The WC53 Carryall thread .

[Alxj64]

Window boxes!?! Good lord!

Chasing down a rain water leak on the passenger side of the carryall body. (The side Julie sleeps on.) I needed to get to the inside of the outer skin of the truck behind the forward window box. Sigh.. This is absolutely blowing up here. The bottom of the box was gone, the window was sealed with plumber's putty. Are the boxes welded to the body skins? It looks to be the case. How have you guys dealt with this? Are the wood sticks just to hold the trim bits in place? Does anyone make replacement window boxes? Or the soft bits that came out as a brown powder? If I cut these out, how does one set the alignment when one weld in new ones?

yikes!

-jim lee

Jim, I'm getting ready to make window boxes from scratch for mine. Like literally in the next few months. The window stuff will be as closer to stock than anything else on my truck. If mine turn out decent, I'll make some more. My intention is to make mine out of stainless so they'll never rot out again.

[jim lee]

Window boxes!?! Good lord!

Chasing down a rain water leak on the passenger side of the carryall body. (The side Julie sleeps on.) I needed to get to the inside of the outer skin of the truck behind the forward window box. Sigh.. This is absolutely blowing up here. The bottom of the box was gone, the window was sealed with plumber's putty. Are the boxes welded to the body skins? It looks to be the case. How have you guys dealt with this? Are the wood sticks just to hold the trim bits in place? Does anyone make replacement window boxes? Or the soft bits that came out as a brown powder? If I cut these out, how does one set the alignment when one weld in new ones?

yikes!

-jim lee

[Matthew Welcher PWA]

It is such a shame that people cannot pick up after themselves. What elevation is this that you are at Bruce. It is incredibly beautiful.

[Alxj64]

Bruce! Thats awesome! I love the photos of your adventures! Such a different and beautiful landscape up there that just makes these trucks look so cool out there on your expeditions! I love it! Thanks for sharing so much!

[Bruce in BC]

Because of the snow and cold temperatures we elected to stay at lower elevations and found a protected area that was out of the wind. There is a reaction ferry at Lytton that goes across the fraser river. We took that ferry and headed up the Thompson River valley towards Kamloops. While driving that way the elevation changed outside of Logan lake and there was snow. A bunch of backroads later and the elevation dropped enough to get out of the snow and we found an area that was out of the wind.

IMG_1662.JPG
. IMG_1660.JPG

Of course we came across the typical signs of idiots with guns. My wife and I cleaned up more than a thousand shells from this area.

[jim lee]

Our apple tree is going crazy down here as well.

The Vancouver trip is basically a support run for the kid. She was up running and whatnot in the mountains all night last night. We didn't get a lot of sleep either so we all slept most of the day today. Another race tomorrow then off home.

Went to a Korean restaurant this evening. The cultural mix was amazing! Asians, whites, mediterraneans.. Everyone all mixed up and getting along like no one cares. It was really cool. Seeing that gives me hope for the future.

I'm going to run Franklin around a bit down here. If things seem reliable, the plan is to run over to Vancouver Island in a bit. We have friends over there we want to visit. We'll keep you posted on when this should happen.

-jim lee

[Bruce in BC]

Where in Vancouver Jim? Not sure if I will be over that way, my son is running around and picking up his sister at the Tsawwassen ferry on Saturday.
This is the type of scenery we saw on the trip, in this case it was on the Lytton reserve. Lots of fruit trees dropping their apples this year, the crop seems huge.
IMG_0399.jpg

[jim lee]

Heading up o Canada tomorrow AM. Kid's doing some sort of endurance/overnight/obstacle running race thing somewhere near Vancouver. Bringing up a pushbutton car though, not the Carryall.

P.S. Carryall is actually in running condition at this moment. A rare occurrence.

-jim lee

[Bruce in BC]

IMG_0398.jpg
We were only at 3500 ft when the snow hit. This is the roughest part of the road that we encountered on our second day, quite easy in two wheel drive and aired down to 18 lbs. Some stretches were quite smooth, others had random pot holes and cobble stone tossed in. There is a bit of everything as you climb up and down in elevation, you see desert grass and sage brush and west coast forest with a bit of that dry interior pines and grass tossed in as an accent.

[Cheyenne Dave]

August 27 was our first snowfall this season...up in the Jackson area. I think it was snowing at most elevations above 9K feet up that way.

Great pic of your WC, btw....looks right at home.

cd

[Bruce in BC]

IMG_0391.jpg We got snowed on ! In September and it was still summer. Went on a trip to visit my daughter and then up the Fraser canyon, crossed the Fraser at Boston Bar and took the west side road. The road wonders along the side of the Fraser and was a bit rougher than I expected. We did the whole thing in two wheel drive but averaged about 12 miles an hour. The funny part was the road got narrower and narrower and at one point I would have sworn we were in some fellows yard and just when I thought the road was going to stop we turned a corner and the road was wider and graded. There was a couple of spots way up high that I did not like and can remember asking " why is the road so darn narrow where there is the biggest drop offs? We found a little field that may have been some ones yard in the past and camped there on our first night.

[Matthew Welcher PWA]

That looks like a great trip, I have a few rocks and hills for you to play on in Iowa.

[jim lee]

Yeah, ya see? Just stressful!

-jim lee

[Alxj64]

Off topic from the Carryall, but certainly a reason of why my Carryall is built the way it is; I have rock crawler in my blood and my fab experience is for suspension systems that just flat out WORK.

Rock Crawling was my main automotive hobby prior to really getting down and dirty on my Carryall. I had a TJ that had been through all sorts of variations. Had a club that I was the leader of, etc etc.

Here is a picture from Harlan Kentucky, drove over this... somehow.




Here is a video of one of our last trips before I got out of. Anyone with a sense of trails, rocks, and the finesse of driving on those situations can appreciate the scenes of mud falling sideways off of the hood due to angle of the rig, and tires well off the ground, static hill positions despite spinning all 4 tires. These rigs are all full body stuff too, no buggys or whatever.

https://youtu.be/NREyZEDN58A

[jim lee]

Not a big fan of rock crawling. I love using dirt roads to get places, but I hate being all stressed out about getting there. Rock crawling to me is just stressful.

Also, your right, the pictures always make it look like you just went for a ride in the park. Looking at my last set of pictures, I remember all of us being all stressed out. But the pictures look like we just went over a bump in the road. I did get one that gave a pretty good impression as to what things looked like to us that were there. Its looking up at the rear of the truck as it crests a hillclimb.

IMG_1444.jpg
Maybe this is the trick? Looking up undernieth the truck tends to flip the mental switch that "Hey, this was pretty steep."

-jim lee