Old Blog: RIP - The "Beast"

 (Originally written in 2011)

The Beast coming back from QLD during the move to Melbourne. We did 1600km in 23 hours. The temperature was 47C during this stop.

Alas! The venerable 1989 model Ford Maverick (rebadged Nissan Patrol) is no more. After 488,000 km (a decent number of them off-road) it could do no more. The number of expensive jobs on the to-do list kept increasing, and with the LPG tank now out of date (and condemned) it simply wasn't worth it. I sold it to a mechanic in Sunshine for $650, but not before I removed the dual battery system and the CB radio.

I knew the sale had to be to a mechanic - most of the work that needed to be done was labour intensive:

• Front brake master cylinder frozen
• Steering bushes needed replacing
• Broken engine mount
• LPG out of date
• Fuel pump leaking oil
• Carburettor overhaul required
• High beam micro switch broken
• Windscreen washer motors shorted and fused
  

To get all this done would cost me about $3k to make a 21YO vehicle roadworthy. It was a tough call as over the last two years I've spent close to $7k keeping it on the road. If I had known what it would cost, I wouldn't have started down that road. However, one of the things that still nags me is the prospect that if I did spent the $3k, then there really wouldn't be anything else to go wrong. The Beast would be like the axe my grandfather had for fifty years: He only had to replace the head twice and the handle three times.

Work done over the past couple of years includes:

• New head (that was 3k alone)
• Rear axle and diff rebuild (also very expensive)
• Clutch master and slave cylinder replaced and relined. New clutch plate.
• Complete overhaul of disk and drum brakes. New Master cylinder.
• New radiator and several hoses replaced.
• Installed new calcium battery with 850CCA (a very expensive battery)
• Aircon re-gassed, hoses and compressor replaced.
• Power steering hoses replaced.
• Upgraded headlights from sealed to high luminance modular.
• New muffler.
  

This is the Beast crossing Coca Cola Creek on the Cooloola Coast near Noosa

To keep the costs down I did as much work as I can. The problem with that is five of my hours are worth about one of my mechanics - and I simply don't have that much time. Also, sometimes it is counterproductive. For example, I tried to do the power steering myself and ended up doing damage because I misread the Hane's manual on how to overhaul the power steering.

This comes to why I called the Maverick "The Beast". Working on it is a religious experience - actually, it's a taste of hell. I'm sure if Dante were to to do a rewrite, there would be a special section of hell where people would be forced to carry out repairs on the Beast for eternity.

In fact, whilst some people dream about their cars, I used to have nightmares over mine. Even replacing the spark plugs was difficult (not all of them, just plugs 3 & 4). It used a whopping 7.8 litres of oil - just try finding an oil pan big enough. And reaching the oil filter? I swear, the engineers who designed that engine must assume that people have five joints in their arms and eyes on the ends of their fingertips. There's a mixture of metric and imperial bolts and nuts in place and lots of little plastic "screwlets" that cannot be replaced and love to break if you look at them wrong way. There are replacement pipes and hoses that do not fit unless you either bend them or move something else.

Driving the beast is also an experience. It is seriously underpowered and felt more like a truck than anything else. It had Auntie Jack steering (it'll rip yer bloody arms off). The synchromesh stank so double-shuffling and pumping the clutch became a way of life, however if you held revs at exactly 1800 at the right speed for the gear you wanted you could pop it into gear smoothly without any clutch at all. I drove it around for a week without a clutch that way. On a dirt road it drifted like a rally car. The more you loaded it up, the better it handled. Driving back from QLD with the trailer on I was 4 tonne all up. It handled beautifully unless I had to brake quickly.
 

Warrego Highway coming out of Toowoomba at the top of the Toowoomba Range

This lead to one of my big scares and highlights a big problem with vehicles with rear-wheel drum brakes. Coming down the Toowoomba range with the four tonne load, I thought second gear would be sufficient. I was wrong. Unknown to me, the heavy load had blown the diff seals and saturated the rear drums with diff fluid. This made the rear drums useless. The trailer also had no brakes. I had brake fade by the third corner and had no option but to ride it out until the half-way flat. With the engine screaming at over 80km/h in second I hit the flat and stood on the brakes. I managed to slow it down to about 30km/h before they failed and pulled on the hand brake - which on the Beast is connected to a fifth brake attached on the diff. The hand brake pulled me up just 30m short of the next descent - smoke was pouring out of the front disks pads, the discs were glowing red and I was shaking like a leaf.

The gearing of the beast was also poor. The huge ratio gap between second and third was such that driving uphill with any decent load meant you either were going too fast or too slow. Fuel consumption was close to 20L/100km - hence the need for LPG.

In fact, the Beast never really seemed to be happy unless you were off road with a heavy load. The diff lock was manual and on low range you could really do some wonderful things with it. Once I told some Japanese students I would take them on a 4WD track, so I took them up Mt Kooralbyn. However it had been over a year since I'd driven the track and it had not been maintained. Also (presumably) no one else had been up there in that time. I was white-knuckled all they way up (and down). There were three-foot deep cracks in the track big enough to claim a wheel. On the ridge, the grass had overgrown the track to a height of four-feet and a sapling had grown in the middle of it. The kids loved the drive; but it scared the crap out of me.

Trying to get through the 2008 floods in the Beast

I once went on a youth camp with the boys in a state park outside of Bacchus Marsh. It rained considerably during the camp and the windy dirt roads became considerably soggy on the way back. This brought the drift speed all the way down to 30km/h. After about the fifth corner with a 45 degree drift and an idiotic smile on my face, the kids started saying "Dad! Really! You're embarrassing us!"

After I moved to Melbourne, I took a load of rubbish to the tip, but took a wrong turn with only a few minutes before closing time. As a result I had to take the dirt service road to the tip entrance. It was a good (but windy) dirt road with no corrugations, so I took the corners at speed and used the full width of the road including the verge. Kylie was with me and after the first corner she said "Did you just slide around that corner?"

I replied "It's called drifting."

"Should you be drifting in a 4wd?"

"That's not a problem. A 4WD is really like any other vehicle. Same basic rules apply."

"Should you drifting with a trailer on the back?"

(pause) "Probably not." I replied, and backed off the speed a littlle.

The worst gaf I made with the Beast was on the Cooloola Coast. Coming back, I mistimed the tides and had to drive with two wheels on wet and two on dry sand for a while. I pulled over at a good wide stretch and waited for the tide to turn. When it did, I drove back, but forgot to release the hand brake. By the time I realised, the damage was done and the brake began to seize. Fortunately, I made it back to the bitumen where I cooled my heels for a few hours until the tow truck turned up.

The Beast has now been replaced by a shiny Honda Odyssey. A 4WD it is not (which is disappointing), however it will sit large teenagers in the back row in comfort - something the Beast won't do. It should also be cheaper to run and (hopefully) maintain. Now I have to work out what to do with the CB and the dual battery system. I also need to fit a tow bar.

At the very least I will no longer have to constantly steer in one direction whilst driving and then steer in the opposite direction when braking.