find any neat artifacts in your deli?

[marsgal42]

I too got an owner's manual, service history, and Shaken reports. They are thorough.

My current Rosie-san avatar is part of a scan from the maintenance section of the owner's manual. I love all the smiling dfferentials, sad turbochargers and sleepy batteries. Never figured out the evil-looking snowman in the section on starting the engine.

...laura

[coach]

My favorite is the smog monster that escapes from the exhaust pipe.
Some visuals for those who haven't had the joy of an original owners manual.
Sorry the quality isn't better.....

[Taynton]

I was lucky enough to find a complete set of Gnarly japanese winter tires barely used on the same rims as my summers! not legal here but im going to run them anyway, as i cant bring myself to dispose of them especialy when the only reason they are not legal here is they dont have load capacity marked on the sidewall!

[JMK]

I just replaced perfectly good rubber because I'm planning a trip to Vancouver Island. The reason is my understanding that if you are Kamploops and West of there, driving a RHD, then you will get nabbed. There's a post either here or on the IH8MUD forum about a guy getting ticketed going up Todd Mountain, which is the furthest east I've heard it happening. I was going to put my perfectly good but non DOT rubber on my Chevy pickup until I noticed my pickup was unfortunately 16" rims. Conventional wisdom seems to be if you run non DOT but otherwise good rubber, your best odds are doing it on a LHD vehicle.

[quadzilla]

I found a small army man, a little character key chain that looked like a smiling mushroom, some coins, a box of matches, a ski wax scraper, and what looked to be used tissue stuffed inside the wall near the right rear speaker. The matches still worked, the army man ended up in my boy's toy box, the ski-wax scraper was recycled, the coins are around somewhere, and the tissue was thrown away. Finally,the key chain was swallowed by my neighbours dog , and no, I didn't wait for him to poop it out.

[jwfchase]

Many instant food packets, assorted coins, business cards from something automotive? (there was a picture of a car, the rest in Japanese characters), many receipts, a small stuffed dog who survived my purging and now rides on the dash...

...and a sheet of wallet sized photos of a very serious looking 30ish Japanese man in a business suit glaring into the camera (I can only assume a former owner)

[FalcoColumbarius]

Two biscuits with a cat and a panda respectively, three CDs: One boy group; one with this Chinese girl singing in Japanese with an engrish refrain ("so you want to leave me", or something to that effect and when I showed it to Shogo at Japanoid his eyes rolled); the other I have not managed to play, it is just a plain CD with hand writing on it. Store receipts; a book slip; parking passes; a ski resort map; and lots of cigarette ends stuffed in both cabin ashtrays. The cockpit ashtray is full of little yellow beads that I think are air fresheners? I have kept them, perhaps they are a good luck thingy or something. I have yet to find coins. I have two manuals; the one with the pictures and one that looks more technical but is all in Japanese.

Falco.

[konadog]

Nothing anywhere near as interesting as some of the posts here, but I did make another discovery. After reading the post about seat-belts for the bench version jump seat I lifted the carpet searching for anchor points and found a 2006 Japanese newspaper tucked in there just behind the sliding door. The scary part is it was soaking wet No holes in the floor or mouldy carpets, or even wet carpets for that matter and no evidence of a leaky sliding door seal. I dried and aired the spot and will keep an eye there but I am hoping it was a case of someone leaving the slider open in the rain and using the paper to soak up the mess and forgetting to remove it. Mmmm...

[i(heart)delis]

i haven't found anything inadvertently left behind, but...

does anyone else have a clearly after-market set of switches bolted onto the centre console?

they have mystified me and all my passengers so far. there is a aluminum plate with two metal switches (that affect nothing when switched, i was all ready to get ejected from my seat but no dice), and beside each switch is a "gem"- one purple, one green....

jen

[mararmeisto]

i haven't found anything inadvertently left behind, but...

does anyone else have a clearly after-market set of switches bolted onto the centre console?

they have mystified me and all my passengers so far. there is a aluminum plate with two metal switches (that affect nothing when switched, i was all ready to get ejected from my seat but no dice), and beside each switch is a "gem"- one purple, one green....

jen

Pull up the centre console and see where the wires go (if anywhere).

Sounds like it may have been something like Quagmire has in his place: the music starts, the lights dim, the van lowers, a disco ball comes down out of the centre of the roof in the rear cabin, the bench flips over to become a bed...

[Green1]

basically with any aftermarket switch all you can do is trace the wires if it doesn't do anything obvious, there's a good chance that whatever the switches were connected to isn't even on the vehicle any more, but you may find something interesting. (I had an aftermarket switch under my dash that seemed to do nothing until I traced the wires and found air horns under the vehicle! I've since hooked them up properly )

[FalcoColumbarius]

Do you ever wonder about the life of your Delica when she lived in Japan? Perhaps ghost stories? Not many people sit in the cockpit of my van and I can be very fastidious about how I do things in the Miss Lil' Bitchi, but every so often I find finger prints on the lower parts of the windows, the kind that children might leave. I have also found finger prints on my rear view mirror. I would never adjust my mirror by touching the glass.... like someone bending the mirror to do their make-up in the passenger seat? Any similar stories?

Falco.

[Green1]

I am curious as to what my Delica did in Japan... When I bought the vehicle it had a trailer hitch on the front... but none on the back... seems odd to me, and I just can't figure out what they were using it for...

[JMK]

If I found a couple of spare switches that weren't being used I'd place one into service as an interrupt for the fuel supply as a secret anti theft switch.

Trailer hitch on the front: common for boat enthusiasts to move boats down the launch ramp, makes it much easier in fact to maneuver any kind of trailer into tight spots. We used to have hitches on the front of our work trucks for placing bear traps into tight spots in the woods for example. However, normally there should also be a hitch on the back to get the boat there! Sounds like your previous owner was a boating enthusiast perhaps, but there is still a mystery as to why no hitch on the back.

[Green1]

but there is still a mystery as to why no hitch on the back.

I have certainly seen people add front hitches for manoeuvring trailers, however I can't think of any reason why one would ever be doing that without having a need to also TOW said trailer, and there is no evidence there was ever a hitch on the back, no trailer wiring, and it has the original rear brush bar with the appropriate amount of wear to make it look like it was never removed...

I originally thought it might have been a work vehicle for shunting trailers around a yard or such, but it's a super-exceed which would seem awfully high spec for such a thing, and it had a TV in the back and such too... so that stuff indicates a personal vehicle...

oh well, I guess I'll never know for sure...