Mike,I faxed your permit to you this morning.Mike,make sure you recieved the permit conditions,LA curfew map and the 24/7 running.Must be stapled to permit or they might red tag at the scales if stopped.Give me a call.

Hey Mke,

I'll put the hammer down at 6:00 am in Petaluma. It should put me down where 99 & 5 come together about 12:00 Noon +/-. Isn't there a truck stop right there? My cell phone is 415-720-5936. Keep the bears out of the air:p .-glen

Thanks a bunch for letting me use the low boy trailer John. I'll call you if I have any ??? or troubles.

Glen, I'm a newbie at truck driving and this is going to be my first heavy haul. Plus I'm going over the Grape Vine . I just plan on taking it easy and my old truck only has 400 HP, so I'm going to be pretty slow up the hill. Heck I'll be holding you back. So call me when your about an hour away from Bakersfield and that will give me a head start. When you catch me we can stop at a truck stop on top of the hill (Gorman) or on the bottom side (Castaic). Then after we eat we can convoy onto Carl's.

Here is my number 661.331.2996 but I'll call you on Thursday to confirm. Sound like a good plan? Sounds like fun to me:D Mike

Hey Glen the curfew is only if your over 10' wide. I'm 11'5", how wide are you?

Mike,

I'm less than 100", so it's cruisin' while there normally snuzzin' for me. I had better stay just a little in front of you comin' down the other side. That's when it counts, just easy does it and don't burn 'em up. If you need, i'll just turn on the retarder and brake for both of us.

Here you go, we don't waste ANY time!!

MikeMc unloading the HO D8:

Glen (7upuller) unloading his D6/60 can:

More to come...


CS

carl, that link was fun to watch. Thanks for posting. GWH

Here are my pictures and story from Saturday.

I had planned to pick up the DW10 from Woodland weekend before last, but I think I ran the pony out of oil and it froze up while I was trying to start it, so it is still sitting up there, so I couldn't bring it. I also don’t really have the money to fill the truck up with diesel to take anything down there. On the other hand, Glen and Pat Gilotti were coming and Mike got his High Output D8 ready and was taking that, too. I didn’t want to miss out, either.

We had our first winter storm arrive Thursday around midday with wind and some sprinkles. It rained all night Thursday night and sprinkled all day Friday. When I woke up Saturday morning it had rained all night and was still raining pretty good. Since I couldn’t do any work at Mom’s, I decided that I was meant to go to the play day. I still didn’t really want to take the truck, so I decided to take the Jeep that Mom and Martin just finished reassembling for Emily (daughter number 1). I could tear around and supervise with that, and I could just tow it behind the Suburban on the car trailer. I called Daron Dustin and he said he was up for the trip, so I was ready to go.

I hooked up the trailer and pulled it around to the front of the barn. I tilted it up to be ready to load the Jeep. Then, I started up the Jeep, which was parked in the front of the yam barn. The Jeep has been updated with an F-head engine, so the carburetor sticks up through a hole cut in the hood. Mom and Martin had not yet overhauled the carburetor, and the needle sometime sticks. As I was pulling it out of the barn, the needle stuck and started shooting gas out and running it down the side of the engine. The gas must have gotten to the distributor, because it started on fire! I jumped off the Jeep and ran to the shop, where we have a couple of big extinguishers. I ran back, noting that the pool of gas underneath the Jeep was also on fire by then.

I untied the drawbar from the front of the hood and got the hood open. A couple little shots from the extinguisher put the fire on the engine out and also killed the fire underneath. I checked everything over, and there was a little scorching, but nothing was burnt. Even the insulation on the wires and small rubber tubes were O. K. It was probably a good thing there was a pretty good layer of oil and grease over everything so it was protected. The fact that it was poring rain off and on probably didn’t hurt my situation, either.

After I checked everything out, I decided to give it another try. It started up and ran great after that, so I decided to take it along. I looked around at the trailer, and it wasn’t tilted up any more. I went over and tried to put it up again. The pump would run, but nothing happened. We had to jack the trailer up to get underneath and see what was up with that. It turned out that the reservoir was low on oil because the lines to the tilt cylinder have a small leak. The reservoir is up underneath the trailer with the filler about an inch from the bottom of the deck boards of the trailer. It doesn’t have any hole or access from above. I had filled the reservoir when I replaced the unit a couple of years ago, but hadn’t done anything with it since.

After scratching my head for a while about how to fill the reservoir without taking the whole thing out while lying in the mud underneath it. I remembered an old electric fuel pump that was laying in the shop and decided to see if it was strong enough to pump hydraulic oil. It worked, so I just lay underneath while Mom held the leads on the battery until the reservoir was full, so I was back in business.

We put the trailer back on the ground, tilted it up and loaded the Jeep with no more excitement. I headed off to California City to pick up Daron under a steady rain. I love driving in the rain. I arrived at Daron and Mary Ann’s house, still under steady rain.

Daron and I stopped by McDonald’s for breakfast and hit the road for Chino Hills. By now it was about 10:30 am. We drove through a steady rain until we got down to Cajon Pass, where the rain stopped and clouds got steadily lighter. We arrived in Chino Hills about 1:30 pm and followed Mike’s directions to find Carl’s place.

They were just finishing lunch, which Carl and group had provided, of BBQ beef, green beans, BBQ beans, bread, cookies and all sorts of good stuff. We were just in time, said a quick hi to everyone and had a great lunch. Glen and Pat had arrived at 4:00 pm the day before, unloaded their D6 and 60 scraper and worked until 8:30 pm. This after an eight hour drive from their house that day. Glen and Pat were also still out working when we arrived.

After our good lunch, we moved over to the work area, where there were four or five D2s with blades, a tumblebug, grader, a 22, Mike’s D8 and D4 and other stuff. We unloaded the Jeep and ran around some and took some pictures. Carl was trying to flatten out the base of a hill so that he can put an arena on about an acre. We took some kids on rides around the site on the Jeep, they really seemed to enjoy that.

Carl told us that we could drive the Jeep around to the back of the property and get up on top of the hill to take a picture of the operation from above. Daron and I and another young lady who was taking pictures took the drive to get some pictures. There was one steep climb that was about all the little Jeep could do to get up, but it made it.

After climbing up the steep hill, I noticed some unusual noise. I looked down at the back wheel and it was going flat. By then, we were just about to the top of the hill, so we went up there and stopped to get our pictures. The bead had already come off the outside, so I decided to just drive down the face of the hill so that we could air it up. Daron and the other photographer elected to walk down, and I crept down the hill. It was a little scary, since the hill was steep and I don’t like heights, and it was a little squirrely on the flat tire, but I made it down fine.

After that, Daron and I walked around some more and watched. John let Daron drive his D2 with grader, while I operated the grader. We did rounds for about an hour or so. Then I wanted to do something else, so Daron kept on going with no operator for a while. Finally, Pat hopped on and operated for Daron for a while longer.

Everyone kept working until it got dark, the Bobcat and Glen’s D6 have lights, so they ran for a while longer. At about 8:30 pm we finally called it a night. I loaded up the Jeep and we helped John and some others load their stuff up. Mike, Glen and Pat were staying until Sunday, so I think they did some more work then. I dropped Daron off at his house at 10:30 pm and got home and in bed by Midnight.

Thanks for letting us participate and for the great lunch, Carl. It was fun seeing everyone there and playing in the dirt. I hope that Mike, Daron and I can come back in a while and help move some more dirt. Next time we will bring more toys to play with, for sure!

It was good to see Glen, Pat and John and meet some others there.

Pete.

More pics.

More pics.