PennSilverTaco's "Perfect 5-Lug Regular Cab" Build, Aspergers, and General BS MegaThread!

The main guy said he figured the colony was between 250k and 350k, that's a frightening number of termites if accurate.

 

I was expecting them to bury bait stations around but he said they have better luck with this liquid because they can't even sense it and will go right through it.

 

Me too!

 

NEVER FORGET!

 

On Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, I was 12 years old and had just started the seventh grade...

My dad was stationed at NAS Whidbey Island, and we were living in a rented rancher in Oak Harbor, Washington. Because we lived on the West Coast, we were three hours behind the East Coast and everything had gone down by the time we woke up...

I don’t remember September 10th or September 12th, but I still remember the 11th quite vividly...

I don’t think I’d even been in school for a week; I was looking forward to some sort of ice cream social later that week (which ended up getting cancelled).

I’d likely watched TV after completing my homework the night before and then gone to bed like I did every night...

 

My mom woke me up on the morning of September 11th, but something was different this time. She didn’t gradually coax me out of bed like she did on a typical school day; She said something had happened, and then dragged me out of bed and to the family room (we lived in a 1-story rancher; no stairs). I did have a TV with cable in my room, but my mom didn’t even bother to turn that on; She dragged out of bed and plunked me in front of the 32” Sony Trinitron in the family room...

By this time, both towers had collapsed and Flight 93 had crashed in Pennsylvania; I was still barely awake as my mom told me that some bad people had crashed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. She had the news on, and the first image I saw was firefighters walking around the burned out remains of a building; I believe it was the Pentagon but it may have been the Trade Center...

I just remember seeing men walking around the ruins of a building and being completely confused as to what had happened. It took a minute or so, but I finally comprehended what was happening; I don’t know remember what I said, but I believe I just asked my mom “why?”

 

When I was younger, I was deeply saddened more than anything; I just couldn't comprehend what we as Americans had done to make people angry enough to fly planes into buildings and kill almost 3,000 innocent people.

As I got a little bit older and began to understand the situation a bit more, that sadness turned to anger...

I went on a trip to New York City with my parents sometime in 2006, when I was 17; After the trip was over, we stayed over at a hotel somewhere in New Jersey before going home. About this time, one of the masterminds of the 9/11 attacks was being tried, and we were watching coverage of the trial in the hotel room.

There was this Asian woman in her 20s who worked in one of the towers and had died when it collapsed. She actually managed to call 911, either from an office phone or her personal cell phone, and though the operator tried her best to calm the woman down there was nothing she could do.

The woman who died was trapped on an upper floor, but she hadn’t been injured in the initial attack. However, she was being overcome by smoke. You could actually hear the absolute terror in her voice as she pleaded with the 911 operator to help her, and asked if she was going to die. The operator assured her everything was going to be fine, but the signal went dead and the tower collapsed a short time later...

I was a 17-year old guy who rarely cried at that point in his life, and I damn near broke down and started crying right there in front of my parents in that New Jersey hotel room...

My dad remarked that after the jury heard that 911 call, the terrorist on trial (I forget his name) was screwed.

 

The tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks was also the same year I finally got my driver’s license; I felt like I’d matured at least another decade since I was now a licensed driver...

On the actual tenth anniversary, I spent the day watching special presentations about the attacks on TV, including amateur video made by NYC residents; I still cannot believe that terrorists in groups of five per plane were able to hijack commercial jets and fly them into buildings! Even almost two decades later I cannot believe this!

CNN unwittingly recorded the second plane crashing into the South Tower while they were reporting on the first crash, and to this day it still shocks and amazes me!

 

I had a doctor's appointment on 9/11 and just so happened to have stopped at the Toyota Dealer to buy an oil filter. As I was walking thru the lobby I heard the guy on TV say a plane hit one of the towers but I assumed it was just a Cessna or something small. By the time I got to the doctor office they broke in on the radio to explain what was happening and remember telling the doctor what I just heard.

 

Okay, so being the HVAC nut that I am, I did some research on the cooling systems at the former World Trade Center...

Up until maybe ten years ago, I assumed skyscrapers had larger versions of the packaged units you see at smaller commercial buildings, until I saw the chiller at my grandma’s retirement community in Virginia; I was so intrigued by the thing that I got permission from the head of security to go into the enclosure and take a closer look, even filming it!

From what I’ve read, the huge refrigeration units in the lower levels of the Twin Towers cooled not only the towers but at least a few other buildings in the plaza as well. Also, from what I’ve read, there were 7 of them with a cooling capacity of nearly 50,000 tons each; By comparison, my parents’ house has a 2.5-ton unit for the downstairs and a 2-ton unit for the upstairs, for a total capacity of 4.5 tons or 54,000 BTUs...

The original World Trade Center literally had more than 10,000 times the cooling capacity of my parents’ 3,000 square foot house!

York (based right here in PA) designed these systems, and they were not your typical split-systems like you’d find in just about every home in America; Part of the cooling process utilized water from the Hudson River. Prior to 2009, almost all new systems utilized R-22 before the switch to R410a...

From what I’ve read, the system in the Twin Towers used R-12, like automotive A/C systems and domestic refrigerators prior to 1994...

At some point, the system was retrofitted to R134a; Since the system was severely damaged in the 1993 bombing, the conversion was likely done when the system was repaired. R134a was just starting to see widespread use in 1993; All Volvo models, all Mercedes-Benz models, all Nissan models, the new-for-1993 Chevy Camaro and Pontiac Firebird, and the new-for-1993 Jeep Grand Cherokee all used R134a. My guess would be that each office got its own thermostat, and the system for the common areas was separate from the system for the offices and restaurants. I am still not entirely sure if each tower had its own cooling plant or if one plant cooled both towers. The Marriot hotel between the two towers likely had its own system; I’m assuming that even though public gas was readily available and was used for cooling in the restaurants, the heating system for the twin towers was the same basic concept as a heat pump and reverse cycle in the winter to act as a heater.

 

Let’s rewind more than eighteen years, shall we...?

In about June or July of 2002, we had just moved out of our rented rancher in Oak Harbor, Washington and into one of the really nice single-wide trailers at the Whidbey Navy Lodge; When I say the trailers were nice, I mean they were NICE!

They were only a few years old, and they had one thing our 2,300 square foot rancher did not; Central air!

Anyway, we’d been keeping our Labrador in a kennel for several days because pets were not allowed in the Navy Lodge single-wides; Molly would have been about seven and a half at the time.

We had to be gone first thing the following morning, and the kennel opened way too late for us to stay on schedule, so my dad picked up Molly a day early and snuck her into the single-wide...

Nobody ever found out that we smuggled a large Black Lab into the trailer, but my Uncle Craig though it would be funny after going for a walk to bang on the front door, disguise his voice, and demand to know if we were keeping a dog in the trailer...

While petting Molly, I discovered that one of her ears was really swollen; She had been acting rather weird and downright lethargic since we brought her back from the kennel...

We were leaving on a cross-country trip to Virginia in less than twelve hours, and Molly’s vet was not open; Somehow, my dad got ahold of the vet. The vet agreed to meet us at the office and see Molly for a hundred bucks; My dad said no problem...

My parents’ 2000 GMC Safari conversion van was loaded up with our stuff and had a UHAUL trailer with my dad’s Harley inside hitched to the back; Unhitching the trailer would have been a pain in the ass, but Uncle Craig came to the rescue and gave my dad the keys to his 1994 Dodge Grand Caravan; That van was nearing the end of its service life by then...

It ran good and the A/C worked, but it had at least 150K miles on it and was falling apart; Three of the four original wheel covers had fallen off, so my aunt and uncle had removed the remaining OEM unit and put on four El Cheapo Plastico aftermarket ones. My dad drove, I rode shotgun, and my cousin rode in the back with Molly.

We got to the vet and he got there a short time later to let us in...

Molly had some sort of infection, obviously picked up at the kennel; My dad was pissed because if his 13-year old kid could spot the issue with Molly’s ear then the people at the kennel obviously knew...

Unfortunately, there was precisely jack shit he could do in terms of legal recourse; The vet prescribed this stuff that ended up making the infection go away, and we left for Virginia in our own van at the crack of dawn the next day..

Molly healed to the point that she was never in any pain, and lived another seven years to the amazing age of fifteen, but her ear was permanently deformed by that infection...

 

Oh, the infamous ‘94 Grand Caravan...

My aunt and uncle bought the silver 1994 Dodge Grand Caravan LE brand new, and not only that, but they special ordered it instead of buying off the lot; I miss the days when you really pick and choose what options your vehicle got...

I’ll have to consult my 1994 Caravan brochure (yes, I have one now) again, but I do believe that LE was the top trim on the 1994 Caravan...

Since it was the top model, air-conditioning was among the many standard features, but only in the front; All Grand Caravan models were available with rear A/C, but it was not a cheap option, and my aunt and uncle figured they would not need it since they lived in Northern California. I rode in the van so many times between 1996 and 2004 that I lost count, and I never had any complaints about the efficiency of the front-only A/C...

 

So, my aunt and uncle did not pay the extra money for rear A/C and heat; The biggest deal for them when it came to optioning out their new van was the 2nd row captain’s chairs. Their daughters were 10 and about 13-14 at the time they bought the van; They were known for getting into fights on long drives, so the solution was to give each girl her own seat, and it worked wonders!

The LE came standard with A/C, cruise control, tilt steering, power locks, unique-to-that-model cloth upholstery, and I believe a 4-speaker AM/FM cassette stereo; An AM/FM stereo with no cassette may have been standard, but their definitely had a cassette player...

In the last couple years they owned that van, during which time I started really noticing car stereo quality (2002-2004), I remember thinking it was pretty good for a factory system with stock speakers in an old minivan...

 

Power windows were an extra-cost option across the board in 1994, even on the higher-end trims and including the top LE trim that my aunt and uncle’s van had...

My uncle opted to stick with manual crank windows not because he couldn’t afford the option, but because he’d owned vehicles with power windows in the past and had nothing but trouble...

In 1996-1997, the last vehicle my dad had owned with manual windows was a 1992 Dodge Dakota, which he’d traded for a new S-10 Blazer in 1993 due to the lack of 4WD. I was only four when my dad got rid of the Dakota and have absolutely no recollection of what windows it had, but my dad saved the window sticker, which proves that it did not have power windows...

My mom had a 1990 Toyota Camry and my dad a 1996 Nissan Pathfinder, both of which had power windows; The 1993 Blazer also had power windows, and at the age of 7, manual windows were a very foreign concept to me...

I actually remember asking my aunt at one point while out with her running errands why her van didn’t have power windows, and expressing my annoyance at having to roll the window myself; This is rather ironic since my Tacoma doesn’t have power windows and it doesn’t particularly bother me...

 

The standard engine on the base short wheelbase Caravan in 1994 (but not the SE and LE models) was the underpowered 2.5L four; The SE and LE came standard with a Mitsubishi-sourced 3.0L V6, which was mated with a 3-speed automatic transmission on base models (a 4-speed was standard on the LE). The 3.0L was also standard on the basic Grand Caravan, and the 3-speed auto was the only choice; With only 150hp on tap, acceleration must have been leisurely at best!

My aunt and uncle’s van had the 3.3L V6, which made a decent-for-the-time 162hp, and Mitsubishi 4-speed auto; The tranny in that van never failed, but there was a recall in 1995 or 1996 and it was replaced free of charge when the van wasn’t even two years old and not even paid off yet! The new transmission never had a problem...

 

My aunt and uncle bought that van new in 1994 and owned it for ten years; By the time they got rid of it in 2004, it had about 180K miles on it! Keep in mind that they live in California, which has obnoxiously strict smog testing; My uncle says the van NEVER failed a smog test!

 

In 1997, the van developed weird electrical problems; Whenever my aunt hit a bump or even the slightest imperfection in the road, the door chime would go nuts, the dome light would flicker on and off, and the digital clock on the radio would fade in an out, among other things...

The van did not stall or even give the slightest hint of losing power, and I quickly dubbed it “The Haunted Caravan”; My aunt and I had a good laugh...

I forget what ended up being the problem, but my aunt and uncle got the issue resolved; I’m guessing something came loose and would touch off the impromptu electrical show whenever my aunt hit a bump...

 

My aunt and uncle live in California but regularly drove it out to Texas in family trips, and also out East; They drove it to Washington at least once (see above)...

The odometer reading in 2004 was something like 180K, which was high for a 10-year old vehicle; I’m guessing that van had a 100K by the time the new millennium rolled around. The van was obviously long since paid for by then and still had no trouble passing smog, so my aunt and uncle decided to keep it...

My only complaint about the van in later years was that it did not have a CD player; In 1999, my uncle bought a new Dodge Ram pickup and his 1987 Isuzu Trooper was relegated to third car status...

The Caravan continued to chug along even after the younger of my two cousins went to college...

 

In 2003 or 2004, the A/C quit working for good; They’d had to recharge it a couple times over the yearS, but this time the compressor seized if I remember correctly...

Dodge Caravans are not known for their strong retail values, even in perfect condition with low miles; Ten years old with about 180K on the clock? Forget about it! The cost of putting a new compressor in that van would have probably been more than a third of the cash value at the time (I’m guessing maybe $2,500?) So, my aunt and uncle sold it to someone on Texas (despite the A/C being shot), and bought a new 2004 Honda Element that they held onto for at least a decade before selling it to make room for the two VW buses...

 

sup Charlie
given all the recent posts about the towers and 9/11
and your intense research of the towers hvac system...

a bit off topic perhaps, but in the event you have never seen this film... I wanted to recommend a film called The Walk

it is the story of Philippe Petit, a french high wire walker, pretty good film IMHO

as a New yorker who grew up in Manhattan and was witness to what went down... I find films like this worth the time, a glimpse into how spectacular these buildings where before they became infamous.