A normal, everyday day in Minnaluna. Early sunlight bathing the side of the Fangle Mountains. Mid-July, so tropic's schedules were in full effect. It was barely eight o'clock in the morning, and the temperature had already hit 80F.
The mountainside town of Rainbow Falls had woken up early and was already on its way to full swing. On the large yard of the heavy vehicle and offroad towing and recovery company Heavy Liftin', it was busy as usual. Vehicles coming and going, people coming and going and walking around. By one of the doors of the largest building, the company's owner, the puma woman Florence Beaumont, smiling and talking into a large camera pointed at her by her personal camera woman, the raccoon woman Clara Clayton.
"Well, good morning everyone! It's a beautiful day today, even if it's only eight in the morning yet, and as you can see, we're right here in our yard, rather than on our way to a recovery. So why this video? Well, you see, we have a bit of a predicament. Walk along and have a look."
She walked across the yard, followed by Clara filming her. Over on the far right side, between several old semi-trailers and old shipping containers, several discarded vehicles were sitting. Clara panned over the one Florence was gesturing at; a 2023 Polaris RZR side by side that was pretty beat up; many of the plastic panels cracked and broken, the front right control arm sheared so the vehicle drooped to one side on the flat and de-beaded front right tire, lights cracked or missing, and some of the metal bars of the cage bent or tweaked.
"So, many of you can see what that is," Florence said, turning back to the camera. "For those of you who don't know what that is, let me enlighten you a bit. Most people would call this a Razer, because that's how you pronounce the R, Z, R name of this particular model, but that's more or less the same as calling every tissue a Kleenex, or calling any type of body filler Bondo. This actually is what is called a side by side, and while all Razers are side by sides, not all side by sides are Razers. Anyway, this is basically the next step, the evolvement of the ATVs and three- and four-wheelers we've come to know since about the eighties. Now, these are steadily becoming somewhat of a plague. They're relatively affordable, they're very popular, they're quite capable, and that is exactly the problem. Folks buy one of these, and think that makes them a capable off-roader. It doesn't. In my humble opinion, everyone wanting to pilot one of these things should take a test and get a license for it, same as you have to for a motorcycle. But as it stands currently, you can just buy one of these and rip around in it. Which makes our work extra busy, because when they break down or get damaged, either from misuse or ignorance, we get called out to recover them. Over the past year or two, this company here has gone from hardly seeing any of these on a recovery to having almost every other recovery being one of these. This one here," she gestured at the beat-up vehicle, "is one we recovered seven or so months ago and bought from the insurance company who wrote it off. Not to fix it, but as a reference. Because this here is in fact not the predicament I mentioned."
Leaning against the side of one of the old shipping containers, the puma woman made a prompting motion with a paw at the raccoon camera woman, who chortled softly and responded.
"But Florence, what then is the predicament you were talking about?"
"I'm glad you asked," Florence chortled as well. "See, ever since these things started to become popular, people have been able to take them everywhere they want to rip them around. Trails, offroad tracks, sand dunes, name it. Now lately, the Fangle Province has actually started recognizing that this was slowly becoming a problem, so they put into action a few plans they have been drawing up. See, back in the day, dirt bikes started spiking in popularity, and in response, the province laid out several trails and dirt tracks specifically meant to ride dirt bikes on. Same when a while later, ATVs started rising in popularity. And now they're starting on doing the same again for these things here; creating trails for these things to ride on. And that is the predicament we're beginning to find ourselves in as an offroad towing and recovery company."
She made the prompting gesture with her paw again, drawing another chortle from Clara behind the camera.
"Do tell us, Florence, what is this predicament?"
"Like I said, I'm glad you asked," Florence chortled again. "The predicament is that the side by side trails that are being laid out by the province are quite narrow. Too narrow for our regular vehicles and trailers. You may remember that we built the narrowest offroad recovery vehicle in the country several years ago, out of that little Suzuki Samurai Mini that we basically sliced in half lengthwise and narrowed down into a single-seater, along with a trailer we did the same thing to, but that one is way too narrow to recover these side by sides. We built that one to go down the dirt bike tracks to recover motorcycles. So now, we have to do something similar; we'll have to build another purpose-built offroad recovery vehicle, one that is capable of going down the trails, powerful enough to haul a trailer loaded with a disabled side by side, and narrow enough to actually fit down the trails. That is the reason for this video. Today, we're going to make a first start on a new project! Whoo, exciting times!"
"So what are the first things that need taking care of, Flo?" Clara asked from behind the camera.
"Well, we already know the basics," Florence smiled. "We're going to need a vehicle that is relatively small, with an as low as possible center of gravity so we can make it as narrow as we need it to be without running the risk of it being too top-heavy and wanting to tip over all the time. But are we going to build something from scratch, or are we going to modify an existing, operational vehicle? And if so, what kind of vehicle? That's what we're going to look at now. As many of you folks know, my late husband was a collector of Plymouth Valiant cars from every model year they were built in, and his whole collection is sitting here in our overflow yard. That'll be our first stop, to see if there's anything there that would be feasible for this project."
With Clara following and filming, Florence walked over to the back of the main yard and opened a chainlink gate covered with sheets of aluminium paneling. In the yard behind the covered chainlink fence and gate sat rows upon rows of classic passenger cars, all models of Plymouth Valiant from 1960 to 1976; two-doors, four-doors, sport coupes, sedans, hardtops, station wagons, everything. Most of them were complete, or as complete as could be expected, many had parts or panels missing, some were just body shells. They were parked by generation as well, and Florence walked straight to the rows holding the third and fourth generation models, from 1967 onwards. Those were only two- and four-door sedans and two-door hardtops, however, and the puma woman pretty much rejected them out of hand as being unsuitable.
Turning to the rows with the second generation models, she took a bit more time to assess several of the station wagon models, mainly the 1965 and '66 ones. There was a door-less body shell of a 1966 V-200 station wagon that held the puma woman's attention for more than a few moments.
"What do you think, Clara, would that work?" she asked the raccoon camera woman. "We could do pretty much what we did for the Rocker; build a frame from scratch, modify this body and plop it on there."
"I dunno, Flo," Clara said from behind the camera. "That would be an awful lot of work, because we wouldn't only have to narrow it, but we'd also have to slice off the rear part of the roof to basically make a pickup truck out of it if you want any kind of boom on there. And even then, it's still pretty high; even if you would put this on the smallest offroad tires you could find, it'd still be kinda top-heavy."
Florence nodded slowly, running a paw over her whiskers.
"I think you're right. But that still makes this little excursion a success, because now we know pretty much what we're looking for. So let's bring in the family to help us find a suitable base vehicle for the project!"
With a cheery wave of an arm, the puma woman led the way back out of the secondary yard, closed and locked the gate and walked into the largest of the garage buildings, the one holding five full bays. It took a little while of walking and asking around, but eventually Florence had both her daughters and her son sitting with her in a small office together with Clara, who was still filming the proceedings. Standing by a whiteboard, the puma woman illustrated the things she was telling her daughters Sonja and Marion and her son Thomas.
"Alright my kittycats, I have work for you to do. You know this new project we've been discussing, the new narrow recovery vehicle for the side by side trails. Clara and I have taken a look at my Valiant collection, and there's nothing there that's suitable, so we need a vehicle we can use for this."
"So what are we looking for, mom?" Marion, the youngest daughter, asked.
"Something low, and pretty long," Florence explained, scribbling some shapes on the whiteboard. "I need a decently medium to long wheelbase vehicle, preferably a passenger car-based pickup truck to keep the profile as low as possible so it won't get too top-heavy. Remember, we'll have to take a sizeable strip out of the middle of it to make it a good bit narrower."
"Does it have to be a runner?" Thomas asked.
"That would be nice, but it's not necessary," Florence shook her head with a smile. "We'll probably end up building a custom motor for it anyway."
Thomas nodded.
"Gasoline or diesel?"
"We'll see what will work best," Florence smiled. "It'll be mainly used on narrow trails all over these mountains, so there'll possibly, even probably, be a decent amount of rock-crawling it'll have to be capable of, plus it will have to be able to pull a trailer loaded with a side by side so it'll need some good torque for that; I'm leaning towards a small diesel motor, but it'll have to be the narrowest inline motor we can possibly find, and I'd rather it be six cylinders instead of four."
Marion piped up again.
"If we're gonna make it narrower, like the Sumai, is it gonna be a single-seater as well, or should more than one person be able to fit in it?"
"It would be handy if it could carry more than one person, but we'll have to see if we can get that figured out," Florence nodded.
"Is it gonna have a boom?" Sonja, the oldest daughter, asked.
"The initial plan is; yes, a small boom as well as winches," Florence nodded again.
"What's the price we're looking at?" Thomas wanted to know.
"Reasonable," Florence said with a light chortle. "The lower the better of course, because there'll already be a lot of money going into all the custom stuff we'll have to build."
"Ground-up build, or are we modifying something?" Sonja asked.
"Ground-up," Florence confirmed. "We'll do pretty much the same as what we did for the Rocker; custom frame built as close around a narrow inline motor as we can manage, articulated four-link suspension front and rear with limiting straps, rear steer, boom, winches, and on top of that we'll plop a narrowed body."
"Sounds like a fun project!" Sonja smiled.
"I'm sure it will be," Florence smiled. "So get out your phones or your laptops, guys, and start searching! Because first of all we will need an actual suitable vehicle as the base for this project."
With a few cheerful whoops and giggles, the three younger pumas took out their phones - or at least Thomas and Marion did, Sonja actually went and retrieved a laptop from another office. Florence herself sat behind a computer that was in the office, and Clara got them all some cold drinks after setting the camera on a tripod to keep filming, and sat down with her phone as well to help with the search.
Minute after minute passed by, mostly in silence. Every now and then, one of the younger pumas spoke up to have their mother come over to look at potential cars they had found for sale. Almost an hour later, Sonja drew everyone's attention with a quite loud "whoo!" from behind the laptop she was doing her searching on.
"Whoo what, sunshine?" Florence chortled.
Sonja looked up from her laptop with a quite broad smile.
"I think I just found a pretty perfect little gem, mom!"
"Talk to me, what are you looking at?" Florence smiled.
Sonja turned back to the screen of her laptop.
"Alright, I have an InterMarket ad here. Datsun seven-twenty crew-cab pickup truck. Nineteen eighty-three, right-hand drive, long wheelbase, four-wheel drive, diesel."
"How much?"
"Three hundred fifty bucks."
"So what's wrong with it?"
"The ad says; motor runs but ticks, taps and misfires, transmission and transfer case bad, missing gears or popping out of gear, frame good, body good, interior decent but needs refresh. There's some photos, and it looks pretty good, I can hardly see any rust. It's sitting on a trailer, so I can see the rockers and lower fenders quite alright, even though there's what looks like rock sliders on the sides."
"Hmmm. What about the trailer it's sitting on?"
"All the way at the bottom of the ad it says they're willing to negotiate a sale on the trailer as well."
"Where is it located?"
"Quite close by actually. Halfway down Overview Road."
"Gimme the number."
Sonja read out the telephone number stated in the advertisement so Florence could dial it directly. Only a short conversation later to confirm the vehicle was still available, the puma woman slid her phone back into her pocket and rose to her feet.
"Right, we have a plan," she smiled, pointing at her children one by one. "Marion, you're coming with me, princess, and bring a camera. Tom, Sonja, you two take a truck or a long trailer over to Steely Dan and pick up some box beams. You know the ones we used for the frame of the Rocker? Get ones that are one size smaller than those, two of ten meters long, one of six meters long, and several six meter lengths of five by five centimeter square tubing. Clara, you can go with them to film that. When you get back here before us, you can lay them out in Bay Five; we'll designate that the bay for this build. Put'em next to the lift though, because we'll need the lift to first disassemble the vehicle."
"Alright!" the three younger pumas replied cheerily.
All of them got up, and there was a flurry of activity for a moment or two. Clara took her camera off the tripod and readied it, the three younger pumas put their phones away and Marion trotted off to go find one of the smaller cameras on a short stick while Florence sat back down behind the computer for a moment or two to check something before following the others out of the office and into the yard. Clara and Thomas squeezed themselves into the cab of a Mauvelous Pink 1957 Scania-Vabis LS71 truck of which the load bed had been replaced by a very long rollback deck that Sonja got behind the wheel of, Marion used the camera she had grabbed to film her mother getting into a Mauvelous Pink 1972 Plymouth Valiant four-door sedan and backing up to a car trailer which she hooked to the tow hitch on the back of the car.
Getting into the passenger's seat, the youngest puma girl pointed the camera at her mother as Florence started driving off the yard.
"Well, we're on our way," she smiled at the camera. "In that little timelapse just now, you saw us scouting for a vehicle, and we've found a possible candidate. I have Marion with me right here, and we're off to have a look at the vehicle. We brought a trailer, because it's quite likely we'll end up buying the thing; it's a very good deal and a very good base for our project. We'll see y'all when we're there, and in the meantime, you can see how Sonja and Thomas stole my camera woman to go off and pick up a load of steel beams we'll be building the frame for this new vehicle out of. See y'all in a bit!"
Marion clipped the camera into a holder on the dashboard so it could film through the windshield and sat back in the seat while Florence calmly drove them to the southeastern outskirts of town.
Meanwhile, the other two younger pumas were being filmed by the raccoon woman as they drove the other way, down the ring road and over to the industrial site a bit further down to the south end of the city. As they were driving the very old Scania-Vabis truck, they were a bit squished in there, with Sonja behind the wheel, Clara in the passenger seat and a bit pressed up against the passenger door, and Thomas smooshed in the middle, leaning back a bit so he could talk into Clara's camera.
"So, this is a bit weird. Clara always goes with mom, but this time mom sent her along with us. I dunno why, it would have been much more comfy for all of us if Clara had gone with mom in the four-door Valiant sedan with a decent backseat, but instead here we are, squished into this truck like sardines in a tin."
"She's just making sure you kids have a responsible adult with you to keep you out of trouble," Clara chortled from behind the camera.
"So she gave us you?" Sonja giggled.
The shot was perfect, as it showed a dark gray-furred lower arm and paw with white fingers coming into view from the back and the side of the shot to give a playful swat against Sonja's ears. They all laughed, and Sonja shook her ears for a moment.
"Anyway, we're on our way to Steely Dan, mom told us to pick up some long-ass box beams that we'll be using to build the frame of our new special recovery vehicle out of. And look at that, here we are now."
She pulled the truck into a large yard, turned it around and backed it up near the corner of one of the larger buildings adorned with grungy letters cut out of aluminium paneling spelling out "Steely Dan, We buy, sell and salvage metal". They more or less tumbled out of the truck, took a moment to straighten themselves out, and stepped into the small addition to the large building marked 'Office', greeting a charcoal-gray wolf man sitting behind a desk.
"Well look who it is, it's the Beaumonts! Or some of them at least."
"Yep, we are back, Jack, to do it again," Thomas grinned.
The wolf man slow-clapped.
"It never gets old, does it? Except that it does. What can I do for you?"
"Mom sent us on a mission, Dan," Sonja smiled. "We're here to pick up a few long box beams and some square tubing."
"Well, that's what we do here," the wolf man, whose name was indeed Dan and not Jack, nodded, half-turning to a computer. "Do you have any sizes in mind?"
"Yes, you know those beams we picked up to build the Rocker?"
"Right, those would be the... lessee here... the twenty by twelve centimeter ones, one centimeter thickness. You need more of those?"
"No, we need ones that are one size smaller than those."
"That would be... fifteen by nine, seven millimeter thick. That what you're after?"
"If those are the first step down from those ones we used for the Rocker, then yes, that's what mom told us to get."
"Right. Well, we have those. What lengths do you need?"
"Two of ten meters long, and one of six meters long. And we also need a few sections of five by five centimeter square tubing, six meters long."
"Ten... times two... and six, we can do that. How many of the square tubes? Five, ten, fifteen? Twelve, three, seven?"
"Uhm... mom said several. I think we're gonna use them for cross-braces? And it's gonna be a narrow vehicle, so... heck, give us five. If it's not enough, we'll be back for more."
"Works for me." The wolf man did some typing and clicking on his computer, gave a final click of the mouse and got up from behind the desk. "Let's go put some load onto your truck, shall we?"
He led the way out of the office and over to the side of the large building. With several gestures, he directed Thomas to park the old truck parallel to one of the yards full of racks and pallets, and a russet-colored squirrel man with white patches in his fur driving a telehandler on the forks of which were two long sections of rectangular steel box beam, and one shorter section. Fortunately, the rollback deck that had been put onto the back of the old Scania-Vabis truck was a 30-footer; a bit over nine meters, so it had enough room for the ten meter long sections of box beam and they only hung over the edge a little bit.
With quite some loud clanking and thumping, the long beams were tipped off the forks of the telehandler onto the deck of the old truck. Shortly after, another squirrel man, with gray and black fur this time, walked over to the truck with five lengths of square tubing bouncing on one of his shoulders and put the tubes onto the deck of the truck as well. Cleverly, Thomas moved one of the long box beams to the side a bit so the lengths of square tubing could be placed in between the two long box beams together with the shorter box beam, which kept all of them securely in place as both pumas started strapping everything down tightly.
The way back to the Heavy Liftin' yard was just as uneventful and cramped as the way to the metal company had been. Only when it was time to unload the steel beams did things get a bit more interesting. Clara found herself a spot on one of the shipping containers near the back of the largest building, filming the proceedings from above as Thomas backed the long old rollback truck up to the fifth garage door and unstrapped the steel beams, and Sonja got into a small forklift inside the building and carefully stuck the tips of the forks into the open ends of the two 10-meter long beams to lift them just a bit. Thomas got into a telehandler and pulled up to the side of the truck, sliding the forks under the slightly lifted beams and carefully lifting them off the deck of the truck.
With the forks angled backwards, the puma boy left the machine where it was and hopped onto the deck of the truck. Sonja also did, helping her brother pick up the 6-meter long beam and lay it on the forks of the telehandler as well, then doing the same with the handful of square tubes. The old long rollback truck was slowly and carefully driven out of the way and parked back in its spot near the front of the yard, the forks of the telehandler were lowered all the way to the ground, and working together smoothly, the two younger pumas carried all the steel beams and square tubes into the building, laying them down next to one of the posts of the car lift in the fifth bay.
At the same time, during all that, the bright pink Plymouth Valiant pulling the car trailer moseyed its way onto one of the slightly winding mountain roads to the southeast of town. The inclines were not very steep there yet as it was on a part where the foothills up towards the mountainside leveled out, enough for a row of medium-sized, quite attractive houses to have been built along the side of the road, with a magnificent view on the Minna Forest to the south and over the Minna River to the southeast across the road. About halfway down, one of the driveways of one of the houses was much broader than usual, and to the side of it, quite near the front by the pedestrian pavement flanking the roadside, sat a trailer with on it a low, double-cab, kinda boxy passenger car-based pickup truck; a 1983 Datsun 720 in a somewhat faded bright yellow with a triple stripe in three tints of brown along the sides.
It was definitely quite high; even while sitting on the trailer, it was clear it was sitting on high, offroad-ish suspension, and while it had very basic steel 15" rims, they all had lockable hubs in the center and all-terrain tires mounted on them. On the front it sported a black plastic eggcrate-patterned grille with chrome strips on the top and bottom, large chrome letters spelling out Datsun in the middle, a similar badge of smaller orange letters saying 4WD in the lower left corner, double square headlights on either side and wraparound turnsignals on the front corners. Below that, a chrome bumper held horizontal rectangular turnsignals and daytime running lights, and a long rectangular opening in the middle over which a chrome license plate holder was bolted, holding the so very distinctive Rainbow Falls license plate in horizontal bands of rainbow colors. There were small rectangular mirrors mounted just behind the vent windows on the front doors, all doors had sunken chrome door handles and a chrome lock was below the handle on the right front door and the small fuel door just behind the right rear door, which also had a small badge saying "Diesel" on it. The chrome windshield wipers seemed to be pointing the wrong way, towards the left of the vehicle, because the steering wheel was on the right side. There was a little bit of rust, but it was just surface rust where paint had chipped away on the somewhat rippled and crumpled front valance below the front bumper, at the front edge of the hood, around the mounts of the mirrors and alongside a rubber bump strip running over the lower parts of the doors between the wheel wells and over the side of the bed. The bedsides had several tie-off hooks along the top, and vertical rectangular taillight units with just an orange square over a red rectangle, and units in the rear bumper similar to the turnsignal and daytime running light units in the front bumper, but with the lenses being half red and half white. Also along the bottoms of the doors ran lengths of round steel tubes with a number of short round crossbars, angled slightly upwards, which looked like they doubled as rock sliders as well as steps to get into the vehicle.
Florence pulled the Valiant into the driveway on the left side and parked. Both she and Marion got out, the puma girl filming her mother taking a few moments to walk around the trailer and the small pickup truck, running a paw over the body panels here and there and every now and then giving a nod of her head. Ringing the doorbell of the house brought out a black-furred bat-eared fox woman who shook paws with Florence and waved at Marion still filming the whole thing.
"Miss Jakobs? Florence Beaumont," Florence introduced herself, gesturing at Marion. "My youngest daughter Marion. Do you mind being on Youtube? She's filming for our Youtube channel."
"Not at all, I actually follow your channel," the bat-eared fox woman said with a smile. "So I was actually kinda a little bit surprised but quite thrilled you called me with interest for this little pocket pickup of mine. Might I ask what you want it for?"
"We need a new trail rig for the new side by side trails that are being constructed more and more," Florence smiled, letting go a light chortle. "So I hope there's not a whole lot of sentimental value to this vehicle, because if we buy it, we're gonna cut it up pretty good to make it at least a foot narrower."
"Narrower? Not shorter, you mean as in, lengthwise? From bumper to bumper, bringing the left and right doors closer together?"
"That's correct. All our recovery rigs are too wide for those new trails, and the super narrow one we built is only for recovering motorcycles, it's completely unsuitable for recovering side by sides so we need to build something new specifically for that kind of work."
"That'll be quite a project, whew. But it sounds very interesting, I'd actually kinda like to see that happen."
"No bad feelings about us cutting up your pocket pickup then," Florence chortled. "How long have you had it?"
The vulpine woman closed her eyes and ran a paw over her muzzle and whiskers.
"Twelve... no, thirteen years, just about. I bought it in Australia when I was vacationing there. I was part of a wheeling group back then and we did a special adventure expedition to drive from one side of the country to the other side, through all the territories."
"That sounds like an amazing adventure," Florence nodded. "How exactly did that work?"
"Well, we flew into Brisbane where we had our first meeting," the fox woman smiled. "The objective was to buy a cheap four wheel drive vehicle locally and drive it from there to the other side in a sort of large N-shape so we could hit every state or territory. This car actually came from Toowoomba, and as we started out in Queensland, we drove down into New South Wales, via Maitland, past Sydney and through Canberra, via Wodonga and Bendiga in Victoria, up to Adelaide in South Australia, and from there all the way up to the Northern territory, via Alice Springs and Tanami to Halls Creek in Western Australia, and from there down to Perth, and we'd fly back home from Perth. The whole challenge was to keep your vehicle in good enough shape to make it all the way, and if you made it to Perth in the vehicle you bought in Brisbane or surroundings, you'd get a trophy plaque."
"Wow, that's amazing!" Marion chimed in from behind her small camera.
"Yeah, now I kinda feel bad about buying this to cut it up," Florence nodded with a chortle. "You've been through a helluva adventure with this car here, that counts as plenty sentimental value to me. How long did that trip even take?"
"We did it in... six weeks? Six or seven, I can't quite remember. And we've been through some stuff, indeed, and she did make it all the way, but she's never been the same since," the bat-eared fox woman chortled. "After that expedition, I had grown attached enough to the car to keep it and have it shipped back home, but she just never really got over that huge cross-country trip."
"What have you been using it for once you were back here?"
"Just some recreational four-wheeling in the surroundings here. Mainly up to Rainbow Falls Lake and the springs of Rainbow Falls Lake, and a couple times I've taken it to the other side of the mountain to four-wheeling events by the Fangle Reservoir. And all of that really showed just how rugged I've ran her on that Australian adventure, because every time out, something broke, haha."
"Right, the ad mentioned some points of concern. What exactly is wrong with it?"
"For one, she's on her fifth transmission and like the eleventh transfer case, and they keep popping out of gear or out of low or high range. The engine is a diesel, so you can't really tell if it's knocking, but it definitely has some pretty severe lifter tick and valve float even when you're not pushing it too hard, and she smokes like a blue-hair on the penny slots, so the rings are probably going, again, plus she's had like a dozen head gaskets and the one currently in it might be going, too. She's had three fuel tanks, five exhaust changes and at least a dozen driveshafts, there's more patches in the floorboards than a patchwork quilt, and she's just..." The vulpine woman shrugged lightly. "Eh, she's old and tired, it's time to let her go. For all the money I've poured into her over the past dozen years, I could have bought a brand new Toyota Tundra, so it's also time to stop that, haha."
"Haha, yeah, as fun as these older vehicles can be, they can also quite quickly turn into bottomless money pits," Florence nodded. "Well, I'm not even gonna wheeler-dealer on this one, not after a story like that. You listed her for three-fifty, I'm gonna give you three-fifty for it. Heck, I'll give you six if you throw in the trailer, because we do actually also need a trailer to narrow up."
"I was willing to let the trailer go for a hundred, so that's certainly quite generous of you," the fox woman smiled. She held out a paw. "I'd say you just bought yourself a pocket pickup with trailer, miss Beaumont."
"Yay!" Marion cheered from behind her camera, causing both women to chortle.
The bat-eared fox woman walked back into the house to get the keys and paperwork to the small pickup, and Florence took another slow walk around the trailer with the vehicle sitting on it, leaning over here and there. Eventually, she stood back upright and scratched the back of her head for a moment, smiling at her youngest daughter.
"Go on and unhook the trailer and get me some ratchet straps from the trunk, princess, would you please? We can't daisy-chain these trailers together, so we'll have to load them onto each other."
"Okies, gimme a sec!" Marion nodded brightly.
She trotted over to the pink Valiant sedan and leaned through one of the rear doors to grab a tripod from the backseat, which she set up near the start of the driveway and clipped her camera onto so the proceedings were still being filmed. While she started lowering the trailer jack and undoing the safety chain and electrical connection of the trailer, the vulpine woman came back out of the house and handed Florence an envelope of paperwork and two sets of keys, which the puma woman traded for six brown-colored banknotes.
"There's a couple of old photographs in here as well," she said when giving Florence the envelope. "They're from that Australia trip, and they're doubles so you can keep them if you want."
"Oh, that's nice, we'll put them in a large collage frame and add some pictures from during our work of stripping and narrowing it, and some after it's all done and painted, that will make for a cute little story board," Florence smiled.
"I like that idea," the bat-eared vixen nodded with a smile as well. "And I'll be looking forward to seeing what you'll make out of this little truck."
"Keep an eye on our channel, there'll be videos on there following the whole build," Florence smiled with a light chortle. "And the first video will also have this conversation in it, so you can see yourself."
"Great, let me wave at the members of the four-wheeling group I'm currently in, I know most of them follow your channel as well," the vulpine woman chortled, smiling and waving at the camera on the tripod. "Hey guys! See, I sold the pocket pickup to Heavy Liftin', so you can all stop asking me what happened to it, haha!"
With cheery laughs, they shook paws again, and the vulpine woman helped Florence to strap the Datsun mini-truck to the trailer, as it was just sitting on there, using the ratchet straps Marion had handed her. The teenage puma girl meanwhile made sure the trailer behind the Valiant sedan was fully disconnected and pushed it a bit backwards. When the Datsun was secured, Florence got into the Valiant and turned it around, hooking the trailer with the Datsun to it and turning that around as well, then disconnecting it and hooking their own trailer to the Valiant again so she could back up to the rear end of the trailer holding the Datsun.
After that little dance, Florence used the winch to pull the trailer holding the Datsun onto her own trailer backwards and secured it in place with the chains and come-alongs on her trailer and some more ratchet straps. Marion retrieved her camera and the tripod and put it back on the rear seat of the Valiant, filming from the passenger's seat as Florence got behind the wheel of the car and waved at the vulpine woman again before driving off. That had all gone pretty smooth.
Back at the yard, Florence again had to do the little dance of musical trailers. She parked the Valiant near the large building, unloaded the trailer holding the Datsun from her own trailer, parked her own trailer in a roofed-over spot between two shipping containers, unhooked it, drove back over to the building and hooked the trailer with the Datsun back to the Valiant so she could turn it around and back it into the fifth bay in the large building. Clara filmed as Sonja and Thomas unstrapped the Datsun mini-truck and let it off the trailer with help from Florence, who in turn parked the purchased trailer in another roofed-over spot between two of the shipping containers sitting next to the building and marked it as a vehicle to be modified. All in all, they were still well in time for the start of the four-hour midday rest period that was mandated by the tropic's schedule during the hot Minnalunan summers.
A bit after three o'clock in the afternoon, everyone emerged from the nap rooms, stretching and rubbing paws over their faces. Most of the crew returned to their regular work, responding to incoming calls for help in twoes and threes and with some cameras, while Clara was joined by Susanne Merkeley, the brown-furred mouse woman who had dyed dark pine-green Siamese cat markings in her fur and who was the secondary main videographer of the company. The two of them filmed the family of four pumas who set the Datsun mini-truck onto the car lift, lifted it up a bit and started stripping it down completely.
Off came the wheels, the hood was removed as were the headlights, grille, front bumper and fascia and the front fenders. Sonja and Marion started taking out the entire interior; first the steps/rock sliders and all four of the doors, then the seats, interior panels, dome light and headliner, carpet, the gear shift handles, seatbelts, steering wheel and most of the dashboard. Marion cheerily kept a small plastic sandwich box aside to put in all the little unexpected prizes they found during the interior disassembly, such as receipts, loose change, old opened rolls of hard candy, several 10mm sockets and some other random small tools, business cards from garages with Australian addresses and more random stuff like that. At the same time, Florence and Thomas drained all the fluids, removed the radiator, AC condenser and transmission and oil cooler lines, disconnected the brakes, disconnected any and all hoses and lines and wires between the firewall and the engine, and after Florence had pulled out the engine and transmission in one lump and set it on a pallet to move it out of the way, Thomas removed all the last bits and pieces from the front end of the vehicle such as the windshield wipers, wiper motor, blower motor, the whole heater box and a few fuse blocks and relay holders.
Sonja helped him take out the windshield, and Florence waved at them as she returned from where she had put the pallet with the engine and transmission on it.
"Careful with the windshield and the back window, set them somewhere safe! We'll need them as templates for when we get custom-sized ones made."
"Gotcha, mom!" Thomas acknowledged.
They carefully carried the windshield over to a rack and set it down on an old blanket on one of the metal shelves, also wrapping the ends of the blanket over the top of the glass. Florence nodded and turned to Clara, who had walked over to her with the larger camera.
"Alright, that's been quite a timelapse, wasn't it?" she smiled, gesturing at the Datsun. "As you can see, we're only a few hours in and it's already most of the way stripped down. That's the beauty of working on it with the whole family; everyone works hard and we get a lot of work done in not too much time! So what is gonna happen from here? Well, there's still more that needs to come off; we're gonna continue until it's nothing but a bare shell. For some of it we'll have to lift it, but most of the work we'll still do while it's low down like this, because for one, it'll be easier to reach, and for another, it'll be much safer for removing the axles and such. So it'll be back to the timelapse, and I'll be right back with y'all when we're all done so we can check over the shell and see what we may need to do in rust repairs." She motioned at the brown-furred mouse woman. "Suse! Can you get some of your crew out of the editing room? I gotta go put them on a search for me."
The mouse woman gave a thumbs-up from behind her camera.
"No prob, Flo, back in a sec." She set her camera in a tripod and walked into one of the second-floor rooms, returning a few moments later with a handful of men and women. "Flo's got a job for you, folks!"
"That's right," the puma woman nodded with a chortle. "I need y'all to get behind your computers in that fancy room up there and scour the interwebs for me. Find me the narrowest six-in-line motor you can find. I don't care how old it is, I don't care what brand it is, all I care about is that it's as narrow as it can possibly be and that it's in decent condition. I would prefer a diesel motor, but if any of you come across a good suitable gasoline motor, that will do as well. It's gonna be sent out to get built, so don't worry about power ratings or anything. All I need is basically a good, suitable long-block with cylinder head as a base for a build that's as narrow as it can be." She grinned playfully. "Whoever finds the best one that I'll end up buying will get dibs on first driving the new project when it's done."
Everyone laughed and cheered and got back to the editing room while Susanne retrieved her camera from the tripod and Florence returned to the work on the Datsun. The rear bumper and taillights were removed, followed by the tailgate and then the entire bed was disconnected and lifted off so it could be set out of the way. That gave them a lot of access to remove the fuel tank, most of the exhaust system and disconnect and even remove the entire rear axle. They even almost were able to reach the transfer case from that position, but decided to leave that for when the vehicle could be lifted up. Still, as it was a four-wheel drive vehicle, the front axle was also a live axle so it was relatively easily disconnected and removed, along with the steering box, which in turn allowed them to take the full steering column out of the cab.
From there, the rest of the dashboard came out, wiring harnesses, and any and all insulation and sound deadening material that happened to be in place. The floor of the mini-truck was painted with some kind of textured, rubberized black paint, but it could still be seen it was indeed quite a patchwork of larger and smaller patches having been welded in over the years. When they finally came to lifting up the vehicle and got their first looks at the underneath of it, they could even see how some of the holes in the toe-boards at the very front had been covered with expanded metal, over which just a thin sheet of metal siding had been put on the inside of the cabin.
Removing the transfer case and the front part of the exhaust system went quick enough, any leftover metal brake lines and fuel lines were taken out, and the body mounts were simply cut because they were very worn out and rusty. While Sonja and Thomas worked on that, Florence went up to the editing room after a shout from one of the editors through the opened window overlooking the workshop that they had found an engine that ticked all the boxes she had specified. When she was back down in the workshop, the car lift was lowered down and lifted back up to lift the cabin off the frame - at which everyone present playfully cheered once the body and the frame of the mini-truck had been fully separated.
"Alright!" Florence smiled at the camera Clara was pointing at her. "I'll say it again; it's amazing with a large crew. I mean, just look at this! It's... a bit past closing time, almost twenty past eight in the evening, and these wonderful folks here stayed late to make sure we got this first part of the job finished. And what a job it was! During the morning, we scouted for a vehicle, found one, bought it and brought it to the shop, and during the afternoon and early evening, we completely took the thing apart, all the way down to the frame, and we even got everything off the frame. Now we can pull this old frame out of here, put the body on a jig, pull it off this lift, cut out the floorboards and weld a whole web of bracing to the inside. C'mon, follow me over here, folks." She walked over to the Bay 5 whiteboard, erased a few random silly doodles and notes and took one of the markers to start writing on the whiteboard. "So let's see here, we'll label this the Datsun Job, there. What will we need... front and rear axles, in the Dana seventy range. I want rear steer in this thing. Four-link back and front. Limiting straps. Transmission... unfortunately it'll have to be a good beefy automatic because we'll have to be able to lock it into park for winching. A real beefy transfer case. Front winch bumper we can modify, so a second-hand one, but a good second-hand one. Side winches, rear winch and a small boom with two lines. Airbags, air lockers and air steering. A double air compressor with tank for that. A portable air compressor, preferably one of those under-hood setups. A welder powered by the motor. Custom fuel cell. Storage boxes on either side if we can fit them. It'll have to have power everything and AC, that's just pure necessities out on the trails here, or any road for that matter. Two back seats if we can fit them, or a narrowed back bench, but there will only be one seat in the front because the driver will be more towards the middle. Hmmm... that may give us a little bit of room to play with up there for some custom little things, we'll have to figure that out as the build progresses to see what we'll have to work with. Custom front and rear glass as I mentioned, and of course a full cage. And we'll see what we do for a dash, whether we build a custom one or try to use some of the original stuff, which I would prefer just for aesthetics."
With a giggle, Sonja came in from the other side with a red marker to write "One Week" below Florence's list.
"And we only get a week to do it in!"
Florence grinned and crossed out the red words with her marker.
"Don't be silly, girl. We'll try and do it as quickly as we can, but we're gonna take our time to make sure we build all of it good and durable. But yeah, let's leave this list as it is right here for now, because it's already pretty long, and this has been a pretty long day. All of this will be for upcoming videos! For one, we first have to pick up that motor and have it fully built up, and we can't even do much else until that's done because we have to design and build the frame around it. Plus we have a lot of stuff to look for if we have it in stock or can scavenge it somewhere, and if not, we have a lot of stuff that needs to be ordered. So that's for tomorrow and onwards, folks! Tomorrow, I'll be picking up that motor we found and drop it off at Erika's Excellent Engines, let them know what I want so they can get started, and maybe we can at least get a start on building at least the stringers for the custom frame. Either way, it will be an exciting time here for a few weeks to come, something fun for us to work on in between all the recovery jobs, so keep your eyes out for all the upcoming videos, folks! And for now, I will bid you goodnight, because it's late and it's time we got all these people home and in bed for a good night's sleep. Thanks for watching!"
The puma woman gave a cheery wave at the camera. The cameras clicked off, lights were switched off and picked up, Clara and Susanne quickly went into the editing room to connect their cameras to a computer with several external hard drives and let all the files transfer. That was the last action of the day. Everyone went home and Florence locked up the shop.
Tomorrow would be another day. Video files were going to be edited into a smoothly flowing, if long, video. It was going to be quite an interesting video. And it was going to be quite an interesting project to create yet another custom-built new recovery rig for the company!
