News11

Hamburg Container Terminal with 12 cars and 4 containers - "afterwards we had champagne and a bit of time to relax after a hard finish". (Jost Hashoff)

Standing from left to right: Christian Police (F), Edith Boesch (CH), Claude Hermans (CH), Carolin and Jürgen Loos (D), Joachim Groesser (D), Sabine Mesli-Dinges (NL), friend of Carolin and Jürgen from Hamburg, Fritz-Peter Rabe (D).
Sitting from left to right: Jost Hashoff (D), Michael Mohr (D), Luk Derde (B), friend of Luk Derde.
Lying: Ales Matjaz (SLO)

Cheers Steve, and Anja,

You asked for a report on the Lollipop so here goes, It needed a Iot of work on rust, not in the chassis, thank god, so it meant removing all doors, windows, bonnet, boot and roof not to mention motor and gearbox. The worst was the windscreen frame which had to be removed by chiselling it out, this was slow and tedious, wiper arms and motor came off and dashboard, vent mechanism removed and wiring removed. But my biggest problem was finding a new frame. To cut it short, it came from a very good friend, overseas. It took a while but it pays to know people. We welded the new frame in cut out bits and pieces of rust in usual places migged them in with the help of my nephew Russell on the mig.

A smashed up bonnet was given to me by Bob Conley. We panelbeated this and it came out prettv good if I must say myself, so the. other bonnet is now for around town. The next big step was to beat it as much as possible and fill it, this I did then sprayed it. Before all this we took out the motor, gearbox and steering rack, the gearbox and the steering rack went to David Gries in Melbourne, the gearbox needed syncroes in first and second gears, the rack was also done, which works beautifully, after installation of course. The motor is purring like a kitten so it was now time to do more work on the extension boot made out of fibre glass from Ralph Hibble from W. A.. It has a tray so I cut a hole in it to take a dish and to be able to get under the tray. I have put the gas stove on the left with the gas bottle outside on the bumper bar. It is a copy of Ralph's car. I have also put the map of OZ on the bonnet the same as what I had on the DS. CB radio, temperature guage and the claxton horn of course had to go in. I am taking five 135 tyres to get us to Cairns and four 145 to go to Cape York and back. We have prepared all the camping equipment keeping the weight to 975kg as we were told. It certainly has been a lot of fun but the best will be meeting all our friends again and doing it.