Ulu

I begged them not to buy a Dell. Anyhow, everything was recovered, and everyone has calmed down. Even me. I've heard of Steel Draft & I've run quite a number of other CAD, CAM, and CAE programs over the years, but I've never actually detailed structural steel as a specialty. The steel is supposed to be detailed by (or at least at the expense of) the company providing the steel. However we're forced to do some as a requirement of the submittal process. With the current state of undecipherable building code conflicts, we are having to show more and more details of the steel work. The state architect's office can't/doesn't/won't check the steel shop drawings, so anytime they have a concern they make the structural engineers (us) show details, which they can then officially check. Nobody pays us any more $ when this is required, so it's sort of a sore subject. We end up working for free "just" to keep good relationships with our client, the contractors, and the state architects. (OK, those good relationships are everything to our business, so I don't moan much.)

I went skating at lunch again, and I wore a sweater. It was a mistake. I came back drenched in sweat. The sun is shining and the blossoms are everywhere. Winter is likely over for us (such as it is.)

A thread for all those Tools we Wish we Had... I thought of this because I'm working on the drawings for the new Fresno Calif Highway Patrol garage. WhooWee! There getting these, and if I could get away with ordering an extra, I'd have one myself. Dual two-stage Quincys on a 200 gal tank. (BTW, their tire rack holds 600 tires! It has special earthquake resistant anchors.)

Probably replace them, as they just wear out. But check to see that it's not dropping due to worn pivots or such. If a pivot wears to a point that the mechanical advantage of the mechanism is reduced, a good spring may still not be able to hold the lid up.

I found this thread & this is sorta what I have done with springs in the past (though not on this particular car.) http://p15-d24.com/topic/23933-trunk-lid-springs-rr/?hl=%2Btrunk+%2Bsprings It works, and I changed the front springs on my Subaru with wire just the same way. But it'd be nice to have a real clamp to install them, so I may end up welding some fingers to a vice grips or some such.

I just saw a new one on Ebay for $50 and another for $195 and yet another for $295! I'll bet that part cost $1.25 in 1947

I'm going to need to do this too. One of my hinges needs to be welded & restored. I haven't really looked into how they come out yet.

We had a pretty good rain at night Friday/Saturday, but today it's nice again. I went for my usual 4 mile skate at lunch. It did snow here once in the past 30 years, enough to "stick" until noon the next day, but basically Fresno/Clovis never sees snow. I remember tossing our cat out to play in that snow. He'd never seen snow, and it was rather amusing watching him try to figure it out.

I don't wonder about the tire in the seat as much as in, "Why the devil were they still building wooden cars in the 40's?" What was the attraction?

The tech is here from Dell. He's changed out the motherboard & I hear the drives running, so I think we're almost back in business. The biggest headache in this debacle has been that our backup system (Bare Metal Backup) only got to 98% before the thing crashed so I don't know how much data may have been damaged/lost. I'm hoping that since the controller card wasn't dead that we'll find everything OK on the drives. I'll have to patch back in the past couple day's work, but I'm praying that's all. If we loose data I'll be kicking myself in the ass, because I quit doing the manual backups when we got this system. For 21 years I've been doing our backups manually every day, and in all that time we've never lost but one job due to a computer failure. Now we may to turn out to find a whole week's work for 10 guys gone down the toilet. Anyhow, I'll know soon now.

My wife & I were cracking up through the whole thing.

Our new domain server died this AM. *sigh* I begged them not to buy a Dell. Anyhow after a lot of fiddling I'm able to get on the internet. But without the server all my drawings and calcs are hostage of a failed SCSI system. This machine is only 2 weeks old and it just stopped dead in its tracks. Normally I'd be the guy fixing the server, but this one is under warranty, so I'm not gonna touch it. I think I'll go home and play with a computer that works.

Could you be looking at an engine mount?

As a kid, my dad taught me to fix TVs, so I used to take my wagon and pick up broken TV's & radios off the street for parts, and to fix them. I took the tubes to Radio Shack on my bicycle, in a shoebox, individually wrapped in toilet paper. They had a huge tube tester. Often it was just one single tube which was blown, and for a buck or three I had a working TV. They weren't always pretty, but in those days a new 17" black & white TV sold for $50 at Target, and I could sell a working used TV for $15 or $20. I used the money to buy phonograph records and to build a custom bicycle for my newspaper route. I built it right after seeing the movie Easy Rider, so you can imagine what it looked like. Anyhow, Dad's tube tester was locked up at the blockhouse, so without The Shack, that stuff would have not been possible. Also I built my first computer from a Radio Shack kit in 1969. My life would be very different today if Radio shack hadn't been around.

I feel for you guys. I lived in several places with horrible winters. I miss having a snowmobile, but not enough to endure snow.

They'll get some. I have a photo printer, & I make some pretty nice prints up to 8.5x11 Too bad these weren't scanned at a higher resolution though. This one had the best focus of the lot and the oldest photo by about 30 years! I only met my paternal grandparents on two trips: for 6 mos in 1966, and a for few days in 1976. This the only photo I have of them together. I believe it was taken about 1970.

Pristine. His keyboard was like new. BTW, here's a photo I found on Dad's PC. I've never seen photo before wednesday nor ever knew it existed. I believe this was taken in early 1945 at the boardwalk amusements. He was born in '29, so here he's 16 or 17 years old at most. Shortly after he earned a big scar on his leg, in a dockyard cargo mishap, and the war ended with Dad in a hospital bed. Dad served in 3 wars & saw duty overseas in each. He was as military and straight laced as they come. He did early AM calisthenics into his 70's. I never saw him take a drink. So I'm both joyed and I'm stricken by the pictoral evidence. That's him on the left, the short guy with a bruised lip. You can guess what they'd been doing.

I'll have to post a pic of the keyboard. It's not a Qwerty. Nor a Dvorak either. <EDIT> Hmmm...it's put up somewhere so I'll have to find it. Anyhow it looks like a typical old IBM mech switch keyboard except the keys are in alphabetical order.

I think this one runs an AMD K62-500, which is just a regular chip style CPU.

You're not gonna believe this, but I just fired up my Dad's old PC the other night. I haven't booted it since he died in 2002, and it's been sitting in my garage. Actually, it's so obsolete (a Tyan Trinity 100 based machine) I finally decided to just junk it, and for 6 months it's been sitting outside in the weather on my porch. I blew it all out with the air hose and plugged it all in. After 12 years it booted the first time, and the clock battery was still working. It still had the correct date, and the time had actually gained about 43 minutes! The battery is a 3v lithium-ion button cell, so I guess those things are really durable. Anyhow, browsing Dad's old PC I found some old photos of our family that I never had seen before, & from the dates Dad had evidently scanned them into the PC just a month before he died in 2002. One is sorta interesting & I'll post it up later 2nite. Anyhow, I'm sure glad I decided to run that machine again. Those photos would have been lost forever.

The trees outside my office window are in full bloom. It's been cool at night here, but dry, and warm during the day. I've been outside skating almost every day at lunch hour. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, but the news said this has been the 2nd driest year here since the Gold Rush days--some 160 years I suppose. We need the rain desperately.

Oops! I should have said off the tailshaft and not the midshaft. I've looked at diagrams of the trans with & without OD, and I've dis-assembled and overhauled both of mine, as well as the Ford versions (OD & non-OD) that I ran in my Edsel. I have this cute little gizmo at home & I should photo here. I think it's from a 1950's military radio or radar unit. Anyhow, it's the fine tuning control from something old & it has a neat little planetary reduction drive inside. I sometimes use it to show people how automatic transmissions work. I freaked out the first time I saw a Model-T trans in a junkyard, until I found out what was inside. It looks like the Borg-Warner OD is basically a Model-T transmission with electric solenoids instead of pedals.

I use a Logitech G11 at work. I've used it for over 5 years now & it shows no signs of wear on the keys. None at all, because unlike some keyboards the letters go all the way through. They're not just painted on.

My stock cable fit OK as well. It was a bit tight but it never failed in some 50,000 miles or more. What failed on me is the rear engine mounts, which were old & let the engine tip back a little what with all that OD iron on the tail. This put tension on the upper radiator hose. That tension split the solder holding the water outlet to the top tank, and one morning I found lots of Prestone on the floor. Anyhow I got some new rubber mounts and had to solder the radiator back together. My speedometer never changed as I recall. It must tap off the mid-shaft and not the tail-shaft.

I saw some drone videos of NYC this AM & they got pummeled. Brrrrr!