onetrack

David Brown made pretty good transmissions and gear trains, but when they tried to extend their skills to building entire tractors, they couldn't match the tractor manufacturers who'd been in the business of designing entire tractors for multiple decades.

Willie, what's that horizontally opposed donk you've got there, it's not a Lycoming is it?

I've never seen anyone shut down by the ATO at 24 hrs notice unless major criminality was involved. The ATO prefers to have a negotiated settlement, unless it's obvious the tax defaulter is intent on major rorting, and continuing tax avoidance.

Had a taste of Summer yesterday, it got to just over 31°, with a very warm N/NW wind. Much cooler today, with low cloud cover and 24° forecast, with a SSW/SW light wind. Light rain coming again next week, with Wednesday looking like we'll get a few mm. The BOM is forecasting one of the hottest Summers on record to come, for 2024/25! https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-12/australia-facing-one-of-hottest-summers-on-record-bom/104464014

They're simple people, those Carnamah folk. They understand big is good, bigger is better, orange is good, and Orange Tractors are the best! The 40KA sold well, because the engine ran on Power kerosene, which was cheap and reasonably efficient, and the engine was a simple, low speed (1200 RPM) horizontally opposed twin. Bob Chamberlain also struck it lucky on several fronts - he saw the massive pent-up demand for tractors in the period right after WW2, when many soldiers took up farming, and developing farms from bush. The wool boom, and a little known accompanying wheat boom (wheat doubled in price between 1950 and 1952), all added to increased tractor demand. Chamberlains acquired a former Australian Govt munitions factory in Welshpool for a fraction of the cost it took to build it. The factory was well served with an excellent power supply, a big furnace, a rail line, and a main road. Bob couldn't afford costly Swiss gear-tooth-polishing equipment, so the Chamberlain transmissions were left with machining marks in the gears that produced loud whines when the gears were hardened. Not a lot of farmers worried about the noise the Chamberlain transmissions made, the tractors were made locally, supported with spares and factory backup, and they were readily available, unlike many other imported brands. Bob did well with the horizontally-opposed kerosene engines, but when he tried to make the engine into a diesel, it was a disaster. The diesels blew up regularly, because of faulty design that didn't take into account the vastly increased stresses on engine components caused by the higher energy level of diesel fuel, and the much higher compression ratio needed to ignite it. The answer was to buy in "brand name" diesel engines in the form of GM diesels and Perkins and Meadows diesel engines. These engines proved to be winners, but the noise the Chamberlains made didn't decrease! - in fact, with the GM diesels, noted for their 2-stroke scream from their Roots blower, the Chamberlains only got noisier! But regardless, the Chamberlains are fondly remembered by anyone who has had anything to do with farming - and many thousands of them are still running today, testament to their fundamental reliability and simplicity.

The GST was touted by Little Johnny as a simpler and fairer tax. It's not, and the complexities of GST calculations now far exceed the original taxes it replaced. The GST taxed a lot of "black money" and drug money that formerly escaped taxes, because eventually, "black money" and drug money has to be invested in areas where taxes are applied. One of the things that got up my nose is that the Govt gained a huge windfall in GST from the sale of used goods that were formerly untaxed. Jerry, I trust you're not actually saying that millionaires and billionaires need to pay more tax?? God forbid, Gina Rinehart is struggling on her $37B worth of assets, give her a break!

Peter, I've been pretty busy, so not a lot of time to answer brain teasers. It's warming up, and things are happening, and I have a backlog of jobs/projects to catch up on.

The size of the U.K. market would mean the Tim-Tam distributors and retailers there, would be able to negotiate a better price for Tim-Tams, based on a substantially-increased volume of Tim-Tams. The Australian sales levels are probably less than a quarter of U.K. sales levels. And despite the freight cost to the U.K. that would initially appear to be sizeable, containerised transport via ships is relatively cheap, especially when a client is a sizeable, regular, repeat client. The cost of transport within Australia is quite high, because we freight goods on trucks, and despite using road trains, the cost per item is high, due to the fact that trucking is actually a high cost freight method, as compared to ocean shipping. I got freight quotes recently to move a 600kg generator set from NSW to W.A., and the charges were vastly more than I expected, and one of the quotes had a fuel surcharge of 28% added to it!! The quotes ranged from around $2500 to around $5000, and it's a compact heavy gen set, so ideal for the trucking companies.

Well, the latest EV news has one simple message - the Chinese have won. In disconcerting news for the major Western car brands that have set up huge production factories in China, producing "Brand Name" cars for the Chinese market - whereby these companies generated huge company profits from this process - the Chinese buyers have now taken to the locally-produced EV's and hybrids, obviously seeing good value in them - largely due to pricing, too, no doubt. BMW sales in China have dropped by 42%, and Mercedes, VW, and Audi are going the same way - and there's real panic in the boardrooms of these companies, as they see their massive Chinese-built vehicle profit levels evaporating, under the Chinese car manufacturer onslaught. The solution to these manufacturers is obvious - climb into bed with the enemy, and use their manufacturing base and massive abilities, to produce "badge-engineered" models. In the past, design and development of the Brand Name models was carried out in Europe, along with procurement and oversight of suppliers. In the near future, virtually everything will be done by the Chinese, under Brand Name management and oversight. The Brand Name companies manufacturing facilities in Western countries will eventually be reduced to a shell of what they once were, as the Chinese come to totally dominate the vehicle manufacturing industry, on a scale that no-one could've envisaged, as little as only 5 years ago. https://kr-asia.com/can-prioritizing-china-reverse-the-ailing-fortunes-of-luxury-car-giants-bba

The wives and girlfriends suffered because they had no idea what their husbands/boyfriends had experienced. I can recall one woman relating a story where she cooked her recently-returned, WW2, ex-POW (of the Japanese) hubby, a beautiful rice dish for dinner. Once placed in front of him, her hubby exploded in rage and threw the meal against the wall of the dining room, abusing her, and telling her she was NEVER to serve him rice, ever again. The poor woman was devastated, she had no idea that a serving of rice would produce so much rage from her hubby, that she loved - but of course, he hadn't talked about what he'd endured as a POW, and no-one else had prepared her to understand what she would likely have to put up with, from her war-damaged hubby.

I missed my chance for a great bit of birdwatching video this afternoon. We have quite a number of Red Wattlebirds here, and I love 'em. As well as being the mainlands biggest honeyeater, they're absolute tigers on bugs and spiders, they get right into the bushes and trees, and search out every nook and cranny, even looking at the underside of leaves for food items. They hang off the fence capping, and look under it for spiders, and pounce on them, the instant they see them. We've got a sizeable native Hibiscus just outside our rear patio, which patio extends about 4M out from the back of the house. There was a Red Wattlebird that flew down from the big Jacaranda that graces our backyard, and into the native Hibiscus, just as I stepped outside the back door (without my phone, of course!). I watched him for about 3 mins as he jumped and hopped from branch to branch inside the Hibiscus, grabbing a few bugs, and spending a lot of time searching all the leaves and branches intensely. I'd hate to be a bug when they're around, it would mean a short lifespan! What amused me was, he would regularly stop searching, and let out this loud and raucous "RARRKK!!" noise, possibly trying to frighten bugs or spiders out of their hideyholes. I had a great view of him as he did this, and I'd have loved to get it on video. But as always, I ducked back inside, grabbed my phone, and just as I got to the back door again - he flew off! They're absolutely fearless and ferocious at defending their territory - especially against bigger birds and the baddies - such as Crows, AND Kookaburras! I watched one attack a Kookaburra that was sitting on a TV antenna on the house behind our neighbours place, a few days ago. The Kooka was just sitting there minding his own business, possibly looking to spot a rat or a lizard, when "BAM!", this Red Wattlebird came out of nowhere, and attacked him! Then he came back for another good peck, but the Kooka was waiting, and took a big snap at the Wattlebird on the way past! Of course, the Kooka missed, the Wattlebird was too fast and agile. But about then, the Kooka decided it was time to vacate this unfriendly territory, so he took off! When I was up at my block in the Wheatbelt last week, I watched a Red Wattlebird divebomb a crow - it was amazing to watch. He flew up behind the (departing) crow, then gained altitude, and banked, and went straight down on the crow, like a Spitfire doing a strafing run on an Fw-190! The crow ducked and swerved, and snapped back, and went into a dive, but the Red Wattlebird kept up the attack, and didn't ease off until the crow was low to the ground! https://ebird.org/species/redwat1

An old bloke who had a local car wrecking business here in the 1960's, had a gantry on the tray of his ute for picking up car engines. It comprised a couple of inverted U frames (along the lines of the tradie rack bars below - but heavier material), and he'd slung a length of light RSJ girder ("I-beam") down the tray centreline, attached to the frames, and the RSJ hung over the end of the tray by about half a metre. He had a girder trolley attached to the RSJ and a chain block attached to the trolley. He'd back up to a wrecked car, unbolt the engine, hook the chain block onto it, and lift the engine out, then roll it into the tray, via the girder trolley. He had that rig for years and years, until he died, I think.

The coal mines will never be missed. The cemeteries of every area where the coal mines are, are full of coal miners who died young - gassed, drowned, killed in rockfalls or gas explosions, killed when winders failed, or who died of "black lung disease". My Scottish grandad lost his leg in a rockfall, and his only son, a mine manager, was gassed at age 44, leaving a young family. Only those who have never been in a coal mine still want them. They incurred massive levels of deaths and injuries, and many of the victims were little more than children. Even when they didn't go down the mines, they were killed by mining machinery. http://scottishmining.co.uk/5.html

Build a gantry that fits in the back of the trailer and mount the winch on that. You could just bolt the gantry in place and remove it when you weren't snigging logs.

That's an interesting point. I noted two articles pertaining to the U.S. Presidential election, that point out, rarely-thought-of events, that affect Presidential elections. 1. Virtually every second election of a former President has turned out to be an unmitigated disaster, as the second time around, vast amounts of poor decision-making seemed to reign. 2. Natural disasters have played a big part in U.S. Presidential election events. Every time there's a sizeable natural disaster affecting the continental U.S. (massive storms or floods) resulting in severe financial and personal losses, the Republican vote has tanked. This is reportedly because the Democrats are more inclined to indulge in social welfare and help programmes to mollify the damage and losses, whereas the Republicans do only minimal amounts of Govt help, and tell people they now just need to work harder to pick up the losses. I note that two large storms have now impacted the Southern U.S. States, with losses running into the billions. I feel these two events will be a boon for the Democrats.

Yeah, but just think about the size of the nipples! 😄

I saw where Tassie is on its way to have a nudist beach. I couldn't imagine any Tasmanian day being suitable for being unclad.

Musk has stooped to a new low, paying voters in swing States to sign a petition supporting the 1st and 2nd Amendments to the Constitution. It's effectively a vote-buying drive for his best buddy, Trump. The best line I've seen all week? The name, Elon Musk, is an anagram for Leon Skum! 😄 https://www.the-express.com/news/politics/150872/elon-musk-offering-money-gun-rights-petition https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/07/us/politics/elon-musk-47-dollars-petition.html

The only way the Ukraine war will end is when Putin is either overthrown in an internal coup, assassinated, or dies from natural causes or a disease. The two first reasons are more likely, simply because Putin has few real friends in his inner circle, and plenty who only see idiocy and the destruction of Russia in his plans. The longer Putin lasts, the more paranoiac he'll become. Mad dictators start to see enemies at every turn - already Putin is constantly sh*****g himself about being taken out by a suicide drone - and it may not be a Ukrainian one, either.

I like around 20° to 35°. When it gets into single digits in the overnight figures, I'm ready to head North. And when it gets over 40 degrees, I'm looking to turn the A/C on. The worst part about Perth is when we get a Summertime heat trough form down the coastline, from about Bunbury to well up past Geraldton. This results in humid, still conditions, until the trough moves Eastward and inland, when we return to strong afternoon cooling sea breezes, or steady SE and E winds.

You can guarantee those Australian-Lebanese drug dealers will be out of Lebanon on the first plane to Australia. Rats bale out of a sinking ship first.

It appears Jerry isn't so hard done by, on the Tim-Tams front, anyway - he gets them cheaper than us! The downside is, the manufacturers shrink the packet size for the U.K.! https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/oct/05/aussie-classics-vegemite-and-tim-tams-cheaper-in-uk-supermarkets-than-australia

Well, we had a beautiful start to Spring with the cessation of regular rains, and then lovely clear days with 20° to 28° days, from the 8th to the 26th Sept. Then Winter returned again on the 27/09. It rained every day from the 27/09 to the 05/10, with a total of another 44mm in that period. The BOM says we've had a Winter period (officially, 01/06 to 01/09) that was 5% wetter than normal. I guess the wet Winter was overdue, after the 7 month drought we had in Spring, Summer and Autumn. But the last 3 days have been very pleasant, 22° to 25° and mostly sunny. However, it's warming up, and Thursday and Friday are predicted to hit 28° and 30°, before it cools down again to the mid-20's. The W.A. crops went back somewhat with the dry September period, the experts downgraded the total State tonnage by about 3% on Sept 19th, but most of the State got the good, late Sept/early Oct rains that I mentioned above, so I think the crop yields may spring back a bit yet. https://www.graincentral.com/news/giwa-trims-3pc-from-tonnage-forecast-now-below-17mt/#:~:text=THE Grain Industry Association of,17.438Mt forecast last month.

It was the bloody French who first mandated driving on the RHS of the road, in the late 1700's - but it was Henry Ford who insisted that motor cars should be LHD, with the introduction of the Model T in 1908. A lot of American-built vehicles stayed RHD up to about 1913 - even though they were driving on the RHS of the road.

In W.A., the Kings Birthday was on 23rd Sept 2024, and Labor Day is on the 1st Monday in March, which was 4th March this year.