Stoked and runnin’

Krazee middle of the month, with blow’d up truck on a thunder run, followed by the recovery thunder run and all the fun and games of getting things together to make it right.

Cost me, and cost you, my dear readers, but damn, so worth it with what I have to share.

Ok, first up, Buffalo,,, I had been fighting a front end noise for over a month. Thought it was bearings (that I had replaced less than 2 years prior) Wasn’t them. Found the ball joints were worn out and did replace them: that wasn’t it. l

Did the thunder run to ‘Bama and rear diff frag’d on me. Get her back, donor Diff is near perfect match (taller, by a few percentage points. Speedo is off by 5mph at highway speeds,,,,) but works flawlessly.

and that ‘front end noise’ is gone completely. Only thing I can figure is the bearings going out in the diff were vibrating the frame and causing the floorboards to resonate, completely screwing my diagnosis up. Even my Unk thought it was front end and thought it may be the front diff going. Both of us were wrong, but situation rectified now.

And to make it even better, I have a full donor vehicle that I need to strip of parts . Offered $200 for the diff, bought the whole damned truck, then Unk turned around and asked me to buy him an electric weedeater like mine ($150 at big box store) since he liked how well mine worked, in lieu of paying him that cash (and saved me $50). He is payed off now and I have a good engine and transmission, transfer case and axles for the taking before I scrap the body of this monster. The body is a rust heap, mostly frame rot, but some body rot too. Not horrible considering its a rust belt beast, but bad enough that I have no need of hanging on to it. But the engine and trans,,,, Hell, Unk drove it to where it sits right now. Fired up after sitting for 3 years and he took it through the woods on one last joy ride before surrendering it to me.

And right now, I have no need to pull anything off it,,, I will, but no rush, and I want to build a small shed to hold what I pull off it until such time as I need it.

Onto Lyssa,,, The goddess of madness that instigated the whole affiar. Cripes is she a fun boat. Moving at speed, with a bit of edge and using the paddle as a bow-rudder, she will turn on her path in less than one length. FAST,,,, Not quite as fast as a WW boat will, but she is double the length of one of those, but far faster than even BlueJean does. and BJ does NOT like bow rudder moves, at all. I always have to use stern-rudder on her to get her to turn, or sweeps if not moving. Lyssa is going to be able to teach me a lot of things I have struggled with in other boats.

I have not rolled her as yet, but with how her ‘secondary’ felt, I feel she is going to be easy to roll. Maybe even easier than BJ is,,,, I was having too much fun in our introduction float to mess with rolling today. Put on 15 miles on the lake and the only reason I stopped was that leak I mentioned. Yeah, the crack was weeping, but that wasn’t where the majority of the water was coming from…. I noted that when I was doing left turns, starboard edge dipped in water, I was getting wetter. Enough that by the time we got back to put in, I was sitting in a couple of inches of water (and I realized that I had forgotten my sponge to bail with.) That skeg box has two tubes feeding it, and the shorter one on the upside of the skeg (receiver for the extra cable so it isn’t digging into your thigh) was wide open, no cap on its end. A rubber vacuum cap from an autoparts store and that is fixed.

And right now, Lyssa is back on the horses as I repair that crack to stop the weeping hole she has.

Gonna slap a section of glass and resin on the inside after I dremel out the old grungy glass, but I have to wait for the gel repair first. She will be water ready by sunset today.

Gonna be a good summer so long as the world holds its shit together.