New England B.S. Thread

aapi awareness month

 

Day one of the trip. Left eastern MA at 07:00 and headed west then south. MA Pike to Sturbridge where we stopped to top off the gas at the Pilot. $3.49/gallon which is not horrible. A lot of CT license plates as people living along the border come up there for gas since it's much cheaper than CT prices. From there I-84 to Port Jervis, NJ to top off again. $3.99/gallon. Much more just down the street in NY. Back on I-84 west into PA. Turned south on I-81 towards VA. I avoid going through NYC, Westchester County, and NJ and prefer the western route.

BTW, lots of police on the MA Turnpike and I-84 through New York and PA. Mostly sitting by the road waiting for speeders. My guess is that they are under orders to sit more than patrol to save gas.

Stopped for lunch in Carlisle, PA. One of these days I'll get there for the big car meet and swap. Just to be able to say I did it. Continued down I-81 through MD, WV and into VA. We got to Harrisonburg, VA where we are overnighting. Did the whole distance from NJ on one tank of gas. Set the cruise control a 75mph with radar on. Lots of construction along the way, but it wasn't horrible other than a very slow stretch near Harrisburg.

I didn't calculate gas mileage but on the highway with cruise control on it seemed pretty good even with the truck packed to the gills with stuff. I'll get a picture of it uploaded when I get more time.

Tomorrow we continue south on I-18 to Roanoke and then turn west onto I-40 just south of there. We'll end up in Jackson, TN on the way back. Looks to be another long day.

I haven't booked the hotels for the return trip yet, but we're thinking of three nights instead of the two we're doing on the way down. We already know that we are staying one night just south of Nashville because my wife wants to look at potential relocation sites in that area.

I'll try to continue the travelogue tomorrow night if I have time and energy.

This will be our fourth long trip in the Taco and the longest by far. I guesstimate 4,500 miles by the time we're back home on the 15th. Or maybe the 16th. The Taco is pretty comfortable to do this kind of drive in. As I mentioned yesterday, it would be nice to have a hard cap, but the rest of the time I'm quite happy with the OEM tonneau.

 

It doesn't count. It never counts.

Awesome! Similar route I took to Amarillo last March. I pulled I THINK about 22-23 mpgs in the mountains, think you said you were more loaded down and I was closer to 70.

Sold my soft topper otherwise I'd have let you borrow it. Glad it's working out though!

I don't really have much for travel recommendations in that area.

WAIT. THAT'S A LIE.

Well might be. If you're going that a way swing by Mountain View, Arkansas. It's at the southern end of the Ozarks and.....spectacular. I was in Louisville and was headed toward Nashville -- actually that's another lie. I was blasting through Louisville and then said hol up - I'm going to stop. Glad I did, cool city. Anyway decided insteasif heading toward Nashville -> St Louis -> OKC -> Austin I would instead head from Louisville into the Ozarks. I put in Tulsa into the sat nav and google tried to send me south then west, or west then south, completely around the Ozarks. So, I forced it by picking a point directly in the middle, zoomed in on the map and picked mountain view AR. I was expecting two old boys and a banjo, as I blasted through the mountains.

Instead - I came around a bend in the woods to a church, big ol church out of nowhere. Then the rest of the town --- I accidentally landed in the folk music capital of the world, it was an amazing small town, cool park on the north (I think north?) Side of the town. I was absolutely flabbergasted. Sat in the park, ate dinner and just sat there, enjoying it. That was one of two jaw-to-the-floor moments on that trip.

Grabbed an early ish dinner and hung out at the park. There's a stone amphitheater there or something like that, was treated to one of the most amazing sunsets on my way off the mountain after that experience too.

Threw in another picture of my copilot for good measure

Long of the short - if you can make it, go. I was there in July, not sure if the town is "seasonal" or not though.

 

Eh, it's a Chevy..might not start half the time in the first place.

I don't disagree, though I think it's also (maybe more) a case of everything is a lawsuit and always go after the deep pockets hoping for an out of court settlement or a sympathetic judge/jury

As a Native American I feel I'm being provoked

 

All right folks, Today's topic, heating hot water.

With Oil prices knocking on the door of 6 bucks a gallon, I am trying to decide if I need to change my system. Currently, I have boiler that heats my hot water, and that will suck up about 150 gallons this summer, thats 900 bucks. In the winter we have a pellet stove for when we are home. The boiler keeps the house above 50 while we are not home. Do I get an electric Hot water set up?

 

If you have room in your panel to do so I would

 

Does anyone have a

$18 Baofeng UV-5R VHF/UHF Dual Band Radio 144-148MHz 420-450MHz Transceiver

Baofeng UV-5R the black one, and wants to trade it for my red one? I can program it to whatever you want before I hand it off - GMRS, MURS, weather, repeaters, etc.

Reason (so you don’t think I am taking advantage of you!): The red one I have has a screwed on chrome face plate. 99.9999% of the time, this is not an issue, and has not been for me for the past 2 years. However - I used it with a radio vest for the marathon, when you take it in and out of a tight fitting pocket, the screwed on chrome face plate catches up on the pocket, and gets hung up. The black one doesn’t have any of that shenanigans, it’s just straight plastic.

Edit: Happy Friday morning! I forgot to respond!

1 - Do you have potential for solar? If so, I would consider it for sure.

2 - Do you have forced hot water radiators for heat? If so, you can’t use a tankless heater. Well, to clarify: MAKE SURE using it for a forced hot water system doesn’t void warranties, they’re not typically built for that application.

 

Not going Solar at this time, however it is possible in the future. Currently I am locked in on my electric rate, and it's very respectable based on the public rate.

Yes, it's forced hot water radiators. What I will do, set up some valves to isolate the boiler in the times I don't want to use it, then isolate the electric hot water when I want to run the boiler. Honestly, I don't care about the warranty on the boiler, a few years ago, I considered get rid of it and going propane.

 

A tankless heater will burn out in a few years because they’re not meant for forced hot water systems. IF you want a tankless, you’d want to run that only to your appliances, and then a boiler/tank system to your FHW system. Or just set them both on your boiler, that’s what mine is (but I’m on piped NG).

If it was ME, and what I am looking at long term, I’d be looking at going electric with the potential to go solar. Solar heat is usually a forced hot air system though. My roof has another 5-7 years on it. When that blows, I’m going to look at solar. 5-7 years from now is going to be VERY expensive, because we’ll be doing a roof, solar, and sistering the joists, sealing the crawl space, PROBABLY going to 200A service at that time.



Probably just pitch the house and buy a new one at that point. We’ll see.

 

I am not sold on tankless, my understanding is that I could get a couple more years out of a tank versus the tankless. And I am not going to push water from my electric heater thru the radiators. It will only be for hot water. In the winter, I will switch back to what I have now, well maybe switch back.

 

Oh, I have ZERO opinion and not trying to push tankless, just wanted you to know if you were, FHW and tankless is no bueno!

Honestly, prices probably won’t go down appreciably. For many reasons, some I can’t talk about without getting banned on tacomaworld

I’d say scope it out going to electric, with the idea of going solar - whoever does the install, talk to them about it. If it costs an extra 40$ for the system that is “solar ready”, I’d just do that.

Even if you don’t want to go solar, the next person who buys the house likely will, and “It’s solar ready” means you can charge more

 

when talking about this the other day my 18 year old son said it best.
It's clear we are going towards more green energy and that means using the electric grid. And he is correct. I will add, there is no reason for the current administration to do about the current fossil fuel costs. It would be counterproductive to the green energy move.

 

Is this good enough for what I use my Tacoma for?
https://www.autozone.com/batteries-...tery-27f-dl-group-size-27f-710-cca/766480_0_0

 

That'll work. I replaced my OEM battery with a 24F Duralast Gold last year (got a few more CCA in the deal, important here when the temps go sub-zero in the winter).

 

I'd see how much Toyota wants. Last time I shopped around for batteries they were cheapest and had the best warranty

 

Thanks I'll call them

 

Ended up buying a set of NFab steps for my buddy who owns a second gen but isn’t in the forums. Happy to help out and be the middle man. Get it to my house, touch up a little surface rust with paint and he sends me a picture of his totaled truck

 

@tacobell007 you just saved me $30

 

Ouch! Hopefully he’s ok

 

So, took the truck in for a blown speaker (they're ordering a replacement), slow and quirky infotainment (they said they opened a case with Ford's tech hotline), and very subtle front end hum. They said the first tech couldn't hear the hum so he took a guy with him for a second ride and that guy heard it. Then they brought it in and ran it on the lift and said it's coming from the front diff. It makes sense based on the symptoms (no change with turns) but I sure wasn't expecting that. Do you ever see that on a 15-20 F-150 @emelianenkov ? They want to take the truck for a couple days so they can tear the differential down since Ford will make them do that to determine whether to rebuild it or replace it. I'll probably schedule it toward the end of the month - they said they're booking out a couple weeks anyway.

Plus side is this dealer seems way more competent than the closer one that I've had trouble with in the past.