Car Accessorizing, PNG/Andrew Style

      So everywhere you go on this terrestrial sphere, you'll find people who lavish care and attention on their cars.  One of the most common ways that you can tell a person likes his or her car is by whether or not  they choose to accessorise it.  Accessories can be as simple as the classic flower bud vase that used to be popular in old VW's, to million dollar paint schemes and custom made wheels.  Extremely popular accessories would include fuzzy dice hanging from the rear view mirror, steering wheel covers, and bumper stickers. 

     In addition, each country and culture has it's own spin on what it considers to be "cool".  A taxi driver in Peru, for example, might have a seat cover made out of large wooden beads and a statue of the virgin Mary on the dash board.  Another in India might have a small representation of his favorite deity.  In the Southwestern USA, you might find miniature Native American dreamcatchers hanging from rear view mirrors.  In upper east Tennessee it's popular for kids to hang the tassle from their high school graduation caps there. 

      In PNG you'll often find cable ties attached to the windscreen wipers to make the wipers look like huge eyelashes.  Sometimes you'll see a set of deer antlers, (sometimes complete with skull), lashed to the bull bar with sturdy rubber straps.  I've also seen bull horns mounted this way.

       And sometimes, if you are lucky, you might see this:

    Yep!  Those are dead birds.  Not to worry, they have been carefully dried out so that they don't attract any vermin, and they should stay well preserved for quite a long time.  Lovely plumage, to be sure.

          And then there's me.  I did a little accessorising myself over the weekend--our shop rescue truck is down, so I decided to optimise my Land Rover for light rescue duty, (pulling people out of ditches, hauling small trailers, that sort of thing.)  So to that end, I installed a trailer hitch and the biggest clevis I've ever seen:

I made the mount for the ball and the attach point for the clevis out of pieces of scrap I found around the shop.  Don't worry about the 2 little bolts holding the trailer hitch on, there are much bigger bolts underneath, where you can't see them.  I also added a rear view mirror, since all the ones that were on there have been stolen over the years.  The new one is a motorcycle mirror that was given to me by a friend in Tennessee, (along with a bunch of other odd parts).  Here it is:

In this photo you can also see a couple of my other efforts at accessorsing--namely my custom built grille and the OOOOOOGAH horn that was given to me years ago by a friend who left.  One day I would still like to put a set of the early style narrow headlights in behind that grille.  That would be cool. I've got the parts, I just need to do it...

While I was under there working on the trailer hitch, I discovered that one of the U-bolts that holds the spring on on the right side was missing, (I assume it must have broken and pieces fell out), so I replaced it with an old one that I had.  I was puzzled as to why the U-bolt had broken, it was a new a couple of years ago, and from a reputable company.  In contrast, the one I put back in had been on there with an older set of springs I for many many years.  I plan to keep an eye on all the other new ones to see if they start breaking, too.