It has been a while since I’ve posted something, I’ve just been rather busy with all kinds of stuffs.

Our department have been swamped with work the last while. We’re getting ready for stock-take and it seems like everyone is scraping together the broken stuff that always get shoved to the back of the shelves. Last time I’ve had so much backlog of work was when I started there….

Anyway, besides that I’ve finally fitted locks to my Landy’s doors. Now it is ready for a road trip

Keep well and remeber to keep on Smiling.

L.

PS. Check out my new collection of Epic Electronic failures. I’ll be updating this page as I come across them.

I wanted to write about this earlier, but I’ve been busy running around with other things, but rather late than never:

My Folks arrived on Friday evening from PE. We planned to go play at Melkbos 4×4 on Sunday for the Landrover’s first outing in Cape Town. Saturday we sorted out the last details before the Big day.

Sunday morning arrived, we loaded the braai-grid, meat, etc. into my dad’s Isuzu and after a quick stop at the garage for diesel and oil-check we were off.

We got there, picked the best braai spot and off we went on the first 10km track. I wanted to stop to let some air out of the tires, but hey, I’m in a Landy, so I just carried on. 3 Bar on sand with thin mud tires… Normally that is a big no-no… This was my first outing on sand with him so after a while of playing with the gears to find the best ratio I settled on  4th Low and occasionally back to 3rd low for sharp corners.

The further we went the bigger the smile! I eventually let the tires down to 1.5 Bar to get over a loose sand obstacle.  I always knew I wanted a Landy, but after this trip I was sure.

After a quick braai we went to “Hell Gat”, the Big boys playground with mud-pools and big obstacles. I went over a few and everytime more and more amazed at what the Landy could do. It went up places that I literally could not walk up… One of my flat mates was with us for the day so I gave her a chance to drive. After talking her through a few I got out to take some pics. My dad got in to help her. I stood at the bottom of the hill, she pulled away to go over the first big hill. She started well, enough momentum, correct gear for the hill. It was executed perfectly, I just wished she had stopped at the crest…

As they got to the top I expected the brake lights to go on, but instead she kept going at full speed. All I could think of was “Keep straight!”

Too late, she turned left… All I saw was the roof toppling over and then the most heart-sinking, sad, very scary crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch….

It is amazing how my body goes into emergency mode. I ran up the hill to get to there, but the crunching sounds just did not want to stop. At this point I couldn’t care less about the Landy. My dad and my friend was in the rolling car! I got there as it stopped rolling. She fell out and ended up about a meter from the roof. If it rolled again it would have been tickets… My dad was inside, I called them and they both responded. Cool, they are alive. My dad said he was OK. Sue-Anne was complaining that her back was sore. She was on her back. I asked her if she could feel her legs. By this time my dad made it out and was standing next to me. To both of our relief she was All OK, but in shock.

I remembered seeing a shattered windscreen. That must have hurt… I was looking for the injury that it caused. It turned out it was my Dad’s knee. He was OK. By this time the rest of the people with us arrived. My dad got back in to get the GPS, jackets and hand bag.

Now that I was satisfied that everyone was OK I turned my attention to the Landy. He was on his side, oil dripping out, bonnet off, right hand door bent the wrong way. The worst was the gurgling sound the Diesel made. It reminded me of a slaughtered animal. I don’t know why, but I tried to get it back onto his wheels by myself. Pretty lame, but at least I tried…

It landed a bit awkward to just flip, so we had to tow and slide it on it’s side before flipping it. It was amazing how the battery landed. The terminals came off and it landed upright next to the car. We put in the battery, the bonnet in the back, checked the oil and amazingly it started instantly! The bonnet was scraping agains the back door, so we ended up putting it back in place. Only the catch broke off.

Enough said. Bring me any other car, roll it two and a quarter times down a hill, flip it upright and drive it 40km home. Land Rover rocks.

Damage:

2 x Windscreen glass. (It has got a split screen)

1 x Door glass.

1 x Window wiper motor.

2 x Dents on the roof corners (they took most of the impact)

2 x Door hinges (Door not closing)

Numerous small body panel dents.

For pics go here.

It is all repaired again (except the door) and ready for the next trip…

I’ve been looking at my access.log file and there are two IP’s (77.92.88.4 and 78.129.208.100) that keeps on leaving spam comments on my blog.

Thankfully Matt wrote Askismet. In the last day it stopped 69 Spam comments. The fact is that it’s still wasting bandwidth. On the positive side, this just proves how awesome Opensource is. I just downloaded the plugin and it works like a dream. If it was a M$ product I would have to fork out cash for something that will probably not work as well. Thanks Matt.

I eventually added the IPs to my hosts.deny file. That should stop the spammer. I wish I knew enough to break into this guy’s server and have some fun on his expense….