So, ummm, I'm going to Seattle?? (Dajiban Content)

Russian Warship, Go Berkeley Yourself said:

There are stories. 

 

And photos.  

 

Hopefully when I get to my hotel room in Fargo.  If I don't pass out in the bed as soon as I get there. 

The Dajiban is near-perfect.  

Everything else went sideways. 

In reply to Stampie :

Yoink. 

In reply to Russian Warship, Go Berkeley Yourself :

Guessing on the "sideways"...

Did it have to do with the van door saying "official use only"?  Ha.

Russian Warship, Go Berkeley Yourself said:

Some day a real rain will come and wash all these bugs off my windshield.

 

 

I90 between Vantage and Moses Lake?

Does "sideways" mean:

- Overbooked hotels and nowhere to sleep

- Speeding ticket(s)

- Alcohol induced liver damage

- Life events happening back home while you're on I90

- weather adventures

Good luck and stay safe!

Nice. Love some threads devoted to Dodge Vans. Or Dajibans.

Good luck.

RandolphCarter said:

Does "sideways" mean:

 

- Overbooked hotels and nowhere to sleep

- Speeding ticket(s)

- Alcohol induced liver damage

- Life events happening back home while you're on I90

- weather adventures

 

Good luck and stay safe!

Or a combo meal of the above? Hope the trip goes well for you RWGBY!

Okay.

Got home last night about 5:30, talked to the neighbor "kid" with the RHD JDM and slept from 10pm until noon today, waking up for about an hour and a half midmorning. 

I will update here and there where I can between getting caught up restocking my booths for my vintage business, and straightening out some eBay stuff. 

Was just too exhausted, sleeping, or driving during the trip to try to post from my phone. Sometimes a combination of the three..

Mrs Warship usually takes care of booking where we stay when we do Epic Road trips while I drive.   Even though she didn't travel with me on this one, she still took care of lodging each night from home. 

While I was scrambling to figure out how to get across Seattle from SeaTac on a combination of light rail and buses, she found me this cool little blast from the past that was up in the area I needed to grab the Daji. 

She picked it on Bookings.com based on "reviews on cleanliness", and it didn't disappoint. 

I had planned to sleep in the Daji to save on money, but obviously had no Ban to sleep in the first night due to the airline running too late for me to miss the leg of the flight to SeaTac, thus landing in Seattle far too late to be able to grab my new-to-me USDMAF Dajiban. 

The thought of sleeping in an actual bed, with actual air conditioning and not have to worry about draining a car battery with my CPAP seemed like a way to simplify the trip and keep me well rested, though.  

Little did I know that would come back to bite me later...

birdmayne said:

Russian Warship, Go Berkeley Yourself said:

Some day a real rain will come and wash all these bugs off my windshield.

 

 

I90 between Vantage and Moses Lake?

I-94 in Western North Dakota 

Bugs? Cheap hotel? Bed bugs? 

The suspense is killing me. 

In reply to Slippery :

Me too......

I too would like to hear the rest of the story

You're killing me, man! Glad you're home safe though. 

Oh, hey there.


Where was I?   Oh yeah, still in Seattle (Lynwood)

The room was great, the bed was wonderful, yet I still woke up at 3AM.   I couldn't pick up the van until at least 7:30, and the motel office wouldn't open 'till 7AM.  (Gotta have my Free Continental Breakfast)


Was trying to figure out the logistics for picking up the van.  I didn't want to check out before picking up the van partially because I wasn't sure what it needed, and mostly because I didn't want to walk two miles with both of my carry on bags.   I had already walked at least three miles with them the day before, and I was getting really tired of my CPAP  case's shoulder strap constantly sliding off my shoulder.

It was about a 37 minute walk.  Hopefully it would be early enough that I wouldn't have to worry about the sun baking me too much, but I wasn't sure how many hills I was gong to encounter.

 

I arrived in about 35 minutes, give or take,  and as I walked into the "compound", I started to worry a bit about just strolling into what appeared to be a Medium Security Facility.   On foot, with a backpack.

But right as I got past the 10 foot tall vehicle gates and looked to the left, all of those concerns melted away.

THERE IT WAS 

It had been unused since COVID, and "prep" had been to check fluids, kinda hose it down, and remove the lettering.   (Bummer)  I have a lot of moss and lichens to remove.  

There are a couple dings/dents here and there on the lower body from poor driving and on two of the doors from ham handed drivers (or passengers) slamming their hands into the door instead of closing them correctly in the first place.  

And then......? 

:)

In reply to a_florida_man :

No "And Then"!!





You come back tomorrow.

Sorry to hear the word on the door have been removed.  Did they come off cleanly?  

For my Gov't Mule, they took the graphics off heavy handedly (gray primer exposed) before letting the truck go to auction.  I was then left with the quandary to either paint the doors and risk the door paint looking different from the rest of the truck.  Since the truck was never, not going to look commercial, my answer was $12 ($6 per side) of fake business logo attached to magnetic vinyl.  

In reply to John Welsh :

If you look closely, you can see the faint ghost of the lettering on the passenger door in this photo.   No paint damage, other than the typical paint failure of most Big 3 vehicles of this era.   It appears that the passenger side of the van faced the sun most of the time.






To everyone else-
I will update the thread to catch up some more later today, but posting to the forum with photos from my phone is a complicated, multi step process that takes quite a bit of time for each post.  And I want to get it right, while keeping it entertaining for my fellow GRMers, so please bear with me.

Whoo hoo.

When are you installing the hydro e brake for dajiban?

Just kiddin'

Thanks for the updates 

So, the van fired right up, and I checked fluids and  generally nosed around it, checking things out.

Going to need some interior work.   Kids are destructive.


 

To be fair, the seats don't bother me much, as I won't be using them.  But I will have to find those interior panels, and especially the vents for the rear heat and A/C.

The front seats will likely get swapped into one of my pickup trucks, as the only damage is to the back on the passenger side. The business end of the front seats look nearly unused.    I have plans to replace them in the Dajiban.