PhilA

I wish. We just got the adjuster visit, so now we can start trying to find people to come in and clean the house up and make it livable. I would do it myself but when it comes to houses and mold, I want that paper trail showing that yes, damage from water. Yes, professionally cleaned and certified. Long process Phil

As part of doing other things today, I got to go to the beach. This occurrence made me happy.

It is, I need to get some rivets to put it back on. Phil

Ran the car yesterday, thumped the hood and most of the dent popped out. Tried it with the roof but the headliner prevents good access. I've been suggested to try dry ice, rubbed around the dent to cause the metal to contract and pull the dent out. Only place that sold the stuff locally was destroyed by the storm so I'll have to work on that one. Phil

That's getting close to a Rover V8 camshaft after 150,000 miles. They just get wheezy and tired when the cams destroy themselves, that'll be no exception. Replacing that will significantly liven that engine up.

Yeah, NEMA buckets aren't small. They also don't really cast much light, either.

Congratulations! I remember those heady halcyon days. Get out there and get comfortable behind the wheel. Congrats on the cobrahead, those are becoming a rarer sight over here now, good lamps.

That'll happen here, usually right before you drive into the rain that the cold air is carrying. Sharp edge weather fronts are rare in the UK but not impossible; a much more common occurrence here, I find, where the air temperature will drop suddenly maybe ten degrees or so. Phil

My last truck had General Ameritracs on from the factory, which lasted 6 months before I sacked them off for something with more grip in the wet- they were hard and starting to chip off on the edges of the tread, looking like a stone-age flint knife. Made in Korea. Replaced with BF Goodrich ones which were made in the USA and they were night and day compared. Flexible, compliant, grippy. They did 56,000 miles in 10 years, by which time they were hard, useless in the wet and starting to craze and crack. As stated above, name brands seem to matter where they are made. I remember rubber inner tubes being stretchy. You could make slingshots out of them. These days they feel solid, like stretchy fudge, and fail at a significantly lower strain force, often without a smooth fracture edge, more one that looks like a cheap chocolate bar when you snap it. Same goes for CV boots, hoses, wiper blades etc. All pretty terrible, no matter where you buy them from.

Would they let the Galaxie in?

Lies and slander! The air in London is all primroses and butterflies since everyone has had to pay to get in.

Yes. They've made some improvements but the boards and soldering technique temperature, wave soldering etc) weren't changed from 60/40 Pb/Sn solder and so the new lead free RoHS grade stuff would fracture and dry joint very badly. Since then board design, alloy mixture and technique have improved the reliability. The useless crap still fractures though.

Peak? Depends upon your definition but I would say about 3 years ago, the state of the art has been pushed again and cars are just now having pfaff added to them as sales bamf rather than actually being any better than their predecessors as a machine for a purpose. Peak in terms of feel-good, not necessarily actually any good/rose-tinted specs? Mid 60's. Reliability was improved, lightweight monocoque designs with decent suspension, comfy seats and a simplicity that came from cost-cutting. Peak in terms of machismo/keeping up with the Joneses? Mid 90's. Technological advances in computers had reached a zenith, whereby they were complex enough to take care of the engine well, yet had become more reliable and hardened. Again the point at which simple engineering gained strength from metallurgy, electronics and CAD improvements. There are many peaks, usually on the trailing edge of a significant change, mostly where the designers reached the point that their designs were affordable enough to mass produce but hadn't been wrung out to dry by the accountants. Phil

In the words of the folk round here; "Dat's purdy". Phil

House was leaking again. More tarps. Home Depot was sold out of chainsaws. Cable ground box full of wasps. Nearly got sunstroke up on the roof. Did clear a little bit of the yard but there's been monsoon style rain every day and everything's soaked. I had intention to cut the grass but it was too wet to even contemplate trying to liberate the mower.