Jsdirt

I might take mine to the car wash this week. Maybe. It's almost pure white with road salt. Never oiled it this season either.

I threw a set of Firestones in mine. Didn't have to touch the spare. Fairly easy install - did it on the dirt floor in my barn in the middle of winter. I need to come up with a way to use the air compressor I already have to make them automatic fill - need to isolate the tank somehow. Hate to buy another compressor just for that, but that seems to be how they sell those. I ran the lines to shrader valves in the rear, next to the hitch.

Just had a great demonstration of that minutes ago. Did a t-stat on a '06 Impala, 3.9 - after I burped what seemed like 10k cubic feet of air out of the thing, the factory cluster gauge came up to the center, where it normally stays. Scan tool showed 170°. Drove it around, stopped, turned heat off and held it at 3k for a minute, then shut it down, and turned key back on. Hot soak got it up to 222° on the scan tool - the gauge had moved literally 1/16" from 170°! I'd prefer a little more accuracy than that on my dash gauges, that's for sure.

Whelp, just moved all the scrap metal out of the back of the useless turd I had in there for traction. Think I got 1.25 plowing seasons out of it. Wasn't expecting a driveline failure. Figured the frame would bust in 2 first. Tried plowing the 7" of snow we got yesterday - 4x4 failed immediately. FIGURES!! Got stuck everywhere. Then not 20 minutes later, I throw the clutch in to get ready to shift to reverse, and I hear PLINK! Pedal dropped like a rock. Friggin pile of crap!! Was fun while it lasted. Got it for free, and put $70 into it for a clutch line when I first got it. No loss, I guess. Should've sold it when it was useable and bought something better. Pretty sad when a 800cc ATV shows you up as a "truck" ...

Yeah I've seen a few different brands suffer the same fate. My Toro 828 Powershift is one of them - scraper is gone, & it's cutting into the sheet metal now. That one is a '88. I've been through that thing front to back - all new shafts, bushings, belts, fresh paint (done the right way), found some decent original tires on eBay, and just went through the transmission I also bought off eBay when the original one spit a bearing right out of the case. Was lucky to find one when I needed it at a reasonable price - was froze solid when I got it - full to the brim with water that froze in the delivery truck. On the original, someone had attempted to weld the bearing area, and failed, apparently. Got that Toro for free from my buddy - he left it outside unused for 8 years. She's all back to her former glory. Only thing I haven't touched is the engine, aside from the ritual carb clean, thanks to MA's crap gasoline. The bumper you saw is a '86 Grand Marquis. Bought that for the wife 14 years ago next month. She drives it 70 miles a day for 3 seasons a year. We've put over 170k on it so far. Doesn't burn a drop of oil, but has leaked since day one out the rear main, and timing cover. Reliable as a stone ax. I've done very little to this thing over the years. Love that car. Over 130k on the ball joints - did them in '05. The OEM starter just failed this year. 30 years! Last year I rebuilt the entire A/C system - that too was all OEM original. STILL on the original OEM fuel pump! If only my Silverado's pump would make it half that long ... Only thing I don't love about the car is the quirky idle (Multi-port F.I.) - it's perfect some days, then erratic as hell others - and the slushbox transmission. Slow to shift, and has a SUPER tall overdrive that lugs the engine on any hill under 48 MPH. Some day when the engine finally croaks, I'll do a long block, carb., and throw a built tranny in there. Will go another 30 years easy. Some pics of the Toro:

One of those hard-to-blend colors - my buddy was telling me about that. Said if you paint one section, it will stand out like a sore thumb to the other sections. That sucks. Paint costs have skyrocketed the past 8 years. 1032 - not much to see. Got it free - I wouldn't buy something that looked this bad, lol. It didn't run, and now it does - just needed a carb clean / tank flush, like the mower.

Wow, you did good there. My sapling incident didn't look as bad, but it still cost me $2,200 after all was said and done. A large chunk of that was having to go on the frame machine to straighten the box, and for bodywork & paint. Cost me over $400 in parts, just for the stupid small section of chrome "bumper" (a poor excuse for a bumper) and a bunch of braces, and some plastic. The the GMT900 was only 2 years old then, so parts costs were insane.

I had to laugh at your heater. Different world over there from the Northeast! It was 0.8°F this morning here. Got up to a whopping 18° for a high, briefly. I had my waste oil burner full bore for 7 hours straight just to get the barn up to 58° - that's over ONE MILLION BTU's. I'd get some torches going and persuade the parts back to where they should be. You might have to shim a few pieces here and there to get everything looking straight. I don't envy my buddy, who did that kind of work day in and day out for 15 years. I've done body repair work only 5 times ever, and my neighborhood could hear me cursing 2 miles out each time, LOL. I finally installed a new pressure regulator on my 15 year old (in a few months) Craftsman air compressor. Took it apart, and aside from being rusty, there was a busted E clip inside. I probably could've fixed it and kept it going another decade or 2. Installed the new one, and threw this one in a ziploc bag with the rest of my junk for spare parts down the road. Got this '60's or 70's Craftsman lawnmower running (thing is in MINT shape - just needs a good cleaning), and finished the Volvo - it needed the power steering belt tightened after the adjuster busted (rust), and I also had to put the 2 caps back on the shrader valves on the fuel line, and stuff the grommet back in place for the fuel pump wiring harness. For the p/s pump belt tension, I just loosened all the pivots, grabbed my 3' prybar and put a little tension on it, then hogged down the bolts. Fixed! Saved the guy $45 for a new adjuster. Also mickey-moused the front air dam so it wasn't dragging on the road anymore. Looks like someone drove through a snowbank at 40 with the thing. To finish it off, I scraped the remnants of a little convex mirror off the driver's side outside rearview mirror, entered the lock code & set some decent presets in the radio, and set the analog clock in the instrument panel to the correct time. Got quite a bit done today, despite the frigid temps. A rainbow for REAL men ...

I've been asking that question since the late 70's ...

WTF, unreal! Yesterday I installed a new master cylinder in my sister-in-law's '04 Olds Alero. Thing only has 63k, so I suspect the seals failed from all the years of sitting. Fairly easy job - took me an hour, mostly thanks to the CRAP lines included for bench bleeding. Friggin things were stiff as concrete! Every time I tried to bend them around to put them into the reservoir, they'd pop off the plastic port fittings. MAN was I getting pissed! Totally useless. Part of the problem was it was 15°F out there as I was doing all of this. Ended up giving up on those, and cut 2 lengths of my good Tygon C-210-A clear hose, and ran a zip-tie under the reservoir to hold them in position to bench bleed. What a joke! I had about a half pint of brake fluid all over the vice, floor, and everything close by. Sent her on her way just as the Autoparts International guy dropped off a fuel pump and strainer (that I didn't need) for that '95 940 wagon I've been working on. Jumped into that and had it running in a couple hours. After finishing that, I attempted to turn the rusty p/s pump belt adjuster, and snapped the 6mm x 100mm bolt in half. Grabbed one off my parts car's A/C compressor, and broke that one too attempting to straighten a bend in it without heat. Then I experienced a 37 MPH (according to my Davis weather station on the roof) wind gust that slammed the hood down on my head. Luckily I was wearing a hat, and the insulation was still intact under the hood. I could've fought Mike Tyson and won after the day I had! Strange failure of that fuel pump. Took me a bit of time to get there - at first I was convinced it was an electrical problem. Car would fire up, idle, and run perfectly every morning, but, at the first stop sign about a mile out, it would crap out and never start again the rest of the day. Poor guy spent close to $2k throwing parts at this thing trying to fix it. Did all the usual Volvo failure items: radio suppression relay, crank position sensor, fuel pump relay, etc.. - none of it fixed it. So I had it idling on the trailer here for almost 45 minutes - still running fine. So I got in and held the throttle at 3k for a minute or so to simulate driving, then slammed the throttle shut. Immediately I could hear cylinders dropping out one by one. To my surprise, my timing light was still flashing all the way until it stalled. Time to grab the fuel pressure gauge. Yep - 0 psi! BUT .. the pump was clearly running! Could hear it prime, and could hear it the whole time it would stall out. Really strange! Long story short, I yanked the pump and hooked it up to a battery in the driveway, and put the sock into a yogurt container full of acetone. Hooked to battery, the pump ran, but not a single drop came out! After tapping the ground wire to the battery, rapidly turning the pump off and on, it made a POP, then acetone shot 5' in the air. Plugged check valve! That was an odd one! Walbro pump too - those are normally pretty good. Guy said he had just changed this thing recently, which is why he completely avoided fuel system troubleshooting. Goes to show ... !!

Wonder if there's a problem in the electronics that's feeding too much voltage to the motor somehow? Don't see how that could be possible unless it was designed to run on less than normal battery voltage. That's about all that would cause a motor to fail, besides excessive heat (normally not an issue with fans, but a bad connection with high amperage can get REAL hot), or water intrusion. The other variable could be that they're just complete and utter chinese garbage ...

Hey little puppy! (I say that to all dogs regardless of age, in as high a pitched voice as I can - makes them all go absolutely bonkers, lol). That's gonna look sweet - I can tell already.

Par for the course today. They always find somewhere to cut corners. Brakes should be the LAST place to try and save a buck, but it's the 21st century - if a fraction of a tenth of a cent can be saved, they'll do it, regardless of the system. The S-series pickups and especially the Blazer/Jimmy/Bravada used to eat front brakes, and ball joints, at alarming rates.

I can't get those links to work, Ryan. They also chew through your pads faster. I've stayed with solid rotors with EBC Yellows - thing stops pretty damn good for a 6k lb. truck. I've got OEM GM shoes & drums in the rear, 2nd set in 88k miles. They're wearing a little funny though. The leading shoe is really thin, and the trailing shoe still hasn't worn in enough to use 100% of the friction surface. It's at about 75% now.

Yeah, it's crazy. Seems like everything across the board is just going up, and up, and up ... Definitely would be nice to be able to reload rimfire rounds. Could sit there and make thousands of them. I bought a Rock Crusher a while back - still haven't used it for the Marlin ammo yet. I think I bought everything I needed, and then got sidetracked with some tough jobs - haven't looked at the stuff in 4 years! I've also got a Hornady Lock N Load progressive press, with a case feeder. I can crank out pistol rounds with that like crazy. Think I hit close to 500 rounds an hour doing .45 ACP. Can really get it moving once you get a rhythm going. If I had a way to automatically keep the primer tube full, I'd be able to go even faster. I haven't used it in a while. My wife hoards quilting supplies - it's buried right now ... Just realized my cat Buddy is in the background there. RIP - miss the little guy. Best cat I've ever been around in my life. Was like half human, half dog. He weighed 21 lbs. when this pic was taken.

I used my Marlin .338 Express lever action to ventilate the the Trooper shocks a few weeks back. That SOB hits HARD! Would take down any large game in North America, for sure. The shock was hit at about 35 yards - close-range for that thing. I should've used that on the printer ... but they're almost $3 a round - that damn Lexmark cost me enough money in ink as it was.

Shockingly, I've only changed the bulbs once in 9 years on mine - and that was only to upgrade to Silverstars. Didn't notice any improvement in lighting on this as I did in other vehicles. Bulbs have also outlasted other Silverstars I've had on other vehicles by a HUGE margin. Think I installed these 8 years ago. Still have the stockers in a drawer just waiting for when they're needed. At least they got ONE thing right with my truck ...

I fixed up my Lexmark right here in the backyard. Total pile of dung. I'll never buy another inkjet as long as I live. I replaced it with a Canon All-In-One deal - the toner is pricey, but it lasts me over 2 years, even with my wife printing 40 pages a day of stuff she finds on the net ... .22 is great - cheap and super accurate. Was a great way to break in the Mark III Hunter, and take out some frustration at the same time.

I remember fixing the FOB on that '00 Jimmy I had. One of the first repairs I made regarding that wheeled toilet. The battery holder inside had detached from it's solder point on the board in more than one place. Soldered it back on, and was amazed it actually worked! That should've been the warning to dump that pile ... because repairs like this were daily for the following 2 years. Now it takes up space out back ...

Put my brandy new Blizzak DM-V2's on the truck, finally. Mounted and balanced them a few months ago when I sold the DM-V1's I had bought in '10 - finally got the wheels on the truck. At least it wasn't snowing today, like it was when I threw the winter wheels on the Volvo. Inspected the brakes - fronts getting VERY thin - 30k HARD miles on the EBC Yellows. Lots of towing, and high speed braking. They've cut a pretty good groove into the rotors (also EBC). Should still have plenty of meat to turn them for the next set. Going to check them out again when I throw the summer wheels on. Not anticipating very many miles, since I only put 2,997 on the truck in a 1-year timeframe. As for the rears, the leading shoe is getting thin in the center, while the trailing shoe is hardly worn. OEM GM shoes and drums (2nd set of drums). The trailing shoes still haven't worn to 100% contact - maybe 75% of the shoe is contacting the drum surface. Maybe the aftermarket can do a better job there ... In other news, hit a milestone today in the Vulva ... err ... Volvo ... (sorry Sarah).

I always run the tires according to the door sticker, which varies by the weight of the vehicle. My ol' man always ran 80 psi in his load range E tires in the 2500 HD - that's MAX. pressure for MAX load! Rode like crap, and wore the center strip of the tires off before the edges of the tread. Been telling him to run what the door sticker says for years. He never listens ... The proper way to do it is to paint something like prussian blue (or chalk, but you have to drive a bit on perfectly level pavement - impossible in this state) across the tread, and see if the tread pattern is even across the pavement (somewhere nice and level). Dark in the center, and light on the sides means your over-inflated. Light in the center, dark on the sides, under-inflated. Prussian blue mark the pavement, so you can easily read it there.

Hope they gave him a tune-up before they stuffed him in back. Nothing I hate more than someone who steals from others, and then endangers the lives of everyone on the road trying to get away.

Yep - I white-knuckled across WY on 80 back in '01, in my '72 El Camino pulling a U-Haul trailer. Most stressful 13 hours of my life ... ever. Desert-hardened 10 year old tires are no good in snow, LOL. Damn, NEFisher - what the hell is going on with the motors? GM getting them straight from red china? WTF! I finally got the snows on the Volvo this morning - better late than never. The car-eating machine drove by soon after ...

Wow, that IS sweet!