Yup, Don! The very PDX. I get in on 6 April for a couple months. The MWFD has already been there for 3 weeks so I'm getting a "wetter" report every day. Sitting in the middle of 1:100 year drought and a heat wave that has lasted since October I am really looking forward to wet and cold weather. I'd really like to meet some of the guys while I'm there. Have some beers and talk TLCs. Are you down near Corvallis? I have difficulty judging distance in the USA because I don't drive there anymore - I'm too African and lawless - after having a serious run-in with a South Dakota state troopers. 3 x in one day and we all ended up losing our sense of humour and I decided that discretion is the better part of valour and I will simply not drive there if I can help it.
JungleBiker, you said it. A mutton chop tastes soooo much better than the cabbage it ate.
Cult45. Now that's real red dagha to play in! I want it, the V8, I've just got to get it for the right price.
We've had some of your TV countrymen filming some or other reality series down the road. Even Shaney put in an appearance apparently as a guest on the show or something. Walked into a lodge for a drink two weeks ago and there he was. Looking old now.
The Dagha Boy.... Well, what can I say?
Went to Nelspruit to pick up my very very expensively finished body parts. Left at sparrow's fart to beat the Easter weekend traffic and return the hired trailer by 16:45 and avoid paying an extra day hire. They eventually loaded me at 14:00. The tub and bonnet, which was all that I could see that wasn't wrapped in moving blankets looked magnificent. I paid the Kobus, and hit the road. By that time of course the holiday traffic was in full swing. Four hours later and ten years older I arrived on the farm.
This morning I off loaded and unwrapped everything. F@#$%&*@#K.
While the exterior of the tub is mind blowingly good, the interior of the tub has not been properly sprayed. Eg. The area just aft of the kick vents and immediately in front of the door has no top coat on it. It is also clear that the epoxy undercoat that should have gone below the colour coat was not put down. The brace where the front door hinges go, has no coating on it but for a little bit of overspray. The 2K primer I used if an almost perfect colour match to the Dune Beige final colour, so you have to look very carefully to see it. The dead give away is that there are little speckles of grey bin liner overspray that still show grey on the beige primer. So definitely no undercoat and no sanding went into that part as it should have.
The hood was also perfect on the outside, but full of runs and dust on the inside.
The doors. Although straighter and flatter than should even be allowed on a Land Cruiser, the paint work is patchy, runny, saggy, no under coat over the 2K etch primer and full of DUST (REMEMBER I TOOK THE BLOODY THING TO HIM BECAUSE OF THE DUST HERE) I am no spray painter, but I could have done a far better job right here than he did on any of the parts he did. (Insides of the hood aprons are just raw etch primer!!!)
I'm OCD, OCD, OCD, and that is the standard I have worked to on every little piece. I did not believe I could do an acceptable job under the conditions I have here and THAT IS THE REASON I PAID 50% MORE THAN THE GOING RATE TO GET THE BEST GUY TO DO IT RATHER THAN I TAKE IT TO A LOCAL PANEL SHOP TO DO IT. IT HAD TO BE
PERFECT. HIS OTHER WORK I'VE SEEN IS PERFECT. BUT THIS STUFF IS A F@#$%$@*&K UP. It just shows you, you never can tell. You gotta watch them all the time. Damn!
I've repacked everything and Tuesday morning 07:00 when he arrives at his shop I will be parked in his parking spot...
An unhappy camper.
Sorry, I have taken no photos of this mess, I was just too angry.
What I did achieve yesterday was to get the split rims and front bumper sandblasted and etch primered them this morning. They're looking good. (no runs and no dust in the paint) I got some grey chip resistant epoxy top coat. Matched to the colour on a 3/90 rim from a spare that had never seen the road or the sun. It looks damn good to my eye. I cannot tell the difference between it and the Grey used on Masset Ferguson tractors. The paint guy says there is a difference but I really can't see it. I'll let them bake in the sun and get the 7.50 x 16s fitted on Wednesday, which will be exactly 1 year after I started stripping it.
The colour on the roof and head light bezel is the correct Cygnus White and just looks RIGHT. Any other white would just not be right. I'm glad I decided to go factory on that. Well, actually it wasn't me that insisted on that, but the MWFD.
Lots of writing and no pictures...
Here's one of the MWFD's son Tom, (MWFD co-pilot) getting the previous HJ45 sideways while running away from a storm while he was driving it 1000 miles across the country (back roads all the way) after we bought it. I was driving ahead of him in a Merc and had lost traction on the loose stuff so knew what was coming and waited for him to take the photo.
Next morning the MWFD took the Merc and abandoned us, so we bought a couple cases of beer and cruised the last 500 miles home.
This is the cruiser I have repo'ed. The body is completely rotted off but mechanically it is perfect, with new OME suspension on. I'm thinking of doing a nuts and bolts on it, including changing it to LHD and send it to him for his 30th b'day. (I had promised to fix it for him and never did. Guilty conscience.) Anyway he had a good couple of years use out of it while living out here, and loved it. It is the original Dagha Boy, and he ran it with a wildebeest skull and horns strapped to the bush bar. Unlike the CJ7 he used later it never let him down on the road.
I bet that King's Blockhouse beer is tasty! 
