The Man Of 1000 Insect Stings

The Man Of 1000 Insect Stings
I found this amusing little tale in my inbox this morning. Via Posthip Scott.

Car Troubles

Ford Pickup Truck Being Repaired

Stopped by Heaton Automotive today to talk to Eric about my broken pickup truck transmission and I spied this Ford pickup truck in the shop. What kind of repair requires lifting the entire cab off the chassis, I enquired. Cylinder head replacement was the answer. How bizarre. It used to be that a job like that could be handled by man with a box of wrenches working alone in his garage. Things have changed. I suppose that with the number of complex systems tied into the engine, and the engine compartment being shrunk, it's quicker and easier to pull the cab off. It obviously makes access to the engine easier. You shouldn't have to make a repair like this very often. For most trucks it might never happen.

Last week my truck went all the way to San Francisco and back without any problems, other than the air conditioning compressor blowing up. But then I got in the other day to go pick up some lunch and the automatic transmission quit. Driving down a quiet residential street and the dang thing shifts into neutral. Try second and it engages for a few seconds and then it disengages again. Fiddled a bit and not it seems to be working okay, but then I go around a corner and it just quits completely.

Cutaway Automatic Transmission

Looking on the internet I find one story about how it might be a cracked filter that is letting air into the hydraulic pump, which would pretty much cancel all motation. On the other hand, the truck has 150,000 miles on it. I had the transmission rebuilt once before when it had around 70,000 miles, so there is a good chance that it is just worn out. However, I've never had a transmission fail so completely and so quickly. Usually I get all kinds of signs and portents for weeks before it becomes undriveable, and then I can still drive it to the shop. This time it quit so completely I had to have it towed.

Replacing the transmission with a rebuilt unit and fixing the A/C would cost $3,500. Scrap value of the truck is about $300. If I decide to keep it, it is also going to need a paint job and a couple of dents fixed, not to mention a couple of tires, all of which is going to push the bill past the five grand mark. It might not be worth it. Meanwhile I have the Hyundai. Looks like it might be the end of the road for this truck.

Pic of the Day

Woman hanging laundry - Jeffrey T. Larson

Via Iaman, who finds this image comforting. Mr. Larson provides us with an example of how you get good at something: you do it over and over again. 

Pic of the Day

A destroyed Japanese H8K flying boat is examined by men of the US Army - October 24, 1943

I plotted the location on Google Maps. There might be something there, it's hard to tell. The immediate vicinity is obscured by clouds and their shadows. This aircraft was built by Kawasaki. There is one left in a museum in Japan. Via Iaman.

Haze

Portland, Oregon, Air Quality, Friday, August 4, 2017

Driving into Portland Tuesday I wished I had some sunglasses, it was awfully bright. This was kind of odd, because when the skies are blue, like they were then, I don't need sunglasses. It's when it's overcast that I want them. I suspect this is because when the skies are blue, only a small portion of the sunlight is getting scattered. Most of it follows a straight line from the sun to the ground. When the sky is overcast, all the light is getting scattered and so you get light going in all directions, which means there is more light heading for your eyes.

The sky was a little hazy, which was kind of odd. You don't usually get hazy blue skies. Blue skies are usually very clear.

Then I started hearing that the air quality in Portland was very poor due to smoke from forest fires that are raging in Canada. Huh, who'd a thunk it, blue skies and bad air? Yesterday the air quality in Portland was worse then it was in Beijing, China, which is reputed to have some of the worst air pollution in the world.

I went for a short walk just before noon and while the air seemed fine, by the time I got home I wasn't feeling all that great. Matter of fact, I felt pretty crummy all afternoon. By evening time I was thinking that perhaps my allergies were acting up, so I took a Zyrtec. It didn't help. Then I got a headache.

Woke up around 2 AM and the headache is worse. I'm thinking this headache is bad enough that it might call for Oxycodone, but I don't want to use narcotics if I don't need to, so I took a Naproxen. I waited an hour, but it didn't help, so I took an Oxy. It's been an hour and the headache has abated. I'm actually feeling a little loopy.

It's a little unnerving that something undetectable can have cause me so much trouble. If I hadn't heard the reports I would just suspect allergies, and maybe it is.

We also had a heat wave this week. It got up to 105 yesterday, which is exceptional for Portland. In preparation for running the A/C continuously, I cleaned the electrostatic air filter. Since then you can hear sparks cracking continuously. I presume it is electrocuting smoke particles. Cleaning the air filter was a fortuitous decision.

Previous post on the subject.

Redding California, Part 3

Broken Serpentine Belt
It was lying in the bottom of the engine compartment. I pulled the broken ends (green squiggle) up so they could be in the picture. Notice the rubber debris embedded in the compressor pulley (center). I suspect that happened when the belt broke.

After we unloaded the truck last weekend, I pulled it out of the garage and parked it in the street. I noticed that the A/C pulley wasn't making it's usual screaming noises, but I figured it had just worn itself into a happy place. It wasn't until a couple of days later when I looked under the hood that I discovered that the serpentine belt had snapped. That was a lucky break! (heh) The A/C compressor bit the dust like 800 miles ago, and the belt could have decided to snap any time after that, but it held on until we got home. If I am going to be that lucky, I should have bought a lottery ticket. But with the way the gods work (the gods of the lottery, the gods of broken cars, the gods of highway travel, etc.), I probably wouldn't have won enough to cover the tow I would have needed if the belt had broken on the road.

Since we already had one major expense this week, I decided to put off the $700 A/C compressor replacement, but to keep the truck drive-able it needs a belt. A discussion on a Dodge truck forum clued me in that you can get a shorter belt that could be installed without engaging the A/C compressor pulley. So I went to NAPA and bought a belt for a truck like mine, but without A/C. Oops, no, it's too short. So I go back to forum, find where the part numbers for the 'special' belt is mentioned, and take those numbers to NAPA where the counterman is able to translate these numbers into a NAPA number (25-070901), which leads to a belt and a $7 refund. Whoo hoo!

I thought about replacing the compressor myself, after all I can buy a compressor kit from Amazon for a couple of hundred bucks. But then I still need a vacuum pump and gauges and while I could buy these devices for another couple hundred bucks, the quality is not all that great and I am liable to end up with a substandard installation that will have to be revisited in a couple of years. Better to belly up to the bar and let someone who knows what they are doing, and has the right equipment, tackle the chore. Besides there's the whole psychic agony thing that comes from contributing to global warming by releasing freon into the atmosphere.

Sarracuda

Heart - "Barracuda" (1977)
This song has been popping up on YouTube recently. I remember it, of course, from back in the day. It's a great tune, but now when I am listening to it, I got to wondering just what the heck is she singing about? Never bothered me before, it was a hard rocking tune, and I was jammin', the FM radio in my car was my soundtrack. But now I listen to it and I am puzzled. A barracuda is a fast predator that lives in the sea. Has kind of a nasty reputation. Reading the lyrics (because half the time I can't understand all the lyrics and the other half of the time I get half of the words wrong) doesn't really get me anywhere. This story over on Ultimate Classic Rock explains that Ann Wilson was angry with some of the jerks she encountered in the music business, which sounds a whole lot like the Boss Hoss tune Monkey Business. The lyrics don't really make that clear. Actually they don't make a much sense, but hey, poetic license, use your imagination.

Then I'm reading in the Wikipedia article about how Sarah Palin used this as her theme song at the 2008 Republican National Convention, and I'm wondering 'are Republicans really that tone deaf?', but then I remember some other stuff I have read about why Trump is so popular, and I think I understand. They are just like I was, when I was busy and had a job. I didn't know or care what the song was about, I just liked it. It's only now that I am unemployed that I have time to think about such things. The whole thing with the Republicans and Trump is that they want a major change in our nation's direction and they don't care about any of these little chicken-shit issues that those persistent liberal reporter gadflies keep bringing up.. They want a change in direction and if they can't get the train to change direction they will be perfectly happy to derail it because they don't like the direction it is heading. Sounds like a culture war to me.

P.S. Heart is still in business, or at least they were in 2014.