Errr, Northwest Mogfest, that is. After a mad dash of work, finishing and bolting everything removed from Trog over the last 6 months, Colby and I left for Mogfest, pretty much on schedule. The drive down was uneventful, other than an early fan controller failure on Colby’s TGB11. He hacked in a relay to force the fan on all the time and off we went.
Colby.
We found a very nice campsite down by the river (with a dirt driveway that featured a 45 degree angle, pits and a fallen log — no problem for Trog)
It was hot there — in the 90s most days. I recruited soldiers for the Swedish Army and we fought the Germans in their Mogs.
My valiant freedom fighters
Strafing some hapless Boy Scouts German spies.
Timmaaayyy! in his friends Pinzgauer joined in the fight against the Nazis.
Trog played in the pits — not even close to getting stuck…
Luci seemed to like the pits…felt closer to home.
A little Nitrous Oxide helped during the parade race.
All in all a great time. I’m already looking forward to NWMF09. I’m off on a road trip for a bit, so no TrogBlog posts til October…
Trog
The old stalk light on the back of Trog was looking pretty bad. The post had corroded, and the hose clamp stops rusted. The light housing itself was also corroded.
A little processing, painting and new stainless stalk fabricated, along with stainless shaft collars as stops, and it looks way better:
Trog
I bead blasted and sanded the door handles — they polished up quite nicely.
I originally thought I’d hard anodoize them black, but upon further research, that may be a bad idea. It turns out that glass bead blasting aluminum is a no-no if you want to anodize it later. The glass beads heat up the aluminum, opening the pores. Also as they hit, they explode into fine grains, which embeds itself within the aluminum. The process of anodizing involves opening up these pores, then soaking it in a dye and then closing the pores. The glass mucks up this process. Also, these are cast aluminum, which often has high Silicon content, which also messes up anodization.
Also, powder coating may also be out of the question. Again, the glass bead remnants mess with the powder coat as it’s curing, causing problems.
Hrm….maybe polishing w/ a 3M unitized wheel will remove the outer layer and glass beads?
Trog
The Volvo C3 series exhaust routing is a little bit strange. The muffler is on the right side of the vehicle, but the exhaust is routed under the drive shaft to exit on the left side of the vehicle. This takes up valuable room for a propane tank and hydronic heatert.
Re-routing it to exit on the right side was super simple. I picked up a 1 7/8″ ID right angle elbow at an auto parts store. That, plus the now functional chrome exhaust bling now makes the exhaust exit on the right side of the vehicle.
I bent it a little bit so the angle is a bit more than 90 degrees so the exhaust exits pointing a bit towards the rear. (pic is of 90 degree, before bending)
Most cars are designed with the exhaust on the opposide as the fuel filler. In the case of Trog, there’s about 10 feet separating the exhaust from the filler at the rear of the car, so I don’t think safety is compromised in any way.
Trog
Check this out. There’s a hole drilled in the front window sill on the side with the safari window. It’sprobably there to drain water that collects there. Unfortnately it drains into the metalwork behind the dash and eventually trickles down inside. This helps explain the rusted out driver side footwell.
Some polyurethane caulk plugged the hole…Of course now I have to worry about the sill rusting out. Maybe I’ll plumb up a proper drain, but access behind there is difficult. Maybe a tube from the corner leading to the side?
Trog
On Trog, the windsheild washer jets were plugged with paint from the last paint job. A needle poked in the jets helped, but still the washer fluid barely reached the window. Turns out there’s a flow restrictor after the fluid reservioir. It was probably put in there when the washer motor was new and had lots of mojo. 30 yrs later, it needs all the feed liquid it can get.
The flow restrictor is the blue plastic thing.
Trog
To continue the theme of shiny things, I thought I’d replace the mudflaps. Then I shopped for the things. $100 to $200+! For friggin mud flaps? No way. Instead, I decided to renovate the old ones. I added some stainless weights/extenders to the bottom.
Between the bumper and the main box, the old design used another piece of rubber. It was flawed in that it allowed mud to collect in the crack above the rubber, causing the bumper to rot out. I’m going to replace the rubber with some rigid pieces of rolled stainless, fastened/welded appropriately. Rust isn’t really an issue anymore since I replaced those sections with stainless. Still, it’ll be one less place to clean out after going off road.
I’m resisting the urge to add the classic mud flap girl:
Or, with the little one now in the house:
Thanks to Chris Marshall of SimpleMachine for rendering this version. My lovely wife had CaféPress print a coffee mug with this as a Father’s day present.
Trog