Eneto-55

Not the same situation, but on a vehicle I bought (well) used, the englne lube was really black, so I drained it & put in some used ATF. Ran it at an idle for 3 minutes. (With my hand on the ignltion the whole time, so that if I heard any strange noise, I could shut her down right away.) Then I drained it & put in clean stuff. It stayed like new (color & viscosity) for a long time. (Spelling & word choice note: For some reason certain words get changed into some sort of link. So I misspelled them, or used other words. What causes that? Is it a problem on my end, or does it do that for you all, too?)

Some states used the serial number on the title, located on the A pillar. (I thought that this was the normal one used, but maybe more states used the engine/frame number, I don't know.) Most P15's had this on the left side, but I've seen one with it on the right side.

I see a lot of furniture built by Amish-owned shops around here, and most use this type of joinery (even the high-end stuff). Very few seem to use the hidden dowel pin method, or even 'biscuits", with clamped glue joints. The screw method is just so much faster, I guess - no waiting for glue to set up.

I have not had to deal with this type of malware, but heard about it from another tech friend, and he said that there is no way around it, that you either wipe the system & start over, or pay the ransom. (I suspect that it blocks you from running a Restore Point, but like I said, I have not dealt with it myself.) One of the best things you can do is to use a non-administrator account, especially anytime you are connected to the internet. I have been doing this for 5 years or so, and have not gotten any infections on my system, even though I don't run any anti-virus software, either. But you do have to be very careful about OKing any process that wants to run - If you're not sure that you personally implemented it, then don't enter the Admin password to allow it to continue. I have gotten a LOT of those emails with attachments, claiming to be invoices, etc., but I only ever view the email in Print Preview (I don't actually open the message), and so I also don't open the attachment. I frankly don't know what would happen if I did - maybe my security approach would protect me, but I don't want to take a chance. (By looking at the message in Print Preview, you can also see a bit more information about the sender, etc.)

I echo this from DJ, Dan. Neto

I lifted mine off (the first time w/ the doors still on, later w/o doors) with a chain hoist in front, and a come-along at the rear. Set it down on 2 x 6's laid flat, on 4 15 gal drums. I worked under it that way, too. It didn't bow the 2x6's at all, either, or I would not have gotten under it like that.

I am also in manufacturing, in a very small way, as a one-man operation. Because of the nature of my product (non-auto-related), I need to have local people doing tech work. Well, one of my dealers violated an agreement he had signed, a 5 year non-compete agreement, and copied my product & started selling them before he had even paid for all of the goods he had ordered from me. (I actually thought he was going to default on about 7 grand worth, but he did eventually pay up.)

Maybe this isn't the best thread for this question, but does anyone know whether Nebraska used the actual Serial Number, or the Engine number on vehicles back in the early 60's? (I have a 49 P-15 which I bought for a parts car back in 81 or so, and several years ago I requested lost title info, but I never thought to use the engine number. I actually don't have the engine anymore, as it was blown - hole in the block - when I bought it, and I scrapped it way back when. But I figure I could get the frame number, and try that, if that might work. But it was last tagged in 61 or so, so there are probably no records back that far anyway. I don't have the vehicle's history before that, as to whether it was originally registered there in Nebraska, or how long it was there if originally sold elsewhere.)

AustinSailor already hit on what may end up being the most important point - Is there a title? It is not unsurmountable, but can be a deal breaker for many folks.

Well, about 35 years ago I did the opposite. I bought my 46 (P15) intending to just get it back on the road, so that I could sell my only other car, and get out of debt. I kept seeing one more thing that should be done, and pretty soon I had the body off of the frame, and I was under it patching holes. All the doors came off, and the glass, latches, window runs, everything came out. I soaked the doors in a vat to remove the many layers of old paint, and cad plated all of the screws & bolts, and a bunch of other parts. (I worked in a plating shop.) Then I met my wife about two years into it, and it still sits the same way as it did then. I have never driven it once.

A few years ago I cut up a 93 Chrysler Town & Country - "cut up" like I hauled it all off in an S-10 4-banger PU, no piece being too big for me to load by myself, by hand. (Although I did use a floor jack to get the block up high enough to scoot it into the bed of the PU.) It was interesting to me to see how the body is constructed (also a unibody, of course), and how the material thickness varied from a 68 Dodge Polara station wagon I cut up back in the early 80's. The 68 was also unibody, but the frame was built of much heavier steel than the 93. Really, the entire 93 body formed the structure of the frame, where as with the 68, it was more so just that the frame was welded into the body's floor structure. It was of special interest to me to see that the body panels generally are not connected to the inner body panels except at the top & bottom. (Interesting in comparison to some custom auto bodies, and body customizations I've seen illustrated in magazine articles. They often construct a web of steel reinforcement bars that follow the form of the outside body skin, completely different from where the outside skin is largely independent of the inner panels & other structural members.)

I'm sorry I didn't see your post about this until now. (I'm in Holmes County, Ohio, about 100 miles north of Columbus on US 62.)

Maybe some "walk boards" that would flip out from the wall would do the trick. My younger brother finish-coated mine, and he is tall, and I don't recall that he had a problem with this.

If you have a pit over which you could do this, and could hook up an exhaust fan to do a down draft into the pit & out, I've heard people say that is the best system. Personally, I've never had the chance to paint a car in anything but just a section of a garage, and cover up everything you dont want painted, and then wet the floor down as much as possible.

I like the appearance of some of the hammertone power coatings, but as a whole, I don't like it. I worked in it for about three years, and I saw the disadvantages of it, like the tendency to chip or crack due to its extreme hardness, the ability to "cover a multitude of sins" (like parts covered in surface rust after sitting in the space right after the wash line during break time, or painting over weld splatter). I came to powdercoating with a background in plating, where those things are not possible, and yes, I know you can wet coat over rust & flaking welds, too. But powdercoating also doesn't feather out when sanding, and that seems to me to indicate a lack of good adherance. (Just my two bits, you can throw it all out now. I do also realize that the place I worked did not follow all of the industry standards, and that's part of the reason why I'm no longer there.)

I was too young to have gotten in on the hand cranking on the old tractors, so the only engine I have started with a hand crank is a Yanmar 1 lunger 11 horse diesel (Brazil made). But on that you have a compression release, and yes, you do have to crank it multiple times around to get it going fast enough to start when you release the compression lever. (I learned, though, that if it isn't making that psst psst sound, there's no point in cranking it - it will never start.) That engine had no electric starter, so that was the only way to start it.

If you're going 12 VDC anyway, you might ask him if he can rewind the 6 VDC motor for 12 volts. I don't know if it is possible. (I did a rewind on a 120 VAC motor once years ago - I had a friend who told me what wire to use, & showed me how to do it, and he also had the schellac to coat the windings with.)

Part of the problem may be that you all never got your milkshakes.

Where did you get the windlace, and does it have the wire mesh in it like the original?

Don't forget the 4 cups a day of coffee for prostate health.

Does that kind of bamboo sprout at every joint like the large diameter kind with the yellow stripes? (That's the kind we had in Brazil.. I wish I had a picture of the clump we dug out next to our house down there, but I doubt that I ever felt like taking a picture of it, and that was also before digital cameras.)

My run in with this "tallest grass in the world" was in Rondonia, Brazil. We bought a house that had some in the back yard. Other houses there also had clumps of the stuff, but ours was the biggest. Some of the other places had it far enough away from the house that they were able to kill it off by cutting it down, then building a big fire on top of it. If you got it hot enough, it would kill the roots. After ours was about the only bamboo left on the mission base, everyone came to me for their television antenna poles. Wonderful for that, as long as you made sure it didn't grow where you stuck it in the ground. Ours was too close to the house to burn it out, so different times I started cutting on it, but it always grew back faster than I could cut it. (This clump was around 8 feet across, and so dense you could not see through it. I know that there are also different varieties - this was the type that gets up to around 4 - 5 inches in diameter.) This area is in the Amazon - mostly re-growth, so the bamboo is the tallest thing around. It was good for two things, shade, and protection from lightening strikes. It was also good for snakes & rats, etc, but I never saw the advantage in that for us. But talk about it spreading, before I knew how it acted, I had just thrown the stuff I was cutting down into the jungle at the back of our yard, but soon found out that if one of the joints is in contact with the ground, or wet enough, it will sprout and grow another clump right there! I was burning a big pile of it once, and people were coming from all over to see what was going on, because the sections are hollow, and explode in the fire with a pretty nice bang. Later the mission got an old back-hoe, and I had the maintenence department come and dig it out. I think they still had to dig out a few roots they had missed later, but that took care of it. Needless to say I would NEVER plant that stuff on my yard.

Digging out bamboo - that's something I could go on about. That stuff is about impossible to kill.

If it is not in tatters, and if you are thinking of making your own, or having a local shop make one, I would remove it as carefully as possible, to use as a pattern. I replaced the headliner in another car myself once, and when I took mine out of the P15 I kept it in one piece for quite a while, intending to make alignment markings for each panel, but later forgot and took out the seams w/o doing that. My experience with the first one was that it is difficult to properly align the separate panels, and then you can have wrinkles, or some panels which will not reach in spots. The material in the other car was less forgiving, so maybe that would not be as serious of a problem here.