Who is doing what maintenance today?

[BobMurphy]

wow Bob, that's one Rusty 90 series, how'd it get so bad in the first place?

It spent its early life in Aberdeen. It was full of sand, so I think its been near the sea. Its actually better than my '100' which came from Yorkshire. The roads in the North of England and Scotland are covered in salt for months each winter - cars don't last long .

I had thought about removing the body completely but I don't really have time to do a full restoration on it. I don't need two Landcruisers so getting it solid and back on the road may lead to me selling it on. We shall see.

Bob.

 

[BobMurphy]

More maintenance today . . . . but this time its not a Toyota:





I have an 80ft dead Beech tree to take down and I'll be using this to attach strops & chains to the divided trunk before cutting.

The platform goes to 41.5 ft, but its nothing when compared to the tree:





A friend of a neighbour, who lives up in Fife, has been 'topping' some 30ft Leylandii along his boundary but now has a problem. He can't reach a couple of them because his garage is in the way.

Cue "Thunderbird II" (A.K.A. "The Very-White Van"), we may be heading his way next week armed with chainsaws and all the usual accoutrements.

Today it was just oils and filters (in the rain, as usual) .

Bob.

 

[froggy Steve]

ye gods! thats high...no way would you get on that cherry picker - i dont do more than 3 or 4 rungs of a ladder now....all stems from my days on the 132kv distribution for Eastern Electric.........I got stuck up a concrete structure and they had to rescue me.....cue search for a new job time!

 

[BobMurphy]

ye gods! thats high...no way would you get me on that cherry picker - i dont do more than 3 or 4 rungs of a ladder now.

Ha Ha! I used to be scared of heights as a kid but these days I have done some daft things with long ladders and chainsaws. The 'Cherry Picker' is civilised - providing the controls in the bucket continue to work, they are exposed and my worry is that a connection somewhere will fail. It helps to have an 'Assistant' on the ground who can operate the 'Ground Control' from inside the truck!

These things are never tall enough. I once hired a large lorry to do some topping. It's platform/cage went to 80 ft, but it was still 10ft short of the top of my Elms! We got a good view of Edinburgh though (I took the daughters up in it to give them an experience).

Of course, I wear a full safety harness with a short strap locked to the hard eye in the bucket plus a hard hat - and carry a 'phone. The chainsaw is also attached to my harness with a strap.

Its not a 'toy' to treat lightly .

Bob.

 

[Beau]

Quick question, I didn't want to start a new thread. I'm looking for a suitable USB outlet that can go in the place where the heated seat switch normally goes on the 90 series. Has anyone done this? I remember seeing some discussion about this a while back...

This is the USB outlet I'm thinking...

 

[StarCruiser]

Had a rear axle day today. More brakes and springs really. I returned home yesterday to the sound of hot metal pinging which confirmed why the truck had felt like it was slightly lunging. A seized offside brake calliper was the culprit, I could feel the heat coming from it on my face as i looked in.

So, wheels off, callipers off, decided to remove the drums/discs and inspect the handbrake which was in remarkably good condition, so, pulled off the shoes and the dog bones, got the bones welded with an extra 2mm as I've never really had a huge amount of trouble with it.

I struggled getting the retaining clips either side onto the shoes, until I made them up first and slid them into the slots on the shoes…much easier. The extended dog bones dropped straight in after the whole thing was given a clean and smear of copper ease on the contact points.

The calipers alas were beyond saving. One worse than the other with the chrome gone rusty…time for replacements…local motor factors 'Delco' ones coming in the morning.

With time in the day to spare, I decided to give Zebadee and Mrs Zeb a new home and put the newly acquired springs in.

Amazing that the new ones are twice the weight of the original ones…and have given the truck a 4" lift out of +30mm springs. That's cos I've been riding on the bump stops for ages.

 

[Pumpy]

Quick question, I didn't want to start a new thread. I'm looking for a suitable USB outlet that can go in the place where the heated seat switch normally goes on the 90 series. Has anyone done this? I remember seeing some discussion about this a while back...

This is the USB outlet I'm thinking...

I got some of those to fit in the center consul in the 80 where there's 3 holes for switches on mine, they didn't fit, I'd need to make a plate for them, so plan changed to blanking plate since I don't really need any more usb sockets.

 

[Pat]

Ha Ha! I used to be scared of heights as a kid but these days I have done some daft things with long ladders and chainsaws. The 'Cherry Picker' is civilised - providing the controls in the bucket continue to work, they are exposed and my worry is that a connection somewhere will fail. It helps to have an 'Assistant' on the ground who can operate the 'Ground Control' from inside the truck!

These things are never tall enough. I once hired a large lorry to do some topping. It's platform/cage went to 80 ft, but it was still 10ft short of the top of my Elms! We got a good view of Edinburgh though (I took the daughters up in it to give them an experience).

Of course, I wear a full safety harness with a short strap locked to the hard eye in the bucket plus a hard hat - and carry a 'phone. The chainsaw is also attached to my harness with a strap.

Its not a 'toy' to treat lightly .

Bob.

Bob,Will you put more pics up when you do the job as it looks real challenging
Regards Pat

 

[BobMurphy]

Pat,

I will if possible - difficult to be in two places at once and 'photography' tends to be forgotten when I'm stuck into something like this.

The next step is to borrow my neighbour's spare anchor chain (100 metres, 4-ton breaking strain) and get it set up with strops. That's what I did last Autumn with the Sycamore trees. It would be an easy fell - if it wasn't for the 20-pair phone line that's in the way. I'll be dropping the upper trunks onto my wood pile - seems appropriate .

I'm a bit apprehensive; I've had the roof of my outbuilding flattened by a falling tree before . . . I don't think the Insurance Co. will look kindly at a second occurrence (the first one was the result of a January storm, nothing to do with me Gov') .

Bob.

 

[Towpack]

Ha Ha! I used to be scared of heights as a kid but these days I have done some daft things with long ladders and chainsaws. The 'Cherry Picker' is civilised - providing the controls in the bucket continue to work, they are exposed and my worry is that a connection somewhere will fail. It helps to have an 'Assistant' on the ground who can operate the 'Ground Control' from inside the truck!

These things are never tall enough. I once hired a large lorry to do some topping. It's platform/cage went to 80 ft, but it was still 10ft short of the top of my Elms! We got a good view of Edinburgh though (I took the daughters up in it to give them an experience).

Of course, I wear a full safety harness with a short strap locked to the hard eye in the bucket plus a hard hat - and carry a 'phone. The chainsaw is also attached to my harness with a strap.

Its not a 'toy' to treat lightly .

Bob.

We use these things at work everyday, in various sizes and, as with most commercial usage, a ground man fully conversant with recovery procedures is mandatory. They can certainly make light work of what would be a much bigger, more difficult and dangerous job using ladders and abseiling equip etc.

On the LC maintenance front, spent the morning fitting 2 new towing sockets. The small welded on bracket holding the sockets snapped off so, rather than faffing about with the welder, decided to relocate the sockets to a bolt-on bracket fitted between the tow ball and bar. A 15min job I thought until the old sockets practically fell to pieces when trying to remove the rusted fixing bolts, plus the screw connectors were all seized, probably something to do with the sockets being full of water no doubt. In fact some of the connections were so bad I'm amazed they were still working!

 

[Shayne]

The tipping point of cherry pickers is astonishing we used to use one to push down walls on demolition . The controls were in the basket and though i struggle to remember i think it was an old BT light lorry . The wall bit back and let go and the pendulum effect had us hit the shops opposite before it came right .

No cameras in those days but while searching for a memory refresh i came across this which is only a few doors away from where we had our fun . We were parked inside what was left of the building .




As for cruiser maintenance i polished the whole truck and decided i need to stop messing with unimportant stuff like paint and concentrate on the mechanical stuff .

 

[fbnss]

So today I went from this...


To this...

Not a carpenter or an upholsterist so im quite chuffed with myself

 

[Trevor]

Nicely done Nick, as the saying goes "a blind man would like to see that".

 

[fbnss]

It probably looks good from your house too!

 

[clivehorridge]

Very nice Nick, you should be very proud of that!

Do the drawers open and close and stuff?

 

[fbnss]

Yes Clive! I had to trim the drawer fronts and the "wings" to allow for the thickness of the carpet stuff. No more rattles from the back now. Woo woo!

 

[BobMurphy]

The tipping point of cherry pickers is astonishing we used to use one to push down walls on demolition . .

Hmmmmm, Not to be taken for granted. Mine is not a very heavy truck (3.8 tons) and it only has one pair of hydraulic jacks which are quite close to the body. They don't lift the wheels clear of the ground. I have six thick planks, about 1.5 metres in length and put two under each jack (more if the ground isn't level).

The extending boom only extends fully (3 metres I think) when the boom is above 45 degrees. From there it won't let the boom down until the sliding mast has been retracted to 1 metre or less. This means I have 7 metre reach to the sides and 13.2 metres reach vertically.

The bucket takes 200 Kilos (2 people plus tools). When talking to the Versalift people they warn about overloading the bucket as these 'light' trucks have been known to tip over.

As always . . . I now want a bigger one .

Bob.

 

[AndyCook]

What a major undertaking with the 95 Bob, I owned a shogun for a few months which was like that, I got if for free, but bought new parts, then i sold it on to someone who wanted the engine to cover the cost of the parts I never used, the sills were well rotten.... I knew I would never get it sorted out

 

[chadr]

Spent an hour or so changing the rear number plate lights yesterday. One of the bulbs had blown and was highlighted*() at the MoT earlier in the year but there was no way to simply replace the bulb as all the screws were rusted so badly. I had got the OEM lenses, gaskets and screws from Simon a while back and set about drilling out all 4 screws - which wasn't too bad.

I could've reused the old lenses and gaskets but hey ho....replaced both bulbs with nice new LED ones and we're good to go. I do have a pic but I'm sure you all know what a LED bulb looks like! ;-)

 

[StarCruiser]

Shock absorbers came in to the local Toyota main dealer today. You've got to like the parts guy who says 'would you just like me to type the numbers into the machine or do you want me to read out the total?' . Anyway, I got them home and changed them in less than an hour the two, the DeWalt knocker gun proving itself once again to be a great tool.

It seems it wasn't a moment too soon as the nearside stud (or should I say remains of) sheared as I tried to undo it!!

The kit came with the rubbers and nuts but alas no washers so that's on my list to get and replace. Apart from the effort required to push the darn things up, this was probably one of the easiest jobs I've done so far.

As a precaution, I sprayed white grease on the top and bottom studs on the new shocks. It says it stays put and keeps moisture out. We'll see in another 22 years. Hmm, I'll be 70!!