Oh very well.
It was dealing with that town full of drooling halfwits known as Prince George that exhausted me. The relentless belligerent driving style up there wears on you a little bit. You can only take so many near death experiences in a 3 hour period before it starts to harsh your mellow.
(if you're from PG and you can read this, congrats.)
Anyways long story short, picked up an hj61 with a 5speed. Little crusty around the edges, but actually less rusty than I thought it would be. Considering what a halfway decent bj60 goes for these days, I'm ok with what I paid. Doesn't have lockers, just a crappy LSD which is rather dubious.
Owners were morons, (see above re: PG) and didn't know their asses from holes in the ground. I stopped asking them questions after 2 minutes. They lived on 200+ acres, so the cruiser hadn't seen much highway in a loooooong time.
Trip home was uneventful once we were past quesnel....where I coasted to a stop in the Hospital parking lot with a toasted clutch slave...I loaded up with spares at Radd before leaving, but we both forgot about the slave...
Called all the parts places, and no one had one, marvellous predictions of "maybe tuesday" etc, meanwhile I had the slave in hand, contemplating how to haywire it together with an o-ring or something, when one parts guy says, " You should get a hold of George" aka shancerlelby.
Turns out he'd replaced the slave on his HJ60 a few months previous, and being the prince among men that he is, took it out of his truck and brough it to me. Restored some of my faith in humanity after dealing with northeners.
Depsite his protestations, we bought him a case of beer and paid him for the slave, and we were off again. After that it was just a typical drive in a cruiser. Clunks, rattles, occasional death wobbles (made more fun by the absurd 12" steering wheel , unbalanced YokoOno snow tires and dead steering stablilizer), all with the bizarre difference of being actually able to accelerate up hills....12ht's do ok on the highway.
So I've spent the last couple mornings doing clean up , and hosing everything down with homebrew creepy oil.
Step 1 was get rid of this FAWKING steering wheel.
and, replace it with a good ol' 40 series bus wheel. Note the dodgy wiring and gaping maw where the stereo should go.
I threw on a new Emu steering stabilizer, and tightened up the steering links that can be tightened. Between that and some new wheels , it should take care of the wobbles.
This is the truck. Yes, I will get rid of the front porch at some point.
It has the PTO box still, but no winch or shaft to the winch. Probably fine with that. pto winches are kinda sketchy anyways. I'll have to think of something cool to do with the pto box tho. Maybe drive a compressor with it or something.
These assholes like it so far.
Little busier than a bj60's lump hole.
So yeah. Still needs tires, and quite possibly a rear third as the flange was loose and that generally means pooched bearing. LSD sounds and feels like a lockrite. meh.
)
