The 8008 645

A Ute, in Australian parlance, means a light truck up to about the Ford F100 in size. It is short for Utility.

Probably, The planks were bolted to the chbuttis so that they protruded sideways just past where the wheel arch would-should have been. There were no sides. The modifier had removed the middle of the body and moved the back seat so that it became the drivers seat. The doors just fitted the opening nicely but I have no idea if they had been modified. The floor, under the driver's feet, was a couple of planks of wood with large gaps so that driving through a puddle at speed meant that the driver, and any pbuttengers, became thoroughly soaked.

The steering column lacked a nut, other than the driver, to hold the wheel in place so, when one of my mates asked if he could drive, I would just hand over the wheel. I actually scraped several palings off a fence one day as a result of the wheel coming off after I hit a bump in the drive.

Our side drive was about one and a half tennis courts in length and then curved to the left for another thirty yards ending up at a shed. This shed had a tap (faucet) in front of one of the supports. Originally it was about four feet from the ground to the tap. I must have crashed into it around a dozen times and knocked the tap off. When that happened one of my friends would head for the front gate to turn off the water, another would head to the back paddock to turn off the water from there while I grabbed the pipe vice and tap and die set, cut a new thread on the end of the pipe and screwed it back into place. A whistle would let the water monitors know it was OK to turn the water back on. Time elapsed was about five minutes from the car stopping to the water being back on. At least it was gal pipe not copper. Soldering copper would have taken forever.

The vehicle was never registered during the time I had it and I never drove it on the road. I later bought one and a half Whippets from someone two streets over for five pounds and, a little later, bought a two door sedan which was registered for twenty five pounds. I drove that on the roads for over four years in spite of its obnoxious habit of throwing number four big end at high speeds. (circa 50-60 mph) I used to carry a spare con-rod under the back seat to fix that problem. The reason for the spare rod becomes apparent when you realise that it did not use bearing shells. The rod had to be line-bored.

-- David Remove "farook" to reply At the bottom of the application where it says "sign here". I put "Sagittarius"