DirtyComanche

All of it. If I'm driving into Vancouver, 99% of the time I'm either going to the airport (Richmond) or the ferry terminal (Tsawwassen, if I spelled that correctly) and I'll be coming in via the #1. Once I pass Hope, I consider it all to be "Beyond Hope". I have no idea why anyone would want to live there, but apparently people must want to based on how many are there. I'll confess I've actually never taken the route through Stave... But I have been up to Stave to wheel (not actually at the lake, I'm not into mud).

Ever played the '3 items' game at wal-mart, superstore, or etc...? Basically, you walk in, dressed however suits your taste, and buy 3 items that are normal by themselves but incredibly awkward when together... Example: Baseball bat, ribbed condoms, black trash bags Best done at 2-3am in the 24hr stores. Pick a cashier that looks most likely to have a brain. See if you can actually get a conversation going with her/him.

I forgot about Barkerville. It's great if you have kids. And if you want to go through Whistler (Hwy 99), I don't advise driving that road at night. It's fairly curvy, has steep drop offs, a couple single lane bridges (might all be gone, they were upgrading a lot of them in the summer of 2009), and very few guard rails. Throw in that the natives don't keep their cattle, horses and dogs off the road... However, if you do go that way, you can get a ferry from Horseshoe bay to Nanaimo, then drive south to Victoria, and then to Port Angeles by ferry. This skirts the massive disaster that is Vancouver (which I also refer to as being "Beyond Hope"). On the side of Hwy 99 there is a couple BC Hydro rec sites (dams) which are nice to stop at and walk around. Whistler should have a gondola or two running, and there is always a places to eat/stay in the town.

Agreed. Stewart and Hyder are a must. It's about 80Km from the Meziadin junction to Stewart, the road winds a bit but isn't bad (driven it lots). You'll see the Bear Glacier on the way down, watch for a white/green/yellow helicopter slinging loads up the glacier, there's 2 rock drills on the cliffs up a little farther. The whole drive into Stewart is very pretty if the weather cooperates. Hyder is a bit of a time warp, hit up the Sealaska for some pizza and beer, and the other one and get Hyderized (I forget the name of the other pub, damn alcohol, but it's cool with money all over the walls). Go walk out on the pier, or drive on it if you've got the balls. If you go up the dirt road on the other side of the town, there is a place that you can view bears eating fish, it's pretty and kinda neat if you're into tourist stuff. The road continues and you can see the Salmon Glacier, and some mine stuff, and eventually you can get to a small airstrip with a big pile of junk on it. The airstrip is active, be cautious. Again, watch for helicopters slinging loads up the glacier, there's about 8 drills up near the top of the Salmon, but I don't know if they've shut down for the winter yet (the weather gets harry there). The King Edward hotel in Stewart is decent and not terribly pricey, and you can get kitchenette units. Also, Bob Quinn airstrip, which is 200km~ north of the Meziadin junction (or 150km south of Dease Lake, if I remember my distances right) might have a young guy from Lakelse Air sitting there with a helicopter. He's changing $100 for about 10 minutes of flying (sounds expensive, but it isn't, split it over 4 people and it isn't much at all). I think his name is Jarret. Anyways, there's some really neat glaciers out there that you can get a better view of. What else? Prince Rupert has a nice waterfront. The casino serves decent food, and there's another good one down in the bay there that I forget the name of (been a while since I was in Rupert last). There's an old cannery in Port Edward (just out of Rupert) that you can tour, never done it but apparently it's interesting. Can't comment on hotels, never stayed in one there. Smithers is a decent place to stop and spend the night if it works out. The Sandman is decent, and there's a couple more expensive places that are nice. I don't know what there is to do there, I normally just drive through it. The next big bump on the road is basically Prince George. It's a mess, but another place to stop if you want a hotel. I live there, I guess I can admit that. I could ramble on... Anything specific?

Pretty much all of them. My 76 GMC takes the cake though... The highlights of the issues with it were: -O-rings for fuel sender/pickup installed wrong = water in fuel. -Cab welded back together with 'reclaimed' sheet metal. There appears to be part of a toyota welded under the door sills. -Most of the bed mount bolts had fallen out. -Upper rad hose was too short, plus the radiator has the wrong diameter inlet for the hose anyways. -A cut brake line (drove it before finding that). -Taiwanese doors are bent. I'm missing half the pieces to install locks in them, but made it work anyways. -Mad max trailer hitch. It looked like they started with a hitch that didn't fit, welded some metal to it, decided that wasn't gonna be strong enough, then welded some really thick metal to it (poorly).

I frequent many forums... This isn't bad. But please, keep the signatures to a reasonable size. Sure, I can turn them off if it annoys me. But then I can't see the funny ones that don't annoy me. One of the local forums has stupid spinning trucks for all of the unread threads. They're distracting, to the point of annoyance. I had to turn off ALL of the images for the site because of the way the forum software worked. It was that or I would have to stop reading/posting there.

I bet I could fix it, providing he doesn't do any more work to it. And by 'fix' I mean make it into a convertible that was safe, and MIGHT not leak as bad as a YJ. No promises on that. Of course, this is assuming that I had the time to complete such a project.

IIRC, it's hydraulic motors mid mounted in the chassis, with chains in the 'control arms' to the final drives. Hence the 'Chainlink' name. Suspension is obviously active. Very cool. I can't believe people are talking crap about it. It doesn't work very well. Over complicated (both in control and mechanics), heavy, low top speed (or wheel speed), reliability isn't great from what I understand (I think it broke an arm clean OFF at the only comp it went to). From a standpoint of "Wow, he built something cool" it's a 10, but from the standpoint of "That thing will clean up at a comp" it's a 0. I like cool things, but I also like them to actually work. That's not saying that you can't make a hydrostatic rig work. Or active suspension. Or whatever. But there's a lot of R&D to get something 'outside the box' to actually function as well as something more mainstream. It's simple really, everyone builds solid axle rigs with gasoline engines, so all of the major R&D is already done... This? Not so much. The closest related application is a skid steer. Try wheeling one of those and let me know how things go.

:rotf: yeah, you had to have heard this clown talk though, he deserved all that plus more... one of those "i know everything about these cars, you know nothing, and how about a $500 discount cause the left front tires a little low and theres some rust on the control arm bolts" kind of jerks... and then when he bought the car i went to bank of america with him so he could pay me with a business check, and because i don't have an account there the teller asked me for 2 forms of id so i could cash it, then a 3rd one cause they couldnt accept my work id, and he lit into the teller, screaming and swearing at her.... I had one of those try to buy my old blue XJ. I say try, because I wasn't interested. I think I only asked $1200 for the thing (they don't go for under $2000 unless they're really crappy, 'round here), and he proceeded to attempt to nitpick and pulled out the card about how it 'wouldn't pass an inspection, and thus couldn't be worth anything'. I told him it was what it was, seeing as it was a 20 year old vehicle that I admitted I wheeled and had modified, and he could call me back when he wanted to pay me what I wanted.

Groovers aren't that expensive. I have a couple friends with them. You can cup lugs, cut extra lugs, sipe, etc. You can even take a bogger, and after lots of time and effort, make it into a tire that almost works in something other than mud. You can add tread, or deepen the voids with them... But if you see belts, you've gone way too far. Those tires are thick, you should be able to add some tread. It might not produce a tire that is round, balanced, or even safe, just as my little disclaimer.

IIRC, it's hydraulic motors mid mounted in the chassis, with chains in the 'control arms' to the final drives. Hence the 'Chainlink' name. Suspension is obviously active.

It won't sag like that. Or allow me to rephrase that, it shouldn't sag like that. The roof is a hell of a lot less structural than people think. Roll-over, accident protection, etc, yeah, it's very important. Additional rigidity, sure. But it's not primary structure.

If it's worth it is up to you. I already have 3 pickup trucks (1 Dodge, 1 GMC, 1 Jeep) and an XJ. I'm talking real vehicles, not R/Cs. I don't need any more fawking hobbies. So to me, no, I wouldn't get one.

So, who on here actually talks like that? The truck, well... Hmm. I thought he did a good job of cutting it. Then he started sticking aluminum on it, which I'm not into. If he welded up the cuts properly, and did a good job on the seals, it would be a lot better. Also, yes, it needs a cage. It could be done so it would take up a minimal amount of room, and look good. As a bonus he'd be able to weld all of the nodes properly since the roof is off... However, I see no evidence that he can weld anything, so I'm not counting on that happening.

The only competition it showed up for... It failed miserably. Everything broke. That would have been at least 6 years ago. Probably more like 8.

Very true.

Google it, I dare you. For maximum effect, prior to Googling it, turn off the moderate safe search. Then click on the image search section. Then search. Oh, I've seen a picture of a Florida plate (you know, where the orange in the middle looks like an 'O'), and the letters were A55 RGY. I don't think it was a vanity plate...

So, I'm in. The credit card didn't even melt (yet).

Thanks :cheers:

A lot of those military birds are showing up in the civilian market now. They get surplussed 'cheap', so operators buy them for drill/fire pigs. Actually, the school where I'll take the course has a UH-1H since it was much more affordable than a civil 205 (and the differences are minimal, at least for training purposes). They're a tough aircraft, considering they've been basically out of production for 30~ years and there is still as many of them left as there is. We just fix all the cracks in the airframes every winter, and they keep on humping along picking up drills or water buckets all summer. :D

There's a story behind that... The answer would be normally yes. I don't have to do this, but it's what I want. I actually enjoy working on them, and already have a reasonable amount of experience with them. And if things go well, I might have it payed for in a very short period of time. Since, well, flight pay on a 205 is about $50/hour. So, if we fly 8s I'll make $400 a day, plus my salary, plus other incentives ($50 a day field pay, $50 day meal allowance), and whatever overtime I actually wind up being payed on the day. It's only money in the end. Besides, they will probably be giving me some other training in the near future. And it all makes me more employable in a boom or bust industry, and will hopefully lead to some other options in the international scene.

A J20 should have a D44 front and a D60 rear. 3/4 ton stuff at best.

Nah, it's really vibrating so bad that gravity has rejected it. Proven fact.

I'm going to go get the course for these suckers: Image Not Found Bell 205. I hope... It starts in 2 weeks, I phoned last week and they had 6 seats left... But I waffled and didn't register right then. So hopefully I'll be registered Monday morning. $5000~ for 3 weeks :ack: But I get a 25% discount (to make it $5000~), and a LOT of the other courses are about $10000 and in less convenient places (like Texas, not that I have anything against Texas, just it costs more for flights and hotels...) Also, I'll get some money back in taxes. And hopefully the course will pay for itself quickly enough (a couple years at most). :banana:

Well, guess I was wrong. I had casually looked into it by talking with people that should know, and they had all told me they just shipped them to some place to be replated and that there was no other viable option, along with some mentions of failing coatings that were no longer approved. Everything I work on has bladders or plastic tanks.