Gotta Set Things Up 😉 Before The Chill Sets In! 🥶

October was already upon us, but that wasn’t stopping us from wanting to get on the road again. Our plan was to leave on the 8th, so we had about a week to get everything ready.

The new Toyota emblem light had come in the mail, so I was going to carefully disassemble this one a bit more carefully.

Once I had opened it up, I removed the new emblem and the reflective mirror panel behind it…

… and slid the sealed set I had made right over the light fixture.

As fortune would have it, I had access to a garage bay for a day- so I was going to take advantage of luxury of not lying in my driveway. I had 2 things I wanted to accomplish:
1) Oil Change!
2) Install the emblem light.

So I layed out some card board, and got to draining the oil pan.

This oil change was going to be a very special oil change- I was converting our girl over to synthetic!

I had never had a rig that had synthetic oil before, but after confirming it was a solid upgrade I picked up some high mileage synthetic and made the magic happen.

While the new snythetic oil jug was sitting upside down to get every drop out of it, I went on to wiring the emblem light.

And once she was shining, I set the emblem in place with a solid bead of caulk and propped it into place to sit.

After I had buttoned up and cleaned up the shop, it was time to take her home. Our newly set light held solid for the drive!

So in the next few days I would go over it a few times with Gaco to officially sign and seal it into place.

Before winter hit, I had a non-Toyhome side project I had been putting aside for way too long. Years ago, when I had started building yard solar staffs, I told my Dad I would make him one. He had handed me an old brass dome from a bell, and asked if I could integrate it into his staff when the time came. Well, it was time to make it happen.

I had found a burnished copper light house one day on my travels, and I thought it would be perfect for this project. So I set about sanding down my copper rod, the took a torch to it to make it flare up into spots of all different colors, and then sealed it afterwards.

I ran my solar lighting up through the small cabin and the lighthouse, so the lights to both would illuminate from within when it was in the dark. Then I twisted together and mounted a small copper hanging wire for the bell, so when the wind blew it would push the bell into the copper staff, causing the most gentle and pure sounding ring. So anyway, I’ll wrap up my digressing here, this is how it turned out:

One more cool fact about it: The light house actually has a music box built into the bottom, so you can turn the top of the lighthouse and it will play music! Thanks for listening to my little side story; it had just been awhile since I had created a staff. 🙄😊

Alright, back to business! Another reason I had been able to get the time to do the staff project was that The Ohana was finally getting the new control arms installed. I had also ordered a new set of torsion bolts, nuts, and keys, just in case they were needed.

So our baby was in the professional hands over at Redline Automotive.

The old bolts didn’t break loose easily. Yet, the owner of Redline, Dimitri, made sure the job was done right and close to the estimated budget.

We always appreciate the personal touch Dimitri puts in on our projects, showing that he really cares about the job. If you need work done on your rig- keep Redline in mind! 😉 https://www.redlineautoak.com/about-us

With that Our Ohana was ready for her next journey, so I parked her place so we could load her up for our October weekend up North for my birthday. 🎉

Geoff Murphy 11/2/2020