DanMartin
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- Hillsboro, Oregon (USA)
February 7-8, 2009 M-29 Weasel recovery: Portland, Oregon to (near) Redding California.
OK everybody, let me fill you all in on my recovery trip for the Weasel yesterday.
First, I would like to thank my friend Vern for helping me on this little trip...I couldn't have done it without him. I think he was more excited than I was.
Secondly I would like to thank Curt and Bonnie who sold me the weasel. They were very helpful and nice people who went out of their way to get us on ours.
OK, now the fun part...here's how it went.
I packed up the truck and got the trailer ready to go on Friday night after work. I packed up some munchies, drinks, and all of my electrical gadgetry and left early in the morning on Saturday, heading south on I-5. Pretty much an uneventful trip...I do this run many times during the summer months when I go ATVing on the dunes in southern Oregon. The trip starts getting interesting about the time you get to Ashland, Oregon when you start getting up into the Siskiyou mountain range and the landscape starts to change. Interesting driving through this landscape of volcanoes and rolling hills. About the time we hit the California border, we were at 4300 feet elevation, but the cloud cover that had dogged us sine Portland disappeared and we were greeted with perfectly clear skies and dry roads. Lots of pictures were taken during this time because of the great scenery, especially around Mt. Shasta, lake Shasta, and the "Weed" rest stop (I chuckle every time I see that exit sign..."Weed, next 3 exits".
Here's some pics of the trip itself (raw, but some good ones in there):
http://s214.photobucket.com/albums/cc162/dantheman29a/Weasel/Recovery/Trip%20Pictures/
Truck (06 F-350 dually) was getting a consistent 16mpg towing the empty trailer, about what I expected. We were doing 65mph down.
OK, so we get up to where the weasel is, and we have a bit of a surprise in store for us. When he pulled it out for us to load up on the trailer, the left track shattered. Not snapped, not broke...shattered...as in the grousers were so rusted that they broke apart. This made for some interesting ideas getting it up on the trailer, but let's just say that a torch was involved cutting the defective track, and we unrolled the track and laid it down on the trailer like ramp and winched the weasel up on the trailer. I could not understand why we were so winded trying to get this stuff done...I mean exhausted getting it up on the trailer (with a winch and come-along) and getting it all chained down....Curtis reminded me that he lives at about 4500ft elevation (I live at 200ft, so we were suffering from altitude issues). It took us a few hours to get the loading and strapping-down part done, but by the time we pulled out of Curt's place it was dark...and we were exhausted and hungry.
Oh, and we almost hit a deer coming down the mountain back into Redding. That woke us up for sure.
We made the decision to just haul ass back to Portland after we filled up with fuel and ate. We gassed up in Redding and found a *great* little mom-and-pop steakhouse just north of Redding where we had a great meal, and hit the road coming home. Rest stops were used several times, we hit DENSE fog coming through the mountains on the way back (dark, winding road, dense fog, no other traffic, towing a trailer...scary).
We filled up again in Cottage Grove, and were back home by 4am with no incidents. The Weasel is now sitting on the pad at the side of my house as I contemplate starting the tear down and assessing the overall condition.
Here's pics of the recovery and this morning after it's home:
http://s214.photobucket.com/albums/cc162/dantheman29a/Weasel/Recovery/Loaded and home/
So far the issues look like we have pretty bad a track issue (start saving for LAR tracks I guess), rubber on the idler and drive sprockets are gone, a poorly constructed front pintle hitch arrangement (which broke free as you can see from the pics, creating quite a bit of damage that will need to be undone), a few rusty pans that will need replaced, the splash rails are rusted on one side, and dented on the other, some creative wiring, a weld-job on the right steering-brake control that will need to be sorted, and a few other things that will need to be un-done or fixed (I'm sure there's more). Radiator looks dented and in poor shape...will need replaced for sure. There is some creative wiring of the headlight that will need to be remedied (and one second add-on light that needs to go away).
The good is that the starter works, the engine turns over freely, and it appears to be complete minus a few small-ish parts. I'm not 100% sure about the "Harley Davidson" speedometer, but it may be period...maybe not. Need to research. The hard-top is all there and can be rebuilt...will need a complete disassembly. Note that all of the glass appears original and is not broken!
I am missing a few things like seats, the headlight protector grill, and some other minor things that will be expensive I'm sure.
This will be a great undertaking, but I think I have a solid starting point here. Some shade-tree mechanic stuff will need to be un-done as well as rust and damage from use and abuse, but I've seen much poorer restoration candidates out there that ended in success...
Weasel on.
OK everybody, let me fill you all in on my recovery trip for the Weasel yesterday.
First, I would like to thank my friend Vern for helping me on this little trip...I couldn't have done it without him. I think he was more excited than I was.
Secondly I would like to thank Curt and Bonnie who sold me the weasel. They were very helpful and nice people who went out of their way to get us on ours.
OK, now the fun part...here's how it went.
I packed up the truck and got the trailer ready to go on Friday night after work. I packed up some munchies, drinks, and all of my electrical gadgetry and left early in the morning on Saturday, heading south on I-5. Pretty much an uneventful trip...I do this run many times during the summer months when I go ATVing on the dunes in southern Oregon. The trip starts getting interesting about the time you get to Ashland, Oregon when you start getting up into the Siskiyou mountain range and the landscape starts to change. Interesting driving through this landscape of volcanoes and rolling hills. About the time we hit the California border, we were at 4300 feet elevation, but the cloud cover that had dogged us sine Portland disappeared and we were greeted with perfectly clear skies and dry roads. Lots of pictures were taken during this time because of the great scenery, especially around Mt. Shasta, lake Shasta, and the "Weed" rest stop (I chuckle every time I see that exit sign..."Weed, next 3 exits".
Here's some pics of the trip itself (raw, but some good ones in there):
http://s214.photobucket.com/albums/cc162/dantheman29a/Weasel/Recovery/Trip%20Pictures/
Truck (06 F-350 dually) was getting a consistent 16mpg towing the empty trailer, about what I expected. We were doing 65mph down.
OK, so we get up to where the weasel is, and we have a bit of a surprise in store for us. When he pulled it out for us to load up on the trailer, the left track shattered. Not snapped, not broke...shattered...as in the grousers were so rusted that they broke apart.
This made for some interesting ideas getting it up on the trailer, but let's just say that a torch was involved cutting the defective track, and we unrolled the track and laid it down on the trailer like ramp and winched the weasel up on the trailer. I could not understand why we were so winded trying to get this stuff done...I mean exhausted getting it up on the trailer (with a winch and come-along) and getting it all chained down....Curtis reminded me that he lives at about 4500ft elevation (I live at 200ft, so we were suffering from altitude issues). It took us a few hours to get the loading and strapping-down part done, but by the time we pulled out of Curt's place it was dark...and we were exhausted and hungry. Oh, and we almost hit a deer coming down the mountain back into Redding. That woke us up for sure.
We made the decision to just haul ass back to Portland after we filled up with fuel and ate. We gassed up in Redding and found a *great* little mom-and-pop steakhouse just north of Redding where we had a great meal, and hit the road coming home. Rest stops were used several times, we hit DENSE fog coming through the mountains on the way back (dark, winding road, dense fog, no other traffic, towing a trailer...scary).
We filled up again in Cottage Grove, and were back home by 4am with no incidents. The Weasel is now sitting on the pad at the side of my house as I contemplate starting the tear down and assessing the overall condition.
Here's pics of the recovery and this morning after it's home:
http://s214.photobucket.com/albums/cc162/dantheman29a/Weasel/Recovery/Loaded and home/
So far the issues look like we have pretty bad a track issue (start saving for LAR tracks I guess), rubber on the idler and drive sprockets are gone, a poorly constructed front pintle hitch arrangement (which broke free as you can see from the pics, creating quite a bit of damage that will need to be undone), a few rusty pans that will need replaced, the splash rails are rusted on one side, and dented on the other, some creative wiring, a weld-job on the right steering-brake control that will need to be sorted, and a few other things that will need to be un-done or fixed (I'm sure there's more). Radiator looks dented and in poor shape...will need replaced for sure. There is some creative wiring of the headlight that will need to be remedied (and one second add-on light that needs to go away).
The good is that the starter works, the engine turns over freely, and it appears to be complete minus a few small-ish parts. I'm not 100% sure about the "Harley Davidson" speedometer, but it may be period...maybe not. Need to research. The hard-top is all there and can be rebuilt...will need a complete disassembly. Note that all of the glass appears original and is not broken!
I am missing a few things like seats, the headlight protector grill, and some other minor things that will be expensive I'm sure.
This will be a great undertaking, but I think I have a solid starting point here. Some shade-tree mechanic stuff will need to be un-done as well as rust and damage from use and abuse, but I've seen much poorer restoration candidates out there that ended in success...
Weasel on.
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