Ulu

Oh look...there's my old Cadillac...

Hah! I just scrapped out most of our old network. Stuff that's been cluttering up the office for years. But old computers are like old cars. They have a sort of charm the new ones have lost in the race to do "everything for everybody forever". Those old chassis in the photo are slated for sacrificial annode duty, so say bye bye...

Ah yes...a bumper car! What fun! I love bumper cars, and never fail to ride them when at the fair or the boardwalk.

I'd like to do a CNC mill. I've only done turret press, press brake and tubing bender, plus flame cutter & some pretty basic general production line control. Before CNC was popular, I made patterns for pattern follower type burners and welders. Some were 2" long and some were 12' long.

It's beginning to look more like Christmas around here.

...I have never had a working computer in my garage. My old living room PC now resides there, with the addition of a D-Link Nano wireless device. This was a powerful PC in its day (AthlonXP 1800+ @ 1.6 Ghz) and still holds it's own on some things like web surfing. Not so hot on streaming video, but I suspect it'll run some OBD port emulators pretty well, if I can find the right ones. That's the lure, well plus having online parts diagrams in the garage! WooHoo! I think I can get a scope emulator that will sub for several of the functions of an old Sun machine, so it might even be useful for tuning the P15. Anyhow, this is the 7th PC on my home network, counting one laptop & the wife's i-Pad Air. I'm now able to run Windows XP Pro, Vista, Win 7 Pro, and win 8.1 Pro. (Plus the portable iOS) I have one other really old PC that'll boot PC DOS, OS2 Warp IV, and Red Hat Linux, but I don't know if I'll be able to get drivers to put that one online I still have a PS-2 Model 50, and a PC-AT that will probably still work, but haven't booted those dinosaurs in years.

Not just that, but feel the whole tire inside with your hand before you put the tube in. Sometimes crap just gets inside the tire.

Looks much nicer than my crummy imported driver. It worked OK untill I went for the 4 lb hammer. I only got half my hinges off before it crapped out. I need to buy a new one & I'll order a good one this time.

OK, it's real dark and this is the best pic I could get with the 120 lights going. I'm less than happy with my work, but that's no reason to give up. It's going to get much pointier next time. Right now, aditional welding is not in the cards, as I'd have to re-do all 125 zip ties, and I'm not up for it this week. I'm happy with my wreath though. My neighbor has a glossy K-Mart wreath, so I'm feeling a bit more smug about this bit.

"...failure will result in metal to metal back up......." With a goodly slop though. But a rag joint isn't intended for much (if any) any axial misalignment. The shafts must be in line or you'll rip it slowly apart. It can also cause "notchy" steering feel & wear on the steering pinion input seal. OK for a puttering trailer queen, but as a daily driver it's not reliable.

That's worthy of a Norman Rockwell, Bob. I've been out shopping for my grandkids. They're all getting new sneakers and books for Christmas. All ten of them. I won't post all their pics just right yet....

That's a really lovely car. I can't imagine the idea of putting a filthy tire inside the passenger compartment though. Maybe they figured these were just for farmers or something...I dunno. I would surely have put the tire elsewhere, like on the tailgate. That's some pretty fancy woodworking. I'd be afraid to tackle a woody. In fact I'm almost afraid to touch a woody. The last one I touched was about 1987, in a big Sanger junkyard right on old 99. (You old CenCal guys will remember it.) It was a '41 (?) Ford woody, and I was amazed at how rusty the metal parts of the body were, yet the carriage bolts on the rear header were bright shining stainless; and I had to touch one to see if it was a stainless bolt, or just a rusty bolt with a stainless cap. 15 seconds after I touched it, the wood body groaned and just fell over and collapsed into flinders.

What a cutie pie! The car is cute too. What's with the tube on the nose?

Yes some better pics would tell more. The one thing you do not want is the inner tie rod ends to move up and down (due to bracket deflection or movement) as you drive. Related to that, If the bolted connection to the rack relies on friction alone, for rotational alignment, you will probably have issues. If you have "socketed" or keyed the bracket to the rack, that part will be far more secure. That long arm you added, however, means that the steering has a lot of leverage over whatever keeps the rack aligned. In a hard left turn, deflection of the left tire will cause some serious jacking forces on the end of the new bracket.

This is the weather thread. Not the lacing thread. You guys got yer wires crossed.

I went up on the roof last night & tied on 70 more lights, with 70+ well made zip ties. It's a tile roof with a 6:12 pitch. Difficult to stand on, even when dry (it was) and you must be careful walking about to avoid breaking the tiles. I was pretty shaky by the time I climbed down. Anyhow, now I think it almost looks worse. The extra lights made the curved ends appear more obviously curved, whereas originally I'd intended the pattern of lights to obscure that. Some experiments are doomed because of shortsightedness and this was one. I thought I was being "cute" but it doesn't come off at all.

I belong to a lot of other forums, but since I joined P15 it has quickly become my favorite. I never knew Norm, but this thread makes it very clear why I like this forum. Genuinely nice people are a blessing in this world, and this place is blessed with an abundance of them. A Merry Christmas to you all!

"...after operating the switch a few times, the headlamps stayed on even with the switch in the "off" position..." This sounds like the relay was overloaded, and the contacts welded themselves together a bit. If the contact faces are burned or pitted, or you smell the lacquer burned off the coil, this will tell the story.

We had about 1.5" of rain here in 24 hrs. That's pretty good for us. We started a homeless encampment on the patio this week. OK, just kidding... Those are my boat and car parts under wraps for the winter.

Imagine your entire loom spontaneously de-loomed.

Clovis CA got about 1.5" in the past 24 hrs, judging by the bucket on my patio. It wasn't nearly as violent as predicted though. Some people on the coast are having mudslides, so the weather here is inconsequential. Except it drives me indoors to work on the motorcycle instead of the car. Here's a pic of the bike just after I rode it over Tioga Pass in a thunderstorm. Pretty exciting when there's standing water on the road and you're at 10,000 feet with lightning striking the peaks just above you. I kept riding while every other biker was parked under a tree as I went by. I was told never to hide under a tree in lightning.

It'l turn that thin trim into a pretzel real quick and wrap it around the shaft too. Beware!

Ralph, I have one of those inherited from my dad, but it didn't come with the wooden box. It's still under the seat of our Scout. I remember using it once, out at Topaz Mountain, to pump up a tire and it worked but seemed to take a long time. Then again they were 15x11.00 floatation tires, so they took some air to fill, yet I might have done it faster with a bicycle pump, The 4-cyl Scout wasn't that happy running on 3 cylinders, but it survived.

I like the skirts way more than mine because they are much taller. I think my skirts are too short, and in fact barely cover the opening. I imagine that's because they're some kind of universal/aftermarket types.

hmmm...I never posted here? OK, I'm a professional computer bum & I engineer various stuff. I wanted to be an architect. Mom wanted me to go to the Baptist Bible College & become Oral Roberts or something. Dad sent me to engineering school to become Werner Von Braun instead. An engineering professor told me that engineers who could not program computers would have a hard time finding work in the future, so I studied FORTRAN and BASIC, and started into COBOL; then I got a real job programming computers (!) and I left engineering school just before the senior year. We were making pre-fab trusses and walls for tract houses on a semi-CNC production line. I wrote code, did calcs, programmed our Sharp microcomputer, and drew trusses. So I ended up being an engineer anyhow, later doing tool design, programming, and manufacturing engineering at Manlift. I designed aluminum extrusions at Kawneer and did product and application engineering, I was a project coordinator for a big construction co, and later I ran the prototype shop for a big machine shop (a local job shop) , and also did prototyping and CNC programming at Vendo. I got sick of big companies too. Dad taught me to fix cars as a kid. We did engine swaps and swapped bodies & did various re-builds of cars and bikes. I worked for some pro shops while in college, building engines and doing brake jobs and electrical work. I was also a Teamster for a couple years when all the engineers got laid off here in the 80's. I ran heavy equipment, serviced it, and managed the yard activities. For the past 20 years I've been working for a small (10 man) consulting structural engineering firm (Advanced Structural Design) where we design mostly schools and public buildings, plus a few random stadiums and churches. I draw buildings, check drawings, do informal calcs (no state license, so I can't stamp & sign anything) and handle all their computer issues.