December 21 2009 by Darrin.

Finally, after 4 months back at home, I’ve started our Alaska 2009 movie.  It was originally going to have voice-over narration and all the bells and whistles (it may still..) but I was really disappointed with not making our anticipated Arctic destination.

Added to my despair were some technical issues with my home-built Avid Liquid 7 video editing computer.  The largest problem was a glitch with her ability to render high definition MPEG files.  I was so looking forward to making “Alaska 2009″ for Blu-Ray, and the thought of creating “just another DVD” made me consider giving up!  But problems got solved, and the show must go on.

Click the photo below for Chapter 01 - Introduction, in WMV format…

While this streaming sample is not hi-def, our computer is digesting HD footage well now, after updating the software.  A Blu-Ray “feature presentation” is on the way!

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December 15 2009 by Darrin.

After sitting in the front of the shop while we were in Hawaii and Baltimore, the old Cruiser finally rolled off the trailer and into the shop on Saturday…

Now the whole room smells like rats!  They’ve sure enjoyed themselves for the decade+ the HJ was in storage…

Time to tear it apart and start stocking up on rebuild parts.  Since selling the big AATREC-FM204, I want to build a mini-AATREC.  This vehicle will likely become an “AATREC-HJ” camper, with the troop compartment converted into a camper.  It’ll mostly be a bed, fridge and small counter with diesel stove and sink, all over an elevated floor.  Under the floor, I suspect you’ll find 25 gallons of water, a small water heater, two AGM betteries, and rear pull-out drawers for storage of food and cooking supplies. Just dreaming at this point, but it’ll eventually come to fruition.  Right now, it looks like this…

 One nice thing about the old HJ is the straight and rust-free body.  It was shipped to Wyoming from Port Hedland, Western Australia in 1987, and it’s been in this 17% no-salt climate ever since.  At least there won’t be too much body work!

I still have a number of projects to get to here before going hog-wild with the Cruiser project.   Our Fiat tractor decided to start leaking fuel from three different places at once.  (???)  I’ve got a fuel suction leak on our firetruck (Unimog U1300L) that’s keeping her from running.  The stuff never ends.  Fix one thing, something else breaks.  Oh well…  That’s the fun of it, right?

Recently, I fought a situation with our 1970 Unimog fouling spark plugs in just a few minutes running.  I rebuilt the carb multiple times, completely rebuilt the ignition system, and then (and only then) did I figure out that it was old gasoline.  It was so dark, it looked like dyed diesel fuel.  Now she’s ready for winter with a rebuilt carb, new ignition, and decent fuel…

This is really good news, because the old Swiss 404 is our go-to winter machine.  Her skinny tires and tremendous ground clearance get us through the biggest snow drifts at the worst times, and we were really worrying about blizzards without the Unimog in our vehicular arsenal.

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