Shop Time w/T.W. Friends

That’s if it worked. Saw lotsa d.o.a’s with those.

 

Good afternoon shop friends. I spent some time making a part for the three wheeler this afternoon. Better than freezing my butt off outside!

fits pretty ok I guess!

 

there's really nothing wrong with one of those. especially with 'good' flux core in it, it works awesome.

this was entirely flux core with one of those


but it took me 2 different spools to end up with a good roll of flux core from harbor freight. the first spool, i spent all my time blaming myself and the welder for poor performance, but it never came out right. finally ran the spool out, changed it with a new one, and suddenly everything i was doing was right, even with the same settings that didn't work before. almost like the flux went bad somehow.

 

I learned a long time ago (thanx Reddit) to not use the HF wire. I had the same issues you had and I went over to Lowe’s and brought some Lincoln wire. Works great. Last year though I got some Vulcan 30 as a backup and it worked a lot better than the og wire. Also, I only run 030 in it. Penetrates better and just works better. Although I agree there’s nothing wrong with the little green machine it does have its limits. It cannot hold a bigger spool and the spatter can get cumbersome for cleanup. But you can’t argue with its simplicity. It’s a great little welder that will not be thrown to the wayside. Me and that little welder tackled some awesome builds

 

Nice score

 

My first welder was one of these, a 120 volt stick welder with a whompin' stompin' fixed 50 amp output and the emphasis on "stick" for sure.



Notice the aluminum tube stinger with a thumb screw to hold the electrode.

It worked just well enough that I couldn't throw the damn thing away but not really well enough to actually weld anything beyond a mower deck -- barely.


Even then (as now) I knew my crappy welds were mostly me rather then the machine.

 

Das ist es!

 

Good morning shop crew, have a great and blessed Sunday.

 

Good morning everyone, I hope you have a pleasant Sunday

 

Mornin’ Gents

 

Good morning manly men

 

So I've spent entirely too long trying to figure out which is our best option for getting the two of us from Waikiki to Pearl Harbor since we won't have a car.

Spoiler: Spoilered for the uninterested

My options were:
Pearl Harbor tour bus
Rent a car
Turo
Uber
City bus

The tour bus end up basically charging you $100/person to drive you there and back. They do some other things but not enough for me to justify the cost.

There are three rental agencies at the hotel so I considered renting a car for the day. Price for the car is about $50 but the earliest it can be picked up is 8:00 and it either needs to be returned by 2:30 or you pay $40 to park it for the night. I doubt we'd be back by 2:30 so that would make it a $90 option.

I've never used Turo but I could get a vehicle from 8:00am to 4:00pm for about $90 plus the cost to refuel it and $7 to park it at Pearl Harbor. Let's call that $120 total.

I've only used Uber twice in Las Vegas to get from the airport to the hotel and back. The price to get to Pearl Harbor is $36. I assume it will be similar to get back so $75 total.

The city bus is by far the cheapest at $12 round trip for both of us but living in Fargo with no experience with reliable public transportation coupled with this is the same bus that brings people to the airport so it fills up very quickly with people and luggage and turns a 20 minute drive into an hour, I'm not overly excited about this one.

So I've decided on the Uber. It's not the cheapest but it's not the most expensive. It won't be the most interesting but it will almost assuredly be the fastest option. And should be the simplest.

 

Add a Basketball & you could make a movie outta that.

 

I brought a mini football to Punta Cana with us. Close enough?

 

That’s one of the reasons I don’t like travel. And other reasons like ....

Spoiler

not in the budget

 

That’s why we rent a car for the trip.
Take the uber

 

Short of Disney World where they drive you around everywhere or resorts that we don't leave, this is the first trip we've taken that we won't have a car.

I like being in control of where and when we go places but since it's just the two of us and we won't have a kitchen, there's no need to do a grocery store run like we usually do and paying $40/day just to park the thing is crazy.

Tickets to the Arizona Memorial and Missouri Memorial are bought and the Uber is already scheduled.

Only thing left to do is get tickets to go to Diamond Head. But we're just going to walk to that one.

 

Sometimes, if you get friendly enough, especially if you're doing a down and back trip...you might convince the Uber to give you his/her number to call for the trip back. He shuts his app off, offer $30 cash. He makes more, you save more. Some might call this a win-win.

 

Might just say “Gypsy Cab” & call ‘er good.