Well, I'll be darned

[sparquelito]

I checked out a beloved neighbor’s lawn mower yesterday. 
She's a smart, capable lady, but the mower wasn’t running right.
Making a metallic noise. 

She rang me up, and I said, "Yeah, bring it on over and drop it off. I'll make it work, no worries."

After a bit, I looked at the oil level, fresh ethanol-free gas in the tank, the air cleaner, and the spark plug, gap, and cap.
All great.   

Checked all the nuts & bolts and the mower blade main bolt. 

Pulled it twice, and it ran like a champ. 
I called her, told her to come over. 
She ran a few test strips in my yard. 

“Can you hear that noise??”

Turns out her last mower was electric. 
She’s not used to the sound of the engine and exhaust. 

😐

[Sgt. Pepper]

Damn engines that make heat and noise. Who invented them. Some guy named Diesel?

[OrdinaryNimda]

If this is an AC/DC kinduva problem, I will stick to the title of this thread: 😁
 

 

[Sheepdog1969]

My John Deere D105 lawn tractor had nearly the opposite sound issue a few weeks ago. It has a whopping 57 hours on it and, other than replacing the battery last spring, sharpening the blades, and yearly fluid/filter changes, it runs great. That is until this spring when it turned, but wouldn't fire. The sound Sparquelito's neighbor thought was an issue, the same sound I wanted to hear, had been usurped by the pathetic chug of an engine turning only under the power of a starter motor and a battery. 

The clear fuel filter showed me I was moving gas. I had just replaced the air filter, cleaned the outer foam filter, and verified that there were no obstructions in/around the intake. Even I know that there are three basic things a combustion engine needs to run; Air, Fuel, and Spark. It had to be Spark. So, I pulled the spark plug. The boot was solid and it's plug connector was free of corrosion. There was just a bit of fouling on the nose and electrode, but it was wet with fuel. (no spark).  I visualized every electrical connection and wire that I could see, searching for the short, ( to no avail)  I went as far as using electrical connection cleaner on them all, and reapplied dielectric grease on the plug connections. No luck!

Befuddled, I decided to replace the spark plug. As I removed the boot again, I gave the wire a light tug to make sure it was still connected, since it runs beneath a plastic shroud to the similarly hidden coil. 13 inches of the 14 inch long plug wire slid out of the shroud, with gnaw marks adorning the severed end. Once I removed the shroud, it was obvious that a mouse had moved in over the winter, and had chewed the wire clean through, just over 1 inch from the coil. 

I removed the coil and checked the inter-webs for a replacement. I quickly found many parts that met every spec, except for the plug wire length! Not even John Deere had the correct part, despite me providing their part number directly from my manual. Everything, including the part number, was the same as my part, except the plug wire was less than half the length I needed. (and the John Deere part cost around $100 vs. the same wrong part everywhere else costing between $15-$35.)  

Like Sparq's neighbor, it was time for me to make a call to a friend, (who happens to be an electrician.)  I assumed the coil was still functional, and I thought I had just enough wire left on the coil side of the break, (just over 1 inch), to splice the wire. (it's a sealed coil, with no ability to replace the entire wire.)  But rather than trying this myself, and going from SNAFU to FUBAR, I left it to a pro.

My friend showed up not long after my call, (he had come over directly after work), and assessed the situation as I poured him a beer. He took a frothy sip and said, "I got this!".  He scurried out to his work van and reentered with an odd assortment of parts, tape, and tools. He braided a short length of similar scrap wire into either side of wires to be spliced, creating an internal splint of sorts. Then he applied a bit of superglue on a few areas of this connection. He then crimped a 1 inch long butt splice connector over the splice, (a tube-shaped connector with two crimps for splicing wires in-line).  Finally, he wrapped the exposed wires with some high end electrical tape, (he got quite serious while explaining to me that not all electrical tape is created equally, lol.).  Neither of know exactly how long the fix took, since we spent far more time sipping beer and talking than he spent "fixing".  However, as far as his impatient wife is concerned, he worked his fingers to the bone the entire hour and a half he was at my house that evening.  

I re-installed the part the next morning and buttoned everything up. I only had to tap the ignition, and that b!tch fired right up! After mowing my  1 acre property, I decided to take my little green tractor for a road trip, and drove it one block down my street to my electrician friend's 2 acre property. It was mid morning on a Friday, and he and his wife were at work and the kids were in school. Just as I suspected, his lawn had not been cut. He had chosen to help me out the night before instead of mowing his own lawn. Worse yet, the forecast called for rain from 1pm that afternoon until late Sunday. It had already rained most of the previous week, and combined with the unseasonably warm weather, the grass was growing fast. Beyond being miffed about the mouse disabling my tractor Thursday morning, I knew if I couldn't fix it before early Friday morning , the rain would force me to wait till Monday to cut. Undoubtedly my friend knew this as well, and understood he needed to mow Thursday after work, or get rain delayed as well. Yet, he never mentioned this to me when he came to my aid Thursday after work. If he had, he knew I would have gone to his house and used his tractor to mow his property as he fixed my part Thursday. He could have even asked me to mow his property after I got mine cut Friday morning, once he realized he had spent too much time Thursday evening helping me to cut his lawn before nightfall that night.  And, of coarse, he wouldn't take a penny for his work. (I began to understand why his wife was upset with him. Not because of him doing my job for free, but because their lovely property would be "shagged out" until Monday night, because of his selflessness.)  So, I cut and trimmed his lawn that Friday morning, and got everything home and put away within 20 minutes of the skies opening up.  Can you believe that he had the nerve to call and thank me, AND offer to pay me for my gas/time, when he got home from work late Friday evening? Some people, Right?

Guys like Sparquelito, and my friend Greg, are the kind of people that do the selfless things that never make the evening news. Guys and Gals like them would shy away from that spotlight anyway. Yet, these are the folks that have your back, even it if means stabbing themselves in the back in the process of helping you out.  Many would assume, based on what we hear from the media, that selfless acts, (and the people who perform those acts), are few and far between. I disagree. I bet, even in the "Big City" where these "Talking Heads" reside, that there are 10,000, (or more) times as many selfless acts of kindness per every Headline leading violent criminal act that dominate the news day. (I still would rather have my car breakdown on a desolated rural road than breakdown in any crowded large urban area. Rural folks know what I mean.)  Good people defiantly outnumber the bad guys, they just don't have the powerful Public Relations people that the bad guys do! ("Good guy helps neighbor" doesn't sell copy nearly as well as, "Bad guy kills good guy.", does.) 

So, I raise my glass to The Good Guys/Gals.  May we all aspire to join that club! 

PS -  I found out why my John Deere part number for my Tractor's coil seemed not to be correct.  After I got my tractor, JD decided to switch the 17HP engine my model came with to a smaller engine without changing the model number. Apparently, if I had searched for my part, specifying that my tractor's serial number was below 700,000, I would have found the correct part. Thanks JD! 

 

Edited May 11 by Sheepdog1969

[Sheepdog1969]

5 hours ago, Sgt. Pepper said:

Who invented them. Some guy named Diesel?

I heard George Washington Carver was making them for Peanuts, or was it that Mr. Carver was making Peanuts for Diesel's engine?

Beyond Diesel's engine design, Henry Ford actually designed the original Model T to run on both ethanol and petroleum. With great foresight, both Carver and Ford believed that petroleum supplies would become limited in the future. Today, Bio-diesel created from recycled deep fryer peanut oil, (or raw peanut oil), works exactly as Mr. Carver envisioned as a Kerosene based Diesel fuel alternative.

https://www.reliableplant.com/Read/5513/carver-ford-biofuel

Though worlds apart, George Washington Carver and Henry Ford shared a vision of a future in which agricultural products would be put to new uses to create products and industries.

One idea both men worked on more than 60 years ago – biofuels – is again in vogue as America seeks to reduce its dependence on foreign oil.

"Henry Ford was ahead of his time on this. He knew he needed fuel for transportation, and if he could develop something that was good for agriculture, too, it would be a good match," said **** Baker, a technology leader at Ford's powertrain, research and advanced engineering department. "Henry also knew of Carver's work and said 'that's somebody I need to learn more about.'"

That was because Carver, born a slave in Missouri during the Civil War, had become a world-famous botanist by the 1930s, famed for his research into the many uses of peanuts, soybeans and other plants. Over the years, Carver promoted the idea that such plants could be turned into plastics, paint, fuel and other products.

Ford was interested in the same things. Besides his legendary work creating plastic car parts derived from soybeans, Ford had long believed that ethanol (or grain alcohol) should be produced as an alternative fuel.

"All the world is waiting for a substitute for gasoline," Ford said in 1916. "The day is not far distant when, for every one of those barrels of gasoline, a barrel of alcohol must be substituted."

During the early days of Prohibition, he even suggested turning Michigan's idled breweries into distilleries to make denatured alcohol for fuel in cars and trucks, noted historian Ford Bryan. That went nowhere since Prohibition doomed the idea of any large-scale switch to alcohol production.

The automaker learned of Carver following his donations to the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Alabama, where the botanist was a faculty member, Bryan said.

At Tuskegee, Carver had promoted the use of crop rotation – planting such nitrogen-rich crops as peanuts, sweet potatoes and soybeans – to improve farmland depleted by years of raising cotton. In so doing, he also worked on hundreds of new uses for such crops.

Though he's often credited with inventing hundreds of uses for the peanut alone, Carver left few formulas or detailed records, making such claims by admirers hard to verify.

By the late 1930s, Carver and Ford were corresponding on a variety of subjects, including new industrial uses for soybeans and other plants. Ford had also met with Carver in Dearborn and at Ford's estate in Georgia and visited him at Tuskegee.

At first glance, they must have seemed like a strange mix – the billionaire industrialist from the North and the modest scientist and naturalist from the South. But Ford regarded Carver as a contemporary. Both men had been born on farms during the Civil War and both had sought, in their own ways, to improve the lot of the common man.

After Thomas Edison died, the automaker even called Carver "the greatest of all my inspiring friends." To honor him, Ford also had a replica of Carver's log cabin birthplace built amid the other historic buildings at Greenfield Village in Dearborn. In addition, Ford helped outfit a laboratory for Carver and had an elevator installed in a Tuskegee dormitory so the botanist could get to his lab more easily in his later years.

While certainly forward-thinking, the idea that agriculture could be used to create alternative fuels wasn't totally new with Carver and Ford. The German inventor Rudolph Diesel had created an engine that ran on peanut oil in 1900. But both Carver and Ford believed that petroleum supplies would one day become limited. And both promoted the alternative uses of soybeans, which Ford used to make car parts in the 1930s.

This interest culminated in 1942, when Ford showcased a car with a plastic body made from soybeans. Attached to a tubular frame, the body weighed 30 percent less than a steel car and was much more flexible and durable. The experimental car was also equipped to run on ethanol rather than gasoline but such a novel idea failed to catch on.

By that time, huge new oil fields were being discovered and petroleum had become much more cost-effective than plant-based ethanol, said Baker.

"Agricultural fuels take a fair amount of processing to create, whereas petroleum comes out of the ground and just needs refining," Baker said. "The principles were right for what Ford and Carver were doing in the lab, but they didn't have the tools we do now to go big-time with the idea. Now, we're revisiting their old story with new tools, and exciting things are going on in the laboratory again.”

More than 60 years later, the ethanol-fueled dreams of Carver and Ford are becoming a reality.

Edited May 11 by Sheepdog1969
typo

['Scales]

Back in 1999 in the lead up to the birth of our first child, my young wife decided to do some temp agency work and was despatched to the Brisbane headquarters of John Deere Tractors. A couple of days into the job she tells me the guys in the office were laughing at her cos she asked if the tractors came in colours other than green. Bless her.

[PrairieDog]

6 hours ago, Sheepdog1969 said:

My John Deere D105 lawn tractor had nearly the opposite sound issue a few weeks ago. It has a whopping 57 hours on it and, other than replacing the battery last spring, sharpening the blades, and yearly fluid/filter changes, it runs great. That is until this spring when it turned, but wouldn't fire. The sound Sparquelito's neighbor thought was an issue, the same sound I wanted to hear, had been usurped by the pathetic chug of an engine turning only under the power of a starter motor and a battery. 

The clear fuel filter showed me I was moving gas. I had just replaced the air filter, cleaned the outer foam filter, and verified that there were no obstructions in/around the intake. Even I know that there are three basic things a combustion engine needs to run; Air, Fuel, and Spark. It had to be Spark. So, I pulled the spark plug. The boot was solid and it's plug connector was free of corrosion. There was just a bit of fouling on the nose and electrode, but it was wet with fuel. (no spark).  I visualized every electrical connection and wire that I could see, searching for the short, ( to no avail)  I went as far as using electrical connection cleaner on them all, and reapplied dielectric grease on the plug connections. No luck!

Befuddled, I decided to replace the spark plug. As I removed the boot again, I gave the wire a light tug to make sure it was still connected, since it runs beneath a plastic shroud to the similarly hidden coil. 13 inches of the 14 inch long plug wire slid out of the shroud, with gnaw marks adorning the severed end. Once I removed the shroud, it was obvious that a mouse had moved in over the winter, and had chewed the wire clean through, just over 1 inch from the coil. 

I removed the coil and checked the inter-webs for a replacement. I quickly found many parts that met every spec, except for the plug wire length! Not even John Deere had the correct part, despite me providing their part number directly from my manual. Everything, including the part number, was the same as my part, except the plug wire was less than half the length I needed. (and the John Deere part cost around $100 vs. the same wrong part everywhere else costing between $15-$35.)  

Like Sparq's neighbor, it was time for me to make a call to a friend, (who happens to be an electrician.)  I assumed the coil was still functional, and I thought I had just enough wire left on the coil side of the break, (just over 1 inch), to splice the wire. (it's a sealed coil, with no ability to replace the entire wire.)  But rather than trying this myself, and going from SNAFU to FUBAR, I left it to a pro.

My friend showed up not long after my call, (he had come over directly after work), and assessed the situation as I poured him a beer. He took a frothy sip and said, "I got this!".  He scurried out to his work van and reentered with an odd assortment of parts, tape, and tools. He braided a short length of similar scrap wire into either side of wires to be spliced, creating an internal splint of sorts. Then he applied a bit of superglue on a few areas of this connection. He then crimped a 1 inch long butt splice connector over the splice, (a tube-shaped connector with two crimps for splicing wires in-line).  Finally, he wrapped the exposed wires with some high end electrical tape, (he got quite serious while explaining to me that not all electrical tape is created equally, lol.).  Neither of know exactly how long the fix took, since we spent far more time sipping beer and talking than he spent "fixing".  However, as far as his impatient wife is concerned, he worked his fingers to the bone the entire hour and a half he was at my house that evening.  

I re-installed the part the next morning and buttoned everything up. I only had to tap the ignition, and that b!tch fired right up! After mowing my  1 acre property, I decided to take my little green tractor for a road trip, and drove it one block down my street to my electrician friend's 2 acre property. It was mid morning on a Friday, and he and his wife were at work and the kids were in school. Just as I suspected, his lawn had not been cut. He had chosen to help me out the night before instead of moving his own lawn. Worse yet, the forecast called for rain from 1pm that afternoon until late Sunday. It had already rained most of the previous week, and combined with the unseasonably warm weather, the grass was growing fast. Beyond being miffed about the mouse disabling my tractor Thursday morning, I knew if I couldn't fix it before early Friday morning , the rain would force me to wait till Monday to cut. Undoubtedly my friend knew this as well, and understood he needed to mow Thursday after work, or get rain delayed as well. Yet, he never mentioned this to me when he came to my aid Thursday after work. If he had, he knew I would have gone to his house and used his tractor to mow his property as he fixed my part Thursday. He could have even asked me to mow his property after I got mine cut Friday morning, once he realized he had spent too much time Thursday evening helping me to cut his lawn before nightfall that night.  And, of coarse, he wouldn't take a penny for his work. (I began to understand why his wife was upset with him. Not because of him doing my job for free, but because their lovely property would be "shagged out" until Monday night, because of his selflessness.)  So, I cut and trimmed his lawn that Friday morning, and got everything home and put away within 20 minutes of the skies opening up.  Can you believe that he had the nerve to call and thank me, AND offer to pay me for my gas/time, when he got home from work late Friday evening? Some people, Right?

Guys like Sparquelito, and my friend Greg, are the kind of people that do the selfless things that never make the evening news. Guys and Gals like them would shy away from that spotlight anyway. Yet, these are the folks that have your back, even it if means stabbing themselves in the back in the process of helping you out.  Many would assume, based on what we hear from the media, that selfless acts, (and the people who perform those acts), are few and far between. I disagree. I bet, even in the "Big City" where these "Talking Heads" reside, that there are 10,000, (or more) times as many selfless acts of kindness per every Headline leading violent criminal act that dominate the news day. (I still would rather have my car breakdown on a desolated rural road than breakdown in any crowded large urban area. Rural folks know what I mean.)  Good people defiantly outnumber the bad guys, they just don't have the powerful Public Relations people that the bad guys do! ("Good guy helps neighbor" doesn't sell copy nearly as well as, "Bad guy kills good guy.", does.) 

So, I raise my glass to The Good Guys/Gals.  May we all aspire to join that club! 

PS -  I found out why my John Deere part number for my Tractor's coil seemed not to be correct.  After I got my tractor, JD decided to switch the 17HP engine my model came with to a smaller engine without changing the model number. Apparently, if I had searched for my part, specifying that my tractor's serial number was below 700,000, I would have found the correct part. Thanks JD! 

 

Glass raised and clinked.  

Out here in the country, we kept having mice take out our gas yard equipment.  We were always  replacing this wire/that air filter.  It’s why we ended up switching to the EGO battery system.  Bought a push one in a panic when our rider was once again out of commission and we had to mow for an event coming up.  We couldn’t believe how great it worked and how easy it was.  We now have the EGO z-turn rider and it’s the slickest thing. 

You were lucky though the mice only hit your mower.  

Our worst was when a critter got into my 10 year old Subaru with only 100k miles on it.  Besides wiring and air filters, they chewed through some plastic (the perils of soy based plastics-they taste like food to critters) that tied into the gas tank, which sat under the backseat.  The back seat became a giant sponge soaking up the now leaking gas.  

With the wagon otherwise in great shape, and so few miles for a Subie, we decided to drop the $3,000 on the repairs.

Three days after getting it back from the shop, our wallet still aching, it got hit by lightning…

Edited May 11 by PrairieDog

[Sheepdog1969]

13 minutes ago, PrairieDog said:

the perils of soy based plastics-they taste like food to critters)

Had a great neighbor who was the first person we met nearly 19 years ago when we moved in. He and his wife had identical early '90's Buick Regal's, except for the color. They drove those cars into the ground.  When one of them became unrepairable, he came home with a brand new Chevy 4 door, 4 cylinder tiny POS, which I can't remember the model name.  He was a Army Vietnam vet, who served as an MP, and then became a Deputy Sheriff after he came home. He didn't trust this new Chevy that his wife wanted, so it sat in his drive every day of it's first winter, and they only drove his remaining Buick. Come spring, it wouldn't run, or even turn over. Being under warranty, Chevy towed it to their dealership. Mice had devoured nearly every exposed wire under the hood, and soy based wire insulation was to blame. Chevy rewired it, but 3 more times, over the next two years, the mice repeatedly feasted upon it. He was livid. After the fourth time the mice made it inoperable, I never saw it again. They both drove their remaining Buick until the day he died. 

I have no issues with the soybean. It is a nitrogen fixing legume, and a wonderfully versatile source of protein. Heck, the company my father worked for until it was acquired, AE Staleys, was one of the worlds largest corn and soybean refiners in the world. Soybeans fed and clothed me as a kid. But it takes a special kind of urban stupid to use soybean based wire insulators on any car, as a "save the planet" petroleum reduction methodology. Rodents have always loved (and needed to) gnaw on things to wear down their perpetually growing incisors. Anyone who ever owned a hamster understands how they nocturnally gnawed on every bit of their "hamster trail" plastic pieces until their habitat needed to be removed from any owner's bedroom, due to the noise. Usually, rodents who chose to gnaw on car wiring, stopped when they began to grind on metal. But soy based wire insulation exacerbated their compulsion.  I had no idea that Subaru had begun using this type of wiring. What a horror show for you. Henry Ford had imagined using soy based "plastic" parts in his vehicles to reduce weight and reduce Ford's dependence on costly steel.  The effects of corrosion due to winter road salt would be nothing compared to rodents feasting on your "edible" car parts all year long. 

The person who identifies what rodents refuse to gnaw on, is set for life! My money is on Broccoli, lol.

[Sheepdog1969]

1 hour ago, PrairieDog said:

Three days after getting it back from the shop, our wallet still aching, it got hit by lightning…

um, if it wasn't for bad luck, you'd have none at all. I would have recommended Exorcism, since your car may have been possessed. Do you still own it? As I remember, even "Christine", Steven King's possessed 1958 Plymouth Fury, would repair itself. Just saying.

[PrairieDog]

20 minutes ago, Sheepdog1969 said:

um, if it wasn't for bad luck, you'd have none at all. I would have recommended Exorcism, since your car may have been possessed. Do you still own it? As I remember, even "Christine", Steven King's possessed 1958 Plymouth Fury, would repair itself. Just saying.

Lol, naw, the bolt took out the entire electrical system.  The only way we knew it got hit (it was parked under the tree that took the main strike) was when we went to start it to move for the electrical crew, it was dead, and we found a tiny exit burn hole in the back door panel.  

The insurance company totaled it.  I heard from a friend who works in the industry the insurers in cases like this where the body/engine is fine, they go ahead and repair the wiring harnesses and contacts, then sell them to third world countries that don’t care about “salvage” titles.  So I like to think it’s tooling around the backroads of Botswana or something.

I got a good settlement for it, so I’m not complaining.  Covered most of the cost of a new replacement.  The strike took out our work truck too, which we had just driven home on a new set of tires the night before. Insurance even covered those.  

As for bad luck, there is one giant stroke of good luck here… It happened after we fixed the mobile molotov cocktail that was our car.  We probably would have lost our house in the explosion 😅

[PrairieDog]

1 hour ago, Sheepdog1969 said:

Had a great neighbor who was the first person we met nearly 19 years ago when we moved in. He and his wife had identical early '90's Buick Regal's, except for the color. They drove those cars into the ground.  When one of them became unrepairable, he came home with a brand new Chevy 4 door, 4 cylinder tiny POS, which I can't remember the model name.  He was a Army Vietnam vet, who served as an MP, and then became a Deputy Sheriff after he came home. He didn't trust this new Chevy that his wife wanted, so it sat in his drive every day of it's first winter, and they only drove his remaining Buick. Come spring, it wouldn't run, or even turn over. Being under warranty, Chevy towed it to their dealership. Mice had devoured nearly every exposed wire under the hood, and soy based wire insulation was to blame. Chevy rewired it, but 3 more times, over the next two years, the mice repeatedly feasted upon it. He was livid. After the fourth time the mice made it inoperable, I never saw it again. They both drove their remaining Buick until the day he died. 

I have no issues with the soybean. It is a nitrogen fixing legume, and a wonderfully versatile source of protein. Heck, the company my father worked for until it was acquired, AE Staleys, was one of the worlds largest corn and soybean refiners in the world. Soybeans fed and clothed me as a kid. But it takes a special kind of urban stupid to use soybean based wire insulators on any car, as a "save the planet" petroleum reduction methodology. Rodents have always loved (and needed to) gnaw on things to wear down their perpetually growing incisors. Anyone who ever owned a hamster understands how they nocturnally gnawed on every bit of their "hamster trail" plastic pieces until their habitat needed to be removed from any owner's bedroom, due to the noise. Usually, rodents who chose to gnaw on car wiring, stopped when they began to grind on metal. But soy based wire insulation exacerbated their compulsion.  I had no idea that Subaru had begun using this type of wiring. What a horror show for you. Henry Ford had imagined using soy based "plastic" parts in his vehicles to reduce weight and reduce Ford's dependence on costly steel.  The effects of corrosion due to winter road salt would be nothing compared to rodents feasting on your "edible" car parts all year long. 

The person who identifies what rodents refuse to gnaw on, is set for life! My money is on Broccoli, lol.

yeah, soy beans are sure important for so many things. I got no trouble except for coating the seeds now with some pre-emergent chemical.  Ever since our farmer neighbor started using that kind a few years back, the sandhill crane pair that lived here haven’t had a successful nesting season after a decade of watching the family grow.  The past few years, they hatched a colt or two, but by the end of summer the colts are gone.  I think the adults have finally given up on our place.  They came back this spring, looking like they were going to set up housekeeping, but we haven’t seen them around now for many  weeks.  It’s a bummer.  

As far as soy plastics in cars. I think the tide has turned.  Our EGO tools, which are all wiring, have been fine parked for five years in the same place the old OHC engines were (knock on wood).  And we haven’t had the same trouble with the replacement Crosstrek, except the squirrels have devoured the insulation… at least the car runs with that missing 😄

Edited May 11 by PrairieDog

[Sheepdog1969]

7 hours ago, PrairieDog said:

I got no trouble except for coating the seeds now with some pre-emergent chemical.

When men try to play God, especially men who can't even control their own lives, things get Royally F-ed up. for all of us Companies like Monsanto are no different than Big Pharma.

[sparquelito]

Many years ago, down in south Alabama near an Army base, a tract of land that housed a trailer park came up for sale. 
The family who had owned the trailer park, and collected rent from the 45 or so tenants there, were retiring. 

I proposed to my (then) wife, "I think we should buy this, as an investment property."

She replied, "You're crazy. The workload and liability would be out of control."

"I think we could make it work. And get this. I have a marketing hook that would make it a real winner."

"I don't think I want to hear this."

"I put up a large archway banner over the entrance to the place. I paint it red and white checkerboard pattern, see?"

"Yeah, and...?"

"We paint in bold letters the name of the trailer park, Purina Tornado Chow!"

She just turned and walked away. 
I'm pretty sure that most geniuses are never recognized in their own lifetime. 

😐

[PrairieDog]

17 minutes ago, sparquelito said:

Many years ago, down in south Alabama near an Army base, a tract of land that housed a trailer park came up for sale. 
The family who had owned the trailer park, and collected rent from the 45 or so tenants there, were retiring. 

I proposed to my (then) wife, "I think we should buy this, as an investment property."

She replied, "You're crazy. The workload and liability would be out of control."

"I think we could make it work. And get this. I have a marketing hook that would make it a real winner."

"I don't think I want to hear this."

"I put up a large archway banner over the entrance to the place. I paint it red and white checkerboard pattern, see?"

"Yeah, and...?"

"We paint in bold letters the name of the trailer park, Purina Tornado Chow!"

She just turned and walked away. 
I'm pretty sure that most geniuses are never recognized in their own lifetime. 

😐

Clearly.  There are a few folks I come across and think dang, it’d be fun to just sit on the porch and shoot the breeze with…you’re one of them.  Keep the stories coming. 

[DanvillRob]

I have over 50 trees in my yard....I had a chain saw I used for years..... but I developed tendonitis in my right forearm because of the vibration, (not sure how lunberjacks get away with it), so I got rid of that one and now have an electric chain saw.

I suppose an electric chain saw is as macho as a Vespa....but no worries about pull starting it....old gas, etc.....and my right arm isn't affected by it.

[RBSinTo]

When I read the title of this thread, I thought it was about the autobiography of a sock with a hole in it.

Live and learn.

RBSinTo

[DanvillRob]

Just now, RBSinTo said:

When I read the title of this thread, I thought it was about the autobiography of a sock with a hole in it.

Live and learn.

RBSinTo

Do people even darn socks these days?

I used to darn my socks.... put in a light bulb, then a quick few stitches and it was done!

 

[RBSinTo]

3 minutes ago, DanvillRob said:

Do people even darn socks these days?

I used to darn my socks.... put in a light bulb, then a quick few stitches and it was done!

 

DanvillRob,

I often darn my socks.

Every time one gets a hole I say " Darn! I have to sew it again".

And I assume your socks have lightbulbs so your toes can see inside your shoes.

Pretty clever idea.

RBSinTo

Edited May 13 by RBSinTo

[DanvillRob]

1 hour ago, RBSinTo said:

And I assume your socks have lightbulbs so your toes can see inside your shoes.

Pretty clever idea.

RBSinTo

Well yeah.... my toes do get scared of the dark!

[gearbasher]

I had a friend who was renting a pressure washer. He asked the clerk at the tool rental if there was any chance of getting electrocuted with all the water spraying around. The clerk told him: "I guarantee you won't be electrocuted." So my friend asked: "How can you guarantee that?" The clerk responded: "Because it's gas powered."

Edited May 13 by gearbasher

[sparquelito]

6 hours ago, DanvillRob said:

I have over 50 trees in my yard....I had a chain saw I used for years..... but I developed tendonitis in my right forearm because of the vibration, (not sure how lunberjacks get away with it), so I got rid of that one and now have an electric chain saw.

I suppose an electric chain saw is as macho as a Vespa....but no worries about pull starting it....old gas, etc.....and my right arm isn't affected by it.

I have a Kobalt electric chainsaw, and it is fantastic. 

I use it for quick jobs, small trees, limbs, dismembering ex-wives, stuff like that. 

I do have a larger, gasoline-powered one for larger jobs, but it's a heavy beast. 
It's a 4-cycle engine, so i don't have to pre-mix the oil and gas. 

🙂

[PrairieDog]

8 hours ago, DanvillRob said:

I have over 50 trees in my yard....I had a chain saw I used for years..... but I developed tendonitis in my right forearm because of the vibration, (not sure how lunberjacks get away with it), so I got rid of that one and now have an electric chain saw.

I suppose an electric chain saw is as macho as a Vespa....but no worries about pull starting it....old gas, etc.....and my right arm isn't affected by it.

What’s macho is getting the chores done.  We have an Oregon batt chain saw and the pole saw attachment for our EGO system.  The batteries let us go anywhere on our place, even deep in the woods.  And yeah, like you say, a heck of a lot easier to maneuver than pounds of combustion engine and gas.

[RBSinTo]

1 hour ago, sparquelito said:

I have a Kobalt electric chainsaw, and it is fantastic. 

I use it for quick jobs, small trees, limbs, dismembering ex-wives, stuff like that. 

I do have a larger, gasoline-powered one for larger jobs, but it's a heavy beast. 
It's a 4-cycle engine, so i don't have to pre-mix the oil and gas. 

🙂

Sparquelito,

When there is some tree-limb trimming to be done in our backyard, I use my one-Jew-powered hand saw, which works very well. No noise, no pollution, and don't use no gas or oil. Just an occasional Ibuprophen as necessary.

RBSinTo

[sparquelito]

11 hours ago, RBSinTo said:

Sparquelito,

When there is some tree-limb trimming to be done in our backyard, I use my one-Jew-powered hand saw, which works very well. No noise, no pollution, and don't use no gas or oil. Just an occasional Ibuprophen as necessary.

RBSinTo

I enjoy using my hand-saws, whenever the height of the job, the degree of difficulty, and the amount of noise that needs limiting is taken into consideration. 

Aleve seems to work best for my pain. 
That, and beer. 

😐

[PrairieDog]

4 minutes ago, sparquelito said:

I enjoy using my hand-saws, whenever the height of the job, the degree of difficulty, and the amount of noise that needs limiting is taken into consideration. 

Aleve seems to work best for my pain. 
That, and beer. 

😐

I like the idea that I can take down a something as big as a tree with a simple piece of metal with teeth cut into it.  When I was young and had more time on my hands than what I knew to do with, I was helping my ex-MIL with reclaiming her backyard. It had become a hazard from neglect, and she had gotten a note from the city about cleaning up the alley side.  I found there were a couple of young trees that needed to be dealt with and I realized I hadn’t brought a proper saw. So I pulled out my Swiss army camping knife and took ‘em down  with the little saw blade.  Course it took me some time, chuckle, but MIL was impressed.