Tuesday, Mar. 26, 2013, Jenner, CA.
4×4 1967 Chevy Van conversion and more
I’ve been noticing a lot of hits on my blog lately from people interested in van conversions. When I’m traveling, I get a lot of attention or at least my van gets a lot of attention. Horn honks, waves, both thumbs up, questions and people coming up to take photos of it. I’m ok with that, as it is a real good van for camping out and getting around in the boonies.
Van interior and TBI conversion.
Most of the information on this blog is not about the 4×4 conversion, but is about the van interior and TBI fuel injection conversion I recently did.
Only two of these vans around?
To my knowledge, there are only two of these conversion vans in existence. A friend of mine, Marty has the first one, a Chevy 1968, we did about twenty years ago or so. We used it a lot and later he got a girl friend, so I had to build my own. :O)
I found a 1967 van to convert.
I found a 1967 in fairly good shape and converted it. So I have Proto type II. The two vans are mostly almost the same, I did improve a few things on mine, but not much as far as the 4×4 goes. I did move the transfer case shifter from under the seat in his to up in front of the engine compartment on mine, which required I make a Jack shaft to change the shift direction.
Other than that, I think they are mostly the same.
More information on the 4×4 conversion is available.
Lucky for you guys that want to know something about the 4×4 conversion is the fact that a couple of weeks ago I was with Marty when I got an email from someone wanting conversion information. At that time, Marty informed me that he had a lot of info on his web site on the conversion that I didn’t know about, so there is some info on the 4×4 conversion. I haven’t read this info, but Marty writes fairly well, so it likely is good.
Here is his web address where you can get conversion info down near the bottom of the page.
http://www.sonic.net/tfoot/pigpen.htm
Now, on to kayaking in Jenner today.
I was up at my usual 9:30 am and off to kayak Jenner by ten thirty. It was a bit over cast, but the wind was only a breeze. Looked like it was going to be a nice day.
Two guys that really knew how to throw a lot of rocks.
The boat was in the water by eleven. I paddled across the river to Penny Island where I sat around for awhile. While I was there I noticed two older teenage guys start throwing rocks in the water back across the river at the boat launch.
Now, I don’t normally have anything against people throwing rocks in the water, but. They were taking big rocks off the trail ramp that leads down to the water, rocks I took two years to put there to keep the waves from washing out the ramp. Now, normally, I can stand to watch people throwing a few of them in, but these guys were real rambunksous. They were really throwing them in, including quite big ones to watch them splash. I watched for awhile, but could see they weren’t going to let up, so I paddled over there and pointed out what they were doing to them. They stopped, but didn’t have anything to say, not even a sorry. :O)
I paddled up the river.
From there, I paddled up the river about a half mile and just sat around and enjoyed the day.
I passed this white seal sunning on a log as you can see in the picture below. This guy follows me around a lot.
Lots of cormorants on the river right now.
Up the river there were a bunch of cormorants sunning on the shore. Lot’s of cormorants are in the area right now. The fact that they are just sitting there usually means they have full tummies, or they would be out fishing.
Below you can see some of these cormorants sunning on the shore.
It was a bit chilly and I needed to put another sweater on, so I went down to Penny Island and put ashore so it was easier to get the sweater on.
The monster eagle.
On the way down, I spotted a rather large bald headed eagle flying around on the backside of the island. He looked huge, about twenty or thirty foot wing span. :O) It wasn’t’ that I was hallucinating, but when there is moisture in the air, such as a fog mist or just misty, sometimes things get magnified a lot which makes things look rather large. If one didn’t know this, one might think they saw a monster.
Below is where I landed on Penny Island.
After I got my sweater on, I headed down the backside of Penny Island and headed down toward the rivers mouth where it meets the ocean.
A young eagle.
I spied this young bald headed eagle in the trees just about the River’s End Restaurant, as you can see below.
Seals and cormorants.
I continued on towards the river’s mouth where there were a bunch of seals and a bunch of cormorants.
Below is a picture of the river mouth area, looking out to the ocean. You can see a couple hundred seals on the shore and over a hundred cormorants on the water. The river’s mouth is wide open at this time.
I hung around the mouth area for about an hour taking it easy and just looking at things.
Below, you can see the view I had at the river’s mouth, looking back up the river.
About three thirty pm I was off the river and went home for a nap.
Had a nice day on the river.