gogmorgo

We also have the M18 Milwaukee at work. Our tools get used and abused pretty heavily and usually take the beating and come back asking for more, although we have cooked a few of the tools. Burnt out a couple drills, and broke an anvil on one of the 1/2” impacts, but again this stuff gets used. If you do go this route don’t even bother with the 3amp-hour batteries. They’re fine for light tasks but overheat if you throw a big load on them. The grinder will also overheat the 5.0 batteries, but that’s irrelevant. Also worth watching out for, there’s a couple levels of impact, and the lighter ones probably aren’t going to be competitive with your air tools. I looked into getting into a cordless system pretty extensively last fall and ultimately decided it wasn’t going to be worth the money for me at the time, just for occasional home use. I like the Hilti battery system, but their 3/4” impact isn’t even competitive with the Milwaukee 1/2” at least on paper (1400ft-lbs for the M18 vs like, 650 for the 3/4” Hilti) so it doesn’t really make sense to get into for the cordless impact wrenches, which is mostly what I’d be using as well. I know the Milwaukee because I use it at work, so I think that’s where I’d go to get into a battery system unless Hilti steps up their impact game, but if I already had Dewalt or Makita or something else at home I’d be more than happy to add an impact to that range. Even lesser brands like Ryobi or even Harbor Freight would be okay for occasional use. Dewalt and Milwaukee are definitely the top dogs in the impact wrench game, but bare tools are cheaper than batteries, so unless you’re looking into moving into a new system I don’t see the point in doing so if you’ve already got one. Something I did see that I liked was that Dewalt has adapters to use newer battery types in older tools, which is cool. I wouldn’t want to have to replace all my tools in 10 years just because the batteries all quit and I can’t replace them anymore. No guarantees they’ll still be doing that down the road but you never know. Backwards compatibility beats the pants off planned obsolescence.

This came up in the 24hrs of Lemons groups, because of course it did. The vocal ones don’t really seem to care, many voices actually support the new EPA legislation. Why? Because they and the rest of motor sports aren’t the target, despite what SEMA wants you to believe. The EPA wants to be able to go after manufacturers and installers who are knowingly installing “competition-only” parts on street vehicles, which if you think about it is most of SEMA’s audience. In particular they’re trying to stop people deleting diesel trucks, especially commercial vehicles. We’re seeing the same thing happening up here. As far as LeMons goes, installing a bunch of cheaty race parts is against the spirit of the thing anyhow, and the new legislation isn’t going to stop anyone from dropping a Packard straight-eight into a Civic anymore than the existing regs prevent Joe Blow from cutting his cats off in his driveway between inspections (if he even has any). Most low-level racing series other than backwater circle track stuff have spec preventing fancy $#!& because they want the racing to stay competitive, not to mention adding power is generally going to increase danger. And like LeMons, any removing of emissions equipment on an otherwise stock motor is going to be done with block-off plates and chunks of pipe that are always going to be available, and they’re not really going to gain any power doing it without tuning that will be in violation of series regs anyhow. In fact most spec racing series probably would welcome having to sniff test all the cars as an opportunity to help keep things even more competitive.

I usually seafoam an engine when I buy it. Diesel oils also have a higher detergent content for dealing with all the soot, so they also tend to scrub out the engine much better. The few times I’ve pulled a valve cover off one of my engines it’s been spotless inside. But I will say that after Seafoam and Rotella in my ZJ, the lifter tick actually got louder. I’m pretty sure said ZJ hadn’t been getting oil changes as regularly as it maybe should have, and think it probably got louder after knocking all the insulating sludge out of the valve cover... big that’s just a hunch, I haven’t pulled this one yet. As far as oil weights go, I won’t run anything higher than a 5w, and haven’t noticed much difference in noise or pressure between 30 and 40 weight. I used to run 15w40 Rotella in the summer because I could get it in cheaper conventional, and swap out to synthetic 5w40 for winter, but then one winter I left it a little longer than I should have, and at -20°C the engine cranks over noticeably faster on a cold start with the 5w40 than the 15.

As of this afternoon I’m on team Pfizer. I get some needle anxiety amongst all my other anxieties, so I always look away, didn’t even feel it. The nurse was swabbing my arm, then stopped for a few seconds, then started swabbing again and told me it was done. My shoulder’s a little sore if I stop moving for a bit, basically now that I’m home from work and sitting down, but otherwise I wouldn’t know. And if I didn’t know I got stabbed this afternoon I might not even think anything of the soreness, it’s that mild.

Yeah, my parents finally got out of their Envoy (same thing just with a different badge) a few weeks ago, after eight years of sketch. It’s been four years since they trusted it on a road trip. Any time I had to drive it I ended up replacing something to get home. They’d replaced both the trans and transfer case by 150k miles, despite being maintained at the dealer. I also was never able to find a comfortable seating position as driver or passenger, and MPG was not great compared to my ZJ. The 4.2 isn’t necessarily the worst engine, but the trans ratios it’s paired with are all wrong. It also wants you to run 89 octane if you’re climbing hills, and will start pinging on 87, or at least theirs did. There’s also pretty questionable quality on the interior, as in stuff breaks, not just that it feels cheap, then you go to the wrecking yard to replace said stuff and find twenty others that all have the same stuff broken. I’d pass.

The shrubs I transplanted with the ZJ and a tow strap last summer have started budding out. So that’s cool.

Damn. You wouldn’t think it would be that big a deal. Typical key copying machine you just set the good key and the blank in their spots, and it grinds into the new blank using the old key as the guide. Depending on the key you might need different adapters on the holders, but as long as the key is clamped in and none of the grooves are sitting below the jaws, just send it. But if you’re in a bind and can’t ship away your key for a few days, you can also cut them yourself with a file, so long as you’re careful.

Well we had some big changes go down provincially yesterday in an attempt to knock down this third spike we're getting, and part of it was opening vaccination first-dose bookings to everyone born in or before the year I was born. So I’ve got an appointment booked for the 19th now. So that’s cool. I’m guessing it’s the A-Z but not 100% on that.

I think most of us are somewhere in this corner:

I’ve got three vehicles on the policy and they work out to around $800/year each, more coverage than liability only but not full coverage by any means. This is under the Alberta private insurance cartel. Liability only on a single vehicle when I first moved here was more than I had been paying for full coverage on two vehicles combined under Manitoba’s public insurance agency where they actually look after you because that’s what they exist for, not to generate shareholder profits. I had one speeding ticket on my record when I moved here which made for much higher insurance. Enough time had passed for it not to matter anymore when it came to my first renewal and my rates dropped about 25%... it was only a $130 ticket, but in the three years subsequent it cost me somewhere in the neighbourhood of $12-1500 in increased insurance rates. This is across multiple vehicles so the effect will be less if you only have one, but it’s still not something to sneer at. One of my roommates for a while had so many points on his license that his insurance on a $1000 Focus was $250/month. Gotta be the easiest way to save on insurance, don’t break traffic laws.

mRNA vaccines aren’t even new. They’ve been in development for over 30 years. Yes, it does seem a little odd in that it basically tricks your body into producing the antigens to teach your immune system how to attack the virus, but in a way that’s better, because the immune system can be taught a specific target within the virus that will remain the same across many different variants of the virus, or a target that neutralizes the virus more efficiently than one the body might learn on its own through a more conventional vaccine. It does mean mRNA vaccines produce a more severe immune response than a conventional vaccine, given it can lead to the body’s cells generating some of what the virus uses to attack the body, and it affects lots of cells very easily, but the mRNA strands themselves are fairly delicate and they won’t make it to the cell nucleus before degrading without the virus pushing them. Its also much quicker to synthesize the mRNA sequences than it is to cultivate neutralized pathogens to inject into the body instead, and you don’t even actually need to have the specific pathogen in the vaccine production facility once it’s been properly mapped, (which in this case was within a month of it first being discovered) so it’s a heck of a lot safer to produce as well. Or so says what I’ve read on it. Science is cool. Initially I was going to hold off a bit on getting the vaccine so those who were more likely to be severely affected by the virus could get vaccinated first, but I’ve since changed my mind. Due to the way the province has rolled out vaccine availability, at this point anyone who needs one more than me either has it, or is refusing to get it for some reason or another, so I’ll be going for it as soon as it’s available to my demographic.

This is def just not ok but I think its to squish the vehicle down for bridges Instead of just letting air out of the tires?

Unconscious brains... at least I’m not the only one four months out of sync with reality.

Nah, wasn’t a man. There’s walls between the rooms.

If you can, find a “recovery” strap, or rope. Similar idea to a snatch strap. They’ve got more stretch to them over a tow strap, which means you can hit them harder with less risk to either vehicle, and the stored energy from the stretch helps to slow-pull on the stuck vehicle after the towing vehicle’s stopped dead. Ideally a kinetic recovery rope is what you want, but they’re $$$ compared to the recovery straps you can get anywhere. It’s also a little bit smoother ride if you end up getting towed out of somewhere on the end of it. And like Pete said, nothing with metal hooks on the end.

They just look like regular lug nuts, same chromed finish but they’re solid instead of having a thin chrome cover thing to distort or swell up and make your life miserable. No idea where they came from. The locking nuts are Gorilla brand and look similar to the others in terms of construction and material, but there’s no brand markings on them.

It’s never been an issue up until now because I’ve always just used a socket and breaker bar/impact. I hadn’t actually needed to put a tool on the lug nuts out in the field yet until last week. Locking lug nuts have always been more of an annoyance to me than anything else but I didn’t want to change them out because these are actually solid and don’t have the obnoxious chrome caps.

Haha I figured that was the case. But sometimes you just have to ask.

I haven’t really seen reference to a specific tow package either. The owners manuals refer to a list of required equipment for max towing, class 3 hitch, auto trans, metric ton axle/suspension, and HD cooling and charging systems. The GVWR is reflected in the VIN, above/below certain thresholds, which is a giveaway about metric ton package. But I don’t think much else is reflected in the VIN. What do you mean by “pulling metric tons?” For reasons that escape logic my anxiety and overachieving imagination are suggesting it means they’re somehow gathering them up to withold them from us.