Skip to main content

The Frog Van's Journey Back to the Road Begins

After a bit of a break from regular blogging I'm back with my Frog Van's journey back to the road. Hopefully from here on in I'll be back to regular weekly posts. So, moving on to the van...

In my last update I said I'd start working to get the van back on the road at the beginning of August so the van would be ready to drive in Australia's Spring time. Unfortunately everything got delayed because I got really busy with animation work.

The good side to that is I was able to match the donations to the project with another $500.00 of my own money. Bringing the total budget to $1024.00.

The project got further delayed when I got fairly sick for a couple weeks during the beginning of September - nothing serious, just a really bad cold.

Anyway the first step of the project was to get the van registered, to give me a deadline, as I explain in the video below. (Hope you like the opening animation of the van, using my CafePress store design).



I was very disappointed that, between the last time I started the van up and now, the rear right tyre went flat for no apparent reason and the battery refused to recharge.

Fortunately the spare tyre was okay (though it doesn't have as much tread) so I swapped the flat tyre over.

The battery was no good so I ended up having to buy a reconditioned second hand battery - saving myself approximately $70.00 as a new battery would've been around $100.00-$110.00. Also had to buy some smaller terminal connectors because the new battery had significantly smaller connection points than the previous battery.

I made the video below to show you that the van is now working. I reversed it up onto my back lawn so I could sweep the drive way underneath it and just to turn the tyres after having sat for so long.



The next stage is to take the van to a mechanic, which I hope to do within the next week or so.
TET Life Topics:

Comments

  1. Mum60September 25, 2012 6:14 PM

    Sounded like the door was going to drop off when you shut it! :-) Was that a ball on the driveway, as I noticed it had gone after? Glad the van is working again. Hope the mechanic can fix it from back firing etc. Hope the battery lasts too with it being a reconditioned one. Hope it's worth the saving money-wise.

    Lawn's looking good. Glad you're well again. I expect you were well looked after.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. TET (David Arandle)September 25, 2012 8:03 PM

      All the door seals are pretty much shot so it sounds really metallic when you shut the doors. Fortunately, despite their condition, water doesn't leak into the van. I know this because I've driven it in heavy rain many times.

      It was a tennis ball on the driveway. I moved the van so I could sweep the dirt off the driveway from under it.

      Delete
  2. Mum60September 27, 2012 6:00 PM

    You're very meticulous! New door seals then when the major things are finished? :-)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Comments are moderated by an actual human (me, TET) and may not publish right away. I do read all comments and only reject those not directly related to the post or are spam/scams (I'm looking at you Illuminati recruiters... I mean scammers. Stop commenting on my Illuminati post!).

Buy Whimsical Cat Art Prints by TET (Redbubble Store)

Slide 1
Slide 2
Slide 3

Enjoy Your Favorite TET Art Up Close, Interactive, and so Relaxing!

Enjoy Your Favorite TET Art Up Close, Interactive, and so Relaxing!
Relax and Challenge Yourself with a Fun, Whimsical Cat Art Jigsaw - 30-1000 pieces. Click Image for More.

Popular posts from this blog

Software Stylus for Tablet Drawing

 I own an Android Tablet that has available to it many great drawing applications.  The trouble is, drawing on a touchscreen with  your finger is like trying to sketch with jumbo crayons.  As is trying to draw with most stylus pens which are only a marginal improvement over using your finger.  Precision drawing on your average touchscreen seems like wishful thinking.  However I've had this idea for a software stylus that acts like an extension of your finger and allows drawing with greater precision.  See my rough diagram below.  Essentially it's a pointer that follows your finger around the screen. Its angle can be adjusted so that from your vantage point it looks like the tip of  your finger is coming to a point. Softnib concept sketch.  You simply move the pointer around and the line is drawn from the point of the stylus instead of somewhere under your finger, where you can't see it.  Obviously I haven't worked out a...
1 comment
Continue Reading »

Who Even Reads This?

W riting this blog is largely both a labor of love and a discipline. Since about 2006 (the blog started in 2004) I have written a minimum of two posts per month. Sometimes I've posted more, particularly in the last 4-5 years, where I've tried to write and post at least one article a week without fail. Unfortunately it's not a niche blog, unless the niche is things that interest me. Which means my blog is either too broad to have regular readers or too niche to have anyone other than my mum reading it. Which she does (hi Mum) as we established back in January of 2014 in the post Ya Mum Reads it... That said, this blog overall regularly gets 6-7k views every month, mostly through people finding various articles through search engines. By far the largest traffic source is 'Other' which is basically unknown sources. I'm willing to bet a large percentage of that is the dead internet. Bots testing my comments to see if they're spamable or Illuminati spammers. Whil...
4 comments
Continue Reading »

Occupy Wall Street - Movement for Change of... Something?

I've been kind of following the Occupy Wall Street 'movement' from my position of apathetic denial of what's actually happening in the real world - that you can see if you pull back the curtain or disconnect from the Matrix. In particular I've watched vlogs of the Melbourne, Australia, Occupy Movement through the eyes and camera of You-tuber Sean Beadlam . Sean is quite a hard hitting comedian whose humor is topical, political and often based on the injustices faced by the oppressed. He also focuses on the media and how they'll beat up a story to get their 'angle' rather than provide balanced reporting of the whole story. Although not one of his comedy routines this video below from Occupy Melbourne is a good example of Sean's work with several juxtaposes of the Occupy movement with media and Sean's use of technology. Although Sean isn't the only source of my information, you would think that a guy like him would have...
1 comment
Continue Reading »

Pt5. Three Cat Tails Painting by TET

Finished: Three Cat Tails Acrylic on Canvas panels. Day five of my video diary (embeded below) following the creation of my latest series of paintings, Three Cat Tails. View Part one , Part two ,  Part 3  and Part 4 if you haven't seen them yet. In the final episode of this series I get to paint the black and white layers that I thought I'd be painting on day 4 but delayed in exchange for adding more purple and green shadow. The black and white layers take the artworks through to completion. Then I finish each panel off with a dark blue border around the edge (to cover up the paint marks on the sides). Whilst I do continue to talk about what I'm doing as I paint this episode does contain a few quite moments of just me painting away because there isn't really a lot to say about the white and black layer. However I hope you'll stick with it to the end just the same. The series of artworks are available to buy so if you're interested contact m...
Post a Comment
Continue Reading »

Pt4. Three Cat Tails Painting by TET

WIP: Three Cat Tails Darker purple and green shading added. Day four of my video diary (embeded below) following the creation of my latest series of paintings, Three Cat Tails. View Part one ,  Part two  and Part 3 if you haven't seen them yet. Yesterday I said that I would begin on adding my black and white final layers today. However after looking at the paintings a few times over night I decided the cats could really use more shadow to give them just a little more three dimensional form. I had a strong feeling that adding purple and green shadows was what the images really needed. Especially the two larger images needed the purple shading on the background behind the cats to connect them with it - since those two particular images actually make more sense if you get the feeling that you're looking at the cats, laying on a blue floor, from above. At this point I pretty certain I'm ready for my final black and white detail layers - which I'll get onto...
Post a Comment
Continue Reading »

Pt2. Three Cat Tails Painting by TET

WIP: Three Cat Tails background and base colours. Day two and part two of my video diary (embeded below) following the creation of my latest series of paintings, Three Cat Tails. View Part one if you haven't seen it yet. After painting my initial base painting using the three primary colours, in this episode I demonstrate blocking in my backgrounds and the base colour for the three cats. This episode is a little longer than the last but hopefully is still interesting to watch. All the painting you see is in real time but obviously edited down quite a lot to show the 'highlights' and I explain what I'm doing as I go. I realize these videos aren't as exciting to watch as the more common 'speed painting' style videos but if your the kind of person that likes to watch over the shoulder of a real live artist at work then these might just be up your alley. Continue to Part 3 .
1 comment
Continue Reading »

Pt3. Three Cat Tails Painting by TET

WIP: Three Cat Tails Darker shading and cream fur added. Day three of my video diary (embeded below) following the creation of my latest series of paintings, Three Cat Tails. View Part one and Part two if you haven't seen them yet. In this video I mix a dark brown colour to add some shadow and stripes to my cats. You'll see how the brown tones the orange down quite a bit to make the colouring of the cats a little more believable. I also mix a light cream colour to fill in the transitions between the orange and white area of the cats fur. You'll see in a later episode more clearly what I mean once I add the white back in. Note how, when I add the cream, it initially goes on too thick and I have to wipe it back with a cloth and water it down to make it more translucent. The perils of mixing colours with white paint! Finally I finish up by adding in a few small details like paw pads and noses. It doesn't actually seem like I did that much today. O...
Post a Comment
Continue Reading »