Shop Time w/T.W. Friends

Hey all, Almost 100 pages gone by way to many to read, so I hope the world has been treating everyone right. It's been a very busy month for me. After my uncles funeral, I went to WA for a wedding. Came home and worked the election for both the early voting and on election day. Our county set a new record for the number of people voting, 148,547. About wore both my voice and my feet out. When I wasn't helping people vote, I also got serious about finding a replacement for my Taco. My brother came to visit for a couple weeks, with his assistance we drove down to Atlanta after the election and I bought 2018 F250 XL. It's only a base trim, though it has nearly every option you could get with the 6.7L Powerstroke. All the power stuff, and it even has an engine brake. I do miss the Taco, but sitting in this truck feels right. There are a few things that need to be fixed, but that's probably why I could afford to buy it.

'Merica

 

Welcome back Mike

 

Congrats. I miss my F250. Would love to have another OBS 7.3. Didn’t go off road as well but it could haul firewood and pull trailers like no one’s business and then reward me with 16 mpg’s.

 

Mine hasn't done any hard work for me yet, but it's getting 18.5 mpg for the 700 miles I've put on it so far.

 

This is the first deer I ever got. 30 minutes into the first day of the season. Not a monster but the first one I ever got, and I processed him myself. Went 5 years before I even saw another one.

 

^that's cause they seent u coming with those bright colors...
But really, my brother in law is 10x the hunter I am. He hunts with a 40 year old Husqvarna rifle, wears red plaid in the big woods and doesn't give a dang about some new app with topo maps. And kills big deer everywhere he goes.

 

So like a Hunterdc2 then.

 

Hahaha that’s it! We have to wear 2 articles of blaze orange up here. I’m assuming the deer know what coffee smells like so I bring that too

 

Here is something you don't see every day.



...and here is something that I will never see on my trailer again.

 

Never again!!!



This mechanical butthole of a car has been in the archives for 10 years -- we had it for 17.

A very satisfying day.

 

Apparently this is the job you get when a store employee tells his boss "I can put the new faucet in" , the box was in the trash.



Might as well re-seal the sink also
to do a complete job.



It looked even more heinous in person.

 

Looks like it’s cruisin’ for a bruisin’ right there.

 

The damn thing cruised right out of my life and they gave me $350 for it too.

This is the only car I genuinely hated, it was 1 year old and had 5960 miles when we bought it.

 

Maybe Bob will like it now that it’s in the convenient cube form.

 

Seeing as I was there anyway it was a fine day to do a little recreational junkyarding.

I got a few pieces for an electric upgrade for the LTD.

 

It won't be a cube for a while, this is a pick-n-pull yard -- I don't care if they make a pile of money or a coffee table with the damn thing, it's gone.


I stopped for my favorite budget lunch/dinner at The Club too so a double win day.

 

pt cruisers had a good idea but it flopped at nothing bigger than 4 cylinder

 

Yeah, I guess slappin’ a turbo on ‘er wasn’t much good.

 

It wasn't a bad car to drive, it was easy to get in & out, had plenty of head room, the seats were very comfortable and they went back so far that I couldn't push the clutch to the floor so ample leg room as well.

My personal problem driving it was due to the massively thick A pillar and the low windshield line with rounded corners there was a giant blind spot to the drivers left - hide a 4 door, eight foot bed F-350 giant.

Mrs Green at 5'2" wasn't troubled with the view out.

However...

To put oil in the damn thing was by design inconvenient (and you will be putting oil in them), any other routine service work was a frustrating pain in the @$$ and major work 10X worse.

They wear tires out, they don't wear badly, they just wear out. I tried expensive tires & cheap tires with the same result. The body is quite heavy for a small car and you are stuck with that tire size, probably on the edge of being overloaded. Suspension components wear quickly too, probably for the same reason.

Plan on a battery every 2-3 years, it is an expensive size, (naturally) tough to get at and has a habit of failing at 4:30 on a Sunday afternoon.

Plan on spark plugs lasting a max of 30K - the engine just chews them up and it starts mis-firing. Again, they are a P-I-T-A to change requiring pulling the upper intake manifold.

And then we have the rust...

 

really depends on the level of urgency.

at home, on my own projects, i'm a 1-3 kind of guy, i might not even check youtube, i'll just figure it out. at work, where things gotta keep moving, and it's far nicer to make someone else the scapegoat/accomplice for the issue, i'm much closer to 6-8.