Monthly Archives: June 2009
New Bash Plate
Sometime between last 4×4 trip and a week ago I noticed that my front bash plate was missing. I started to search through my 4×4 trip photos, but none of the photos had close up’s of under the front of the car, so I couldn’t make out whether or not it was still on by the end of the trip. It was only when walking back to the car last sunday after food shopping that I noticed something was odd/missing and thats when i realised the bash plate had gone. 
Getting a new one was more of a challange then first expected. Firstly all the wreckers I visited had barely any Hilux’s to start of with and most certainly didn’t have any bash plates. Then I thought I’ll look into getting an aftermarket one, well that was just as hard as finding one from the wreckers. They all had the 2005 onwards ones but most had stopped making the one I was after. There was one place up in Queensland, so I did keep that in the back of my mind which came to $410 approx (including delivery). The next thing to do was call Toyota themselves and see if they still made them and then see how much it was going to be. Including GST it was just under $500. I was thinking I’m not paying that price. So then I started crawling the 4WD club web pages when I stumbled onto www.hiluxclub.org.au/ and they had a find apart page where it scowers all the wreckers and shops for you and comes back with a responce very quickly. I entered the information Saturday night and I had 2 responces by end of work Monday. For under half the price I drove out to Thomastown this morning to pick up my new (second hand) bash plate. Now I just have to install it.
Futaba Update
After several hou
rs on a flight simulator I realise
d that the right hand controller started to feel funny, slightly loose. Not long after that I noticed that the casing on the control stick had a fracture all the way through and would enable me to pull the stick out. In a short time after that sweat from chronic use of the joystick was enough to pull the stick out of its port. On a simulator it didn’t bother me to much, but if it had of been on a real helicopter things could have been a little different. So in my wisdom I figured I should be able to fix it. So moments later the backing is off. At this point I realised that this radio has been either in a few little bingles or 1 half decent fall eg. off a kitchen table or a garage bench. The rest of the radio had been repaired really well, and now after pulling the whole radio apart know 
why this one was left
how it was. It wasn’t any easy task as their was many screws, couple of springs (which always fall out) and a couple of pins in the way of the resurrection of the joystick. With a little bit of fiddling around, some superglue and a lot of cursing it did manage to go back together. Putting the pin back in place was where most of the swearing occurred as I kept on knocking the spring off. Overall I must admit I don’t think I would have done this on a new radio as there was some fear that I wasn’t going to get it back together again.
The Next Game I'm Buying
Battlefield 1943 is the next game I’m buying. I love my first person shooters, especially online. I started playing battlefield 1942 when it first came out and then started on Counter Strike. Wasnt long before Battlefield 2 was out and then after much persuation I purchased Team Fortress 2 which I’ve been playing madly since I bought my new PC a couple of months back.
Here is video clip of the new and upcoming Battlefield 1943:
My First Futaba
Yesterday I purchased myself a second hand Futaba Heli (FF7super) radio, mainly to play a flight sim, but I am looking into buying a helicopter down the track. Thinking this is a good way to start learning as there is less breakage and less credit card action. Looks like I am following in my dad’s footsteps.
Queens Birthday Long Weekend
Hey there people, Queens Birthday long weekend has come and been. 
As usual I went 4wd and had a ball, we started at Crowes Hut and headed east to the bottom of the butcher track, which I might add was an awesome little trip with heaps of cool scenery. I will be putting pictures up soon (as soon as I find my camera … Its in the Hilux … somewhere !?!?). We set up camp and pulled down a dead tree and had a massive fire which we also used to cook up some mean grub. I had a steak sandwich and it was bloody beautiful. The next day we packed up and headed up to the butcher track. Now after doing this track I know why they call it that. Towards the top the weather changed so not only did we have a mean track ahead off us we had rain and snow. I was getting a little worried because after 10 – 15 mins of this the tracks were becoming very slippery and I’ve only done a few tracks. About 30 hour on the tracks become rivers and looked very cool, but probably wouldn’t have been if I had of broken down. At the top the weather just got worse and I pulled the pin. The other two blokes stayed to camp in the snow but I was worried that we we’re going to be snowed in and wouldn’t be able to get off the mountain the next day, so I headed off that night and did a bit of a night mission which was fun but visibility in the snow at night was quite a different adventure of its own. Over all It was an awesome trip and would do it again, now looking forward to our next trip.