Hello everyone,
I know I have been gone for a long time…again, but my life has unfortunately changed course. The first part is good the timing kind of sucked though, at least as far as the diesel swap was concerned. We bought a new house with 24 acres instead of 10 and it is a beautiful house and wonderful land. There are no out buildings but that is great because we can start fresh and do it right the first time because there were so many issues with our last place I constantly felt like I was in a Holmes on Holmes special. The part that kind of sucks is that I had just put a 10k lbs. car lift in my shop in anticipation of doing the diesel swap (I had enough welding while laying under the Rover when I did my long range tank…I still have burn scars lol). I also bought nearly everything to start doing that damn diesel swap.
Side note: if I am repeating some of my previous posts please bare with me, I am having memory issues and I am not really ready to go back through my thread to jog my memory because it would be too depressing right now.
So where was I…oh the house and the swap. Basically I finally got all the parts together, all the tools together, the car lift, and I was chomping at the bit to do it. Then I found a Disco(s) to add onto the list to give me all the time I would need to do the Classic diesel swap. Then this house popped up on the market and it was everything we had been looking for over the last couple years and…it was 200k BELOW our budget. We jumped on it, and thankfully we got it.
So….the vehicles would have to be put on hold for a little while while we were moving and having our outbuildings built. Well……..that was the grand plan…..
My 35th birthday comes in August and everything seems to going great! Even my families birthday curse didn’t get me!
Another side note: There is a coincidence/jokingly referred to as a curse….that on around one of our birthdays one of the males in my family ends up in the hospital for something. I held the record even before this year. I almost broke my hand on my 16th birthday. I had a traumatic brain injury around(memory is fuzzy on the specific day) my 18th birthday, I dislocated my hip at my 25th birthday party, etc….there are more but like I said I am having memory issues and can’t remember them at the moment. I think you get the picture though.
Ok, back to it then. So my birthday comes up and passes and I think I am in the clear, well…..the day after my birthday the lovely wife and I out on a fine Saturday morning; I had to do a quick job for work, so there was a freon tank in the car. We stop at the place I need to do the job at, I do the job and had barely gotten on the freeway, the get stuck in traffic waiting in a line of traffic.
We are there at the end of a long line of traffic sitting still. My wife and I are talking. In the middle of a sentence I hear “OH SHI….!!!!”, right then a vehicle(Honda Civic) slammed into back of our(her) brand new 2018 Honda CRV at 60+mph. No one died, my wife came out with I think only neck and back pain, I am not sure what the other driver suffered but she was able to get out of the car and sit down against the center divider; however, I didn’t fair quite as well. I bent the seat frame, snapped one of the legs on the headrest (and bent the other one), ripped the seat belt loose, and caved in the dashboard.
Oh yeah, and that freon tank….well, see we have dogs and no kids, which means the backseats are always down in the flat position. So that freon tank was launched forward at 60+ into 2 things. 1 was the headrest and the other was the base of my skull right where the top of my spinal cord attaches. Yeah it hurt really REALLY bad.
I kept the headrest because it saved my life. I am not sure how I wasn’t killed or turned into a quadriplegic, but I made it through alive and able to walk. I was definitely out of it for a little bit of time and couldn’t get out of the car immediately.
An ambulance ride, emergency room visit and a lot of scans later they found I had a concussion, whiplash, and something with one of the discs in my back that hurt like hell. Plus, knees and hip, and well…basically everything hurt like hell. I was released awhile later, and put on bedrest.
About a month and a half later I was back in the emergency because I almost died again…this time from internal bleeding from the meds I was being told to take. One surgery I have no memory off later and 4 or 5 days in the hospital and I was out again on bed rest….again…
I spent the next months anemic from blood loss and trying to survive and recuperate. I eventually healed kind of enough to go back to work on a trial basis. After 3 week’s and a couple of increases mistakes that caused injury to myself I had to go back on medical leave and now it looks like I am going to lose my job. Basically, I have Post Concussion Syndrome along with other physical issues, that are causing me lots of problems and make it so I can’t work.
Now, the crash is bad...really messed things up, but the timing…..oh the timing…I am not sure someone could F+*^ things up more if they had listened in on my life and found the most pivotal time to do the most damage and cause the most stress. Because, 2 days after the crash we received the keys to our brand new(new to us) house.
There we are with two houses, barely enough to support both, and the old one needed a bunch of renovation….and I was pretty much useless. Thankfully, family and friends came through and got the house done. Unfortunately, because I wasn’t able to help and get it ready in the summer window of peak house sales.
Anyway this story is too long as it is so I will try to wrap it up a little quicker. As of now, we are hurting financially, own two farms, I am out of commission work wise, not sure when I will recover or if I will recover fully, that lovely wife is busting her ass to support us(because I was the bread-winner), and I am having to sell a bunch of stuff to pay bills. Trust me there is way more stress and drama, but I will leave it out.
As I said awhile back, my life has changed course now. I am going to do everything I can to keep my classic and the diesel stuff but the Disco(s) are going to have to be sold as is a great many other things.
I am operating way below my normal capabilities right now and I am trying to get the most money for my stuff but I am kind of torn with the Discos, one is pretty nice but no mods. The other looks like ******** but has a TON of mods including a 300tdi with a custom r380 trans. I am not sure if I should just cut bait and sell it as is (it has a death wobble right now) or figure out someway to make 1 fantastic Disco out of 2 flawed Discos.
I will be honest, I have maybe $800 total including the price into the cleaner nicer one. I have about $12,750 into the other one. Do you guys think it would be worth it to build one out of the 2? It end up being pretty much a fully built Overlander with a clean low mileage body/interior/frame, and killer drivetrain with only 28k miles since being completely rebuilt. I keep going back and forth…what do you think the different scenarios would be worth?
I should mention I am currently between my old shop and now in a she with a couple conex boxes with my stuff crammed in them. So I am not in ideal shape to do the work nor do I have the ideal work area. It would still potentially doable if it could sell for enough to really make a difference.
I also have a set of complete 404 Unimog Axles with disc brake done on one of them and parts to do the other as well as the pinion conversions too. I am going back and forth on selling. They have been sitting out in front of my shop since the crash because I can’t move them so they have some surface rust but are otherwise in good shape. I paid a little over $4k for them so if anyone is interested on those let me know.
Anyway it has taken a lot out of me to write all this, but I have been putting it off for months. I figured I owed you guys an explanation for being gone so long when I was so close to doing the swap.
If I am capable of doing it later on down the road, or if I can manage to get enough friends together, then I promise I will post it here. I may do video updates though because I am having trouble with, memory, confusion, words, etc. So video would be easier for me to film and post. Over the past months I have been healing I have toyed around with starting a youtube channel…not sure about it, but maybe.
Anyway, I hope you all are doing well and had a wonderful new year. I will catch you all later.
Have a good one!
Jon
P.S.
Please forgive grammar and spelling errors I can’t bring myself to proofread this whole thing, it will just turn into a jumble in front of my eyes.
Also here are some pictures of the crash. It may not look like there is that much damage to the CRV but it was comprehensively totaled. the fact that it held up so well is a testament to Honda and the fact the other driver walked away is another testament to Honda. I am not sure my Classic or the Discos would be able to provide the same protection.
So, moving forward... 
