So…. Have you ever just stopped for
a moment and wondered where time has gone? One moment, you were 14 living at
home and borrowing tools from the Aladdin’s cave which was your dad’s garage to
make something that nearly worked and now you have moved out, created your own
man cave with all the tools you just needed for the house projects and garden
redesigns. When the house was finished work seemed to take centre stage and
what little time you have you fill with hobbies! At this point I must say Laura
my wife is very understanding as she accepts I have one or two little hobbies! Anyway.
What I’m trying to say, is that all too quickly, days become weeks and weeks
become years and you sometimes don’t see certain family or friends as much as perhaps
you should.
When I sat back a year or so ago
and analysed it, I realised that I had not spent that much quality time with my
dad so it was time to make a change.
Why am I telling you this? Well I
thought it was important to put some context to the project and anyone who asks
“why did you do this?” I can point them to this point in the blog!!!! Anyway
where was I…..?
Ah yes Dad….
To give you a little background to
my Dad he is a doing man. He is the kind of person who secretly worried about
retiring (so they delay it as long as possible) and then when they finally do they
become just as busy doing other stuff!!! The cure for this I thought would be
to find a project where we could get together regularly a father and son
project! Like what you used to do when you were younger with an air fix model
or the DT project you needed a hand with!
Both Dad and I have a love of the
sea so with this common interest I would deploy the idea into his head and let
him think on it a while. At this time, I had not too long ago finished a
rebuild of a boat and a couple of other projects and was thinking about another
sailing boat build, a Farr 3.7 to be exact, so a “kill two birds with one stone”
idea came to me! Plan hatched, the idea bomb was dropped into dad’s head I just
needed to wait for the delayed timer to go off. Well the timer was obviously
faulty as it took bloody ages for the explosion and dad’s cogs to start turning
but once they did, a land based project was top of dad’s idea’s list!
Dad it seemed had re-found his love
of everything military. As a young boy, dad was very interested in the war and
collected a vast number of dinky toy’s all WWII American (I think). There were
Tanks, Tank carriers, Armoured Personnel Carriers, Jeeps etc. all in army
colours. Recently he had started to go to enactments such as war and peace, my
brother in law was just finishing off a mark 1 VW Golf in his double garage and
it must have been at this point the thought bomb I had placed inside his head a
number of months ago went off and boom Dad wanted to bring back to life a WWII
American Willy’s Jeep and it just so happened a friend of my dads who is
insanely fanatical about military vehicles knew of one for sale!
To cut a long and not so interesting
part of the story short, the Jeep was bought and transported to Dad's for a
while as the VW was still in the workshop (sorry secret bunker).The 1st job was
to then get if from Dad's to the secret location.
Mission 1: Transport from Dad's house to the workshop
Date: December 19,2015
This was a surprisingly easy task when you know someone with a low loader!! Job done!
Below are the first picture of the beast (with all the battle scars and rust!).
Picture 1: Dad with the new Toy having his 1st drive (Well Free wheel!)
Pictures 2: Nearly there!
Task 1: Wash and brush up!
Equipment: Jet wash, water.
Picture 3:
View from inside the secret bunker (AKA The Garage)
Now all the loose mud was taken off
which had done a fairly good job of trying to hide some of the more obvious shonkey
bodge jobs! On the positive note not too much obvious rust to worry about (So
Simon my brother in law said). So all in all a good platform to start from!
So now all we have to do is set an
evening when we would meet (Dad Simon and myself)
So I will keep you posted with
progress and regular pictures for that odd 5 minutes you find (yeah
right!!!)
