mrsmackpaul

Thanks for the kind thoughts everyone I always say to people that dogs are only with us for a short while because they give so much in that short time I have never bought a dog, they just sort of end up in my life, normally as a pup I wish I had my older mind many years ago with dogs as my biggest regrets inlife are when I have really done my block (gotten really angry) at a dog It achieved nothing and the dog meant nothing wrong, I guess age gives us wisdom, sometimes ? Miss Molly will be missed by me thats for sure and to me she was a unofficial forum member as she featured in plenty of messages and story telling Miss Molly came into my world when I was putting underground power onto a cattle station (ranch) in north Queensland, Leichhardt Creek station (is about 33,000 acres) Anyway this little pup, maybe about 10 or 12 weeks old gave me a hand all day, whether I needed a hand or not grabbing conduit and electrical wire, the end of the day I was asked if I would like her to which I said "YES PLEASE" and she came back to the sugar cane farm and chased roo's and pulled deer down and wrestled big goannas and generally lived a good life full of adventure She always loved riding in the trucks, she loved the little Isuzu as she could lay on the seat and cuddle me and watch the road all at the same time what a mate she was, did many 1000s of km sitting on the passenger seat of the Mack, I dunno how she sat there for so long but she loved it and would really crack a darcky if I left her behind I do a lot of running and in maybe the last 6 months she started to struggle to do the miles in the morning so the runs got shorter she loved it when we shifted to town as she would clean up around the fast food fish and chip cafe type of shops Anyway she bought me a lot of joy and I hope she had fun Leichhardt Creek station called her "Rubbish" as they were convinced she would never amount to much as she was kinda smallish for a working dog in Australia were they generally have huge dangley legs to cover upwards of 50 km a day working cattle and sheep the Princess changed her name to Molly I usually called Sweety or Darling pie once again, thanks for the kind thoughts Paul

You all may of picked up I have been lucky enough to have a border collie dog share my life and tolerate me for well over a decade I did wonder when she was young if border collies ever slept Well apparently border collies do eventually sleep Poor old Miss Molly the border collie is gone After loosing the use of her right back leg 5 or 6 weeks ago for no apparent reason, the poor darling had something wrong inside and she went down hill pretty quick Anyway I can't be cruel and made the decision have my darling put down What a good little doggolog she has been

See, that's what I'm talking about, we have all had those moments in life we're we wanna leave a lasting impression ha ha ha Always good to have some fun and it is a battle to honestly remember some of the stupid stuff I have done Thank goodness there was no smart phones years ago But, I doubt a younger me would of cared, as long as my parents never found out I was doing okay The joys of growing up in a country town were everyone knows everyone If you really make a ass of yourself your parents find out before you make it home and the wrath of Mum and Dad was worse than any law enforcement person Paul

So to add some useless information here The main reasons (in Australia at least) for the change from generators to alternators in the automotive world world is pretty simply Alternators last much longer than generators in the automotive world as the spin so quick and the generator has a commutator And a alternator has slip rings The commutator by it's design us very aggressive on the brush gear and it wears very quickly Slip rings are nice and smooth and will often last the life of the motor Alternators as mentioned generate power at a lower speed and the generator commutators tended to come apart in young bucks hotted up cars when giving them a boot full of revs Paul

Your hand brake/park brake/or what ever you call it in Yanky land is stuck on Looks like the brake handle is in the released position here so I'm guessing the shoes are stuck on the brake drum on the tail shaft on the rear of the transmission Maybe easier to just un bolt the tail shaft at the diff and tie it out of the way as you were only planning on using the cab I believe Dropping the tail shaft will make it much easier to shift about I had to re read the thread to remember what was what This gave me a chuckle Even more of a chuckle was the grumpy bum replies from some of more mature (Old and forgotten what it's like to be young and have some fun) members Dunno, actually I do know, I remember been young and silly and running hot dog mufflers on a 3 inch exhaust doing our best to rattle the possums out of the trees on a Friday and Saturday night as we tore around town Some of you blokes need to try and remember how much fun was had with a loud exhaust on a hotted up car If you wanna jake every gear as you roll through town, go your hardest, have some fun, your gunna be old and past it in the blink of a eye Go on "BRING THE THUNDER" ha ha ha Paul

Good job and great result Paul

Great news, job was well worth it Better than my results of trying to fix power steering leaks, fixed one and it pissed out else where, fix that and somewhere else I finally got it all sorted The good news is the truck just got cleaner and cleaner as I fixed each leak Still leaks out the winch Paul

So the page and a half of complicated instructions on timing of the steering box and pulling it apart again and again and the rest of that stuff I am far to dumb to understand wasn't needed ?? Great news it's all coming along Paul

I expect it is done like that so cattle don't slip over Paul

Might of been a tad skinner when I was 20 as well Getting (probably already was) shit faced at the summer nats, big piss up for rev heads at Canberra between boxing day and new years day Boy I could drink all night then Paul

Great stuff, you blokes have been as busy as a one armed wall paper hanger It's coming up really well, no time for beer yet, only a few weeks left in the shed, plenty of time for beer after that ha ha ha Keep us all posted Paul

Ha ha bloody ha Mate your having a crack, that's winning right there Don't matter how much goes wrong, your having a crack and that's more than most Paul

Okay feel I have a better grasp of the problem now, so when I am put a transmission or splitting a fram tractor and trying to put it back together I remember what my I over heard my Uncle explain to one of my cousins when I was a teenager Get some longer bolts the same thread as the engine block (in your case the steering box) and cut the heads off these Screw a couple in finger tight, then this guides you as you try and line things up on your own Once you get a proper bolt in, just unscrew the others with the heads cut off Notice I started off mentioning engine block, that's because this what was been discussed back then I have used this idea so many times on a lot more than just guiding a transmission back to a engine block Even just try to get gaskets to sit in a certain spot when I am dropping a rocker cover back on Inlet and exhaust mainfolds It is such a smart idea, I keep the bolts in a tin and fimd I actually don't need that many different bolts Anyway, I feel this idea may help a lot here Or I can just jump on the kero kite and come and help Paul

We are expecting progress and a steering box at least mounted on the frame, even if only held in postion with a long bolt that's to small If it is any consolation, I find everything on truck takes a lot longer, simply because it's bigger and heavier and takes so much more effort to shift it a poofteenth of a inch And truck parts can pinch fingers or squash me so much more efficiently than car parts Keep at it Bob Paul

You blokes are pretty quick, mind you'll find it nice and quiet at 1600 rpm My bucket of bolts is pretty loud over 2000 rpm, 2100 is near 60 MPH and when I'm coasting along and the oils all hot it's ringing in my ears 1950 rpm is a lor quieter and at 55 MPH is much more relaxing Yeah very unfashionable and slow compared to blokes but we don't have traffic were I drive Paul

Wow, never heard of that happening Hoping it all goes okay, I decided maybe 10 years ago to start actually trying to take care of myself, dunno how well it's working for me but I'm still ticking along with no medication But injuries do happen easier and come from no we're these days Paul

Great stuff, really impressive Paul

I guess it really depends on what floats your boat I like the more classic scroll work I'm guessing period correct wpuld be graphics from the 80's See if this works https://share.google/hiURnM8cyEvLgRPic Might have to clickty click a bit, but there's 51 pages of Superliners for your viewing pleasure Paul

Well there goes the neighborhood ha ha People everywhere will be having a love affair with that Paul

Clearly having finger nails doesn't help Paul

Yep, brown and beige is the go to colours for all the cool Super Truckers LOL Paul

Brown beige all the way, can't go wrong with those colours You have a good starting point there, with the truck Paul

A survivor Dominic Golding believes he was born in Cholon, the Chinatown of Saigon. He was discovered in the street by an Australian doctor outside a building which had just been bombed. Dom’s deafness is attributed to this bombing. A vulnerable newborn with cerebral palsy, Dom was taken to a World Vision Orphanage and at some stage named named Hong Duc Nguyen, Duc meaning ‘good’. For Australia-bound orphans to qualify for evacuation, they had to have adoptive parents, approved by state and territory adoption authorities, waiting to receive them. Dominic believes he was one of four children without any such paperwork. “The circumstances which led to me being placed in the C-130 are haphazard. I think I was so small and sick they thought I would probably die, so they just put me on the aircraft hoping for the best.” He survived the journey, but two of the other babies did not. When he arrived in Melbourne, the Golding family of Mt Gambier met the Qantas Babylift, only to find that the baby they had been allocated had died in-flight. In Dominic’s words, “They asked if there was a spare baby.” Dominic spent four months in Melbourne’s Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital under the care of Matron Vivian Bullwinkel, after which he was able to go to his new home and family at Mt Gambier. His adoptive parents were school teachers who had worked in Papua New Guinea, and he had four older siblings. Thus, in Dominic’s words, “they had already been de-programmed from racial discrimination.” In 1975 orphans and refugees from Vietnam were test cases for the new Racial Discrimination Act which replaced the openly racist White Australian policy. Though nearly fifty now, Dominic Golding Nguyen’s life has been completely shaped by his first chaotic months. Dominic went to a loving family with first world medical care and opportunity. He is absolutely certain that his life was saved by Babylift. Life for a foreign adoptee, though, is not without difficulty. Placing a child of one race with adoptive parents of another race creates a complex identity narrative. Reflecting on his life, Dominic is outspoken on race relations and chooses to ‘interrogate whiteness’. In this context, the question of his feelings toward the C-130 Hercules was posed carefully. When we spoke, Dominic stood up, with some difficulty removed his coat and pulled up his sleeve. There on his left forearm was the answer. A bold black tattoo, the silhouette of a C-130 in-flight and the year [19]75. The C-130 means everything to him. For over 65 years RAAF C-130’s have continually provided invaluable support in times of humanitarian crises. Though Australian Hercules squadrons have demonstrated their capacity, willingness and rapid responsiveness to unfolding disasters time and time again, Babylift must surely have been one of their more rewarding operations. Dominic Golding-Nguyen is proof of that. Paul

Vietnam Veterans day in Australia today This year we remember that 50years ago we (The allies) had "Operation Baby Lift" Read bellow Half a century ago, the RAAF and also Qantas joined one of the great humanitarian missions at the end of the Vietnam War, using C-130 and even Dakota aircraft plus a Qantas Boeing 747 to evacuate infants and other refugees from Vietnam. This was called Operation Babylift, mounted in April 1975 in the chaotic final days before Saigon fell to North Vietnamese forces. Operation Babylift, like more recent RAAF missions to evacuate Australian nationals from foreign warzones, was a significant logistics effort, staged far from home at short notice under difficult conditions. In Canberra on Wednesday, participants in Operation Babylift, plus some of the (now grown up) infants they transported, gathered at the Australian War Memorial to commemorate the event’s 50th anniversary. Operation Babylift was just part of a larger US-led operation delivering aid and evacuating refugees from South Vietnam. Australia had withdrawn the last combat troops at the end of 1972 and the US in March 1973. As North Vietnamese troops advanced, thousands crowded into Saigon, creating a looming humanitarian catastrophe. US President Gerald Ford coined the name Operation Babylift to evacuate around 3,000 orphans, many the children of liaisons between Vietnamese women and US soldiers. Australia agreed to help, deploying what was called Detachment S (for Saigon), initially two C-130 Hercules from 36 and 37 Squadrons and two C-47 Dakotas from Transport Support Fight, Butterworth, Malaysia. Eventually the mission included eight Hercules, a very significant effort which tested the kills of aircrew flying to and from chaotic crowded airports in the final throes of a long war. “The airport was fairly busy with a lot air transport and ground strike sorties departing morning, noon and night and radio chatter was …intense,” recalled retired Air Commodore Ian Scott, a participant in the missions. “We had rudimentary intelligence and very rudimentary tactics. What we would try to do is to take off, climb as steeply as we can to get up to our cruise altitude. When we came back into Saigon into Tan Son Nhat airfield, we would try to do a circling approach or a very steep approach to avoid small arms ground fire.” Initially it was thought babies bound for Australia could travel from Saigon aboard a chartered Qantas Boeing 747 but it was quickly concluded the airliner should land at Bangkok, with infants transported from Saigon aboard the RAAF’s C-130s. The first flight carried 87 babies and the next 107, many loaded aboard, the smallest in cardboard boxes stacked side by side on the cargo hold floor. In all 281 children were transported to Australia and around 3,000 to the US. Operation Babylift wasn’t without tragedy and controversy. The first departing aircraft was a USAF C-5A Galaxy which crashed soon after take-off, killing 138, including 78 children and two Australian women. Not all those evacuated were orphans – some had been placed into orphanages by poor but still living relatives. Some alleged their youngsters had been, in effect, kidnapped, and launched legal action in the US. Not all Detachment S activities were about evacuating babies. The detachment conducted many more flights inside Vietnam, evacuating refugees ahead of the North Vietnamese forces and delivering relief supplies. Former Air Force Nursing Officer Val Lawrence, who was deployed on Operation Babylift in Vietnam in 1975, meets Warrant Officer Class One Darren Wasley at the War Veterans’ Home at Myrtle Bank in SA. WOFF Wasley was one of the children evacuated from South Vietnam during the operation and is now studying at the Australian War College. Credit: Defence

Yeah, they call it ESI, extended service interval, plus the tripple oil filters 20000km between oil changes Or 12000 mile for the poor Yanky cousins that are stuck inlast century Paul