so it’s been awhile between decent updates - work sucks….
it certainly wasn’t the best brass monkey in history but it was still better than staying home
for a variety of reasons (99% of them work related) i ran outta time to replace the front calipers on the mq…. this wasn’t an optional exercise as after the last mud running at purga both front calipers were siezed - the mq is tired enough without trying to drive 2 siezed front wheels as well. so the week of brass monkey i bit the bullet and got the servo mechanic up the road to replace the calipers for me - this also involves dumping all the brake fluid and replacing it with fresh stuff. once the brake system was actually operating at full pressure it was too much for the 20+ year old brake lines. thursday night in my BACKYARD i was turning the mq around to load the camping gear when my brake pedal went right to the floor accompanied by a squirting noise. ARGH!
so it’s raining, it’s dark, and im crawling around in the wet grass trying to rape a brake line off the parts mq….. of course after i went to all the effort of getting it off i realised the rubber was perished and it was about to blow as well. ARGH! so i finished loading the camping gear and accepted that i was gunna have to get another brake line in the morning and get away late…… for the first time in 100 years brisbane actually had some good rain that morning - it was POURING! baileys brake n clutch at ipswich came to the rescue and had another line made up for me by 9:30am friday morning…. so again im crawling around in the wet grass and the mud trying to single handedly bleed the brakes.
eventually got away around midday - which put me horribly behind schedule and generally got me stressed out…. fortunately by the time we got to levuka (around 3pm) the rain had stopped. i unpacked the mq, drank a lot of beer and jumped in the mq for a quick reccie…. me and dicko in the mq, eyepee and dibbzeh in the 40, and munga in the zook took a heap more beer and set off onto the tracks.
add another reason for not drink driving to the list - YOU MISS IMPORTANT ROAD SIGNS! the sign said “deep mud”…. what it should have said was “this is a dam”
dicko being the good natured bastard that he is spent some time crawling around on my bonnet until finally giving up and just jumping into the leech infested stinky brown water - meantime i was in the cab with the same stinky leech infested water up to my knees (and we had run out of beer!)
eventually eyepee dragged me out backwards…. as i was draining the stinky mud from my cab he tried to jump a log resulting in his steering rack going snappo!
so everyone piled into the zook and the mq and we went back to camp to call chester on the satphone - “when you come down tomorrow bring parts!”….. we spent a coupla hours in the morning kick steering the 40 into somewhere less muddy, chester rocked up about 3pm saturday with a complete steering rack for the 40 and a radiator cap for the bronco… by sunset the 40 was back on the tracks…..
saturday night we lost the bledisloe which i heard on the radio in between comments from the bm3 annoyinng fark…. by the end of the game the bm3 annoying fark was passed out - and he was passed out in a big way - some aspiring van gogh’s did some living artwork on his face….. and he didnt wake up even once!
sunday came and went - lots of sore heads, some sporadic packing and cleaning and we all trundled back to brisvegas before nightfall.
once again iron chef dibbzeh put on a good performance, eyepee helped out with some of the logistics, dicko helped out by braving the leeches - many others didn’t help out at all and in hindsight there’s a few ratbags who i won’t invite again. either way we made a good weekend of it…. looking forward to the next (less stressful) chill weekend with the usual crew
