dirty work
JOHN ROOTHTHE TASK OF SPRUCING UP MILO IS A MUCH BIGGER JOB
THAN FIRST ENVISIONED.
W
HOA, by now you’re starting
to wonder if old Milo will ever
come back together, right?
Oh, you’re not, you’re too busy
out exploring. Well I guess
that’s half of Milo’s problem, too – she’s
done so much exploring in out-of-the-
way places, she’s in danger of falling to
bits because of it.
Take that time in the Gulf when
Glen, Kenno and I were cutting a new
track through the scrub at Lorella
Springs. We hit the beach, noted no
movement in the tide and figured it
was safe to go fishing. Then the tide
whistled in about a metre in less thanan hour and suddenly the once-safe
beach turned into a nightmare of
undermined sand. If we hadn’t been
carrying a dozen MaxTrax between us
and been able to build a road to harder
sand, we’d have been stuck for good.
Nothing like a bit of adventure, eh?
However, sand and salt takes its toll
on an old truck, and everything I’ve
looked at lately has taken me another
level down in the repair stakes – what
should have been a quick paint and
lube has turned into a marathon of
welding and patching. Good thing a
bloke’s got a motorbike to ride to and
from the wrecking yard.But the truth is I’ve been missing
my old girl so badly I had to hook in
and get her finished. It is one thing to
do the family holidays in the mustard
truck, but quite another to get old Milo
out there shifting dirt.
I say that because that’s how I think
of this truck: more of an earth-moving
machine than a vehicle. In many ways
that’s the truth of it, too, because the
13BT motor is an industrial diesel
sourced from a dump truck and the
low-range GearMaster transfer case
and ELockers mean you can puddle
around at tracked vehicle speeds
when things get tough. It’s alsoWhen the tide came in suddenly up in the
Gulf, the only thing that got Glenno’s truck
free was a ‘road’ of MaxTrax. However,
for Milo it meant one more dose of salt-
encrusted mud and a few more weeks
before we got to a hose.188 http://www.4X4australia.com.au