Ulu

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!

In '67 there was a good one. Dad was just back from Vietnam. We were crossing Iowa and got stuck there when the roads closed. We were coming from Phoenix, and going to Duluth, so it was quite a thrill. Traveler's Aid found some nice folks to put us up 'til it cleared. There was 2' of snowfall in a matter of hours in mid-Iowa, and the same in Chicago. Anyhow, that's one of the many reasons I live in the desert.

Actually not too strange. Back when the govt cut back on the space program (early 80's) there were thousand of engineers out of work. I knew one making subs at Subway and another running a window at the unemployment office. I worked as a teamster and did art work on the side.

Nope. The one where I explain how a guy actually becomes an engineer and even teaches engineers, without having a degree. In short, it's like OJT. Same as any plumber really. You are an apprentice, just like every engineer with or without a degree, when he first starts out. Our guys apprentice (We call them EIT: "engineers in training") for 5 long years after college, to become structural engineers. Even a guy with a masters or doctorate will apprentice for another engineer for some years. My boss has a masters from Berkeley & he apprenticed at Bechtel corp. I apprenticed at Kellner Co. (now gone) and Manlift inc, and was promoted to engineer at Kawneer Co. Santiago Calatrava is about the most famous structural engineer alive, He had a PHD. In fact, he's so big that Universities around the world fight over who will offer him his next honorary doctorate. He has like 8 or 10 last time I looked, but he also worked as an apprentice to another structural engineer. Also, a degree alone does not make you an engineer. i know guys with engineering degrees who don't design a damn thing in their jobs. They can call themselves engineers, but they cannot practice as engineers.

I wrote a big OT diatribe here about my jobs as an engineer. It went poof in the last system hicup & restore. I'm not going to try and reproduce it now. I just turned in my plans for the new Fresno Highway Patrol office. We did the new Fresno DMV which just opened. In the past two years we also did big expansions for Fresno High, and a whole new campus (10 buildings plus a mall and a bridge) for Fresno Central HS. I'll post up something substantial if I can find the "introduce yourself" thread. (Every forum's got one, right?)

Does anybody make reproduction gravel shields for the P-15 rear fenders? In the 30 years I've owned Edith d' Plymouth, I've never seen one in person, and photos were rare too.

Kind of a non-sequitur, but: On the way home tonight, traffic was doing nearly 50 MPH along the boulevard when someone going west made a left turn across/into eastbound traffic. I was in the #2 lane of 3 lanes eastbound, and the perp got punched hard by the car to my left. I nailed it hard and escaped the real carnage, though some bit of plastic debris hit my truck. I was wishing for more acceleration. The poor guy next to me was probably wishing for better brakes. He slowed from 45+ to maybe 25 at impact, so it could have been a lot worse. Anyhow, better engines and better brakes have always been on my to-do list.

I don't mind the over used words. I don't mind the quality of the spelling. I do find it slightly insulting when folks post on web forums as if they were using an antique telegraph. There's no capitals, there's no paragraphs, there's no punctuation except for lots of periods; and everything just runs together in a stream. you get replies to your questions or posts which are hard to read because they look like this...just as if nobody cared whether it was difficult to read...or might be read incorrectly due to the lack of formal punctuation and the possibility of strange word wraps on the page. Computers have all these wonderful keys that make things look so perfect, and IMO it's a shame when people won't take the time to use them.

Lucky duck! I wailed on mine with a steel hook on a 2lb slide hammer & it doesn't budge. I'll maybe have to cut it up.

Hey, that thing is made to last forever. I sure like the reversible nature of the jaws (unlike my "donut" type puller legs, which do not reverse.) Anybody seen a "backwards" leg set on a donut style puller?

I've been trying to post this pic for over a week, but my internet connection was on the fritz. This is the hub puller I made for the 5 on 4.5" hubs. It's a circle of 1/2" plate, which I got as a scrap, a 1.25" dia fine thread grade 8 bolt, a nut. and a pass with the MIG. I drilled 5 holes and use 6" long bolts to the hub. This one works better than my factory made puller on a 4.5" bolt circle & it stays nice and straight. With this design, you can wrench it up tight, then smack it hard with a 4lb hammer, and there's no chance it'll go crooked. With the "donut" type, it's sometimeshard to keep the donut from turning, and that throws the legs out of alignment. I just put a wrench on that big nut and everything's stable.

Glad I read this thread, as I'd never thought about the positive ground/electrolytic capacitor issue myself. I come from the vacuum tube days myself, and as a kid I'd pick up old TV's and fix them. This always meant a trip to Radio Shack to use the tube tester. Last time I was there, the people working the store had all been born in the IC era & would have had no clue what a tube tester is.

You can put heli-coils in the hub. I've fixed a couple this way & it's easy enough.

Was his case heard by a petit jury?

Clearly you were a loose canon. Or cannon, LOL (The devil made me do it.)

After moderating a few different forums over the past decade or so, I gave up on caring how people spell or write, or whether their grammar is too "contemporary", sloppy, or just plain odd. Nowadays, as long as I can understand what follks mean, I consider it a victory in communication. But at work, if some bozo brings me a tech document with misplaced parentheses or one misspelled word, I will give them a hard time about it.

Like bob, I bought my P15 on credit and made 36 payments. Otherwise, I bought mine in '85 all shiny... I drove it daily, and over 30 years turned it into this:

I'm not an HVAC guy, & I haven't seen that exact heater, but a traditional gas burner will have an air "regulator" door for the combustion inlet, that you adjust manually depending on your air pressure (height above sea level changes this.) My old heater had 3 burners and had one air valve for each. Once you change the jets you have to re-balance the air so the flames are blue and hot. Back in 1974 I got to purge & light the giant 3-conveyor high Pepperidge Farms cake oven. There were like a dozen gas valves at each level & each had an air control at the gas pipe with a short handle and a lock screw. That plant was pretty much state of the art in those days & I had the run of it on the night crew of mechanics & mfg engineers. It was my practical introduction to manufacturing engineering. (EDIT...OH hell! I typed all that & forgot this. Contamination in the gas and gas line can cause backfires. Also, If this heater has a blower for combustion air that's one thing. If the blower is just to purge the heater before lighting that's another. It should stop before the ignition. BTW, The purge routine at Pepperidge Farm involved a 20 HP blower plus flashing lights and a siren. )

Exactly: it's to make you visible while parked along a road at night; and in several states it's quite illegal to drive with your parking lights on.

Will the box get rubber bushings at the mounting bolts? For that matter, does your car even have rubber body mounts? BTW, I like the look too.

I'd love to see a video of that bad boy in action.