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Reminds me of something I was told at the beginning of COVID: You can almost always get out of shaking hands by just sniffing your fingers, first.

Nope. Streets are local, roads go somewhere. Hence a "road map" covers a larger region (e.g. state or tri-county) than a "street map" (i.e. city/town). Now, if you're from eastern PA, you'll probably have one road running thru your town called "Street Road". I'm still not sure what to make...

If your memory is anything like mine, you'll do well to take a picture of the whole mess, when you finally finish your first-year's Tetris exercise of fitting it all in there. Then, try like hell to remember where you stored the photo. Classic WinterDeere move is to get it all figured out...

There's some irony in that statement. Guys with big Heavy Duty series pickups that never get used as such must think they look cool, but most of us just think they look like posers.

Ours does. I still have one old "I Love Lucy" phone (model 302) in the kitchen at our current place, and it dials out just fine. Always fun when the kids have a friend over, to ask them to make an outgoing call on it, and then watch the confusion. The biggest thing you notice with these much...

I took my parents' old mustard yellow wall-mounted rotary phone from the house where we lived in the mid-1970's, and mounted it in my old shop in the late 1990's. A nice bit of nostalgia, but became a problem with automated receptionists... "press 1 for English". :D We also had a Country...

You kidding? First, we move the couch, TV, and beer fridge to the garage. I'll be right over, call the pizza guy now.

No idea. Maybe? My grandfather owned a plumbing business when I was a kid, he had started it back in the 1930's with his father. From that, I inherited truck loads (not exaggerating) of Ridgid tools. Pipe threaders, pipe cutters, benders, etc. If you needed to borrow a 4" NPT threading die...

Agreed, except I'd want fenders. Wonder if it's owner-built? Has a vintage look to it, and I'd believe them if they told me it's 50+ years old.

Some of my favorite tools are Rigid. They made one hell of a shop vac 20 years ago. Mine has been thru hell and back, and can still suck the grass off the lawn, not that I'm using it for that. Same with their RO sander I bought ca.2001. I actually bought and brought home every RO Home Depot...

I was about to post the same thing! Haven't seen it since it was new 25 years ago, so not sure how it holds up today, but remembered it being fun at the time.

Ryobi is cheap crap. But in almost all cases, it's better than all the other cheap crap brands. 😛 One tool I've killed more than all others combined is angle grinders. I used to buy the DeWalt brand, and I'd kill them in no time flat. So, I started buying cheaper and cheaper brands, until...

This is why I bought all of my tools over time from the same brand and series. Each comes with two batteries and a charger, and they're all interchangeable. Agreed. It's probably not the best thing in the world for them. But on the flip side, I never run into a situation where I'm doing work...

My bed gets hosed or blown out if what I was hauling is corrosive, like fertilizer, if one of the bags has a tear and spills. Likewise, if it's so dirty that it's going to be a problem for the next thing I'm likely to haul. Other than that... it's a pickup truck bed, it's not meant to be clean...

I like the timer idea, mine sit on the chargers for months at a time, as I have more batteries than I even remember, and chargers scattered all over two floors of my shop.

I see a lot of really pretty F250's, with flawless paint and stupid low-profile tires set wider than the truck body. Lots of them are diesel, some with smoke stacks in the bed, and none will be used for hauling more than a new clothes dryer or a few bags of potting soil... before wiping the bed...

Only if you want to be serious. Three goats per million is more funny.

There are so many studies out there on thermal runaway due to mechanical damage, that we know accidents must be either a leading cause of battery fires, or at least thought to be a leading probable cause. But we also know from 20 years of Li-Ion tech in laptops and phones, that if they're going...

lol... Whenever I see these posts, I want to just dare the poster to try driving the tiny one on I-95 in the northeast. You will never taste death so closely, as driving that thing in heavy traffic at 80 mph on a road perpetually overdue for re-paving.

Three.

I've always suspected this, but I think the issue for some is timing. ICE's seem more likely to combust while in use, due to things like rodents nesting on exhaust manifolds or fuel system leaks in the engine compartment. But EV's seem more likely to spontaneously combust while charging in...

The primary fight between my brain and my body is on quantity. In my 20's, I'd eat a full 12-inch sub for lunch, and still be ready for a full dinner. By my late 30's or early 40's, I'd do the same at lunch, but go lighter on dinner. Now at 50, if I eat a full 12 inch sub for lunch, I'm not...

Milk on cereal every morning, and cheese with lunch most days. I may be in for some tough golden years. Today's lunch was 3-year aged Gouda with a hard salami on Triscuits, with a nice Belgian ale... my body is a Temple. 🤪

1980's computer technology. We could talk ENIAC, if you're old enough. My undergraduate computer engineering professor was actually an engineer working on the ENIAC design, when he was young.

Oh, geez... you just reminded me of Creative Labs SoundBlaster cards. I remember now, none of our work PC's had sound, and only those who could afford a SoundBlaster card had it at home! That was a major expense, when configuring a new PC purchase. :D

That's sad, but expected. I've long believed that he will be remembered as one of the greatest musical geniuses of our time. One guy more prolific and in some ways as innovative as the four Beatles combined, yet he does not get nearly the same credit. Pet Sounds was a ground-breaking album...

Remember the early days of "Plug and Pray"? Some of the early win95 compatibility issues were so bad, people were swearing it'd never work. Hey... kinda reminds me of the EV debate, today! So many of us just wanted to go back to setting IRQ's and DMA's by pin jumpers, since at least you could...

I remember being the first person I knew to upgrade to 14.4kpbs ca.1993. Others still running on 2400 - 9600 baud modems thought I was going to break the internet. :D

You're probably fine, but just be aware that I've come across more than one case on this forum and others, where an optimistic but ultimately ignorant agent said the customer was covered, when the actual written policy said they were not. In each case I can remember, it was discovered only...

Hopefully not foreshadowing a repeat of last year. I've never seen smoke like that around here. Although what we got was surely nowhere as bad, it was a bit of a wake-up call to what our brothers out west have been dealing with, for many years.

Not that I'm any afficionado on fast food, I actually rarely eat it. But I remember when Dave Thomas was still running Wendy's, and yes... their whole marketing and image was based on being better quality than McD's or BK. It seems the current management has lost track of what gave them that...

I can see rolling one over backwards, much more than to the side, but there's actually quite a few photos, videos, and news stories of people rolling them sideways. I will say, I had the mower deck off mine last winter for some work, and the front is so light without the deck mounted that I...

I grew up working on hot rods, and always had a fast car or two, until we consolidated for the most recent move to this house. My first few years in this house, that stupid zero turn was my primary way of feeling some G's, until life stabilized again and I was able to buy another fast car.

Got a parts diagram for this thing? It'd be good to be sure it's supposed to come off, before breaking it while trying.

I’ve found that the appearance and general fitness of most women in a state is at least somewhat proportional to the frequency of swimsuit weather. The average scoring in CA or SC is way above MN or ME.

Replacement cost of that non-serviceable unit?

So, what you're saying is that Maine is the shriveled up old lady of coast lines, whereas California is young and smooth?

Customer service for most credit card companies appears to be in or near India, guessing on the Hindi accent. So, it's likely they'll never catch the joke there, Jenny.

Good on you, for paying attention. But of all the cards I've carried over the years, my AMEX is the only one that actually has useful promotional material. They've never texted or called me, I just get a weekly email with that month's promotions. There's even an opt-out button at the bottom...

Yeah, I have a similar story WRT McDonalds. When we first moved to our present town, we were amazed that burgers from the local McDonalds actually looked like the burgers on the commercial, not the smashed bits of hell we've always seen from other McDonalds. This was a few years after...

Great news. Of there's no +5V line into the EPU main connector, then you're probably right in assuming it's on that board. If you can locate the bad regular, it's probably a $7 part from DigiKey at qty.1. Anyone with reasonable soldering skills could swap it. It would be nice if Google could...

If you have kids, there's a fun scene in the movie Leap, featuring that exact scaffolding and backdrop. In fact the statue under construction appears in a few phases throughout. Of all the hundreds of kids movies I've had to watch, that's one of the few I actually enjoyed and remembered.

It'll be interesting to see how quickly they fail out of warranty. It's a little bit hard for non-engineering or non-manufacturing customers to understand that a low failure rate near warranty period is actually a sign that you have poor process control. Perfect process control means perfect...

So, I just called the aforementioned cousin, who's mowing 2.5 - 3 acres with his Ego. He says he's in his 4th season now, and if there's been any degradation, it's not enough that he's noticed it, given his property size / mowing frequency. I'm sure the batteries degrade, of course they do...

Harry is probably working with much larger cylinders than me! Last pair I did were on my Deere model 52 loader (JD 855 tractor), and doing it with the cylinders held in soft jaws on a bench vise was definitely easier than working over the FEL, since I could lay everything out on a clean shop...

Oh, a few notes I forgot: If your only battery charger is a "smart" charger, you might need to put a car battery in parallel with the bath to "trick" the charger to turn on. However, be careful with this, as car batteries have absolutely enormous current potential. If your part and the...

Okay... electrolysis. It's an electrochemical reaction that converts ferric oxide (red rust) to ferrous oxide, which can be simply washed away with a little water and scrubbing. It's the only process generally used by museums and conservators, for stabilizing and reversing the corrosion of...

Hard to say, from the photos. But yeah, looks like it's probably a sleeve. I rebuild a lot of vintage machinery, and I'd probably drop that whole gearbox assembly into an electrolysis bath for a week, before even bothering to touch it. If you've got a spare trash can, some rebar or other...

It's hard to reconcile the first half of your post, above, with the second half, below. Surely no one worried about the cleanliness of a restaurant kitchen would ever order anything from Pizza Hut, where the average age of a kitchen employee is 15 years? My sister and my best friend both...

This is a good point. But would private insurance of those employees ever cover any procedure done on a third unrelated party (the surrogate)? You'd think that'd have to fall under the insurance and/or benefits of the surrogate, rather than the employer of either of the male employees in this...

Bad place for a political joke, on the left's unwillingness to work? 😛 If no obvious external damage, then probably a cylinder failure. Not familiar with your cylinder, but most have an end gland either screwed-on or held by an ID snap ring. Time to remove the cylinder from the machine, get...

My 855 came with a 72" deck, but it was so much slower and less convenient for mowing, than a 60" zero turn. So, I never really used it, and sold the deck a few months or a year after buying the tractor. If your deck rots out, and the tractor is still in good shape otherwise, I'd sell the deck...

Another sad reflection of our current culture. I was taught enough respect for my elders to keep my damn mouth shut, when grandma accidentally lets one fly. My middle-schooler kids might silently smirk, or try to catch my eye with a hidden smile, but they also know enough to not laugh or say...

Good point. But I do believe that state, county, and even city minimums make the federal minimum mostly irrelevant, in the larger picture of our economy. The talking heads on the news like to excite people, citing new local city minimums (eg. Seattle near $18/hour) against old federal numbers...

Good post, and good points... except this one excerpt I'm quoting. These $15 - $18/hour minimum wages are coming to us thanks to legislation, creating unnecessary inflation, not the other way around. We can all see the end result, a mile away. Business owners are getting pinched, with rising...

We often find history amusing. Anyone remember all the giggles when we learned about the Roman Vomitoriums in middle school history class, or before you were old enough to really understand its impact on the people involved, laughing about the sheer stupidity of the Salem Witch Trials? How...

What exactly would they be fertilizing? Men, even their gay male employees, don't produce eggs.

You know you're old if you've ever had to ask the room if you just farted.

Yes. My mom was good friends with his wife, Sheila. Not sure if they still keep in touch, or if Sheila is even still alive, that was a few years back.

I tend to be the same way. I'll never buy the first model year (heck, usually not the first two or three) of any new model or generation. Too many things are fixed or improved in those first few years.

They're under-achievers. Give me a good V10, any day. 😛

They still had the kits NOS for a few hundred on ebay two years ago, maybe I should've grabbed one then! I'll check again tonight.

LOL... I remember thinking that, at first. Like every fast car you've ever owned, it starts to feel slower with time. Particularly in October/November, when it's effing cold out (with added 10 mph windchill!) and you're racing to beat sunset on each mowing... then it'll feel too slow!

Does it take a lot of passes? We have a lot of trees surrounding and in our yard, and the massive silver maple trees in particular, absolutely blanket the yard in leaves. My mulching blades probably manage to pulverize 1/4 to 1/2 the total leaf mass, leaving it in the lawn, but I still end up...

Seems like a silly argument, when both have been working in countless millions of applications, for about 100 years. Isn't the choice of block configuration chosen as much by the available space (eg. motorcycles, airplanes, battleships), as anything else?

Agreed. For some reason, I read that post as it being a kit he'd be installing only in the fall. I tend to like mulching (Gator type) blades on a standard side-shooter deck, as I can use that to simultaneously shred and shoot all leaves towards the woods that boarders my property, in the fall.

That's exactly what it is. What makes a "competent man" is always changing, from an ability to care for a sick horse, to changing a wheel with a flat tire, now... using a PC or a smart phone. Just another skill reflecting the age in which we live.

Basic theory: 1. Do two perimeter passes, clockwise to shoot all clippings onto your own lawn rather than street/neighbors. 2. Do two passes around each building, counterclockwise to shoot all clippings away from building/patios. 3. Pick a property line as your alignment, and start making...

Nice mower. Your first Zero turn, or transitioning from something else? Which size deck did you get?

How do you expect to ever achieve that Jack Palance leathered tough-guy look, while riding around under a canopy?!? 😛

In a few weeks, you'll be able to do a veritable high-speed ballet. I see some of the homeowner ZT's coming with steering wheels now, and I just can't imagine how that can work as well as the classic levers. Sometimes I even impress myself, when skirting around objects at speed, on the ZT. :D

My stepfather is 87, and can use modern tech as well as most college students. It's not just an age thing. Really, I never understood adults not even marginally competent enough to do things that are easily handled by grade-schoolers. It can't be that difficult, if an 8-year old can figure it...

Just be careful about deck height variation, if running lower pressure in the tires. In fact, this is how I usually notice that my tires need checking, I start to see the effects of the deck dipping into the cut in hard stops/starts/turns, at the end of each pass. It's fine in the...

lol... oops! Actually, not confused, but in such a habit of typing "V" that I didn't even catch myself doing it. I'll go back and fix it now, but it doesn't change the numbers, the new 6 has more peak power and more peak torque than the old 5.7L Hemi V8, in truck configuration. Of course...

I've used the Ego 52", as my cousin bought one a few years back, and I took the chance to try it while visiting them. Here's my observations, versus my 2007'ish 60" Deere 757 ZTrak: Mowing without that obligatory 25 hp Kawasaki V-twin used on nearly ever Z-Turn I've ever used, is very nice...

I live in a neighborhood of wealthy elites, and am counting on that old theory that you don't need to run faster than the bear, just faster than your buddy. If the SHTF here, I predict one other guy and I will be feeding our families on the rest of them. :D

Plus, when folded back, it would still make a nice protective halo around you, rather than just giving you an extra thing upon which to bang your head when hooking up a rear PTO driveshaft. You gotta wonder why tractor companies have not thought of shifting the ROPS at least a bit farther forward.

yeah, I can totally understand that sentiment. I feel like we've just lived thru the second golden age of the muscle car, with 700 hp - 1000 hp Challengers and Corvettes at price points within reach of so many going thru their midlife crises. But at the same time, we both know car...

I've been watching for the original offender, but it seems to have stopped after Saturday. I just figured Muhammad had fixed it! Maybe it's an issue with particular advertisers, and he squashed the last one, but now a new ad has joined the rotation.

Part of the problem here is history. Many of us bought really poorly-designed and poorly-implemented turbo cars in the 1980's and 1990's, with terrible turbo lag followed by insane uncontrolled boost, they really were terrible and almost undrivable for anyone with a heavy foot. Today's turbos...

This is exactly the scenario that played out in the aforementioned book, "one second after".

How about when you get angry at the drop-down menu where they make you scroll back to your birth year, versus just typing the damn number manually. It can take quite a while to scroll back that far, for some TBN'ers!

I never thought the desk was supposed to save me from a nuke, nor was it ever taught as such, at least in our drills. If you're within a mile or three of ground zero, depending on the size of the nuke, you and your whole school building are gone either way... no need or time to get under the...

hah... I was probably being too harsh with my wording. I also like V8s, V10s, and V12's. The more the better, with everything but in-laws and taxes. But I will admit the 5.7L Hemi configured for pickups is a total dog, and really Dodge should've had a HO version of this engine available for...

Do note these new V6's, even the standard edition, make way more horsepower and torque than today's 5.7L V8 Hemi, as configured for pickups: 5.7L V8 Hemi: 395 HP / 410 lb-ft Std. Hurricane 6-cyl: 420 HP / 468 lb-ft HO Hurricane 6-cyl: 540 HP / 521 lb-ft People will try to whine that higher...

You're not misunderstanding. Ignore that post. "Push it down" is the wrong direction for off, on Stihl multifunction lever. And no, you do not need to pull the throttle to turn off your saw. I don't even think it's necessary to depress the operator presence lever (palm, top of grip), but I...

My 2005 Daimler Dodge had a Getrag manual 6-speed transmission. My 2015 Ram has a ZF HP8 8-speed auto. Both have been totally reliable, but I'll admit I'd rather have a manual, if available.

Ditto. Unfortunately, it took me more than one, to learn my lesson. My last two pickups have been a Dodge and a Ram, and have caused me fewer problems than any other trucks I've ever owned, despite being used harder. Go figure, even I wasn't expecting that, when I made the switch.

I've been using so many Stihl saws for so many years, that if there's a trick, I must be doing it from muscle memory without even thinking about it. I don't think there's anything to it, other than just flipping the lever to the top-most position. Have you pulled the air cleaner cover, to blow...

I just keep a battery tender on them in winter storage. I'm on the second battery, on my 2007 mower, I think the first lasted more than 10 years. Likewise on the big deep-cycle batteries on my trailer, I just keep a solar battery tender on those. It seems that keeping them full charged helps...

One of my pet peeves is tractors without a glovebox or toolbox. All of my pins, hitch balls, commonly-needed tools go into the small glove box on the fender of my Deere, or the small metal toolbox mounted on our old Ford. My older Deere had no such box, and I was forever losing things when...

Back when I was managing large engineering projects, particularly anything for the government, we had to rate every risk item on a two-axis grid. The two axes amounted to probability and pain, essentially the likelihood of a risk item causing a problem, and the level of impact that problem will...

Every time I start to set something aside, telling myself I'll remember it the next day, I have to remind myself: "you're not that good". Anymore, every pin and bolt goes back into the hole for which it was intended, before turning away from a job. I've just lost too many, sometimes with...

Love this. I've been debating awhile on how to do something similar on one of my sailboat trailers, as it's an old woodie that always travels with a heavy fleeced bottom cover installed. That bottom cover has prevented me from enjoying that boat it as frequently as I'd like, as I can only get...

I'll admit my memory isn't perfect, and I may not have even caught the full story. But I distinctly remember a lot of talk about Texas power plants being previously cited for not running appropriate levels of antifreeze in their plant cooling systems, and that being the cause of most of their...

Transformer supply chain issues have been going awhile now, primarily related to the availability of the electrical-grade grain-oriented steel (GOES) used to wind the transformer cores. The primary producers of this material are in China, Chech Republic, Korea, and Russia. We've killed the...

Since I have a ballast box mounted to my machine for most logging and yard work, I use my ballast box for storing hand tools and chain: Chain usually sits in that top tray, with ends hooked to upper suitcase weight bar.

This makes me think of the fact that I usually connect my electric braking system break-away cable to the same eye ring as the safety chains, which would be completely ineffective in a hitch separation like this. I guess we should be finding another location on the truck to which to hook these.

It was even more close when viewed from the camera angle used in the airing. They must've replayed it a dozen times from that original angle, and I still couldn't tell which won. It was almost like one horse flaring it's nostril at the right moment would have taken the win. Never seen one...

Read it, audiobook it... whatever. This book paints an ugly picture of this exact scenario...

Our neighbor across the street in the 1970's had a similar thing happen. Picked up a car from a repair shop a town or two over, and drove it all the way home without issue. Then pulling into her driveway, a front wheel fell off the car. Luckily it happened at 2 mph and not 60 mph, the...

Others have asked it, but I haven't seen an answer: Are you actually working the tractor when it's 104F outside? We see similar highs, on occasion, but those are the days when I get any work done early in the morning before it heats up. I'm chilling in the pool with a G&T in my hand, long...

Flush cut dykes work better than traditional double-bevel. DAMHIKT

The Deere 3-series turn signals are plastic housings either side of the ROPS, just destined to snap off at their mountings with the slightest bump. So, they sell brush guards that go around them, standard dealer upgrade, and those brush guards are actually required if you want the...

Damn, that's nice. I rarely have "building envy", but you're making me feel it!

Beats not pulling over. A family friend and founder/owner of Peddlar's Village in Bucks County, died in a 1-car accident, about 20 years ago. Suspicion at the time was he probably had a heart attack while driving, causing the crash that killed him.

... and even then, some! Loosely-related story: The neighbor to our beach house had some money, and used to show up with a random fleet of supercars from Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, etc. What always amazed me is not that he could afford to buy such a car, that's not such a high bar, but...

IPA's are not the cheapest to produce, in terms of ingredient cost. But they have a much higher yield than things like Belgian Dubbels or Tripels, where the probability of the whole brew going south is so much higher. IPA's are hard to screw up, by comparison. That's interesting, and probably...

I was having a little trouble believing this, so I searched on “list Teslas by curb weight”, and this is the list I got, heaviest to lightest. They’re not made of feathers, but none listed here are anywhere near 8k lb. Which ones aren’t listed...

True, but then wouldn’t their earned savings be worth less, as a fractional portion of average savings and/or anticipated expenses? If the dollar is worth less, due to everyone having more of them, that affects your earned dollars the same as this granted investment. Scarcity is the only...

DIY mods or hacks of a well-engineered system are rarely if ever an improvement. Find the source of the problem and correct it to work within the designed intent, don’t slap a bandaid on it. EZ Lube is a great system, used on many trailers with no issues. We need to find why it’s failing here...

… and then surely the savings required for realistically comfortable retirement would increase by about $1m. Capitalism doesn’t just generate a pyramid of wealth distribution, it fundamentally depends on it. We can only live comfortably when we have peons available to do the labor of society...

Interesting bits on how new tech changes perspective and daily life:

I believe you. That's only a 7000 lb. landscape trailer, two 3500 lb. axles. I like zzvyb6's idea about checking the cotter pin. It'd be nice if it were something that easy!

3 dB is double intensity, so while I'd have expected it to be more, it's not a small difference. I guess most of the noise is gearing and chain to wood.

It's amusing that I've seen many of the same people who make these claims, lament the elimination of shop class, small engine repair class, and state that schools should be teaching basic home finance and investing. Personally, I think schools should be teaching public speaking, as that's a...

I was out mowing this morning, and happened to notice how badly one of my EZ Lube hubs was deformed. Still no issue staying together!

Will try that next time I’m browsing from a PC. Doesn’t appear to be an issue with Safari on iPhone.

Thanks, Muhammad! This is the one. It usually appears in side bar, but this time happened to appear at bottom of frame.

Sad, but I might have to find an ad blocker, too. I have so many computers, I'm constantly hopping between three different browsers. The new forum ads will sometimes even appear over my text entry box, in the middle of responding to a post, making it impossible to see what I'm typing. It's...

^ This. If three of your four hubs are fine, and just one keeps ejecting caps, it's obviously time to pull that one apart and figure out what's happening. I can't believe anyone would actually suggest mod's like pinning the cap or venting the hub, EZ Lubes are a well-engineered system that...

It appears to be specifically the "muscle milk" advertisement. It's showing an "X" over the inline speaker icon, meaning it should be muted, but it is not muted. After it starts playing sound, you can click on the inline speaker icon (bottom left hand corner of video ad), which switches it to...

It seems now the forum is playing VIDEO advertisements on every page, with sound(!), as I browse the forum. Totally unacceptable, as many members are probably viewing the forum from locations where loud advertisements are not permitted. Is it really necessary to start playing a video...

It's 120% efficient!

I did. See post #869 on the prior page. Ignoring relative efficiencies, it's a 110x ratio. We know the battery saw has much higher efficiency than an ICE, but what's the gross ratio? Even if the ICE is only 30% and the battery saw is 90%, that only takes the 110x input efficiency down to 37x...

Okay, roof was a bad example. I’m not even old yet, either. :p Just now reaching the age where upon the completion of each 20-30 year item, I’m thinking, “next time I’ll probably have to hire someone.”

Thought the tractor was already owned? If configuring to buy, always get more remotes than you need. Buyer’s remorse over too few remotes is common here.

That's what I do. I have only 3 channels on my machine, so when I need the 3rd to angle my loader-mounted snow plow left/right, I just unplug my hydraulic top link. I set it where I want it before unplugging, and then it holds just fine for at least the several days I might have the snowplow...

... when you realize there are a very limited number of seasons or years left, where you're going to be physically able to complete some of those projects you've been putting off for "someday". Better get that roof replaced, while you're able!

Back to the OP: 30 years ago, few Americans knew what even made good beer. While Germans were still following the Reinheitsgebot, the Bavarian "purity law" of 1516, most American brewers were adulterating their beer with corn or rice. Proper beer is brewed from four primary ingredients...

Totally different subject, but back in the 1980's, the OD of Bearing Buddies was an exact match for the ID of a 12 oz. Coca Cola can. Saltwater boaters used to hose clamp fresh soda cans over their bearing buddies each season, easily replaceable dirt and water shield, sort of belt + suspenders...

Agreed. This is weird. Just to be clear, you're saying these are EZ Lubes, with the usual rubber center plug in the cap, but you're losing the steel stamped housings that hold the rubber caps? I've owned a lot of EZ Lube hubs, and I've never seen anything like that. The rubber plugs are...

I think ruffdog could be onto something here. Check bearing temperature after several miles, and see if it's abnormally high. If not, the only explanation I can imagine is that there's just not enough air space (eg. too much grease), causing abnormally high pressure for the small expected...

I grew up with a lab-shepherd mix, and I think her food bowl was about the diameter of a Frisbee. Great dogs, but my God... the hair! If mom skipped even one day of vacuuming, it'd look like tumbleweeds blowing around our family room.

Two updates: 1. I called an acquaintance who has taken chickens off me before, and asked her if she had any nice old ladies she was willing to give up, to give ours some company in her waning years. She said she has two that would be perfect, and will bring them over next week. She also...

Cool. Before even waiting for a reply, I quick scrambled up an egg and mixed it in with her usual food. It did the trick! Thank you! She's just a little thing, something like 12 lb., so half an egg did it. :D

I’m told Edward Norton is mine. Hopefully they’re not referring to the American History X persona. :oops:

Waitaminnit… how do you prepare eggs for a dog? I have a post-surgery dog that’s not eating her regular food, gotta find something to get her interested in food again, and we are out of the usual chicken and rice.

It becomes a matter of weight. The battery tools can be incredibly convenient for avoiding all the issues associated with infrequent use of a gasser, it's great to be able to just grab the tool, pop a battery into the slot, and do some quick trimming when needed. But gassers will remain the...

"That's my wife, motor!" "I thought you were dead!" Awkward...

I guess it does look like a Y, but we always called them "K-turns"! I suspect nearly every ZT driver learns this their first time at the controls... except the stupid ones. ZT's still tear up a little grass when going around sweeping turns, such as curved gardens or driveways, you'll always...

Reminds me of the Canada geese that used to always nest in one of the parking lot islands, where I used to work. They'd intimidate most to stay away, but there were always a few of us (mostly just me and one other guy) who never wanted to give up our usual parking spots, either side of that...

Yeah, we keep our eggs on the counter, in a gravity-fed rack that naturally rotates them as we pull the oldest from the bottom and the rest roll down to replace what we take. It holds 2-dozen eggs, which is more than our small family needs to keep on hand, so I'll typically pull a dozen and...

Glad to hear. I've been biting my tongue, expecting/hoping that was the case. :ROFLMAO:

Actually, I've never really looked into the details. I assume the fertilized eggs must be sat upon or otherwise incubated to grow, but just the same, I seem to remember hearing stories of bloody eggs and shorter shelf life of fertilized eggs. No? My son and wife both want to keep the old girl...

hah... yeah, I can understand that. I actually think they're among the best pets I've ever had, but really it's something I did because my son (then age 6) wanted them, and I thought it might be something fun to do together. It was a good learning experience, and the kids had a lot of fun with...

This is a tractor forum. If someone here can't handle service on their own lawnmower, I'm going to ask the moderators to revoke their membership. 😛

The Kawi 25hp V-Twins run by most of these commercial mowers have a service interval around 400 hours. That's more than almost any homeowner is going to run per year, heck I'm usually around 100 hours for the year on mine, but it's less than half our mowing seasons when they're running 40+...

If OP's property was larger, I'd agree. But they only have 1.5 acres, and they state a lot of obstacles and tight quarters, and it's rare to see a commercial ZT sitter in any size other than 60 inch, at least around here. I'm also a big fan of commercial 60" ZT's, it's what I mow my own yard...

We've kept a small flock of chickens the last 8 years, usually just 3-5 birds, which gives us more than dozen eggs per week... perfect for us. But the flock has been dwindling down due to old age, and my kids having aged out of any interest in the chickens, I've not been replacing any birds the...

Hey guys, a little aside to this thread, for you brush-hogging types. I have a pretty nice Deere-painted Woods M4 rotary cutter (aka brush hog), cat.1/2, quick-hitch compatible in 48" size. Back when I bought it, I had a heck of a time finding a 48", as nearly all for sale around here are 60"...

The onboard NAV in one of my vehicles shows me randomly anywhere from 5 to 40 miles away from my present location. Started doing this in year 3 and now the car is 8 years old, but I'll not bother fixing it. Waze on iOS is the only way to go, in terms of real-time traffic-based re-routing. Got...

Looks like some of the potholes that frequently exist for weeks at a time in center city Philadelphia. You see one that could literally swallow a small car, and wonder how the city hasn't already seen and repaired it. Living in a county north of the city, our local road crews rarely let a...

"I've laid more pipe in this town than Wabasha Plumbing."

Onboard GPS is a vehicle option made for people who use flip phones. 😛 Anyone under a certain age (80?) knows Waze on your smart phone is vastly superior to any POS NAV GUI dreamed up by a vehicle manufacturer.

We did something a big different, owing to the fact that I don't really work on cars in the attached garage. Attached garage: Long counter down one side wall, with overhead cabinets, and a wall of under-counter refrigerators and freezers under the counter. Heater, toy closet (surf boards...

Same. That's why I welded bars to mine, to carry suitcase weights. Easy enough with most boxes, mine just happens to be the Deere brand version.

Yes, engineer, but with a few coincidental factors that allow us to afford more than expected. Not that we're living in a palace, but I will admit we have more than most. Living in a region where pay is above average, and working in an industry where pay is higher than the average even for the...

I have two attached, three detached, and even one off-site. Guess which vehicles get used almost 100% of the time? The ones in the attached garage, out of sheer convenience. That said, if building my own house, I’d just have 6 garage bays all detached. A breezeway would be nice, but is...

Machines and loaders vary. For my 320R on 3033R, they recommend fully-loaded tires + 2 pairs of wheel weights + extended-height ballast box. I think it adds up to somewhere near 2250 lb., IIRC. I never actually run that heavy, as I'm not doing max loader capacity on anything but totally flat...

My loader is rated only 1600 lb, and even at that, Deere’s recommended rear ballast is more than triple what you’re running. Total ballast of 800 lb is almost into cat.0 SCUT territory. Check your manual, but they probably recommend more like 1500 lb on rear hitch + loaded tires + wheel...

I think you’re forgetting how dramatically things changed over the decade of the 1990’s. I don’t think there was anything to beat ANS in 1992. But by 1998, different story.

My best friend had an 84 Z28, so I remember that interior well. Later, I had an 84 Mustang GT, which was far worse, speaking of cheap interiors. If I recall, the Mustang (not specifically GT) was always marketed as "the least expensive V8 car in America", for at least the first 20-30 years of...

Just to be clear, the refrigerators my parents purchased in 1953 and in 1981 are both still running, as is one I have from the 1990’s. It’s only the refrigerators built in the last 6 years that seem to fail after 2 years. I’ve been through three new refrigerators in the last 5 years, while the...

… has said nearly every dad through history, I suspect. My kids aren’t very helpful around the house, but I’m always proud to hear from others that they’re polite and helpful toward friends and neighbors.

Mine did, when I bought it. But an oil seal change resolved that for all of $15, and it's been dry underneath ever since.

My first car, or at least the first I did not have to share with a sibling, was a 1985 Camaro. So, I'm right there with you, age-wise. But they didn't age well, in my eyes. That said, I still think the shark-body Gen3 Corvettes are the sexiest of the bunch, a'la 1976 Stingray, so I guess I...

As I recall, they did not, or at least it was not sufficient to satisfy his children. It was a big news story at the time. ... and I don't care what anyone says, ANS was just about the hottest thing on two legs, at one time. I say, "good for him"!

Wow... California has gone full Communist!

Just me, or is that almost as ugly as every 1980's vehicle wearing plastic rear window louvers, ground effects, a plastic visor, and every other "aggressive" bit of ugly plastic styling you can jam onto a vehicle?

Oh, definitely true. But I think the trend or average really skipped out over the last ~80 years, probably linked to college enrollment making such a huge jump with the baby boomers. Add 4-8 years of post-secondary education, to your early-20's, and it has a way of delaying one's starting a...

Every year for the last 12 years, I've dumped truckloads of walnuts and leaves into the edge of a drainage ditch on my neighbor's property, per their request, as the area suffers a lot of erosion, and dumping organic matter in there helps to replace some of what the prior year's storms have...

So, I did a little digging, and in PA it takes 21 years of continuous, uninterrupted use to establish a prescriptive easement. I found one statement that it had to be "validated" before sale of the property, for a buyer of the property to be bound by it, but honestly couldn't find more clarity...

That's bizarre, and I've never even heard of anything like that, around here. I assume such a law would also come with some right to sue the seller of the property, if they didn't disclose this usage to a buyer? How else would a buyer even know?

One of the truly ground-breaking bands of their time, sometimes even credited as the first "prog rock" band, although I personally always thought that label was a bit of a stretch.

I'm beginning to think one of the key differences between "young" and "old" is a basic understanding of the first amendment. Watching interviews with protesting students at Columbia and UCLA, so many of them claim their first amendment rights are being trampled by their university. How...

Most movement is going to be forward, under vehicle braking, but are you sure the movement is from mower brake slippage and not just skidding on the trailer deck? Any chance to park it sideways next time, and see if it still moves?

Interesting that disagrees almost entirely with what we know from history class, re: the dust bowl, bogus 1930’s “rain follows the plow” propaganda, government guaranteed grain rates, and the collapse thereof after WW2, etc. For those who prefer to listen rather than read, American Scandal...

Always ran 90W gear oil in mine, never a problem. Always best to set it on something non-permeable, up off the ground with a roof and ventilation all around, if you want the machine and fluids to last. My own sits in a small purpose-built shed, which was knocked together in a day for maybe $200:

In the case of my neighbor, it really wasn't a big deal. One neighbor asked if he could continue archery hunting in those woods for the next 3 years, until his teenage son went away to college, which was fine. A few others kept dumping grass clippings, until they were asked a second or third...

Short answer: yes. Longer answer: This part of PA went thru a lot of "revitalization" at the hands of the Army Corp of Engineers, ca.1970. Many of our historic towns were in decline, as shopping centers built on the outskirts were pulling business away from all the legacy Main Street shops...

Same. We tend to get a later start in life, these days. When I look back at the family tree, most branches of mine are traced back into the early 1500's, it's amusing to see the spacing between generations in years prior to WW2 versus everything after. Couples getting married by 20 and first...

Hmm... sounds like a giant mosquito farm, from that description. Too shallow for small sailboats. :(

My great-grandparents were married 1914, and my great-grandfather passed in 1984, so... 70 years. I only remember the last 10 of that. :D

For sure, there are, I wasn't trying to imply that every part of every one of these states is less ideal. Of course there is local variability. But speaking in broader generalities, many of the planes states which were first populated for farming in the 1930's, are inferior growing locations...

When I got my 3033R, I did that head bang thing a few times, before realizing their was a "half-cocked" position into which I could lock the ROPS, which kept it just above head-knocking height.

The lot behind me, which I was unable to convince my wife to buy, is similarly surrounded by smaller lots, like this one you posted. A guy who is my "new" neighbor bought and built on it 10 years ago, and he had some issues with all of the legacy neighbors using his lot as their dumping ground...

The planes region became our breadbasket not because it had better land or environment, in fact quite the opposite, but because the cost of land was between "free" and "cheap", by comparison to better growing environments "back east". We've succeeded in building cities over much of our most...

I was running a heavy 3-point plug aerator on a big side slope this evening, and thought of this thread. So, I put up the ROPS and put on my seatbelt. Then a half hour later, forgetting about the ROPS, I went under a big maple tree and caught the damn thing on a branch... which then whacked me...

Yeah, mine is a bit marginal for surface cleaner work, as well. I found a little 12" surface cleaner that works on 1.2 GPM, and it's slower than I'd like, but it does the job without causing my little 7 hp machine to drop pressure. The Greenworks is actually only 1.1 GPM at 3000 PSI. They...

Yes, I believe it was an LG. We replaced with a Maytag, but I truly believe they're all crap. The biggest single problem with all of these is the extremely minimal refrigerant charge they carry, per EPA mandate. Any small upset in the system, such as running in a cooler garage or having a...

Most of us unplug our trailer electrics before backing down the ramp, to save the lights. But that rig is heavy enough that maybe he should consider staying connected. Not to mention, boat ramps tend to be very slick and slippery, especially in tidal waters.

In all this stuff, look at flow rate vs. pressure, not just static pressure. 3000 PSI is useless if it's only achieved at 1 GPM. If you want to run a surface cleaner, you're automatically looking at something that can maintain pressure (eg. > 2500 PSI) at 2.5+ GPM. That takes horsepower, no...

Full-disclosure, 2 or 3 refrigerators back, I did "stick it to" the manufacturer and made them replace a failed compressor, just so I could resell the thing on Craigslist. :D I had already replaced the refrigerator at that point, it's hard to go more than a day or three without your main...

I have a little gas-powered 2500 psi 7 hp unit from Excel, with a Devilbiss pump and Briggs engine. It was ideal when I had a little 1/4 acre lot with a deck and patio on a smaller house, used it every spring for cleaning mold off the siding, cleaning the deck and patio. Then I upgraded to a...

We've been averaging about 2 years per kitchen refrigerator, recently. So, when I drop $2k on one, I just figure it's basically a $1k per year rental fee. What's amusing is that it's only the big expensive kitchen refrigerators that keep failing. We have five other collegiate-sized...

I couldn't disagree more. I've been successful, through some combination of hard work and luck, the fraction of each which we could all debate. But it all started with making an enormous stretch, to the point where there were months in which I had decide between home repair and eating...

I've done this. Thankfully, the one branch that was strong enough to not break when my ROPS caught it at speed, was high enough to not completely flip me over backwards. I did pop one hell of a wheelie at 11 mph, though... still not sure how I didn't break both front casters on the landing...