The Hanson Adventure Page!!  This is a freeform section of stories, latest adventures, and possible bad ideas.  
As this grows I will create an index so you do not have to scroll forever.  Enjoy!!

Adventures Page 2

October 26, 2010:  We have been doing a huge amount of work around here and I have been mostly updating on the facebook group.  I thought it was time to add a MEGA UPDATE though.  The Porsche is near complete and you can see the Porsche section for that.  I am currently painting a 1957 Harley Hummer for a customer.  Once painted I should be able to put that together.  Meanwhile there is a BSA M20 WW2 motorcycle to finish, and lord only knows how many WW2 Jeeps.  

On top of all that I received a call a couple weeks ago from good friend Bill Max, and found that he had purchased a Jeep junkyard two hours south of him in Virginia.  So, I have been rescuing that with help from Izzy, Julian, Bobby, and whatever other poor soul wanders by.  1,000 plus miles of driving so far.  Enjoy the pictures below.  And keep reading below that for more!

Of course these pictures only show a small portion of the mass of parts we have hauled.  Izzy kept me sane and awake on the second run.  A fellow who lived by the pile o' Jeeps used his front end loader to stack them on the trailer.  At home Julian, Bobby and I used brute force, gravity, and possibly some bad ideas to unload the Jeeps and parts.  I rested for a couple of days and then decided to put another Jeep together.  The second 1943 GPW was painted an odd seafoam green, so it was easy to scour the parts pile and find all of its bolts and bits.  See the pictures below, I built it up in two hours.  If only I had an engine for it!

 

May 16, 2010:  While I continue to work on customer projects and the Porsche I have been entertaining myself with some experiments.  I found an extremely battered early 1950's Western Flyer in Bill and Nancy's one room schoolhouse.  I brought it home to restore it, and ended up motorizing it with a modern Mitsubishi friction drive set-up.  During this time I also put a low bid in on an antique bicycle motor on ebay.  The motor is a Travis made between 1948 ad 1950.  I was very surprised when I won the Travis motor.  Thus another bicycle came into the picture for the Travis to run on.  I mounted the Travis motor on a 1930's Shelby bicycle.  As the Shelby has a spring front fork (which makes it very comfortable to ride) I had to manufacture a special mount for the Travis.  Within 24 hours of the Shelby's arrival the bicycle was rebuilt and the engine mounted.

    In the history of not so bright things I have done are such incidents as starting the Merlin motorcycle without connecting the brakes.  The motorized bikes are proving a menace to life and limb.  My friend Shannon broke her leg trying out the Western Flyer model.   Motor plus weird coaster brakes was not a good combination.  After mounting the Travis motor I almost had an incident.  I squirted oil into the cylinder to lubricate it.  I then engaged the motor on the wheel and rolled down the hill to turn the motor over.  Oddly, the motor fired off on the lightweight oil.  So, being the "genius" that I am, I poured a thimble of gas in the cylinder to see what would happen.

    Well, the result was that the Travis fired up and ran!!  I was excited until I realized I had not installed the throttle so the engine was doing its own thing with no human control....  I steered away from the downhill and the little bugger picked up speed on the level for a couple moments until it ran out of gas.   Thrilling but a little scary.  And once again, the coaster brakes only enhanced the feeling of impending doom.   Enjoy the pictures below.  There will soon be a section on motorized Bicycles.

April 25, 2010: I realized I have been going alot of places, but have not posted for a bit.  So, yes, I am alive:) Busy month with too many things going on.  First update and pictures are below.  At the end of March I traveled down to the Northern Neck of Virginia to help my friends, Bill and Nancy, clear out their one-room schoolhouse.  The old Pt. Isabel School, closed in 1929.  Pictures of that and some of what we found will be in the next update in a week or so.  While down there Bill and I headed over to visit his mechanic who Bill has restoring his line of Military vehicles and generators.  Jim was a truck mechanic and now is working for himself doing restorations.  There were beautiful tractors, Jeeps, and Dodge M37's that were military retired and then used as Brush trucks.  Jim even gave me a little Briggs and Stratton engine to take home.  It runs nice and is cute:)  Enjoy the pictures.

March 28, 2010:  It is spring break for my school system so I am using the week to work on projects with friends, and put more time into the Porsche.  All in all, things are happy at Hanson Hill:)  A couple weeks ago I had some real adventures delivering Hugo the Electropolitan to Briarcliff H.S. in New York.  When I was in the area of Briarcliff I became very lost and ended up pulling over in a Goodwill parking lot in Elmsford.  This was either insane luck, or proof that God is watching over us.  I am beginning to think the latter. When I pulled into the parking lot a fellow immediately pulled in after me.  He asked what year the car was.  As we talked I found out that he had just dropped the engine for his Metropolitan at a local repair shop.    

    I then explained I was lost, and this fellow called Pete, owner of the repairshop.  Pete came over with his mechanic, Mike, and we all chatted and took photos.  It turned out that Pete has a nice 1959 Met that he and Mike restored.  So, after a group photo by Hugo I noticed that the normally white trailer wheel was black, and that the bearings were hanging out.  Verrrry baaad.  I followed the first fellow over to Pete's repairshop.  Pete owns Autobahn towing in Elmsford, I did not expect such a big and immaculate facility.  Mike backed my truck and trailer into their main bay and got to work assessing the disaster.  Pete showed me his 1959 Met, and then we hit the road to find parts for the trailer as things were pretty badly mauled.

    On the road Pete and I discussed car restoration, hot rodding bugs, and other such fun mechanical topics.  Pete and his guys were fantastic and made me feel like a member of the family.  By the end of the day Pete and Mike had rebuilt my trailer with parts they adapted to it, and did not charge me nearly what their time and efforts were worth.  Plus I also was able to see more of Pete's projects as he has a Ford Skyliner, and a 1930's Chevy Hotrod he is working on back in his body shop.  What could have been a disaster turned out to be a good day with great people.  Hugo arrived at Briarcliff in the evening thanks to the folks at Autobahn fixing my trailer, and the kids at Briarcliff put on a great show and really enjoyed Hugo:)

March 19, 2010:  Things have been rough and very busy around here.  Alot of travel! Coming soon will be a big update about my adventures delivering Hugo the Electropolitan, and about the wonderful Metropolitan owners in NY who saved my trailer when it killed itself.  For the moment though please entertain yourself with the following items.  First up, a video my erstwhile apprentice took at the Rough and Tumble meet back in August.  A wonderful old engine chugging away:

Second, if you enjoy ancient machinery and ruins you will lose days of your life to the OPACITY website, click the photo below and enjoy.  I have been lost for hours so far in this photographer's adventures:)

 

March 6, 2010:  Time to catch up a bit.  Last weekend was full of adventures and this weekend has been exciting so far as well.  I spent last weekend in Nuttsville Virginia on the Northern Neck (yes, that is the name of the town:)  I stayed with my good friends Bill and Nancy.  I enjoyed seeing how their restoration of an old town center is going, relaxed while looking over the water from their house, had fun with the neighbors, and was allowed to play with military vehicles.

First I drove a 1968 Kaiser ambulance, then on Sunday I had a chance to drive a 1973 Kaiser deuce and  half turbo.  Below is the video of Bill driving us around.  Bill and Nancy have a great collection of military vehicles including some rare vehicles such as a CMP truck from WWII, a WWII Burma Jeep (very odd looking truck) and much more.  I hope to get them on the web soon.

After all the fun in Virginia I dropped in on St. Mary's City Maryland to see one of my graduates and explore the changes to the old city.  I graduated from St. Mary's College in 1997, and was married at the old 17th century city in 1998.  At that point there were only a few buildings including the brick statehouse.  Now there are many more buildings.  I included a couple shots of the old city below.  The chapel was built recently and is quite beautiful.   If you are interested in the colonists and settlement in the 1600's this place is now really worth the visit.

Besides all this I began welding work on the Porsche and patched a hole inside the car behind the passenger side door.  I hope the car will see the roads this summer:)  More later!

Bill with the 1968 Kaiser Ambulance	Sunset on the water at Bill and Nancy's
Tractors for sale on the way home	Chapel at St. Mary's
Me, just to give a sense of scale	Silhouette of one of the "new" buildings

 

Feb 26, 2010:  Hugo's former owner sent me a couple pictures of the Metropolitan Snowmobile below.  We could use it in the Mid Atlantic region right now.  In other news Dad and I rescued the 1955 Beetle from its snow mound and put it in Hugo's garage.  Hugo the Electropoliatn is spending the next month earning his money on stage:)  Hugo is in Pittsburgh for two weeks and then off to New York.

Feb 16, 2010:  First off, here is a link to a cool video by the pilots who fly over the WWI Battlefield in Pennsylvania: http://www.weekendwarbirds.com/gwaa/  open the link and then let the video fully load.  You can set it to full screen in the lower right.  This video is very well done and is really worth a watch!

For all of us trapped by the snow here are a couple more interesting shots.  The snow is slowly melting, though I am awaiting a front end loader to clear my driveway.  The shot of the skiis is an interesting story.  I had to make a custom cover for trailering Hugo the Hudson to theaters.  It turned out the tarp I wanted to restitch was in one of my barns and the snow was so deep I could not walk in it.  So, I dug out my cross country skiis and boots and worked my way from barn to barn until I found the tarp.  It was a somewhat scary experience in the pitch blackness, especially when I fell into a snowdrift.

Feb 8 & 10, 2010:  Well, we have experienced the second and third Snowpocalypse of this winter.  Over two feet of snow with more on the way this week.  It is so deep at this point that when I get a chance to dig a path to my barn I am going to make a pair of snowshoes just to get around my property.  Included below are some shots of Hanson Hill in the snow.  Enjoy!!

            ADVENTURES PAGE 2