So is the welcome mat out?

[Ray Bell]

I've not heard of this forum before, but I'm familiar with a number of others and much prefer this kind of communication compared to Facebook and the like.

Garage? Well, I call it a shed, it's 90' x 110' and it's really part of an old factory that's been divided up into sections. I live upstairs in what used to be the office for the factory, so it's pretty convenient.

All of this is in a place called The Summit, near the larger town of Stanthorpe in Queensland, Australia. I have a need for this kind of space because I make rash decisions from time to time and finish up owning stuff that maybe I should never laid eyes on. I also have very long-term projects, all relating to cars. Engines like the Chrysler Hemi-6 (unique to Australia, built from 1970 to 1982), some small block Mopar V8s, some Peugeot 404 and 504 engines and a few Subaru engines.

I drive a couple of Foresters, both dating back to 2005...





...and I'm about to put myself back into a Peugeot 404 (1967 model but to be fitted with the C2 overdrive gearbox and the 404 injection engine) as an enjoyable toy to drive, then there's my working vehicle, a Ford Territory while off the road at the moment is my Dodge B350 Conversion Van. There's a 1975 D100 longbed there too, it's for sale, slant 6 and all.

In 2012 I introduced myself to travelling in America in that last-mentioned pickup, while the B350 saw service for my 9-week 16,100-mile jaunt through 39 states and seven provinces of Canada. There's a bit more to it than that, if anyone's interested in 'reading all about it' I've created a lengthy and picturesque thread here:

Ride along with me... - DodgeForum.com

Members Rides - Ride along with me... - Over the past seven years I have taken four major drives in Dodges. In 2012 I bought a Slant 6-powered D100 in Indiana and drove it 9,600 miles through 28 states with my wife. It's a 1975 model, repainted in two-tone blue, long bed, automatic transmission...

dodgeforum.com

If all goes well I'll be back to travel the Interstates and back roads of the USA and Canada again in 2024.

 

[Walkers]

Welcome aboard!

 

[Toolfool]

Welcome. The mat is always out here. We need pictures of the shed.

 

[Ray Bell]

Okay, pictures of the shed... on short notice...



And here's a shot of inside the shed when I was replacing the engine in the Territory:



The Dodge is alongside with the nose elevated because I'm trying to get around to fitting an NV4500 5-speed gearbox.

It's all in a rural setting, there's a small trucking business operates out of a larger shed down the back...



...and for a little while I thought I'd have to live in this camper trailer in my shed:



Fortunately the flat became available at just the right time.



There's a balcony at the front of the flat and I can survey the scenery from there.

 

[Bad Eye Bill]

Welcome Ray! I remember you from Moparchat. Looking forward to your postings.

 

[Ray Bell]

Yes, I still look in on Moparchat occasionally, it's dead as a doornail but still there...

My drive through New Brunswick back in 2016 was a very pleasurable experience, it's covered in the thread on the Dodgeforum. What a beautiful day it was, mid-June...



...the sun was shining, the trees were really green, the breezes were blowing them around so that the whole world seemed to be coming to life! And you just have to read it to find out my 'reason' for going there!

I should have looked, too, at where Walkers and Toolfool came from. Tallahassee... I got close to that on my 2014 trip...



...but I turned off the I-10 to go up through Graceville into Alabama, while it was about 115° the two days I spent in Phoenix and I didn't do much exploring around there. Again, that was the 2016 trip, I set up in the Walmart car park at Surprise and spent the two days there having come down the back road from Ash fork...



So thank you, gentlemen, for your welcome. I'm still working out what I can do here, but a friend recommended that I join up so here I am.

 

[22george]

You will fit right in here

 

[yellowbox]

Glad you're here
I would love to visit Australia.....
That country Intrigues me so much

 

[Toolfool]

Glad you're here
I would love to visit Australia.....
That country Intrigues me so much

Same here. Back when Australia was recruiting (enticing) skilled people to move there, a buddy of mine, who was a helicopter mechanic, went down to check it out (he tried to convince me to join him) . Never heard from him again. I assumed he liked what he saw.

 

[PugetDude]

Never heard from him again.

Dingos?

 

[kbeefy]

Welcome!

I to am very fond of roadtrips and weird vehicles, also subarus....

 

[isb cornbinder]

Australia was on my bucket list until my health started to let me down. I found a favorite tool at a swap-meet. It was made in The Southern Hemisphere.
I have never used this torque wrench. It is just too beautiful.

 

[nadogail]

Welcome to the Forum from the shores of San Diego Bay.

If you swing by to say hello, I can help you get the Mexico stamp on your Passport.

I keep sodas in my garage refrigerator and we can always make a fresh pot of Coffee.

 

[Ray Bell]

Beefy, I've been along the I-90 three times now, not far from you...





...but not in a Subaru. Some would say they were weird vehicles, however, the D100 and the B350 are definitely foreign to us here in Australia. Those pics are Sprague Lake and the wind tower section is at the Sprague Rest Area on the I-90.

I've not been near the Superstition Mountains, I'm not superstitious either, PugetDude, nor terribly concerned about dingoes around where I am. In fact, I'd have to say I haven't seen very many of them at all in my lifetime.

George, is 'SW Ohio' as it applies to you somewhere along the path I followed in 2016 struggling with a maimed Rochester Quadrajet between Watkins Glen NY and Bloomington IN?



This was on the I-76, then I went via the I-71 and I-70 with a deviation around Columbus, but I only took one photo in Ohio! Well, if you'd known what a struggle I had keeping the van going that day you'd understand.

yellowbox... I'm sure you'd be welcome here. But where are you?

 

[Ray Bell]

Wow, what a welcome! As I write there are more welcoming me...

ISB, that looks a cool torque wrench. I found this online:

1935. Ritch Engineering commenced manufacturing of high pressure Hydraulics in Melbourne Australia.
1989. SPX Corporation of USA purchased Ritch Engineering & Power Team Australia was formed.
2003. PT Hydraulics Australia was born from a management buy out of the Australian hydraulics operations of SPX Corporation (Fluid Power Division).

And I like your slogan too, I generally buy tools when I find that I need them rather than borrow or rent them. Unless I'm too broke. You'll always need them again! And you do live in a really beautiful part of the world, I have a friend on Vancouver Island...



...who is busy restoring a Peugeot 404 Coupe and recently had to buy a new tool, too. He found he had to get a pressure bleeder for the brakes. The pic was taken at Lake Cowichan in 2014, Mike and Sandy were just the most welcoming hosts as I visited.

nadogail, what can I say? I did want to get a Mexico stamp but didn't really think of it when I was in San Diego visiting my old friend from Adelaide, Peter, who became a crew chief on Indycars and later was given charge of Nissan's Sports Car team. He's retired now and living in San Diego among the gum trees - about which many are complaining.

Strangely enough, I only took one photo in that area and only about five on the drive down there from LA and back. This is on the way back, previously unpublished and you can probably guess that I've forgotten why I took such a useless photo other than to show the huge volume of traffic. Or is it perhaps that the road needs repair?



Coffee would be good!

 

[Ray Bell]

Same here. Back when Australia was recruiting (enticing) skilled people to move there, a buddy of mine, who was a helicopter mechanic, went down to check it out (he tried to convince me to join him) . Never heard from him again. I assumed he liked what he saw.

At the risk of sending you off on a tangent...

Back in the early seventies, which was the height of the period where Australia was earnestly seeking skilled people from all over the world, I got to know a school teacher from West Virginia. His name was Quinton Weaver and I met him because he was racing, like me, a Clubman Sports Car.

Quinton was the kind of guy who believed that he could do everything. Or at least it was worth a try. When his wife, Sarah, crashed his Clubman, he built a new one in pretty short time. Many of the things he had to make on a lathe etc he would machine up at the school where he worked teaching metalwork.

Unlike your friend, one assumes, Quinton did return to America. He said he owed it to America to live there again for five years before making his final decision about where he wanted to be permanently. His decision went our way, but by that time his daughter was a teenager, she had too many friends and was too young to leave behind.

But though Quinton died last June, he left behind a legacy on a forum deserving of a look...

Building a cabin in the mountains (Qweaver Memorium) in General Board

I'm thinking of starting a thread on our cabin construction. Where should I put it? Here are the first pictures. Cousin Rodney getting to grade

forestryforum.com

A real tribute to the idea that you can do it yourself.

 

[isb cornbinder]

My younger brother was going to university in the 1960s. He needed transportation. I had a really nice 404 that I was not using, so I gave it to him. As expected, there was no thank you from him. 60 years later. Bro is still an AH. We do not talk unless one of us is announcing a death in the extended family. There comes a point where "it" does not matter.

 

[MileHighRover]

That's the Highway Patrol academy bus. Those are cadets under the tree probably learning about motor carrier inspections. I rode on that bus way back in 2002. Crazy to come across a picture of it all these years later.

 

[Ray Bell]

Actually, they were learning and practising using either laser or radar speed cameras...

There must have been 20 or more being trained and they were at a Rest Area on the I-10 just West of Tallahassee. Which means I made a mistake earlier, I did go past Tallahassee (and that crazy Lassie) on the I-10.

And ISB, that's a sad situation which infects a lot of people.

 

[MileHighRover]

Actually, they were learning and practising using either laser or radar speed cameras...

There must have been 20 or more being trained and they were at a Rest Area on the I-10 just West of Tallahassee. Which means I made a mistake earlier, I did go past Tallahassee (and that crazy Lassie) on the I-10.

And ISB, that's a sad situation which infects a lot of people.

Explains the tractor trailers in the pic.

 

[Ray Bell]

Not to mention that the boys might have wanted to close to the amenities...



Though I see on Street View that they've now improved all of this with roofing out over the pathways.

 

[gearhead1]

Welcome! You’ll like this forum.

I do demolition derbies and I can say from first hand experience those small block Chryslers are almost indestructible!

 

[Bad Eye Bill]

Yes, I still look in on Moparchat occasionally, it's dead as a doornail but still there...

Moparchat was once a great forum, a lot like this one in many ways, especially how members treated/treat each other. In fact, it's the first forum I was ever a member of.

When I first joined it was quite busy with many posts daily then gradually tapered off to nothing. I haven't taken a look there for years now. What happened I wonder?

My handle there was Old Woolie. I remember enjoying reading about your journeys and experiences.

 

[Ray Bell]

I don't know if I should mention this...

Back in the seventies I had a string of Austin A99s, these were a Farina-style sedan which used the 2912cc engine which powered the Austin Healey 3000, but without the 12-port head and good cam. One had body damage on one front corner, I'd bought it for spares. They were a pretty solid car except for the lever-type front shock absorbers, which were highly overstressed and prone to coming unbolted.

One day a car came to a screeching halt outside our house, the driver enthusiastically came in and started looking at the cars scattered in the side yard. He explained that he was looking for a good solid car for a demo derby at Liverpool Speedway. They had a limitation that nothing with an engine of over six cylinders was allowed, so no really big cars, but the Austin seemed good to him.

We did a deal, I figured that the only thing that I wanted that he was likely to damage was the radiator, so I told him he could have it for the value of the radiator ($25 would cover that) if he brought the remains back so I could salvage the parts. Not only did he agree to that, but he got tickets for me and my family to go watch as he charged into the breach with it.

I think there was only another 12 or so cars still running when he came to a stop, these cars had an electric fuel pump mounted on a panel in the boot (trunk) and it fell off and stopped working after he'd pounded a pile of cars into submission by reversing into them.

But it wasn't over yet. A friend of mine had bought a car called the Sabrina Austin, a racing sports car dating back to the early sixties which had been originally fitted with one of these engines with a supercharger hanging out the front. He needed an engine, so a number of us descended on the wreck one Saturday afternoon and the engine went into a trailer to start its new life in supercharged glory while other parts went into my shed.

Anyway, gearhead, I'm making a practice of this now, I don't know which part of North Carolina you're in but here's a pic from Mount Holly taken during my drive down through the state one sunny day in 2014, I was heading out just a little way from here:



And Bill from New Brunswick...



...with whom I had some number of conversations on Moparchat, there was a glitch in the software or something and by the time they fixed it everyone had assumed the site had closed down and didn't come back. At the time the Aussie Moparmarket forum was very strong but Facebook took a lot of people away. I don't know why, but anyway the people who owned it went bust in their business and it closed down for good. I found Dodge Talk a bit seedy when I started a thread there and because there were no posts on it for a month or two they closed it.

 

[Bob Heine]

Ray, welcome to the Garage Journal. Like many Australians I've met, you like walkabouts. I completely understand and have been fortunate to visit every US state, most of the Canadian provinces as well as the majority of the states of Mexico. Also visited some of Europe and most of the Caribbean. I was fortunate to spend two years down under, working for IBM in the West Pennant Hills facility and living in Manly. Sadly we didn't see as much of Australia as I would have liked but we did lots of short drives in New South Wales, a drive to Tasmania and a short flight to Cairns to vacation in Port Douglas. A few business-related trips to Melbourne and Adelaide but missed out on seeing the west. Had to spend some of my vacation time in Fiji and New Zealand because, you know....

You live about as far south in Queensland as one can get -- you're more than twice as far from Port Douglas as you are from Sydney.

I didn't see any Dingos except in zoos and most of the Kangaroos we saw in the wild were two-dimensional ones by the side of the road. We got pretty good at identifying roadkill. My wife did dispatch a funnel-web in our lodgings. Also had lots of wildlife visit the fig tree next to our patio and grew accustomed to the Sulpur Crested Cockatoos and Lorikeets but a bunch of fruit bats scared the **** out of us. We couldn't bring a dog so we adopted a Brush Tailed Possum.

 

[Ray Bell]

At least you got to experience driving on the left side of the road, Bob...

Flying doesn't really help you see much as you travel. Mind you, I do like looking down from a plane and working out what town etc we're flying over, but when there's cloud or in darkness that doesn't work out too well.

In my thread referred to in my opening post it moves on from the third trip around the US to covering my regular travels in Australia, so that includes working and holiday trips, all taken by road, and the big one of those (done in the left-hand-drive B350) being out through our 'Red Centre' including Ayers Rock.

Where you are is certainly a different place from much of the USA. I didn't go any further South than Jacksonville, but I've since worked out that your part of the USA is the only bit which is as close to the Equator as Brisbane and, therefore, over half of the Australian mainland.

I'm not sure if Coonara Avenue (where IBM is located) was a part of it, but certainly Highs Road was a section of road on which a friend of mine used to encourage us to... how do I put this? Exert our vehicles and test their abilities to some extremes, if you know what I mean. But that was in the sixties, it's a different place now and a different world too.

 

[hewey]

Welcome Ray, certainly looks like you keep busy between automotive projects and travelling! We dont really have many Queenslanders on here, a small group of NSW guys, and some additional guys in Melbourne and Tassie.

I'm another Subaru fan, my current and last two work cars have been Outbacks. Great blend of sensible daily driver, and just that extra traction and clearance for exploring on some dirt. The Dodge van and pickups look fun too! As kombi prices have reached the stratosphere, I've noticed interest building in those 70s and 80s van, and all eras of American pickups too.

 

[Ray Bell]

I can never work out why prices do what they do...

The trouble is that most who import American vans will be bringing in Chev, GMC or Ford vans. I'm going to show some bias here, the Dodges are in my belief better. But throughout any of this kind of discussion I keep reminding people, "Every car ever built was built for just one purpose."

And that purpose was to make money for the manufacturer.

So are you in the Lower Mountains or the Upper Mountains, or just hanging about in the middle around Springwood or somewhere? My brother is in Glenbrook, I used to live at Silverdale, which is verging on going up the Mountains. Here's a pic of a darling young lady who took a trip over the Mountains to meet my parents when they lived in Orange...



You might recognise that as the lookout at Victoria Pass. 34 years ago now.

 

[Bob Heine]

34 years ago now.

Ray, that's the year we arrived in Sydney. One of our many sightseeing drives took us from Manly out to Wentworth Falls, the Three Sisters Walk, the Cableway and the Katoomba Scenic Railway (claims to be the steepest incline railway in the world). The Cableway was pretty sketchy back then with a lot of holes in the plywood floor in the car we took across the gorge.

In the fall of 1990 we took a train, from Sydney to Bottom Points and the Zig Zag Railway. The train ride is supposed to re-open soon (

). That steam engine brought back memories of my childhood, taking steam locomotive-driven trains on Long Island (New York). Coal mixed with steam makes a unique smell.

I sent a monthly newsletter back to family and friends. I apologize for the poor quality but these were created with some antique computer hardware and software. All I had back then was a dot matrix printer. Here's the May 1990 issue:

 

[Ray Bell]

Yes, Bob, on the highway over the Blue Mountains there is one spot where, for a fleeting moment as you drive along, you can see the city so far away. I don't know exactly where it is, years have passed since I drove the Mountains in daylight.

But Lithgow is a stand-out place. Or more to the point, the Vale of Clwydd in the Eastern section of Lithgow. All of Lithgow suffers from not getting the sun anytime early in the morning, nestling as it does under cliffs just like those of which you speak. Much of the year those cliffs are moist* as they seep out the remains of rains which fell months ago and the Vale of Clwydd with its little 'miners hut' homes has to wait until at least 11am before the sun shines on its roadways and domiciles.

Or midday in Winter when the sun is mostly pretty feeble there. The air might be clearer now, but the coal-mining and the munitions factory in earlier days helped add to a natural foggy overlay with which the place was gifted.

It's good to see that the 'Zig Zag' is receiving attention. The reason for its being was the kind of mountains we have. As schoolchildren we all learned about the difficulty the first settlers here had finding their way across the Blue Mountains - it took about 25 years for any exploration to successfully strike out in that direction. In about 1807 a man named George Caley had a crack at it about 20 miles further South than the path now followed, naming Bent's Basin on the way but being thwarted by the cliffs encountered in his major goal.

He set forth the proposition that it was worthless to keep on trying by venturing along the valleys as these canyons became impossible to scale at their ends. "We have to climb the hills first and then travel along the clifftops to find our way West," he asserted. And five or six years later some gentlemen named Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson became famous because they gave gifts to Aboriginals to show them the way. They made it, they followed native walking trails across the weathered plateau all the way to Lithgow and then they became celebrated. The Great Western Highway and the main Western railway line follow that path to this day.


* This feature of our sandstone cliffs is briefly noted in Bellbirds by Henry Kendall - https://allpoetry.com/Bell-Birds

 

[The Tool Tyrant]

"because I make rash decisions from time to time" Yep, you'll fit in PERFECTLY here! Welcome aboard!

 

[Ray Bell]

The welcome mat is certainly long and colourful...

I am grateful for every reply, I look forward to any more that might be posted.

 

[Ray Bell]

I found a couple more pics of things inside my shed...



This Forester was already stripped out by the time it got here, but like every other time I've had to move stuff there's no time to tidy up and reduce the pile, just put it all in the shed.



This Falcon panel van was supposed to become my travelling machine prior to bringing the Dodge back from America. It's now been sold and this spot was taken up by the wind-up camper trailer pictured earlier, which has also been sold and now...



...this 404 is in that spot. But I've bought a much better one and this is for sale, I hope a buyer comes along soon as I might run out of room.

 

[hewey]

Ray we're in the mid mountains and pretty happy here. Close enough to commute to the city and head in when we want on weekends, relatively affordable (by Sydney standards), but far enough up to escape the summer heat of Western Sydney, and bushland at the end of our street. Short drive to the upper mountains for a change of scenery, without the bleakness and coldness in winter. Really nice sweet spot for what we want.

on the highway over the Blue Mountains there is one spot where, for a fleeting moment as you drive along, you can see the city so far away.

That'd be just after passing through Wentworth Falls, the view really opens up. Pretty nice on a clear day.