Delicable 得利卡癡

Installed the new skid plate set I got from Dream Works (夢工廠). I think the red looks good with the green.

Nice little Delica meetup with the guys from Dream Works and friends. #得利卡

Thanks to everyone who came out to the beach clean up yesterday. We got a pretty big haul of trash and recyclables from the San Zhan rivermouth to JiaWan beach. 1.5 km of beach cleaned!

Special thanks to Salt Lick 火車頭 道地美式烤肉屋 and Travel Charger Hostel Hualien x 花蓮旅充人文青年旅館 for hosting, and to Redpoint Brewing Company 紅點手工鮮釀啤酒 for supplying beer for the after party.

Travel Charger Hostel Hualien x 花蓮旅充人文青年旅館Redpoint Brewing Company 紅點手工鮮釀啤酒格林車隊

Autumn in Taiwan. The leaves don’t change colors, but the grass does.

Time for a little facelift.

A lot of road work needs to be done after the recent typhoons.

River on one side, Pacific Ocean on the other. Great place for a BBQ.

Rear differential locker is gonna be a game-changer. Can’t wait to try it out.

Some before and after pics of the interior.

Some before and after pics of the exterior.

First camping trip in the new Delica.

Let there be light! Red cedar ceiling is done, as is most of the electrical stuff. My friend Jimmy helped me hook up a multi source switch so that I can run the stereo and external lights off either the main battery or the auxiliary battery, for camping purposes. All the other lights, fans, chargers, etc. either run off the main battery or the auxiliary battery , via relay, depending on whether the van is running or not.

This is the second day in a row my safety triangle has been hit by a car. Today, this guy hit it and then sped off in his car, so I jumped on my motorbike and chased him down. He had stopped a few blocks up the road to check if there was any damage to his car, a souped-up Honda civic. When I confronted him I gave him three choices. Go buy a new one, give me NT$1000 (which is more then double the value of the triangle, or fight me over it. He went for the thousand dollar option but complained it was too much money. I told him to go buy one then and he said he didn’t want to waste his time. So he gave he the NT$1000 and then sped off at a completely dangerous speed. Taiwan has some of the worst drivers in the world.

I always considered myself a decent carpenter, but doing carpentry in a van is a lot harder than it looks. These two pieces of wood (each one made of three pieces of wood glued and nailed together) took me over two hours to make. The cedar ceiling with and electrical is almost done.

Let the fun begin.

No rain clouds over me today.

The master at work. Definitely the best 4x4 mechanic in Hualien. The word “impossible” (沒辦法) is not in Leo’s vocabulary. He literally customized my front steps to give me an extra 1.5 inches of clearance in 40 minutes, including welding and paint, after five different people told me “there’s no way”. 爬蟲類吉普車俱樂部【粉絲團】

https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZCnWgyzBY6t41bmx7?g_st=ic

Taiwan has some strange laws, and loopholes to get around them. You need to register a rack when you put it on your car and that rack has be exactly like the diagram that comes with the rack. You have to do this before you lift the car and put bigger tires on it, so my mechanic had the bright idea to put four metal rods sticking up an extra 15 cm on my rack so that when I went to get it registered, the car would be 235 cm high (the height it will be when it’s lifted with bigger tires). But, when I took the car to the DMV to get it registered, they noticed that the rack did not match the diagram, so I failed the inspection. The only other solution was to buy a new, cheap rack that was 15 cm taller, take off the rack I just put on, and put on this new rack that I’m going to use one time for one hour, go get the car inspected, bring it back, takeoff the rack I used to pass inspection, and then put my black rack back on, with, or without the extension rods my mechanic put on. This process took three days as we had to wait for the new rack to arrive. Luckily, it was pretty cheap and I can probably sell it online for a little bit less than what I bought it for. Finally, yesterday, it passed inspection, so now we’re moving on to raising the van and putting on the new tires. Stay tuned.

If you ever need some automotive upholstery done in Hualien, this is the place. Thanks! https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064064978775&mibextid=LQQJ4d

Best paint shop in Hualian city. 花蓮市最好的寵物店。

Paint is done. It came out a little lighter than I had hoped but it will have to do. Next stop, new tires and rims.

Two week and we’ll be on the road (or should I say, off-road).

I’m really happy with this color. Can’t wait to see it with all the flat black trim and bars.

Painting begins today!!! #得利卡