New Englander

Mine is a typical small New England dairy bank barn. It was in tough shape when I bough the place with a falling down lean-to on the north side. The north side eventually blew out in a winter storm due to leakage where the roof of the lean-to joined the wall. I tore the lean-to down and began a multi year rebuild starting on the worst wall and working around to the next worst. All work single handed by me except some help from my FIL with a 50' beam and one of the posts that was difficult to set even though I set its mate successfully. Backhoe lift cylinder was sinking slowly and I just couldn't time it right. Finally had a crew of Guatemalans do the roof last fall. 19th century barn should last into the 22nd with a little maintenance. As it stands today: I bought a lot of lumber from a local sawyer: Lots of rot: Lots of fun post and beam work: Steel where making a repair and no way to do a proper mortise and tenon: Hardest working guys I've ever seen. There was no way I'd tackle a roof like this:

I like a K2500 long bed extended cab. I actually bought one on Ebay some years ago, an '03. It was in PA and I recognized the dealer's name from when I was based in PHL. All correspondence was good, If it wasn't as represented I could walk. I bought a cheap plane ticket, they picked me up at the airport, truck was as represented, and I drove it home. After it finally rotted out I was looking for another and they're rare as hen's teeth around me. They all have four doors and about a 4' useless bed. I lucked out and found a '13 locally that had hardly used and paid full list for it. It still has less than 60k on it. I had been looking at dealer lots in dry states while on the road but it seemed most had a quarter million miles on them. No rust/rot but pitted windshields and rough interiors. I guess if I hadn't found what I did locally I could have fixed one of those southern trucks up. One of our guys found a nice square body in Colorado and drove it to RI. Would have been cheaper to ship after breakdown repairs and fuel but he got a rust free truck.

The cylinder I made the spanner for was 6". Gland nut was flush thus the need for a pin spanner. Seals were not simple O rings and piston had wear bands too. It took a 1" impact wrench to get the nut off the piston. It laughed at my 1/2", a 3/4" wouldn't budge it. Bucket truck gave me the sinking feeling😁. One of the outriggers on that truck started leaking badly, so badly I finally put the foot in a cutoff end of a plastic 55 gallon drum to finish the job. Getting the cylinder out of the truck required cutting an access hole and a lot of bad words. I was so tired of it that I just brought the whole cylinder to the hydraulic shop where it cost me nearly 300 bucks to ransom it. The lift cylinder on my backhoe is bypassing but I don't use it much and don't anticipate using except for a small job where it'll probably work ok. That cylinder is probably O rings as the bucket cylinder was and a simple reseal. Bull work and I'm getting too old for that.

I made one for my bucket truck's lower boom cylinder. Trunion pins would not pull so I disassembled it in place. I made it out of half inch plate with grade 9 socket head screws for pins. It was a bear to get apart. I rested the boom against a tree so I could remove the cylinder piston, used a heavy ratchet strap to keep the spanner pins firmly engaged while using another strap on a long bar inserted in the pipe welded on the top of the spanner to keep a constant counter clockwise heavy tension on it. With that setup it still took a lot of 10lb sledge work to get the nut loose. Here's the top view with the pipe for a bar that I thought would give me enough leverage to simply unscrew the gland nut - wishful thinking. Pin side: Hammer persuasion marks:

I didn't know that could happen. I have a Detroit Fuel Pincher that puts fuel in the oil.t's a yard truck and not worth fixing.

Nice truck! Trying to find an extended cab long bed is the unicorn around here. All the new pickups have 4 doors and a bed big enough to load two trash cans. I'm going to have to run my '13 for a long time. 6.0 is tough on gas but I only drive around 8k/year. I can't recall the last time I saw a manual transmission PU.

Yeah, small, medium, large never worked for me. Dress or uniform shirts needed to have sleeve length, others in tall. Most of my casual shirts are LL Bean as they have a tall selection for most of their line. Edit: Carhart shirts have tall so I wear a lot of those.

Meth, take it if you love the following: Taking part in risky behaviors such as drunk driving or unprotected sex. Changes in behavior such as mood swings or increased aggression toward others. Impacts on sleep or experiencing insomnia. Cognitive/memory problems. Reduced appetite or not eating a balanced diet.

Modules all over vehicles now. They all talk with one another via a digital bus - CAN , LIN, etc. It may have had nothing to do with the problem but was pulling the bus down stopping communication maybe.

3812 should reduce it. I don't think there was any hardener back then. 3812: Used to be a cheap enamel reducer also used as a general clean up solvent. Well, it still does all those things but sure isn't cheap anymore. I was floored when I finally needed a new can. New paints don't use it so I generally used it as clean-up or when looking for a mild solvent to remove a stain or something.

Here's what's inside just to give you and idea of what you're up against. If you can't get the key to turn you can't get the lock cylinder out. Maybe if you remove the wheel you can at least see if the lock pin is seized and the problem. I suspect it's more likely the lock cylinder but???????

Does it feel like the key turns just a little bit before it won't? If so maybe the lock pin has jammed somehow. If not probably it's the lock cylinder itself and either the key is worn too much or a pin is cocked or jammed perhaps. Raking the tumblers as you have may be the answer or it's going to be a locksmith or drill it out. 50 year-old lock may just have given up.

Might be a shorted wire. Lift the sending unit wire off the terminal and see if the gauge goes to empty. EDIT: I mean off the gauge, not the sender. a common theme is low resistance is full, high resistance is empty thus an open circuit should read empty.

I suspect it's likely air-dry as a baking enamel would be sold to a body shop with an oven. Randolph makes airplane supplies like dope for fabric covered airplanes and polyurethane aircraft paint so they're still around if you want to try to contact them. They've been bought out by this company so may not know anything about sixty year old from the original manufacturer. https://www.conaircraft.com/randolphproducts

Trouble shooting now requires having the service data, a knowledge of how the system works, the tooling, and the skill. It requires a logical approach, not shotgunning parts. The Pep Boys "mechanics" may get away with throwing a part at your car that their code reader says is broken but on an expensive and complex machine that approach just isn't feasible. What ever happened to the Deere "right to repair" lawsuit that was in the news a few years back?

This is an example of what a master module with all the vehicle information on it could do. The transmission needs to know axle ratios, engine, other options , etc. Why can't the transmission have the the selection available and just be told what the particular vehicle has? Cost, probably? Ability to upgrade or fix problems that occur? Warranty issues? I replaced a TPMS module in my kid's BMW then had to pay a dealer to program it. Seemed stupid. How complicated can that system be? All it really needs to know, I think, is what are the normal pressures to be able to tell the car if out of range. Why can't the car tell it what pressure to alert on? I don't know exactly how that system works but it just can't be all that complicated. It receives the pressure from the wheel sensors and tells the car what they are.

Everything should be! Some of the avionics in the jets communicate with a master personality module which tells the replacement all it needs to know. Not everything works that way. A few years back I was uploading a new navigation database to one of our planes while on an overnight. Each plane has a dedicated laptop that is never allowed to connect to the internet. I was using that sitting on the galley counter and plugged in to a power outlet with a coax to the cockpit. It takes close to an hour to do the update of nav, terrain, and obstacles. I noticed the carpet needed a vacuum. I checked the laptop battery and it showed better than 90% so I felt confident unplugging it and plugging in the vacuum. Mistake!!!!!!!!!The laptop battery was junk and it died during the update and crashed the top level software. All the cockpit screens were blank and I felt sick. We had the discs onboard and I started an up load. it estimated over 12 hours and I figured I was spending the night. Once the upload started though the time started counting down fairly rapidly and my heart lightened as it was just verifying. A couple of hours later I was up and running. Lesson learned, new battery ordered. I would never do an update anyway unless there was an extra day before the next flight as early on it was a sometimes sketchy process. Later it became easy and reliable. As an A&P I could do the updates and our mechanics trained a couple of the tech savvy pilots how to do it. We had the FO audio panel fail enroute SFO to Moscow with a passenger pickup in London. Our mechanic managed to get a replacement shipped to London and emailed me instructions on how to get configuration info from one of the other audio panels to the new one to make it work. Meanwhile the right seat guy had to stretch his mic and headset cords to the third crewman's audio panel across from the jump seat. I changed the panel in Moscow. Back to plug n play. There's no reason that I know of that all the vehicle's details shouldn't be loaded on a master and the applicable software installed on each module. They should be able to talk to each other and set up to play. It probably would add to the cost of the machine but when talking the big money the machines cost and the cost of downtime.......

I beat the crap out of them and the Gortex sometimes gives up before they wear out. I change the insole to PowerStep Protech full length orthotics which completely eliminated my plantar fasciitis. They last the as long as the soles. Merrill boots and hiking shoes are amazingly comfortable right out of the box and always run true to size.

My wife turned me on to them. I used to wear Smart Wool but Darn Tough are way better.

I’ve been wearing Merrill Gortex hiking boots. They’re not really rugged but my feet stay dry.

There are different grades of Chinese rotors. If sold as premium by a name manufacturer then QC is probably very good. If bargain priced then maybe not so much. Pulsing pedal kind of points in that direction. Rock Auto lists rotors at many price points. I won't buy the economy ones. Try Seth's method. It may cure permanently or come back.

Yes, ballpark numbers. We would burn closer to 300 GPH going 560+ MPH. Slowing to long range cruise would improve MPG considerably, a tactic we'd use for 12 hour flights. LRC is mach .80 while normal cruise is mach .85. Plane would do .90 but the design was optimized at .85. The drag rise any faster than .85 was pretty bad and fuel burn would go up drastically. Maintenance costs per hour. Most everything is time calculated, brakes are landings charged, inspections can be hours or calendar, major dismantle the plane inspections, the C checks, are calendar. Passengers are amazed when they see the plane with engines, APU, flight controls, landing gear, windows, all inspection panels, and interior all removed. C check is many millions for a large corporate jet and usually when the plane is stripped and painted and interior re-ragged and refurbished. All the cabin transparencies (windows) get removed, inspected, measured, polished or replaced and reinstalled. It's about 3 months downtime every 8 years. Corrosion is often encountered and makes for some big repairs. Picking your cruise speed can become maintenance cost per hour v fuel costs. Go fast when fuel is cheap, slow a bit when it's expensive. Generally the sweet spot for us would be in the m.82-m.83 range where we'd fly when not in a hurry like a deadhead. Right now I bet there's a lot of conservation methods going on. Going slower than m.80 or LRC never panned out. Different planes are optimized for different speeds.

So I got curious and put Mr. Google to work and it would seem that most would agree with you, Michelin claiming considerable MPG improvement plus the weight savings. Those who don't like them are vicious in their hate. It would seem that a fleet operator seeing the MPG improvement would have the greatest gain. Some claim way better tire life, especially with Michelin. I've been a fan of Michelin for years so I'm not surprised they work for the big rigs too. Even our jets used Michelin. EDIT: In case anyone is wondering the M18902 Michelin Air H32X10.5R16.5 16Ply tires are $5000. each. Jets are expensive to operate!

I was unable to set the voltage on my Miller 252, it would just bounce around when I turned the knob. A little searching found that the control is an optical encoder - it senses the direction you're turning the knob and transmits the pulses to the circuit board. Miller wanted $80. , I think but had no stock, Ebay had one for $40. I took it off the circuit board, got the P/N and bought the exact one for, I think, $6. from an electronic supply store. Someone out there probably repairs the electronics for a lot cheaper than Miller new as the components are cheap. It's the know-how, manuals, and test equipment that's required. I suspect there's someone with all. Back when I had the avionics shop our techs would get deep in the circuitry. We had the manuals and test equipment, they had the knowledge.

Many pads suggest a break-in procedure. I have done it and ignored it and not really seen a difference in normal driving. Maybe it'll help. Here's one from Power Stop but most are similar: https://www.powerstop.com/resources/brake-pad-break-in-procedure/