fun than I had.

Replaced left top and lower ball joints on navara because of the knocking sound only when accelerating & braking (lateral forces on suspension) spend the money for the mechanics on tools.
Broke brand new $ 90set of joint separators with a ring spanner? cough. ehm...Jonesway tools ..cough....

Put everything back together took for drive. Knocking still there.... need to check body mounts, drop links, swing arm bushing & anything else?

i've been putting surf back together after panel beater did the rust repairs.
put most of the inside back together before realizing i left out the rear seat belts.
pulled apart, fit seat belts. then realize they where on the wrong sides.