onetrack

Because of WW1.

Accomplished aviator.

Here's a story about how the Chinese are going all-out on a major onslaught on the major car manufacturers of the world - especially Tesla, but also the big global brands. The Chinese are knocking up their own huge, specialised car-carrying ships to ensure they can flood the market with stocks of new cars, meaning no wait times, and multiple choices for buyers. BYD sold 88,640 cars into overseas markets just in May alone, that puts them on course to sell 1,000,000 cars a year, just in exports. Meantimes, Australia's TOTAL car market (that's ALL manufacturers) is just 1,000,000 cars a year. If you order a car from someone like Toyota, stock is limited and demand is high, so that means you have minimal choices, or you go on a wait list for months and months. The Japanese manufacturers are about to get a rude shock, I cannot believe the number of BYD vehicles I'm seeing on the road now, and that is only going to increase. https://au.news.yahoo.com/byd-photos-show-ev-race-heating-up-as-china-looks-to-topple-tesla-its-insane-012054850.html

The most revealing term the Americans use, is "nickel and dime ya". In other words, in any other country, the price is all-inclusive. In America, there are constant "extras" that keep adding to the cost of the item or service. Tipping is just one of them, small taxes and extra charges for services that are included elsewhere are the American norm. Mind you, we're heading the same way, too. Airlines and accommodation are top of the list, followed by card surcharges. We just bought air tickets for a trip from Perth to Broome next month and there was a total of nearly $100 in additional charges to the base fare. Two lots of security charges, card charges, two lots of GST, etc, etc. One of the interesting parts is you can only see all the charges when the "payment" page is presented to you. Once you pay for the booking, there's no no way to see those individual charges again.

Well, that event was a dead loss for us. Despite all the hype and promise, we drove out 75kms to Mt Observation (West of York W.A.), stumbled around in the dark in the bush for an hour, looking for the best view to the South - and we saw bugger-all. 😞 We even had a nice clear sky, and the Milky Way and star clarity was glorious - but all we could see, was a bit of vague red dimness on the Southern horizon. Very disappointing, after all the hype. Now a big low pressure system is moving in, with associated stormy weather and cloud, and we won't see much sky for the next three days.

I've bought Camrys for SWMBO ever since we bought our first 1990 Camry in 1992. We used to buy low km, around 2 yr old, ex-Govt Camrys at auction for about $17,000. SWMBO had been put in a Datsun 180B by one of her car-selling relatives when I met her, it was a POS. I was always fixing something on it. I got rid of it to a girl who came back later, and claimed that we'd sold her a pup, and it had blown up. The cooling system collapsed and she fried it, apparently - so not our problem. The Camrys have all delivered superb reliability and fuel economy, and most were sold with about 100,000kms on the clock. We kept our 2002 Camry the longest, 17 years and 140,000kms. It had done 20,000 kms when we bought it. I probably should've sold it in 2014 when we bought the replacement 2012 Camry Atara - but it was such a good car, I sort of just hung onto it. We still got $3800 for it at 17 yrs old and 140,000 kms. The only major fault it developed (a common one), was an oil pump leak. The oil pump is mounted externally on the front of the engine under the (plastic) timing cover, and it contains two o-rings, and a lip-type seal, which all go hard and start to leak. The problem is, the leak is hard to find, because the oil leak wicks down the block and along the sump and then drips off the rear of the engine, making it look like the rear main engine seal is gone. But I cleaned the engine up spotlessly, and then started to look for where the leak was coming from. It took a while, but I finally found it was the oil pump. It took less than 2 hrs to remove the pump, reseal it with 2 new o-rings and the lip-type seal, and we were back in business. Most people drive Camrys into the ground with no maintenance. People don't change the oil on them, and because the oil galleries are narrow, they block up, and the engine starves of oil. I think the 2002 Camry cost less than $1000 in maintenance over the 17 years we owned it, just brakes and tyres, a thermostat and a top radiator hose. I'm always anal about keeping the cooling systems and coolant absolutely spot-on with regular coolant changes and regular cooling system flushes. All alloy engines have to be treated with care as regards cooling systems, but fortunately, the genuine Toyota long-life coolant is perfectly tailored to protect all the metals in the engine, and if you use it, rather than any "will-do" coolants, you never have any problems. We've had the Atara for 11 years now, after acquiring it for $19,000 at 13,000kms from a deceased estate. It was a steal, they were bringing $23,000-$24,000 at the time. It's a superb drivers car, it sticks to the road and handles like an F1 race car, and only sips fuel. Quite often I can get it down to 6.5L/100km at 100kmh on long smooth straight lengths of freeway. The problem now is what to replace it with. I can't get enthused about hybrids and I think the current crop of EV's are still in the experimental stage. I've always worked on never being the first to buy any new model, I like to wait and see how the model proves up, whether it's an unreliable POS or provides excellent reliability. The RAV4 is looking a likely buy at this stage, but perhaps we'll buy a full petrol-powered RAV4, which Toyota stopped making last year. They're not hard on fuel, and buying a horribly expensive EV, just to save a couple of grand a year on fuel, doesn't make sense to me. Plus the outlandish technology of the newer models is offputting, I'm hearing a lot of complaints from friends and associates about the dramas with exotic technologies such as automatic braking, and lane-guiding features of the current models. Friends have told me how they struggle to keep control, as the car wants to do something different to what they want to do.

What a ripper of an outstanding, clever, and daring attack! As good as some of Britains finest commando efforts during WW2. Now, all it needs is a drone attack on where Putin is sitting or flying, to ensure the head of the Russian snake is fully decapitated

And I'd hazard a guess those names are pronounced something like "Sluffter". The same as the English can pronounce "Cholmondeley" as "Chum-lee", or "Rochester" as "Rosher".

Tonight is the best night for an Aurora Australis sighting, if you're in the Southern latitudes and have a fairly cloudless sky to the South, and minimal light pollution. There's a major solar storm taking place globally, and on a scale rating of 9, it's an 8. For Australian viewing of the AA, the scale rating for viewing is currently 6, out of 9. There are plenty of FB photos currently being posted of the AA. The best times for viewing are between 10:00PM and 2:00AM. https://www.sws.bom.gov.au/Aurora https://www.facebook.com/groups/SouthernHemisphereAuroraGroup/

What is worse, is the number of MAGA adherents who believe it's true, and have come out supporting Trumps baseless claim. What a sorry lot!

Is.

Ahhh, I make the Buick 67 yrs old, Nev, I don't know how you got 98 yrs old. He does have quite a number of early 1930's Fords in the factory unit, mostly roadster style, I'm not sure if they were repro's or original bodies. The Americans knock out a huge number of 1930's repro hot rod bodies. He did mention he had a stack of 1957 Chev parts as well. One of the interesting things he said was, he went to all the car show gatherings with a stall - and people would come up to him and say, "I've got an old car in the shed, would you be interested in buying it?" He claimed he scored a lot of vintage cars in that manner, and people would sell them to him, whereas they wouldn't sell the vehicle to a casual inquirer - because he was in that line of business. But I would think people would sell to him because he may have offered more money than a casual inquirer, and sellers would know he had the funds, rather than just being a tyre kicker, or someone scheming out a get-rich-quick scheme by acquiring a vintage car for a low figure. I used to score a lot of vintage cars for a song by contracting for farmers. I had access to every back paddock on farms once I was there, and found a lot of amazing vehicles. Two that come to mind are a 1932 Model B Ford V8 roadster (genuine original, not cut down into a ute), and a 1930 Model A Ford coupe, an Australian built model. The Australian-built 1930 Model A Ford coupe was different to the American-built ones as Ford didn't have the big presses here in 1930, that they had in America. The American coupe had an all steel roof and steel doors. The Australian coupe followed the older style of construction with a fixed roof made from wooden strips overlaid with canvas, that was painted with a bituminous paint. It had wooden-framed doors that were full height. The 1930 Model A coupe is so rare that the Ford collector bloke I acquired it for, who was in his 60's in the 1970's, said he had only ever seen one in his life, it belonged to a doctor when he was young bloke and it was fairly new. He was over the moon when I bought it for him, he owned 45 Ford cars, all between 1928 and 1935 and he had every body style for every year - except for the 1930 Model A coupe. I'm spewing now, that I sold the 1932 Ford Model B V8 for $600 about 1983, when I needed some money. I could nearly retire on what they bring today, even unrestored (if there's any left unrestored). When I was living and working in the W.A. Goldfields in the mid-1970's, there was an old bloke in Kalgoorlie who still drove into and around town in a 1932 Ford Model B roadster, completely original.

I bought a 13.5KVa 3 cyl Lister generator off a bloke in the Northern suburbs. When I went to pick it up, I found he was a hot rod parts specialist, a hot rod builder, a car importer and general wheeler-dealer in anything American and classic design. He said COVID kicked his business in the bum, it started to pick up again, then the shipping costs went ballistic, so he's winding the business down. He was in a large rented factory/warehouse (I think it was 2 units combined), and he tried to buy it off the old lady that owned it a number of years ago, but she wouldn't sell. Unbeknowns to him, there was a big family squabble over who was preparing to get what, after she died - so she sold everything and cashed in, and is just going to divvy up her estate in cash inheritances. So, the new owner of the factory/warehouse wants to move in, and he has to get out. The bloke says he's built a new factory unit of his own, not too far away, so he's not overly stressed out about the eviction. But he's having a cleanout as part of the move, and the winding down. One of his cars for sale is this 1958 Buick, a classic piece of American overindulgence. It looks like it's sold, and it was only advertised a couple of days ago. https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/1313503580780180

But where else could a ruthlessly ambitious person get their start in State or Federal politics, if it wasn't for the cut and thrust, backstabbing, ganging up, nepotism, and pettiness of local councils!?

They actually turned into your chickens. Chickens are ruthless destroyers from above, just ask any crawling bug.

There's no reason for anyone to possess a machete in urban Australia. Just look at the well-manicured lawns, and the amount of lawnmowers, brushcutters and whipper-snippers we own! Machetes were produced for just one reason, to cut your way through impenetrable jungle. We have no impenetrable jungle in Australia, except perhaps for a few small pockets of rainforest areas, which have no need of penetration, unless its by rescue teams looking for disaster survivors. In which case, machetes should only be owned by emergency rescuers and police.

Every Presidential decision is an emergency to Trump, that's how he operates, he loves to galvanise people with shocking demands. He wouldn't know what to do in a real emergency, though.

The Wall Street sharemarket traders have invented a new 4-letter reference for Donald Trump - "TACO". It stands for "Trump Always Chickens Out". What it means is that the traders know that Trumps announcements mean nothing, and he always backs down on them. So he announces a 145% tariff on say China, the sharemarket takes a dive, so the traders pile in and buy up big. Next moment, Trump has reversed the tariff decision and the sharemarket recovers, and the traders make a huge killing. Trump has been told about the use of the term, and he's livid about about it, calling it "nasty". He claims its just "negotiation" tactics. But he's dumb as a rock if he fails to understand what his on-again, off-again, decision-making is doing to the markets and business decisions. He specialises in chaos, and has zero skills in either business or negotiation. He's always "negotiated" from the bully angle.

B.

What size ride-on tyre can't you buy, Peter? A local bloke supplies a big range of small equipment tyres, but he's not easy to find initially, because he trades as Minidiggers, and deals in all types of minidigger parts. So if you go looking for "mower tyres", he doesn't show up. He says he'll ship Australia-wide. I found him on Gumtree. I got tyres for my ride-on mower for him. I've also got a stack of new mower tyres, can't recall the size at present, I will check tomorrow. Possibly the big problem is you can often buy a complete wheel with tyre and tube for the same price as just a tyre. https://www.minidiggerwa.com.au/

I like Jackie, rough as guts, but her heart's in the right place, and she comes out with some spot-on assessments.

My brothers 85 in September, and he's still going just fine. He's had a major prostate operation, and had a knee reconstruction, in the last 12-18 mths, and he reckons he's better now, than he was 15 years ago. Meantimes, I'm watching associates, former employees and former clients drop off the perch in their 60's and early 70's! I just turned 76, and I've still got 10 solid years of shed building and machinery restoration work in front of me! I can't possibly depart now, or anytime soon! 😄

Trump thrives on all the lightweight stuff, he's as shallow as a birdbath in midsummer. He's a BS-artist of the highest level, has zero credibility as regards anything he says or promises ("I will end the Ukraine War on Day One"), totally reverses decisions in breathtakingly rapid time, is totally consumed by his own opinions, and is easily influenced or changes direction merely by stroking his ego. But by far, the most frightening part of Trumps personality is the way he worships wealth and uses the Presidency as a simple extension of his business aims. His promotion of cryptocurrency (the favourite haunt of drug syndicates and global crime gangs) and his constant massaging of the uber-wealthy, should be ringing alarm bells all through the U.S. Govt and legal circles. Trump dinners with billionaires - https://www.wired.com/story/people-paying-millions-donald-trump-mar-a-lago/ But no-one does anything about it, because he also thrives on bullying, abuse and threatening behaviour that is exacerbated by the massive power he wields. His use of "executive orders" is frightening, he's found he can use "executive orders" to do anything he wants, and uses them to bypass all the normal Governmental controls. In times past, Presidential executive orders were rarely used, and only in extreme cases of urgent and critical decision-making. Roosevelt was the only other big user of executive orders, but Roosevelt was a humanitarian individual and did what was needed to assist his fellow Americans. Roosevelt only used the majority of his executive orders during the Great Depression and during WW2, periods that did require urgent and major decisions.

I was under the impression, Chump wanted Greenland for it's reputed reserves of rare earth minerals?? But here we have Europeans searching for anorthosite? Despite myself being a former miner and reasonably cluey on minerals, I've never heard of anorthosite - but a little Googling shows the Europeans regard it as the Holy Grail for a waste-free source of Alumina, Silica and Calcium Oxide - with all three minerals being in demand. The apparent beauty of anorthosite is its ability to supply a good amount of alumina with no environmentally-unfriendly waste product, as current bauxite mining for alumina does. We mine a lot of bauxite here in Western Australia for alumina, and the waste product from bauxite processing is a toxic red mud with corrosive high alkalinity, and containing dangerous levels of heavy metals. The red mud is currently stored in large tailings dams and no-one has found a use for it, nor can it be successfully re-processed to produce anything economically. In another twist, the Appalachian Mts contain large reserves of anorthosite!

The problem with the COVID lockdown in the Eastern States was the arbitrary and uncontrollable systems of selection and enforcement. The stories abound of unfairness and stupidity amongst the lockdowns rules and regulations. Myself and SWMBO were locked up 3 times for 14 days at a time between 2020 and 2022, each time for a fortnight, simply because we had been in the vicinity of COVID carriers. We never had any infection each time we were locked up. The worst was being locked up over Christmas and New Year 2021/22. It totally ruined our Christmas and NY. We'd gone to the Gold Coast in early Dec 2021 to have an early Christmas with SWMBO's son and wife. But a major outbreak that started in NSW and which was spreading to QLD alarmed us, and W.A. went into lockdown from Dec 20th. Our return flight for Dec 28th was cancelled due to the number of flight cancellations - so we rebooked on a flight on Dec 18th, and just made it home, as the State locked down. BUT - there were 2 travellers, 8 seats behind us on the aircraft, who DID have COVID - despite QLD supposedly being free of COVID at that time. Obviously, they carried it from NSW. Neither of us got COVID during the lockdowns, or during the main period of COVID - but we got COVID when we travelled to the Gold Coast in April 2023, to visit SWMBO's son and wife. This was well after lockdowns ended - and neither of us have any idea of where we contracted it from. It was obviously a public venue we attended, and we suspect it was Robina Shopping Centre.