[rescue] Re: geek vehicles

[Francisco Javier Mesa-Martinez]

On Fri, 24 Aug 2001, Dave McGuire wrote:

> On August 24, ed at the7thbeer.com wrote:
> > '97 Tacoma 4x4.  Rescues anything(including me, sometimes!)  
> > 
> > As soon as I get my 8000lb. winch installed, I can go on rescues in the
> > Alaskan tundra, if need be. :)
> 
>   1974 Mercedes-Benz Unimog 404S.  'Nuff said. :)
> 
>   http://www.neurotica.com/unimog.
> 
>     -Dave


Hot Damn! We had some of these when I served in one of them European
mandatory draft army thingies (you Americans have it too easy with that
"voluntary" Army!). They can go through *ANY* thing, and I am not kidding.

The funny thing is that one of these trucks was getting some serious low
mileage, the mechanic corps could not figure out what was wrong with the
machine. Until one of the Captains ordered the fuel tanks to be revised,
they found out that almost half of the tank's volume was taken by old
cigarette butts. Seems that people liked to hide behind that specific
truck to smoke (was not allowed around base or during maneuvers), so as
soon as an officer came too close they would dump them cigaretters into
the deposit. Which even though was is diesel, it's a bit too ballsy of a
proposition. That is what happens when you have way too many people with
college degrees forced to serve in the Army, some of them are bound to
have some serious knowledge about the interactions of cigarette butts and
diesel fuel.

Aaaaahhhh.... good times, good times.

BTW in keeping with the subject, I once hauled an SGI power series
(4D/440) in the trunk of my 1st gen Acura Integra Hatchback. I drove from
LA to San Francisco in the morning, pick up the machine back to LA by the
evening. Over 800 miles in a single day half of those with a 200lb
machine.

Then it was the time when we had to borrow an old, and by most accounts
unsafe dodge van, with no muffler. The machine would backfire every other
mile. Scaring the hell out of us. We got the VAX into the machine but one
of the springs in the van was bad so it would tilt dangerously during the
CA-110 curves. The van had almost no brakes. Now that I think about it, I
almost risked my life to get a VAX-11 in my apartment. Once we got it in,
we had to run a clandestine powerline from the laundry room. So we could
only run the machine at night. The downstairs neighbours complained to the
dorm's advisors because something terrible happened around midnight
every other night on top of them. We figured out it was the incredible
shaking that the machine went through until the big ol' Fujitsu eagle
drives were spinning up when powered up.....