<span class="highlight">Bush</span> <span class="highlight">mechanics</span> - what have you done ?

Best bush mechanics I ever did was for a young bloke that had borrowed his dads Land Cruiser, taken it up the Victorian high country & ripped out the rear axle & tailshaft.
Got out my chainsaw & made up some mounts & frame for the axle assy then used his front mounted winch to keep tension on the axle against the wooden frame I made. Re attached the tailshaft & he drove it out very slowly!!! Did not get to see the look on his dads face when he got home but I guess it beat walking out & having to call his dad to come get him & the broken truck.

I like the tennis ball idea. Will keep that one in my memory bank!

Had the head off one of my lada's.Refitting after work one day the boss went home i had everything i needed,locked the workshop seeya later etc.
End off the job mmmmm wheres the coil lead. Nowhere to be found.Bit of fencing wire wrapped in insulation tape.
Beautiful job. Stayed this way for a week as i went home to the bush and no parts available and it ran so good why bother.

One of the most amazing feats of bush mechanics I have seen was done by a mate of mine.
We were camped on a deep sandy river bank & when he went to start his landcruiser in the morning the starter motor had totally died. This car had been fitted with a V8 incidentally. Anyway there was no way my 4 cyl 4X4 had any hope of a tow start to his vehicle due to the deep sand.
Well my mate reckoned that if he could jack up 1 rear wheel & put the car in 3rd gear 2WD 2 guys could wrap a rope around the jacked up wheel & pull start it like a mower! (cant do this with an LSD). I could not stop laughing at this stupid suggestion. Well for a laugh I went along with it & said I would sit in the drivers seat & look after the clutch & throttle. Well me being a bit of a comedian I pressed the clutch just as the guys put tension on the rope & they went flying backwards into the sand. Ha Ha.
Anyway I decided to play ball & can you believe it on the third attempt they started the engine & we were able to drive it out. Unbelievable I had to eat humble pie!

My vacuum pump died and I had no booster for the brakes and was towing a CT. I plumbed the suction side of my onboard air compressor up to the booster and periodically ran it. Drove 3 days through the desert till I could pick up another that i had flown in.

My back 4wd tyre got a puncture, put spare on and got another puncture with a half horse shoe in it with a 2 inch cut. Went to tyre repairer fixed good tyre and bought plug kit. At Coolgardie good tyre blew up, used a dozen plugs to fix 2" tear and drove all the way back to Perth, reckon a bit of horse shoe Luck.

Shifter in my old Mitsubishi Sigma kept coming off so I used fencing wire to strap it to the gearbox extension housing, that kept the bastard in there

When I was up at Cape York if ound out that a set of Commodore coils wound down the guts of a set of standard Patrol ones turns them into raised heavy duty!

OBT

The three tools of a bush mechanic:

1. a pair of long nose fencing pliers
2. Donaldson wire strainers with 3m extra chain
3. a few coils of good 8g fencing wire.

These three things can fix a lot of things.

I was out the back of Quilpe in a L/C trayback and broke the chassis rail near the spring mount.

Used the wire strainers to pull it back into place, "borrowed" a couple of steel posts to brace it and held it together with some cocky's twitches with the fencing wire. Drove back to Moree like that.

It did crab about 100mm to the side.

Bruce