VMVC President's Rant
Hello and welcome to my November “Rant”. Well, the onset of longer and warmer days is fast approaching, the type of conditions that’s suited to us (or U.S) military vehicle drivers, especially drivers of the soft top or missing doors variants.
For me, warmer longer days mean more opportunity to get the jeep out, dust her off, check the oil and fuel levels, clean the windscreen, press the starter and get her out on the road for some relaxing drive time up towards the Whittlesea area where my folks reside.
Well it all sounds easy, maybe just a little to easy. What’s been happening to the little jeep whilst she’s been hibernating over the winter months, condensation in the fuel tank from not filling her up with fuel before putting her to bed can lead to all sorts of problems with water contamination of the fuel system. What about the brakes? Have the linings rusted from lack of use, are the brake shoes serviceable? When was the last time you gave the old girl a good grease? Or for that matter just got under and physically checked the security of all nuts and bolts and checked the chassis for any fatigue cracks or just general wear? Then there’s the electrical system, water level in the battery, light globes, wiring not brittle and frayed, the list goes on…
For those of us who are not as mechanically minded as some of the other members who do all their own mechanical work, a good mechanic should be sourced (Refer to the list of advertisers in the Newsletter) to look after your pride and joy and help you avoid breaking down or even worse having an accident due to worn parts that just gave up at the most inappropriate time! Remember some of the vehicles are well over 65 years old and need a little TLC every now and then to ensure they give you trouble free operation for many more years to come and help avoid expensive repair bills in the future!
Oh, and whilst your at it, remember to get yourself checked out too, its amazing the time and dollars that some of the members put into their vehicles but neglect to go see the quack for some servicing on themselves, remember “Prevention is better than a cure”, and that goes for both the vehicles and the drivers..
One last thing, remember, there are only about 8 weeks till the big fat man in red kicks the starter on the OD painted sleigh and get those bar tread skids covered in bulldust, so we thought we had better get your thoughts on the end of year meeting, to see what you can come up with. It may be a full on jeep restoration DVD, a surfing the restoration cyber world extravaganza, staging a reenactment of the siege of Tobruk in the hall, complete with sand dunes, JU87’s, Rommel & Monty plus dugouts! Some may think a night where we all bring, or ride our trusty rusting steeds to the hall and convoy to a distant land for pizza and caffeine (How about Williamstown or Black Rock!), or for us on the Committee where excitement runs to a Bex and a good lay down, we could look to invite a key note speaker. The choice is yours. Vote soon, and vote often. Text, phone, carrier pidgon, email, ink on parchment, morse code, http:, or just drop over, but have your say and make it count!
Till next time, safe motoring.
Gino Di Tella
President VMVC.
P.S; Rick Cove wins a prize (Yet to be determined) for being the first to pick up on the spelling mistake on the new logo prototype leaflet that was included in last months postal newsletter, good to see someone’s paying attention!
P.S.S; Also there were no winners for the VMVC web site’s ” What is it” competition in last months newsletter, the answer could have been an accurate one or if you didn’t know what it was you could have made it up! We don’t care, it was done for fun and to gauge response’s we got from our members which was unfortunately, “zilch, zero, nothing”! Oh well, the $50 fuel voucher prize will be put away for now, remember its YOUR club please try and be a bit more pro-active and submit an article or 3 and enter in some of the competitions we will try and run in the future, it seems the only feedback we ever get is when we muck something up!
Cheers..