WEEKEND AT PAP'S

Went to my Brothers place today to check and replace that worn steering rack bush on the drivers side.

Unfortunately the steering rack bush is fine, but the inner steering rack end is worn out.

I've searched high and low, I can't find a replacement part. Well, I found a pair of inner rack ends with steering rack boots for AU $1300 over in Italy, look to be new old stock. But that's a little too much money for $200 worth of parts lol.

I helped a fellow Ferrari Chat member around 8 years ago to source inner rack ends for his 550 over in the US.

He posted up some measurements and I found a set of Ford Territory ones to suit and I purchased them and sent them over to him for around $150 with post from memory.

So there would be a set out there to suit the 348, I just need to find them.

I am going to search online with the measurements I have and I will also call some workshops down south that rebuild steering racks to see if they have anything on the shelf.

We don't have anyone here that rebuilds steering racks, so will have to call around like normal.

Car is still driveable, I noticed the rh inner rack end had movement in it when I replaced that broken lh steering rack bush in 2016 lol. If I checked the rh side back then, maybe I could have purchased a new pair of inner rack ends no worries lol.






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Forgot to mention, whichever little drunk Italian **** that fit that steering rack into my car at the Factory and saw that steering rack boot hose clamp there like that is still laughing about it 32 years later knowing that someone will have to attempt to take it off one day lol.

I spent an hour trying to get my Andre The Giant sized hands up into a small cavity to loosen that hose clamp because I couldn't get a screwdriver onto it.

I ended up taping a 6mm spanner onto a 10mm spanner, just so I could get the length in there from underneath to turn maybe 1/20th of a turn at a time. I then had to un-tape it, spin the spanner the other way and do it again, 1/20th of a turn, then re-tape spanner correct way etc etc.

Took forever before I loosened the clamp enough to spin it around so I could get a 1/4 rachet and 6mm socket in there. Even then, the sway bar was in the way and I still had to tape a 3/8 drive 10" long extension onto the 1/4 rachet to get the reach up in there to loosen that clamp to get that steering rack boot off.

I checked the worn inner rack end, then put it all back together with a zip-tie holding the back of the rack boot for now. Even trying to get my hands/fingers in there to pull tight a zip tie was near impossible, but I got it eventually.

When I replace the inner rack end one day I will refit a new hose clamp and I will have to place it back in that same spot as it's the only way I can get access to it. Using a new hose clamp it should not take as a long to refit. Even though it's still tight as hell to get in there.

I wish I had Greg's small, supple, strong hand to get in there to refit it.

These pics are after I moved that hose clamp, the head of the hose clamp was nearly right around touching the body which made me cry when I first saw it.




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18 months in Caboolture.

4 years to the day since I last drove it, did I tell you the seat belt barely fits me now.

A lot of things change in 4 years.

 

I'd take $40K if it's a quick cash sale tonight.

 

Thank you kindly IanB.

 

Off to work we go baby!


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Cheers mate, life is good.

 

Might have been the last time I drove the Ferrari to work this morning men.

9News Queensland on X: "#BREAKING: Glencore is set to announce the closure of the Mt Isa Mine tomorrow. @TimArvier9 #9News https://t.co/pkLfSerOp3" / X (twitter.com)



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We have meeting tomorrow at 8am, so will see what happens.

My Superintendent told us "don't stress, it's all good"

But they are told to sign non-disclosures etc, Nicole does it all the time when she goes to those big manager meetings etc

I'm not too worried, but yeah, maybe time to move on.

Kids and Nicole are going to Mackay 100% in January.

My babies leaving their Daddy for big school. So I will have to get my finger out and join them asap over there.

Ride it out at the dump for however many years and then move down the GC I reckon.

 

Cheers RB! Might have to.

 

Cheers mate, there was always going to be a rainbow at the end of my tunnel.

Just a matter of time and this might be the push I needed to get out now. I don't think so, I think it's all media hype, but we will see. The mines can't afford to pay the Wife and I out, but you never know lol.

The last time this happened was around 8 years ago and it A LOT of small businesses went bust because people closed their wallets and didn't spend any money

Took years to recover and I am getting the same feeling here now. I am one of many lucky (smart) ones that didn't spend $500K+ on a $200K house here back in the day lol

So I can walk away from my dump and be happy with whatever I get for it.

And yep, I started to downsize already this year, sold around $10K worth of Holden parts I never used and hoarded to re-sell.

Will dump around 25% of my ****, sell around 50% of my **** and take the last 25% with me to Mackay.

When I leave Mackay, that's when I will buy all new stuff to fit out the new house I build on the GC one day.

 

Well men, it's worse than we all thought.

They are definitely 100% shutting down all our operations here in the copper mine in July 2025.

We knew 10 years ago they would be shutting down deep copper where I work and all the work would be in the upper levels at X41, 15 level and above.

They have been mining 15L and above the last few years and we were told all the work would be there starting around 2025. Not too many job losses, just a few truck drivers and loader operators would be gone, but they would just move them onto George Fisher Mine or even to surface operators.

Now they are closing ALL of that and the copper concentrator also. A huge blow to the community. A lot of these small businesses will close and I just had a look and there are 220 homes for sale here, I expect that number to grow over the next 12 months as people try and sell out and get out while they can.

There are a lot of sad people around, myself included as I love what I do down the hole every day.

I mainly feel sorry for all those who moved here with their families and bought homes to start their mining careers. They will still slowly move people around and offer people other roles etc, they will try and retain as many people as they can they reckon.

But most will be out of a job, the mining/truck driver side of it. Tradesmen will still have plenty of work and we can move to the surface workshop and out to George Fisher Mine where my Brother works. So I will be ok if I want to stick around for a little bit.

They had a community meeting here last night, the media was here as was some of Anastasia Palascak's people along with the Glencore QLD top dogs to have a community discussion, but I never went. I would have missed half of it anyway because we were working.

They are talking redundancy packages and hopefully the Wife and I get one of those as that will be another $120K each in the hand on top of our payout figure.


Mount Isa Mines operational changes (glencore.com.au)