The Official Treehouse Articles Thread

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  • #101
Great pics. We going to see the finished product?
 
That's awesome Gary. I still regularly wrench with my best buddy from high school. His parents own a local auto wrecker and together we often say there's nothing we couldn't tackle.

I too would love to see more pics of the old Bronc.
 
Alex and Bronco.JPG


That looks a bit like me about 1979 but a Toyota Stout a bit overloaded.

Long story but short version. Big day, Saturday afternoon, had the jinx with me, he was a redundant printer I used to give him some casual work. He loved it.

Axel broke on a bend, looked just like that except I was a foot or so more of the bitumen. Got a lift to a wrecker and got an axle, just about finished and a drunk driver clipped the corner of the truck. He stopped a bit down the road and passed out, woman across the road panicked but I said he's drunk just leave it but she called an ambulance. They turned up, he woke up, they called the cops.

I'm in a panic, got to get out of here. (Leave out reason) Axle just about done, cops turn up. He doesn't like it, short scuffle and they get him in the wagon. Cop talks to me pretty quick because the other one was who he hit and want's to get him back to the station.

Axle fixed, and I got home ok. Don't think the other guy did, he was yelling he was going to kill me as they took him away.
 
hahaha...how dare you be in the way of a drunk so that he hit you!!!

Alex actually had TWO axle breaks...on one of them the left rear broke and the tire and rim shot past him, crossed oncoming lane of traffic, went down a hill through a gravel parking lot, almost hit a guy, shot up a 4 foot high dirt hill and launched about 30 feet high and into a patch of kudzu. We looked for about two hours in that kudzu for the tire...never did find it. He got lucky on that one.
 
Tough sunsabitches!

We go to a hot springs over east that has a cold pool. 34 degrees. The silly bastards skip out of the sauna and splash around a bit in the cold pool.

I like to just go sit in the cold pool. 25 minuets is the longest I have gone. Sometimes the skinny guys try to out last me, but they cant. In fact when they hop out, I always stay and extra 5 minutes...come at me bro!

I have always liked cold water. I hate saunas and hot tubs.
 
on one of them the left rear broke and the tire and rim shot past him

He was lucky.

Next time the jinx worked with me we're flying along and I notice a couple of farmers starring at us. Nothing unusual because I always was overloaded, come to a T intersection and stop, a big cloud of smoke comes past. He looks out and says we're on fire.

Pull over and back wheel smoking, grab some water from a little dam and put it out. Only a few minutes to the dump so I'll sort it out then.

I tell him to watch it. About a mile later he yell's "the wheels coming off". The rope rail stopped it. Had to leave it there that time and get a bearing. Got it sorted the next day though.

I had two more Toyota Stouts after that and never had a problem with them. With that one the previous owner changed the motor, gear box and diff.

Mick. I was legal, truck wasn't. Pretty crook at the time with a misdiagnosed kidney stone and flat broke. That makes that story a lot longer, ambulance guys thought they got called for me.:laughing6: I said no, I look like this most of the time, it's that bloke in the car.



Had to look up kudzu, no wonder you couldn't find it. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100517172302.htm
 
Hahaha... Nothting like being fire on running down the road. That happened to me once when a tire blew out and disconnected the fender on a chipper. The tire caught on fire. Luckily the half gallon of drinking water I had left in the truck beside me was enough to put out the fire.

Kudzu is bad news. That picture is pretty close to correct. It will consume whole trees. There have been cars with people in them that were missing for years and they were finally found in a kudzu patch.
 
That happened to me on a crew once logging too. Smoker tossed a but out and it blew back into a box of grease cartridges and garbage right beside the tidy tank. As we were driving through road construction I commented "what are these idiots staring at?" It was moments later we noticed all the residue on the outside of the tidy tank had lit up. So the tank was literally on fire. That truck stopped and I was a 100 ft away in a instant, while my boss calmly put it out with a fire extinguisher and a smoke dangling from his lips. Loggers!
 
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  • #122
I gotta remember that one.

I have a guy like that, if he's left to his own devices. But he can also fix anything with almost nothing. I always say it'd be real hard to keep him in jail.
 
I doubt the jinx could fix anything, but he was super smart. He was like having a personal Google twenty years before there was one.

He originally was a printer then worked transferring things to computer files. He'd read everything and remembered it all, you could ask him anything and he could tell you. A lot of people didn't like him but we got along pretty good. He'd never been outside much and was amazed at what we did, not counting break downs. Well I guess he enjoyed them too, because everyone down the pub knew about them before I got there, and everything else as well usually.
 
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  • #124
Good story, Steve.
 
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