Historic vehicle?

One day, when I left the community center, I noticed a car with "Historic Vehicle" tags...

Since the plate indicates "77", I guessed it was a 1977 Toyota Camry. But... Carl and I were chatting about it, and I checked online, and Google says that Toyota introduced the first Camry in Japan in 82/83, and first in the US in 1983.  So... I don't know what the "77" on the plate means.

While I can't deny that it was in really great shape, it just doesn't seem "historic" to me! It did make me remember my 1984 Honda Accord, which I thought was a little luxury car at the time -- and it probably looked a lot like this!

I did more checking with Google, and the search indicated that a car is generally considered to be an antique if it is 45 years or older, though definitions vary by organization and state. The Antique Automobile club of America (AACA) defines them as 25 years or older for their club activities. Arizona defines a historic vehicle as being least 25 years old.

 

I went looking for pictures of my '84 Honda Accord, and evidently I did not take any when I first got it... but I found a couple of scanned images with the car in the picture...

 

The daughter of one of my friends, evidently planning to start driving!

My Honda Accord in the moving van when IBM was moving me from Virginia to Texas. I remember this so distinctly -- the movers arrived and I had read that you should be in your house to supervise. But, the head of the three guys that came let me know that I needed to weigh my car so they could appropriately charge me (actually IBM) for the weight of my goods being moved. So, I got sent off to a scale leaving them alone in my house packing it up. I remember I knew that it would be a while before I had access to my moved goods as I would be in IBM supplied housing for a couple of months, so I had lots of things packed in the car since I would be able to get it as soon as it got to Texas. When I got back from the weigh station, the movers had put almost everything from my house into the truck -- it was all tightly packed in the front of the moving truck. The head guy instructed me (me!) to drive my car up onto the truck!!! He directed me, but I was more than a little apprehensive as I had to accelerate to drive up those ramps, get the car onto the truck, but not go too far and crash in to all my worldly belongings! Thankfully I got it onto the truck and didn't destroy any of my belongings in the process (and, as far as I remember, the movers got everything well packed without my supervision!).

 

Back to historic vehicles... 

 

Carl and I got to discussing which are the oldest car models still in production... so we again asked Google, and, according to Diehl Auto, found that the Chevrolet Suburban  has been around the longest, being in production since 1935!!! (https://www.diehlauto.com/car-models-that-have-been-around-the-longest) It is interesting to see what vehicles are on that list!

Wisdom from the bulletin board

Someone here in the community leaves thoughts on the bulletin board near the mail room...

I hope they might make you grin!

More golf cart challenges

On New Years Eve, I was going to be volunteering for the morning shift at the Activity Office, and Carl was going to Stretch and Tone Exercise class, so we drove the golf cart up to the center. When Carl attempted to shift it into reverse, it would not go. It wouldn't go forward or backward. We tried many different things with no success. We finally tried putting it into "tow" mode to push it out of the driveway into a parking spot, so at least we would not be blocking traffic. Even that was challenging as, when we put it into "tow" mode, it would initially allow us to push it, but then it would put the brakes on. I would switch it from "tow" to "run" and back and it would stay in tow mode for about 2 seconds before braking. We just kept switching it back and forth until we got it into the parking space.

Later in the morning, Carl went back to the cart and tried various things -- eventually he got it to go forward, so he drove it to the RV lot and into the driveway -- he said he wasn't going to stop for anything because he was afraid it would stop again. Sure enough, after he parked in the driveway, he tried to shift it into reverse, and then forward, and again it would not move.

Our tenant in the casa, Al, works on golf carts at a golf course during the summer -- he came over and helped Carl do some debugging.

As they were testing various things, the results from the solenoid did not seem correct (it would not pass current through), so they decided that trying to replace it might be wise.

Unfortunately, replacing the solenoid did not resolve the problem...

Al did some additional research, and, from the symptoms, it seems that the controller might be a cause...

... so now, we're contemplating replacing the controller.

In the meantime, we were planning to go to Quartzsite for a week, and the golf cart is stuck in front of the motorhome. Unlike when it was stuck at the center, putting it into "tow" mode doesn't allow it to move at all. Carl was able to find another set of instructions to take the auto brake off, and he employed that, so we were able to push it onto the patio next to the RV lot. Further diagnosis and repair will wait until we return from Quartzsite.

Holiday lights

We had wanted to get the lights working on the golf cart so we could drive around our community and see the Christmas lights... so the evening after Carl finished the light project, we drove almost every street in our community to see the lights...

We only took one picture -- I think this was one of the blocks that won an award for their decorations this year. Once a block wins, they are not eligible to compete for the next two years -- which gives other blocks the opportunity to strut their stuff!

There are 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place awards given for block, corner lot, and regular lot. 

New lights for the golf cart

Since putting the lithium battery into the golf cart, the lights were not working -- the lights that came with it when we bought it were in pretty sad shape (foggy headlights, several LEDs were out on the brake/signal lights, and the reflecting chrome around the headlights was no longer reflecting). Carl got new lights and set about to replace them...

He had to get underneath covering mats and fenders to get to the wiring. In the process, he found that someone who had previously worked on the golf cart had connected a red wire to a black wire which had thrown him off when he was examining the wiring to figure out why the lights had not been working. He had thought that he might be able to re-use the existing wiring, but after finding that, decided to use all new wiring (that came with the new light kit).

You can also see in the floorboard of the cart that there is a lot of red dirt -- in the process of doing this project, he had become convinced that the golf cart was in a flood at some point in its life... makes us wonder what else we might encounter...

Front end removed and new wiring in place -- again, you can see the dirt / mud that was underneath all the parts of the cart.

He got the new lights installed and working -- hurrah!!! We had been avoiding driving it at night, and if we did drive it, we used a strong flashlight so others could see us. The community has enough lighting that we could see pretty well, and there isn't a lot of traffic after dark here. One evening, we noticed that the folks driving their golf cart behind us up to the community center were also lighting their way with a flashlight (and not as bright as ours was!) -- so either we started a trend, or we were following an already established trend!

Preparing for Quartzsite

We are planning to take Gracie out to the desert outside of Quartzsite, AZ to meet up with our Christian Fellowship Group for a rally in January...

... so I went up on the roof to clean the solar panels so we'd get as good solar gain as possible from them (the one with the yellow cloth on it is partially cleaned, so you can see how much dust was on them before I started.

I also cleaned the upper radius of the rig since the folks who washed it in Mexico were not able to get the radius done well with the slides out.

Thankfully it was a nice day, and not too warm to be in the sun!

Meals and meals...

Catching up on posting pictures I haven't posted yet...

We went out on Christmas Eve with friends to Coopers Hawk:

Carl got a yummy burger...

... I got delicious fish!

For Christmas Day, our friends Don and Linda invited us for lunch...

What a spread they provided! The food and the company were so great!

They also gave us the turkey carcass and some additional meat, we made turkey bone broth and then made delicious turkey noodle soup!