When I picked it up I drove it from the Gold Coast area to Brisbane where I stayed at my mates house for the weekend. On the Sunday I started to drive it back to Toowoomba. I had just got onto the rural part of the drive when a fairly ordinary sounding thud, followed by a quick succession of thud, thud, thud, thud, thud until I pulled over. I thought it might have been a wheel bearing or something. I got out to see smoke spewing out from the rear tyre. I started crapping the dacks as I envisaged my new car bursting into flames on the side of road with no fire extinguisher at hand. I started shaking the bottle of coke I had in a vain attempt to improvise. The, more than likely, “puff” of smoke dissipated. I had absolutely nothing with me in the way of tools (or knowledge to go with them for that matter) to see what was going on. I ended up ringing my brother who drove from the Gold Coast, hiring a car trailer on the way and towed it back to Toowoomba. A leisurely several hour round trip for him (what else are brother for..). Turns out one of the brake shoes threw a lining and was flapping around in the drum.
All I have really done is stainless sleeve the brake cylinders new linings on the shoes and new flexible lines. Unfortunately it doesn’t get out much at the moment. It hasn’t been driven for a few years so the brakes need freeing up again. The aim is to have it at the Nationals in Toowoomba next year. A couple of years ago I lived about 200m from City Golf Club where the diner is being held so I could have just rolled it down to the carpark.. It has a few other things to attend to that annoy me that I will also try to get to. Even with everything else that goes on at home I think I have a realistic timeframe to at least get the brakes sorted so I can trundle into town!
I still have the first FX ute I bought. It’s partially reassembled now (no repair work undertaken..) and has dropped several spots down the list. It will most likely get looked at as a car for the kids when they grow up, one is a toddler and the other is farm fresh. The first cab off the rank is an FJ van. Bit of a basket case but hard to find so it will do. It’s just a shell, so have a donor ute for it. I will start an engine rebuild for it soon to try to keep things ticking along. No idea how to rebuild a motor but the father in law is a vintage tractor nutter so he is going to assist when the inlaws turn up a couple of times a year.
A couple of pics for interest. It’s pretty hard to get a good photo with the limited space and lighting in the shed. Also some of the books etc if anyone is keeping a register of “the numbers”.
Cheers, Andrew
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nice, nice, nice 
Thanks for the posting. Welcome to the rough and tumble of the forum. You'll find there are some notorious and clever peeps here.
