New England B.S. Thread

yep, gotta pick up another maybe 12 bags. we did the front last night. the mulch really highlights where the rabbits have decimated my plants

 

i keep threatening to trade the gx for something like a used blazer and just beat the hell out of it. but i haven't been able to bring myself to do it haha

 

I dont think I have the self discipline to not mod a vehicle....

 

Yeah I use 1 or 2 and torque em after, not that hard lol

Same, and it's not limited to cars is the worst if it....all my guitars are tweaked to some degree

 

Torque for Tacoma lug nuts is 83 foot/pounds in case anyone doesn't know.

A couple of service visits ago a service manager tried to tell me that the bolts holding the front skid plate on just shear off at random. After a bit of back and forth his boss agreed with me that they don't.

If it were me, the service manager would have been out by lunch time, but I'm not the forgiving kind.

 

They do in fact shear off at random if you hit it with an ugga dugga. Also the welded nut on the inside for them will, in fact, shear off with ugga duggas even within torque specs.

I have a click style torque wrench and just set it to 80. The way I see it, and in my experience, your torque specs are about ±5 ft lbs on a lot of stuff on a vehicle, with spark plugs I use it as +0/-5ish. I don't torque spec my oil drain plug/filter housing.

 

I dropped it off where it was serviced last and called this morning. They said they’ll look over all the lugs to make sure they’re not necked and it’ll be fixed today!

So no late night wrenching thank god.

but maybe some beers in the coolers for friends next meetup

 

sadly I think the truth of it is, I’m the same way

 

After putting 6 yards out into the lawn; my thoughtful girlfriend and I have 4 more to do and I’m so tired of sweating amongst the mosquitos lol

 

That is pretty much what I told the boss and he agreed. I rarely had access to an impact wrench, but sheared bolts here and there with a four way lug wrench. Other bolts as well in my years removing used parts for sale. Everything up here rusts.

Shearing bolts isn't a crime, but lying to a customer about it is.

I never torqued a lug nut in my life. In fact I don't recall torquing anything until I built an AR upper. I did torque the bolts when I installed side steps on my Tacoma, but only because I had a torque wrench already. If I did my own work on the truck, I'd torque everything to spec.

I'm sure that there is a torque spec for my snow blower spark plugs, but I learned how to install spark plugs without bunging them up when I was a kid.

FWIW, I can set points with a match book cover. The hard part is finding a match book!

 

Exactly. I mean I use torque limiting extensions and then torque to spec after. They're accurate within about a quarter turn of the torque wrench

 

River rocks. One and done. Heavy as balls, but mine are 3 years old and look good as new

I won't lie, I've done it once. I think. If not twice. I usually use the 4 way lug wrench and know by feel nowadays. I use the 4 way because it's way easier to control rotational motion on it, and less so cantilever force.

I do with spark plugs just because I don't have that back-of-the-mind feel for how tight they should be, I have the tools, and over-torquing (and damaging) a plug is a major PITA to fix.



I DO love modern bikes. They all have torque specs printed on the parts next to the bolts.

 

The trick with spark plugs is to use the socket with just the extension and hand tighten them until the are bottomed out. That way you know right at the start if they are going to cross thread and can stop before you do any damage. Then you can put the ratchet on and just snug them in.

Cross threading iron heads was a pain, but I can only imagine what kind of nightmare doing that to an aluminum head would be.

 

This. The shop I use is trusted over the long haul as the (former) top mechanic is a family friend, but I've still built a relationship with the owner. He was a big person in getting Right To Repair going years ago as well.

In general that pride is gone. Just get the job done and get out, then F it. I think you heard the horror show about the deck on my pool.

Or buy another bike.

I hope that isn't wood mulch right against the house, please say no

At the minimum I'll always upgrade the audio system.

3 years ago since we couldn't really go places we decided to get the yard sprayed for mosquitos and ticks, very wise move

 

I do know that part - socket down, "backthread" until you feel the plug drop in the threads, then finger tight. I do the same but I do it with a TQ wrench at the end instead of just snugging them in. I do spark plugs about every other year between the two vehicles, so it's not something I do on a regular basis

 

I've been working on my yard for the past six years. It started with clearing the Forsythia out. That involved digging out the roots. Then burning everything, including the roots. Then burning the ashes. Since roots love rocks, I also had to dig out some good sized rocks and move them to the edge of the lawn.

Then more brush cutting to expand the lawn.

Since the soil is poor here because the builder stripped the top soil, I've bought a couple of tons of top soil over the years and spent hours spreading it, seeding, fertilizing, watering to get grass to grow.

I had a tree company come in to remove some trees and trim back others.

This year's project was having the stumps ground down. Then I removed about 30 wheel barrels of chips into the conservation land behind the house. Which will make the termites and carpenter ants happy.

Then about thiry bags of top soil from Lowes to fill in the holes. More seed, water, fertilizer.

I've found that it takes two to three years for those areas to completely fill in with grass. Areas that I did before the pandemic now look like they always had grass.

It's all going to pay off when we put the house on the market. The real estate agent told us people are going to love how good the yard looks.

 

We have it treated but I live near a swamp. I can’t spray the wetlands sadly

 

we managed to get the first year of grass here to look like a 3 year old lawn, after we had to make the builder come back and redo the grading in the yard. took about $400 worth of seed plus what the builder put down, some compost, and a lot of water.

 

i think it's cedar