New England B.S. Thread

I brought my Tacoma back to the body shop today. They brought it over to the shop that does the mechanical work for them and who did the alignment. Turns out that there is a small amount of play in the axle. They've ordered a new axle and when it's in they'll replace it. I can drive it in the meantime and it's good to know that I'm not crazy. At least about this.

 

That's so true. We wanted to add dormers to our cape but would have had to replace complete roof structure to bring it up to the new code. Needless to say skylights it was.

 

I have kind of the opposite problem. There's a door between the garage and house, but there's no back door on the house, only an 8 ft wide overhead door on the back of the garage. So, to get out back I need to go through the garage and lift that door. Basically, the garage has three means of egress but the house only has one direct one and one door to the garage.

Eventually, I'd like to solve that by putting sliding glass doors on the dining room (currently has old ~6 ft tall windows) and a deck.

 

I will do just enough permits so if someone looks, it looks like I got them consistently.

So far, I have one for the oil line replacement in the basement, the shed, and the pellet stove install. The first is something insurance would probably need for the next person (weirdly mine didn't care, but my oil guy said my copper line in the cement was a ticking time bomb). The pellet stove and shed didn't exist in the real estate listing pictures so I couldn't get away with those.

The mild refinishing of my basement is going to be a "it was like that when I bought it" because there weren't any pictures of the basement and the assessor never even looked down there. Same with the garage electrical work.

If I do a deck, or kitchen remodel I'll get permits since those would be obvious changes that were pictured differently before.

 

Speaking of the deck - the local assessors offices are doing aerial surveys of the Towns to update their GIS mapping. Only know this as I was the Town Engineer in a local municipality for a bit, but the building department is using those old and new photos to see if sheds magically appear or if decks are larger than the last flights.

Legally I don't know what ground they stand on in regards to enforcement in the future, but these Town's want their permit money.

 

Interesting. I never looked at my actual tax card to see if it has reflected the shed yet. They know about it because of the permit, but I am not sure when they actually update it.

 

So I picked up an Agency6 winch shackle when I put the winch on a while back - less than 2 years, but I don't feel like figuring out exactly when. Probably more like a year and change.

I noticed a little while ago that there were some bigass chunks missing from the powdercoat. Not that big of a deal, honestly, since it sits on the front of the truck and also actually gets used. When I went to take a closer look, I found that the powder was peeling off in great big chunks with just a fingernail. That's not normal - that's bad powder. I wasn't too particular about the looks, but I figured I would be a good doobie and let their customer service know they got a bad batch of powder.

They got back to me pretty quick and offered a complete replacement unit. I explained that I wasn't concerned about the cosmetics, I just wanted to let them know in case they were outsourcing powder (which most places do these days) and wanted to trace the batch or whatever. Their CSR was most apologetic and left a standing offer on a replacement, or if I was interested in their other products, as steep a discount as he could manage. I thanked him and left it at that.

Well, I busted my winch line recently and when I went to transplant the shackle to the new line, the little button head screws that keep the pin keeper plate in place on the shackle rounded out under hand pressure with a short arm hex key (the same way I put them in there). A couple swipes with the hardness files put the screws somewhere between dirt and cheese on the Rockwell scale. I got one out with an extractor, but the other one just disintegrated. I sent an email about it and wouldn't you know it, fifteen minutes later I get a call to pull a guy out. So, it's back together with one screw on the keeper plate (should be fine, there's no load except gravity in that direction) and I sent another e-mail about the issue.

Guess we'll see what they come back with.

At the same time I busted the line, I also busted the fairlead - turns out the fasteners supplied by Warn with their extremely expensive offset fairlead were also cheese grade and they failed under pretty modest force, given the size winch that fairlead is meant to handle and the size winch I have. When it happened I thought I might have misjudged my pull angle somehow and put a hell of a lot of vertical load on the fairlead, shearing off the 5/16" hardware, but nope - bolts sucked right out of the square nuts, which sent the synthetic line slamming against a hard corner on the bumper under load. I found one of the square nuts today while replacing the fairlead, still sitting in the bumper.

I know the old guys always bitch about stuff not being like it used to be, but come on - in the quantities that fasteners are being purchased (especially by Warn!) the cost delta for two bolts or screws on a $100, $200, $300 part are nothing. Sheesh. Go ahead and pinch a couple more fractional pennies, guys.

 

Getting ready for saltwater fishing season. Reel maintenance.
Here’s the jewel: Diawa Millionaire 203 SW, made in Japan for the Asian market.

 

That Diawa is serious business

 

Yes, thanks. It's a thing of beauty and function.

And, this Diawa is a workhorse. Lexa.

The smaller Black Sea Bass is 17”

 

This is just reminding me of the 11 different reels I have to take apart, oil, and maintenance to get ready for the season.......sigh. I hate doing it but I also know that I feel so much better after it is done with how smooth the gearing is.

 

Spotted this on 95 home just now, way too much money for a Ford but damn does it look good...

 

I don't know Matt, those flares look like they were cut from a curbside recycling bin

 

Can't unsee

 

What are these fancy Broncos going for these days? Had a Bronco sport as a rental a couple years ago and it was OK. Rode lower to the ground than I liked and the hood seemed really long. The non sport ones look less grocery getter

 

Bronco raptor is like 80k msrp, and you're not paying msrp lol

 

https://www.truecar.com/new-cars-for-sale/listing/1FMEE5JR0PLA89512/2023-ford-bronco/

 

Link defaults to the home page for me

 

Bronco at a dealership in Tennessee...$112K

Edit...
Try this one
https://www.hsmillingtonford.com/searchnew.aspx?q=ford bronco raptor

$33k in options