Ya, That'll Do It

This Explains a Lot

This graphic may help explain the FuckingRepublicans. Found this on the Vagabond Scholar blogpost called "Four types of Conservatives".

The Value of the Truck Doubled

I installed a hoist on my old truck yesterday. Now it should be worth twice as much as it was before!!

 This is the hoist completely installed. Bought the hoist two years ago from Harbor Freight and finally got around to installing it on my old truck.

 This is the hoist in the full up position. It will be interesting to see how it works. Bought with the intention of using it for an engine swap on my Barracuda. Hopefully it'll work.

This shows the support beams I put in under the bed of the truck. The box isn't strong enough to just bolt the hoist to it even with the angles that came with it to stiffen it.  The beams are cut from a metal signpost. I bolted them to the frame of the truck and then bolted the hoist to the beams. Now instead of just twisting the sheetmetal of the truck box, it would have to twist the whole truck.

This shows the support beams in place under the truck bed and bolted to the frame. One of the reasons it took awhile to install the hoist was I needed to come up with something to support the hoist. A friend had some metal signposts and I got one and cut the pieces from it. Now it's done and one of these days I'll actually use it.

When I told my friend last night that I got the hoist installed, he asked if it was before or after the rain. I said, "Before, during and after"!!

Hey, We're Programmed That Way

Get Your Photo ID Here

A Captain Goes Down With His Ship

Decided to do a shakedown cruise with the boat today with mixed results. It's a 1965 Crestliner 14ft runabout. Did get it in the water, that's about the only good thing that happened.

 At least it wasn't a "3 hour tour"!! The Old Lady has been joking about the S.S.Minnow and asking what's the Finnish word for minnow?? It's "sintti"*.

I picked a small inland lake where I figured there would not be a lot of people so I could do my thing without a lot of people around. That way I could take my time as it turns out there is a learning curve to this boating thing. Also there was nobody to laugh at me other than The Old Lady, and she does that a lot anyway.

This picture was supposed to show the boat sinking. The water was coming in at a good rate around the drainplug. I pulled it back out of the water to fix the plug, but couldn't find anything wrong after the water drained out. So put it back in and had the same problem, but this time I tightened the plug and stopped the water coming in. At least this time I got the outboard motor to run. The last time (about 8yrs ago) I put it in the water I couldn't get it started. But there was a problem with the way it ran. It would kick back while running like if it was out of time, but not constantly, it would run for a little while and then kick back and run again. A while back I called it a Lemonrude (Evinrude) and people laughed, maybe I was more right than I thought!! If I can't get the motor to run smoothly, I may have to buy another one.

We did do a little spin around the lake and at one time the compass was spinning like a whirling dervish. There must be a large deposit of iron ore under the lake.

Another thing that happened was I blew a brake line on my truck. The line to the rear wheels blew and I only had front brakes after that. At the time I thought maybe I blew a wheel cylinder because I could see a trail of brake fluid on the ground. At least it happened while launching the boat, not when I needed to do a quick stop from highway speeds. Because I knew the brakes were not up to par, I tried to keep it under 60mph on the way home. When I got home, I crawled under the truck and saw the brake fluid was coming from the line just before it connects to the flexible line to the rearend.

*google is a wonderful thang

Numbers

The top number is the temp and the one below it is the humidites.  Of the two sets of numbers the upper set is inside and the lower set is outside.

Beginning to think these numbers are like blood pressure numbers. The top one is bad, but the bottom number is a killer. At the time I took the picture it wasn't that hot, but it still felt very sticky and uncomfortable.

Altho, now that August has arrived the weather has cooled off and is more or less comfortable. Now that I've said how nice it is, it'll get HOTTER THAN HELL!!!!!!!!!!!(and not Hell, MI)

Getting The Snowblower Ready For Winter

Originally these pieces didn't have bushings in them. The shaft they hold wore the holes out to the point where they were egg-shaped. New ones (at 40 bucks a pop) don't have bushings or bearing in them either, they are just cast steel with a hole thru the thick part for the shaft. I got a couple of bushings (probably for a starter) for a few dollars each and made the holes bigger and round again and pressed in the bushings. I'm thinking this will be an improvement on the design. If not, by the time the bushings wear out, the rest of the machine will be shot.

This is the shaft and bushing blocks installed. Last year I bought a new drive wheel (on the left) and had just turned the blocks around to wear in the opposite direction. 

This year I also bought new belts (the Toro dealer wanted $30 for one belt and I got both belts at an auto parts store for less than that.) for the machine. The machine is 15yrs old and this is the only thing I've had to do other than change oil and the sparkplug.

This is how it looks when it's all back together again. Still need to put the cover plate on that will hid all these moving parts. 

Made some adjustments to various linkages and now it works like it did many, many years ago. LET THE FUCKER SNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Things Found On Facebook This Morning

Y not??

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing!!

Poor Baby, how you suffered!!!!!!!!!!!

Proof at last!!

That sums up the problem in a nutshell, MOTHERFUCKERS DON'T LISTEN!!!