willedoo

That's the catch. They want an arm and leg for chimney flue sections these days.

Thanks onetrack, I love Pinterest. You can get so many ideas from that site.

A novel use for an old diff housing:

Apparently OSHA is the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

I've made a start. Today I picked up two stub axles and hubs from a bloke on Facebook marketplace. They're a perfect fit for the two wheels I have and about one third the price of buying new ones. It looks like he's even repacked and adjusted the bearings.

The only left hand drive vehicle I've ever driven was an old Peterbilt ex pole truck that was being used for a water truck. The good thing about pole trucks is that the poles and snatch block brackets all pack away in recesses flush with the deck, so you can have a crane truck capability or a flat deck, whichever you need. A big powerful winch and a full width roller at the rear tops it off. Just a straight winch truck is a handy item as well. One mob I used to know had semi trailer winch trucks. They had no sleeper cabs as the winch took up that space so you'd always see a swag tied on the back of the prime mover. The rear of the prime mover chassis behind the turntable was sloped and had a roller at the end similar to that on the rear of the trailer. The trailer legs could fold up parallel with the trailer deck so when the winch cable was connected to the trailer front, all they had to do was pull the turntable pin and drive forward dropping the front of the trailer on the ground. The front of the trailer was rounded off to move easily down the back of the prime mover chassis and roller. I had one of them move a D7G once. I drove the machine straight on the back as there was a high ramp available. There was no ramp at the destination so the winch truck driver dropped the front of the trailer on the ground and I drove the tractor straight off. You just had to be careful crossing his winch cable that you didn't damage it with the track grousers. After I was clear he sucked the empty trailer back up with the winch.

The idea for those lifting arches on the back of trailers and utes would have come from pole trucks which are used in the oilfields for moving rigs and equipment. The basic principle is the same except the pole truck winches pull horizontally to a snatch block on the rear of the deck then up to the top. The lifting arches pull directly from the top of the arch. They still use pole trucks but not quite as much as they used to. Mobile cranes are used a lot these days.

There's still bargains on FB marketplace and even some good stuff for free but you have to be quick and basically first cab off the ranks. Today I contacted a bloke who was selling a tandem 7x5 trailer. It was a solid trailer with ladder racks, large toolbox, sunraysia wheels and about a month's rego left. It had surface rust and needed a cleanup and a coat of paint. He had $1500 on it as is. He messaged me back saying it was sold and he'd dropped the price to $500 as there was a couple of holes in the side he didn't notice when he listed it. I'd say the buyer played him like a fish. The four wheel hubs would be worth that.

Might be worth a try but they are normally fairly expensive around here. You never know your luck though.

One thing about all those European and American YouTube videos is that they are hauling pine and other timbers much lighter than our Australian hardwoods. I've got a billet cut from a brushbox that had to come down when my power line was repaired early in the year. I might put it on the scales to get a rough weight estimate of logs. Brushbox is medium weight I think. The heaviest around here is ironbark.

I think America is weird. https://www.dailycloths.com/collections/us-flag

Very true. The rich and famous would probably like to swap places with us at times. I remember reading about an interview with Amy Winehouse not long before she died, and she said she'd give it all up just to be able to walk down the street and not be recognised. Some of us lead very humble lives but kings and queens probably envy us.

Facebook marketplace often has old caravan or trailer full axles and wheels for sale at a more affordable price than buying new hubs and stub axles. The problem with FB marketplace is getting a seller to reply to your message. Most of them don't. They often sell the item then don't bother to take the ad down so they just ignore messages.

That quad bike used to belong to my dad. He rolled it on top of himself and broke his leg when he came home a bit full after playing bowls and got a bit over enthusiastic rounding his sheep up. It was repairable when I disposed of it. The front wheel drive wasn't working and the engine needed a new main bearing by the sound of the knock. By the time a main bearing goes, there's usually a total engine rebuild in order at that many hours.

Unfortunately not. I had a Honda quad bike that needed an engine repair but it went along with all the steel, axles and wheels in the the great clean-up of 2021. The only property off-road vehicle now is a 4x4 Mitsubishi Triton.

Although you've still got to back the ute up to within the towbar length of the front of the log with the articulated setup. I had a look at the winch and it's only a 500kg winch so it might not be big enough. Cost wise, it wouldn't be viable to buy a new winch.

Here's another alternative which is cheaper and maybe more practical - a lifting arch mounted directly on the back of the ute tray. I already have the winch and steel. The tray is 8' so for shorter logs I could probably get a 12' log entirely on the deck hopefully without the front wheels being too light. Nice and secure and would cost bugger all to build. For longer logs, I would only need the rear section of the contraption in the OP video. It could be hooked up, the rear of the log raised and secured, then the lifting arch used to lift the front of the log onto the back section of the ute tray. Secured the right way it would ride there and swivel much like a semi trailer turntable. It would be half the cost of the tandem setup in the OP. Also the lifting arch on the ute could be built so it's easy to take off when not needed. The ute lifting arch would also be more versatile for lifting and loading things other than logs. The road registered ute tray could also be set up the same way so the lifting arch and winch could be swapped between the road vehicle and the unregistered scrub basher. I think it's a more practical alternative. Start with the arch on the ute back and take it from there.

I hadn't read that story. I was wondering why he sacked the air force chief. Zelensky said something about having to protect their pilots, so that's likely what he was referring to.

Ukraine has lost it's first F-16 and one of their top pilots. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-30/ukraine-f-16-fighter-jet-crashes-repelling-russian-missiles-kill/104291814

I read a forecast that it's likely to be much warmer than average over the next three months of spring. It also said Queensland, New South Wales and the ACT could have far more rain than usual for this time of year. Where I live a hot spring is ok if there's rain. The worst time is a hot, dry spring and those hot, strong north westerlies in November roll in on top of three or four months of drought. That's the worst fire danger scenario here.

I remember quite a few years ago one Chinese manufacturer had a D6D copy and I think there was a copy of a Komatsu D65 as well. The Cat D6D copy looked like the real thing from a distance. I think from memory they used Cat engines. Up close you could see how rough they were. Inside the cab was hand painted with a brush. All the welds on the machine looked like they were done by hand with a stick welder and not the best welding at that. Along the side of one track frame was a plate welded in that stood out. It was cratered with rust pits and about the size of a barbeque plate. All the rest of the steel was ok. From memory I think they were about $200,000 cheaper than a Cat. There would be a huge difference in resale value if the Chinese version survived long enough to be resold. Good low hour Cats and Komatsus bring a good price whereas with the Chinese one you would have to hope it would last long enough to break even. I worked for a bloke once who used to turn his Komatsus over at 5,000 hours. He'd calculated he made more money that way with a high trade-in for a low hour machine and not having big outlays at that stage of the machine's life. He's now retired and has not bought an EV (in case you thought this was thread drift).

I don't know if there will ever be an option three. We're all having the same discussion that people were having twenty years ago and will probably still be having in another twenty years time.

The 1980's - one thing you notice, there's not a crowd full of phones being held in the air.

It's an unusual time of year for a heatwave. 35 degrees forcast for the last day of winter. The hottest winter day ever recorded in Australia was this week in the Kimberleys on August 27.

Here's Bonnie and John Lee Hooker. One of the first blues records I ever bought was a John Lee Hooker record. I came across a small second-hand record shop with a few different genres of music but the owner had a fairly decent blues section, about a half a cubic metre of them. Depending on artist and condition, they varied in price from seventy five cents to one dollar fifty. I bought a mix of them including Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Leadbelly, John Lee Hooker, Elmore James and Lightnin' Hopkins. Some were original recordings and if I'd had a crystal ball and seen how rare some of those would become, I would have bought the lot.