Life goes on - Winter 2020

JO Many years back, I had the opposite problem. A friend bought his daughter a VW, and she had never driven a stick. I put my head under the dash–what dash there was on the VW, – held her left toes in my one hand and her right toes in the other, and gave her the feel of slipping the clutch and increasing gas, to get it going. All the time, I was hoping to hell that she was watching the road and steering… TomC

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TOM!, I CAN’T STOP laughing.
:rofl::smiley::sweat_smile::laughing::joy::rofl::sweat_smile::laughing::joy: okay I m better now, no I’m not…:joy::sweat_smile::laughing::smiley::rofl::joy::laughing::smiley:
Bob

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Ford/Chevy-battle to the side, I think it was a Toyota Yaris actually. 1.0 l engine if I remember correctly. Even though the transmission kept surprising us when accelerating it purred along quite nicely once up to speed. It got a lot better half an hour outside Atlanta when we discovered the true DRIVE-position and that 4000 rpm at 50 wasn’t needed. Remember? :smile:

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a friend of mine owned one of those. They are tinny hardly a car more like a beer can with wheels by American standards but surprisingly safe. She literally loaned it out to 4 different people and they managed to hit all 4 corners in different accidents once it was hit at the drivers door when parked. But each time the dealer just bolted on new body panels and off that little car went. I have never seen a car take so much abuse.

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A mecc alte ecp 34 2l4 c generator head weight 1070 Lb
A ABB Terra Hp 175 c power cabinet 2954 Lb
charge post 551 Lb
3 phase 480 / 277 volt
300 amp breaker
231 a 192 Kva

can the 26 foot truck carry this load ? can the engine put out this much power ? would you be allowed to put his equipment on a truck ? Would you be allowed to operate a mobile charger station ?

That should be a 10 ton truck. It will require a commercial drivers license in the USA but I don’t see a problem beyond that. Honestly though there are some really nice solar charging stations now designed for the roll off truck bodies and the shipping containers. I forgot who is making them but basically it is a big battery and electronics with a build in solar array that can be deployed on site. There was a lot of talk about them being airlifted into Porta Rico after the hurricane I think it was the first time they where used in that type of disaster relief effort.

I have only been operating a wheelbarrow . Encouraging dead wood to jump into my boiler . Have standing dead wood so badly bug eaten I am not sure I would want to use it . I wanted to build 200 volt dc generator to power grid tie solar inverter overnight . I only got a couple hours run without load and never bought generator head . On the grid tie wood gas generator I connected a red wire to black wire and black wire to red wire in the dark and burned up all my blowers . Did not run this whole year . Still have plan to move flare outside and power blowers with corded drills .

Whatever you did with it, that’s an excellent price for that much vehicle. The trans itself is worth way more than that. Probably the rear as well which should be a two speed differential. Not sure what the engine is but a lot of those trucks just used the same 454 you could get in a Chevelle only they usually had a better bottom end. You could make good money just parting it out.

I was just looking for vortec 8100 (L18 ) engine . I can buy this truck but I can not drive it . I have engine in my pick up truck .
GM 6.0 L V8 Vortec L96

U-haul trucks are juice brakes and automatics. U could drive it without a cdl. The weight has to be under26000 lbs. U haul does that on purpose so people don’t have to have a CDL.

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Thanks for the correction JO :grin::grin::rofl:

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Hi All,
A typical winter morning here.
Yesterday cold, cold rain.
The skies cleared in the night.
Now frozen shut vehicle doors.
AND the wife want to leave early.
Her newer tripled door sealed vehicles this gets tough.
Unplug the house Christmas lights from the pre-set up special extension cord.
Swipe the wife’s electric hair drier.
30 minutes, first on the drivers door. Vehicle start. Full heat.
Damn! That woman left her front and rear wipers On-long duration intermittent! Again!
Steve. Steve. When will you ever learn to check switch positions FIRST. Arg. That’s going to cost at least one of the three wiper blades. And she expects me to buy/maintain these for her.
30 minutes vehicle heating. STILL my passengers’ door froze stuck.
Hair drier again. But this time caught with the “borrowing”. Oh well. She was handing me a nice bacon/egg/cheese breakfast sandwich made with love.

Yep. Yep. Near two months of this in and out winter weather down now. Three more in and out months to go.
Life in the wet; sometimes frozen.
S.U.

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Well I am off on a new adventure now picked up 4 half grown Berkshire large black cross pigs my neighbor didn’t have a home for.

Had a little trouble getting one of them in the pen she managed to wiggle out between the barn and the trailer ofcourse I was working alone and had to call a friend to finally get her back in. Ironically she refused to go in the barn but eventually went back in the open trailer door on her own. Lucky for me I was close enough to close the door before she got turned around and back out. Round 2 with help we got backed up closer and she had no choice but to go in the barn and in the pen with her friends.
This is a first for me. We had pigs when I was a kid but in the summer and I was really small.

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Christmas are at the doorstep. So I said Good bye to my office yesterday and open my each year cookies bakery

Because to bake 50 pounds of cookies takes a lot of time, I have to put my gasification research on hold.

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I was thinking about you being a former dealership mechanic Steve U. Then you sad story about the wife’s car. My wife has a 2015 Nissan Rogue. Got in it last year and the heater blower was making a terrible racket. Naturally I got the blame. I’m not flexible and hate confined spaces so when I decided that the blower motor was bad I set out to fix it. It is tucked up under the dash with no other access. You have to pull out the gas petal assembly and then twist like a pretzel to even get started. I only knew this because of You-tube or else I would never have known what to do. Took all day but I finally got the blower cage and motor out. Mice had packed the duct full of under carpet padding and was rubbing against the cage. Just a horrible job. True or not, I don’t know but I saw that the dealer charges up to a grand for this job. Got it all back together working fine. Two months later the same thing. Only took a few hours this time but still a major PITA. Since then I spray peppermint oil down the duct outlets. I guess mice don’t like it. So far no repeat. If you did that kind of work for a living I’m surprise you didn’t hari Kari.

Mid January in an area that averages 164 inches of snow a year and today is our first real snowfall. Maybe 4 inches. That’s like a dusting here.

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Hi All,
My wife said it is Christmas tree put-up day.
A 14 foot tall cull tree out of the back drainage

bank slope hard up against the side of my new all metal shed.
I let this grow any longer and it’s root system would undermine.
True purpose grown Christmas trees have genes stock that make bushy trees. And still the actual commercial Christmas tree grower do a lot of in-year clipping, culturing, and even tops sticks stiffeners tied to get those perfect trees
Growing for lumber and poles you want trees like this instead with 18"-24 inches annual top growth leaders. Each year the main side branches will come off the last years top leader growth.
Count down the rings of limbs + 2-3 to get an uncut trees age. 6+ 2-3 = 8-9 years. Cut butt rings confirms this.
At 50 years this tree would have been 75-85 feet tall. 24-30 inches diameter at the cut butt. And have pushed in the wall of my outbuilding.
A #1 Domestic lumber. A #2 export log.

Kids and wife tree dressing next.
Yes. Yes. I am a lousy camera man with this computer!
Wife and I always call our D.F. cull Christmas trees, “Charlie Brown” trees.
S.U.

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When I got up this morning it had snowed, and it covered the ground. It is now 11:30 am. and the snow is melting fast.


Could this be why?

59 *f on the northern side of the house. This is the Columbia and Wenatchee River confluence efficient in action where I live here just on the North East side of the two rivers.
I have seen it snowing just a mile across the river West of the house and raining at the house.
Normal weather patterns for here.
Bob

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Two days work

These gingerbreads are made by my wife and daughters. Especially the older one is great painter.

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Okay I am gaining weight just looking at all of this.
Bob

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If the weather is permitting, the temperature is back down to 37 *f and dropping, I would like to get the charcoal diagonal cross flow gasifer set up for a test run to see if it will work.
Bob

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