Warmish and damp.
Forecast shows T-storms. We’ll see I guess.
It was mid 60s yesterday morning, and stayed there most of the day.
I did some auction pickups and shipping. Sold a speaker, and two hardware firewalls. Needed boxes for the firewalls, so that was another stop. I went through my ebay listings and dropped prices. That must have signaled to the watchers that I was willing to entertain offers… which I did, taking about half of my initial listing price. Gotta move this stuff out…
Kids asked if we were going to Disney or if it would be canceled. Wife insisted as of now that we are going. But we acknowledged that things might change and the decision might be out of our hands.
We are starting to get enough numbers to make some initial observations about the WuFlu. It’s really transmissible. Cases coming out of Italy and Spain have even less than ‘casual’ contact. If you are sick enough to be hospitalized, you have a 1 in 3 likelihood of dying. That’s much more in line with the chinese gov’t actions than the numbers they’ve released. It’s also bad news.
For everyone saying “it’s only killed a tiny number of people” I can only ask what they’re basing that on? Chinese fake numbers and wishful thinking? And you have to add the word “YET” to any statement about how many it’s killed. Wait til it burns through Africa and India. Or the Brazilian favelas…
“Bring out your dead…bring out your dead…”
“We’ve come for your liver lungs.”
“But I’m still using them!”
“You signed the card.”
“Oh, well ok then.”
Keep stacking.
nick
Please check in….
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/all-sudden-people-all-over-america-are-prepping-crazy
Have you got enough of your prescription meds?
Yesterday I was informed by my pharmacy (CVS at Target) that some of my and my wife’s medications are “out of stock for the foreseeable future”. When pressed the Pharmacist said, “many of our prescription drugs actually come from China and we all know what is going on over there”.
So folks panic buying and disrupted supply has now hit our drugs. I wonder how the street corner supply is being affected?
My wife and I are not voting in today’s Primary as WA State is a vote by mail state and we must mark on the outside of the envelope what Party we voted for, Democrat or Republican. That makes our not-so-secret ballots completely not secret.
Tornadoes in Nashville. Son lives in the area. Was not affected. His prior home 1.5 years ago was severely damaged to the point of not habitable. I know one person who moved from this area whose home was completely destroyed. Pictures posted on FB, complete devastation, walls gone, ceiling missing, kitchen gone. Some serious damage in the area.
We got woken by severe thunderstorms and booms that would shake our house. Rain traveling sideways, a couple of limbs down, but that is it. Some really nasty weather moved through.
Can you live without, maybe not well, but survive? Are they life critical drugs?
I could live without my drugs but doing so would not be good for my health. High blood pressure would be the biggest issue. Would it kill me? I don’t know. Do I want to take the risk? Nope.
Glad you’re ok Ray.
gotta be scary to have that come thru.
n
@dadcooks,
Start checking with friends and relations. Almost everyone has some old meds in the cabinet. Many churches, especially in poorer communities have illegal meds pools…
Start working on it now so you have time.
n
call your doc, he might have samples he can give you.
My wife and I are not voting in today’s Primary as WA State is a vote by mail state and we must mark on the outside of the envelope what Party we voted for, Democrat or Republican. That makes our not-so-secret ballots completely not secret.
That’s ok. The paralegals at Perkins Coie in Portland already filled out a ballot for you. If a state-wide race is close, expect to see at least one mail truck “accident”.
Maybe I’m cynical.
Outsourcing is really biting us in the ass. At least we can grow food. Until farmers start getting sick. But, Bloomberg thing farmers are just uneducated hicks. Anybody can throw some seeds in the dirt and feed 300 million people. The guy probably hasn’t even *shopped* for food in his life.
Read John Ringo’s Last Centurion. It’s starting to look like prophesy. It has some things to say about replacing farmers with politically connected tyros.
n
We may grow food, but where do the tractor parts come from? Where do the supplements and sprays come from ? Parts for those? Cultivars?
Vet meds?
I just checked with our vet, and we’re good until sept with existing treatments. The office has fully stocked their in house meds. When I asked the tech on the phone if they had any issues, she mentioned that her dental work is on hold. The crown she needs is being made in China and is late. When I mentioned that they might want to keep any masks they have under lock and key she kinda laughed nervously, like she wasn’t sure why they’d want to. So I told her what they were going for on ebay…
n
I’m headed out to get my last auction items and do some targets of opportunity shopping.
n
Crown made in China, yikes that is really outsourcing. I had no idea. Gold crowns are made right here in our little town. Ceramic crowns are made in the dentist’s office.
I had a ceramic crown made about two years ago. My dentist spun me around and gave me a guided tour of his CAD/CAM workstation. The whole system is very well done. This is a great use of computing.
Outsourcing is really biting us in the ass. At least we can grow food. Until farmers start getting sick. But, Bloomberg thing farmers are just uneducated hicks. Anybody can throw some seeds in the dirt and feed 300 million people. The guy probably hasn’t even *shopped* for food in his life.
Bloomberg didn’t grow up wealthy. I’ll give him that much.
RIP. The original CNN Headline News anchors were an interesting group.
Back when Crazy Ted lived in the penthouse and wandered the halls at night in his bathrobe.
https://www.the-sun.com/news/485080/bobbie-battista-cnn-anchor-dies-cervical-cancer/
Idle thinking… To appreciate just how well developed our modern IC engines are, a typical engine turns approximately 200 MILLION revolutions in 100k miles. To put that in perspective, I remember when electromechanical relays were doing well to last 100k cycles at rated load. (Yes, some are much better, but others are much worse.)
Think about other things familiar. How many operations do they endure? I have a stairway I have gone up and down an estimated dozen or so times per day. Over 40+ years, that is approximately 200k of wear, yet the stairway still looks good. How many times did my knees flex? At least the human body constantly repairs itself.
Its times like these that I REALLY miss Robert 🙁
Anybody got anything to contribute about how to test Chlorine Bleach / mixtures
for concentration? Hopefully something simple using commonly available stuff …..
No prize awarded for guessing why !
William: https://drmadscientist.wordpress.com/2013/06/26/concentration-of-sodium-hypochlorite/
Not quite as straightforward as “weigh 100mL and look up the concentration” but I haven’t found a lookup table or simple calculator.
At least the human body constantly repairs itself
With a decreasing efficiency as the years go by. Last week I had a couple of projects due that pushed me up to 70 hours for the workweek. Yesterday I started my workweek with an 11 hour day. Back in my salad days I used to shrug that off like it was nothing. Even go out after work a couple of nights.
Today I feel like I was hit by a meteor. I found myself making a few mistakes so I pulled myself out of the lab (for my safety and others) and I am catching up on some paperwork. I’m 53.97 years old and I now know my current limit is ≤70 hours, probably a lot less.
Just got back from Kroger. Paper well stocked, brought back six rolls of bathroom tissue (their signage).
@William, Wrt bleach concentration for drinking water, Bob and Clorox agree that there should be a faint chlorine odour. If you have that, you’ve got enough. So if you are worried about degraded bleach, add more until you still have the odour after thorough mixing and some short time.
For sanitary use, there are test strips marketed for use in food service, they shouldn’t be sold out yet online, and are probably available locally at a restaurant supply store.
N
Apt metaphor; you win the glib saying for today 🙂
The last time I worked >80 hour weeks, I was in my mid twenties doing design work. I found myself making mistakes I would not make when less tired. There is a definite curve, and it is very nonlinear. It also changes with the duration and intensity of the stress. Those long hours lasted months, and after a month or two, most of us noticed effects outside work. I will leave it at that.
My comment about repair was directed at mechanical repair, but your point is well taken. I almost qualified it for age. Of course, we do lose repair quality with age. That is just entropy in action. The mammalian body is amazing. People might not be as good as some wild animals.
We Have a visit to WDW planned for the first of June. Will play it by ear. Best case is that the spring halts the worst of the virus and lots of people have cancelled so we have a light crowd situation.
WRT my engine, they will be looking at the tranny (for a typical problem with this model, since it will be open and off the motor.) they will also be looking at the lower parts after they get the upper parts off.
I’d just decided to run the oil channel cleaning stuff with this oil change, and then it blew up. No issues with overheating or oil pressure but it’s a design issue and can be addressed. But never got to it.
It’s got 159K miles, but WAY more hours. It was a cop vehicle and spent a lot of time idling. The chain looked well oiled on the part I could see…..
Good idea to check the tranny. When mine failed at 190K, it was all the forward gears. The dealer thought it was just a sensor but wanted $1,000 to pull it and check it out. Or $4,125 to slide in a reman with a three year warranty from Ford. I took the reman since I drive so much out of town.
I am seeing the articles say that the timing chains are getting worn by the overhead cam gear at the top. There is inadequate oiling under load but the chains usually do not fail until they are past 150,000 miles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Modular_engine
With a decreasing efficiency as the years go by. Last week I had a couple of projects due that pushed me up to 70 hours for the workweek. Yesterday I started my workweek with an 11 hour day. Back in my salad days I used to shrug that off like it was nothing. Even go out after work a couple of nights.
Today I feel like I was hit by a meteor. I found myself making a few mistakes so I pulled myself out of the lab (for my safety and others) and I am catching up on some paperwork. I’m 53.97 years old and I now know my current limit is ≤70 hours, probably a lot less.
As a junior / staff plant engineer in my early 20s, I used to routinely work twelve twelves and then get a weekend off. We were way understaffed for any maintenance work and it was all hands on deck when one of our larger of the five units was down. We had 22, 45, 80, 175, and 500 MW units. If the 175 or 500 were down then one could expect horrendous hours getting it fixed plus all the myriad items of deferred maintenance that would be fixed during an forced or planned outage. All of our units were custom built hot rods and routinely driven at the equivalent of 120 mph down the road. 3,500 F boilers and 1,000 F steam are tough on metal.
I don’t want to talk about the day that I let the reheat steam temperature on #5 drift up to 1,100 F. It was for less than 15 minutes, our required reporting time to Westinghouse. I was doing what I was told by central dispatch, lowering the load from 170 MW to 35 MW. I had no idea that the reheat bypass had to opened on the boiler and 60% of the 2,000 F gas moved into it first. Hearing Squirrel (the main operator) lightly scream and come running was awesome though.
WRT Drugs:
Before we went I Medi-don’t-Care my wife and I were able to stockpile 3 to 6-months of our prescription drugs. The problem is that dipping into that stockpile means it will be nigh near impossible to restore it due to the Medi-don’t-Care “rules”.
Today our Costco was completely out of all brands toilet paper, paper towels, Lysol wipes, bleach, isopropyl alcohol, alcohol pads (I use for my glucose testing, baby wipes, bottled water, and more. Tuesday is normally a big delivery day at our Costco but the manager said that less than half of the normal number of trucks showed up and that he was told to expect the same for the foreseeable future.
This is getting worrisome. My wife is on the verge of a panic attack. A garage and shed full of necessities is not comforting enough.
I don’t follow the day to day markets much, but I happened to see a floor trader interview. Don’t know what floor, but doesn’t matter. He was asked about the Fed’s rate cut, and why it didn’t seem to affect the market much. He said his job was to MAKE MONEY. No matter what happens, he is expected to keep that money working and making returns. He has his algos and other data inputs, but it is his responsibility to make the right decisions. Well said. He doesn’t have the option to sit on the sidelines. Same for us, although we have a longer timeline.
I have never, ever seen the Dow drop almost 3% on a 50 basis point cut in Fed funds rate. Just sayin’.
WRT 22 hours to replace a timing chain, that’s about right. When I was doing that stuff we’d shop the heads out and I forgot all the labor needed to rebuild them.
Tuesday is normally a big delivery day at our Costco but the manager said that less than half of the normal number of trucks showed up and that he was told to expect the same for the foreseeable future.
Uh oh. Is the China shutdown already hitting the big box stores ? I thought it would not happen until April according to a news report that I read.
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/2020/02/12/target-best-buy-coronavirus-supply-disruption/41223461/
And as far as I know, all paper products are still made here in the USA and Canada. Am I wrong about this ?
We are going to rue the day that we let China take over our manufacturing. I blame Presidents Clinton, Bush 41, Bush 43, and Obama. They all took money from China under the table for access to the USA markets. Ross Perot accurately predicted this nightmare so many years ago. Trump is the first President since Reagan who is truly America First.
Make your own hand sanitizer (from https://www.thoughtco.com/make-your-own-homemade-hand-sanitizer-606145 ):
Of course, this means that you need a supply of the 99% rubbing alcohol and aloe vera gel.
I suspect that you could add the isopropyl alcohol to non-bacterial liquid soap to make anti-bacterial liquid soap. (RBT would have known. Maybe Ben Siciliano , who now runs RBT’s http://www.thehomescientist.com, knows that answer.)
And as far as I know, all paper products are still made here in the USA and Canada. Am I wrong about this ?
The last case of paper we bought at Costco for our big laser printer at came from Israel. I don’t remember the brand.
Domestic manufacturing of paper products is in jeopardy due to the environmental impact. The big GP paper mill outside Vantucky recently cut 2/3 of the staff.
Toilet paper and paper towels is a “just in time” thing. The hoarding breaks the system.
I could live without my drugs but doing so would not be good for my health. High blood pressure would be the biggest issue. Would it kill me? I don’t know. Do I want to take the risk? Nope.
High blood pressure will kill you in months. It turns your organs into mush over time as the veins and arteries in your organs fail. Will also cause you to go blind first due to bleeding in your eyes.
High blood pressure is why most men used to die in their 50s.
High blood pressure, 210 / 110, was the cause of my first heart attack since I have a compromised heart with the malformed right coronary artery. The left coronary artery went into spasms and shut down the ventral side of my heart. That is a self diagnosis after four cardiologists have refused to tell me what happened back in 2009.
Don’t go without your blood pressure meds lightly.
I am seeing the articles say that the timing chains are getting worn by the overhead cam gear at the top. There is inadequate oiling under load but the chains usually do not fail until they are past 150,000 miles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Modular_engine
You know, this could be a obsolescence feature from Ford. Just saying, I doubt it was planned. More like incompetence.
I voted before heading to work this morning. Lots of Dems in line, but not many for the Republican voting section of the gym at the community center.
Texas has some interesting ballot initiatives. I don’t know how binding those are, but those of you who live in the state who haven’t voted should take a look and try to get out to the polls.
I went to vote to make sure our walking corpse Congresscritter wasn’t voted out of office in the primary. A well-financed RINO challenger immigrant from the Subcontinent had me concerned since (a) he obviously isn’t a Republican when you look at his platform and (b) once in office it would be murder to get him out given the shifting demographics in Round Rock.
The Corpse survived “Doors” (Cornyn should take note of how he did it), but, regardless of their internal prejudices and, sometimes, brutal cruelty to each other behind closed doors, Subcontinent supports Subcontinent in this country.
UPDATE: The folks at work indicated that what I thought were initiatives were more like opinion polls and non-binding.
Domestic manufacturing of paper products is in jeopardy due to the environmental impact. The big GP paper mill outside Vantucky recently cut 2/3 of the staff.
We have been dancing with environmental impact crashing into societal needs for a long time. Exporting our environmental damage to other countries must stop now. We need to get a rein on the courts who have redefined Best Available Control Technology (BACT), from years to days. If you cannot keep an environmental control system going for at minimum of a year at time then you do not have an environmental control system.
Are they shutting down the GP paper mill or automating it ? The waste streams are contaminated with bleach and the old solution of dilution is not working with today’s new impossible standards. I doubt that they are automating it, most of the people there are probably maintenance. Sounds like they are going to run the paper mill until a major failure and walk away.
Kids asked if we were going to Disney or if it would be canceled. Wife insisted as of now that we are going. But we acknowledged that things might change and the decision might be out of our hands.
We Have a visit to WDW planned for the first of June. Will play it by ear. Best case is that the spring halts the worst of the virus and lots of people have cancelled so we have a light crowd situation.
Looks like Bob Iger stepped down at just the right time.
https://deadline.com/2020/03/disney-bob-chapek-ceo-test-coronavirus-bob-iger-1202872287/
You know, this could be a obsolescence feature from Ford. Just saying, I doubt it was planned. More like incompetence.
Wait until the fallout from Port Injection hits in about a decade. Maybe 2-3 MPG gain with an unkown long-term consequence.
Are they shutting down the GP paper mill or automating it ? The waste streams are contaminated with bleach and the old solution of dilution is not working with today’s new impossible standards. I doubt that they are automating it, most of the people there are probably maintenance. Sounds like they are going to run the paper mill until a major failure and walk away.
Shutting down. The mill is *old*. Plus, the Koch family who own GP are not popular in WA and OR.
Looks like Bob Iger stepped down at just the right time.
Iger was fired. Watch the body language in the CNBC interview after the announcement.
In the US everyone except whites votes their skin color. To a first approximation, anyway, and probably a second.
Here in Millbrook, AL (10 miles north of Montgomery) there were no empty shelves for water, toilet paper, paper towels or hand sanitizers today at Walmart.
I have 2000 Ford-250 with 398,000+ miles. Original engine and transmission. Starting to use a quart of oil in 1000 miles towing a 6000 pound load but uses no oil running errands around town.
I would not worry about the bottom end of an engine without evidence of abnormal wear when the heads are off. Most shops set the timing marks used for installation before removing the heads and then do not rotate the engine when installing the new timing chain. They also now use a shop vacuum to suck any loose debris from around the top of the pistons before re-installing the heads reducing the failure rate of the rings from head work. YMMV of course.
Bob
Just went to Wally World Neighborhood Market. Had just about everything. Canned meat shelves were a little light but I bought some DM stew and a four-pack of canned chicken to add to storage. Bleach and four pack of wipes, no problem. Then again I’ve got pool tablets and a 25,000 gal bucket out back. Paper was well stocked so bought large packs of store brand tp and paper towels. Stock crews were busy all over the store.
AB hand soap was low with no small pumps of AB, just plain. Bought a large refill of Equate AB.
Oddest was no half gallons of milk except 1% and skim. Got a gallon of 2%. Is the supply chain of half gallon containers low?
50# bag of Pedigree dog food just for emergency. Normally I buy better but the dog really doesn’t care and I won’t it use unless I have to or it starts getting too old.
Wait until the fallout from Port Injection hits in about a decade. Maybe 2-3 MPG gain with an unkown long-term consequence.
Doh! I meant Direct Injection.
From what I understand, Honda is already sweeping problems under the rug with DI and fuel getting into engine oil.
“Subcontinent supports Subcontinent in this country.”
In the US everyone except whites votes their skin color. To a first approximation, anyway, and probably a second.
My big problem is that the guy is a RINO, but once he’s in, he would be there for a while with the support of the community.
My problem with voting your skin (or religion or sexuality or anything other than the first element of your self-identification being “I am an American citizen”) is that you’re either voting for the interests of your group at the expense of everyone else or you don’t care about the candidate’s platform, views, or honesty so long as he’s in “your group”. (It demonstrably doesn’t even matter whether your candidate harms “your group”. Ref Barry Obuttsuck’s popularity among American blacks even now, despite the appalling black employment and poverty and crime numbers under his misadministration. But that’s a separate problem.) In either case the citizenry as a whole and the nation as a whole suffer because you’re trying to grab a bigger piece of the pie.
Home from my chores, dinner is eaten, one child in shower, one at piano lessons…
On a sneaking suspicion, I hit the Fiesta grocery in the ‘hood, next to the ‘barrio’. Thinking that A. most of the regular patrons can’t afford to stock up, and B. they’re outside of many alt news chains so might not even be aware, and C. Jessica the Soccer Mom is not headed to the ‘hood to look for supplies. I was right. Pretty much everything was in stock and there were a couple of specials that I took advantage of.
-there was store brand and scented bleach on the shelf. I got the last three bottles of clorox Disinfecting bleach.
-there was rubbing alcohol, including 91% so I bought 4 bottles. It was expensive and I have a bunch already.
-the OTC meds were well stocked, although there were some empty ‘faces’ in the Nyquil area.
-I didn’t see the wipes but pretty sure there were some .
-LOTS of toilet paper, all brands, various packages. BUT very expensive compared to costco. Like more than 8x as expensive.
–I bought 100 pounds of potatoes for 35c/lb
–I bought 15 more pounds of onion
–one flat of campbell’s soups
–one flat mixed cans, tamales, chili, etc
–3 gallons of peanut oil, in one gallon jugs, $13 ea, which was the same as bulk, but better to manage usage.
–40 pounds of rice for $19
–35 pounds additional kitty litter.
–some flavored quick rice sides
–imodium
–and I got the last two Quaker Quick Oats on the shelf. Plenty of regular and both store and premium brands.
–the only thing I have left to buy in OTC is my eye meds, wife’s Nyquil (if she wants some) and Bob’s recommended de-wormer, Reese’s Pinworm Medicine. Having trouble finding that. I’ll hit the CVS tomorrow for the odd items.
It’s funny on other sites in comments to hear the smugness as people say, “oh, you want masks, you should go to a paint store or hardware store, many of the dust masks are rated N95….” Oh you smug asshole. Like you are OF COURSE the only one to think of such a thing… so solly, sold out. EVERYWHERE. Except ebay, where you can get what you want you’ll just have to pay someone for the privilege.
Had a long chat with the folks at one of my auction pickups. They were completely unaware of the extent of the oppression and upset in China. They were pretty unaware and mostly complacent about WuFlu here. They were shocked by some of the stuff I told them, and hopefully will follow some of the search terms and look in some of the places I suggested they look. Told them I’d see them again after this all burns out.
Went and voted. I was the only one there when I went although there were people before and after me. The props were interesting. I usually get a voting guide from one of our friends who used to work in the DA’s office. I want to know which Judges are POS soft on crime liberals, and she does a good job of identifying them. It’s not straight party line either. Most were unopposed at this point.
n
Use a pool test strip. The concentration should be between 1 and 2 parts per million for drinking water. The test strips will easily indicate that concentration and are fairly accurate.
Wait until the fallout from Port Injection hits in about a decade. Maybe 2-3 MPG gain with an unkown long-term consequence.
Doh! I meant Direct Injection.
From what I understand, Honda is already sweeping problems under the rug with DI and fuel getting into engine oil.
DI engines don’t run DI the entire time, they cannot. If they have a failure with DI then they automatically fall back into port injection mode.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_direct_injection
My Dad’s Mercedes 300E is a turbo DI four cylinder engine. It sounds just like a diesel at idle.
Today’s automotive engines are extremely complex beasts. The Ford 4.6L and 5.4L V8 spark plug code was actually written at The University of Houston as a graduate project with up to six fires per combustion cycle. Ford paid big money for that.
Supposedly, my 3.5L V6 biturbo is a DI engine but I do not ever hear it sounding like a diesel. But it is 375 hp from a 213 cdi engine. And 400+ ftlbs of torque at 1,200 rpm on.
http://www.f150hub.com/specs/ecoboost.html
Why don’t I hear about people having a year or three of oil, transmission fluid, and filters on hand? Where will you go if things get really sporty? Don’t forget gaskets and form in place sealers, which have a shelf life. An extra car in excess of needs might be in order. Also a bicycle or motorcycle. You’re welcome 🙂
I keep a UH-60 in the garage. Just in case.
Went to a dinner show in Pigeon Forge. Pirates Voyage. Owned and operated by the same company that owns Dollywood, Stampede (formerly Dixie Stampede as Dixie is now racist), and a couple of other dinner shows in the area. Good production and good food.
I was not allowed to take my DSLR into the venue so only took my iPhone 11 Pro. I took several images. Low light in the venue. Zoomed in images suck, motion blur on fast action. Does not react to quick changes in lighting. iPhone was on auto the entire time.
When the iPhone is all you have, that is what you use. Still impressive for a camera that fits in your pocket.
Here is a link to the images. Another time sink for those so inclined.
@JimB, I’ve got oil, filters, wiper blades, and a collection of light bulbs for all three trucks 🙂 And yes, my ranger is backup to the Expedition (although mostly they fill different roles.) I figure one change each is enough to get thru anything including The Fall, if it comes to that. Like most preps, it comes down to convenience when the stuff actually gets used.
😛
n
RINO from the Subcontinent isn’t doing well tonight. By a huge margin.
Still, the fact that he got even a few thousand votes is concerning.
Got my two daily scrips filled. They didn’t want to fill one as it just refilled last week. But A. it’s not abusable, 2. I pay for it in full and in cash ($4, if a classic works for you why pay more?), III. I have refills left.
Wife set them straight with those points and they filled the request.
So now I’m good, wife is good, dog is good, kids are covered, and the only things left are a couple of eye drops and the pinworm treatment. I’ll hit a real drug store tomorrow for those.
Note that WA is now at 9 deaths. O to 9 in what, three days? And Italy is at over 2k infected and 57? dead? FL went from 0 to 3 (possibly) and in 2 weeks should be at 24 by the time I board a plane for WDW.
TX is now showing 11 on the map. Presumably the evacuees. F me. But hey, it’s just the flu…
n
I forgot to mention that even those who don’t do their own oil changes should keep supplies. There will be somebody who can help or trade skills.
Contrary to some belief, oil keeps practically forever, at least in the old metal cans. Plastic bottles? not sure, but oil has buffers and antioxidants, so probably OK. I have probably used some ten year old oil in plastic bottles, left over from a big sale, with no noticeable ill effects. Same for all kinds of (oil, transmission, air) filters.
I would expect no less of you.
I sure would like to have, and know how to fly, any helo. I have known military pilots, and currently slightly know a guy who is in his eighties who still flies helos. He owns two!! No, he is not rich. He might be if he didn’t have those whirly things.
That Wikipedia article on Gasoline Direct Injection (GDI) was interesting. I was surprised to read that in 2016 approximately 50% of the new cars use GDI. Also interesting was the claim of a possible doubling of deaths from increased black carbon emissions if 100% of the fleet adopts GDI. However, that would be from 855 to 1599 annually, a fairly insignificant number. Oh, the lengths we go to meet govt regs.
Lynn, I was told many years ago by an engine developer to limit wide open high rpm runs to 20 seconds maximum. This is especially true for engines with high specific output. The reason is that it takes about that time for the exhaust valves to reach peak temperature. The exhaust valve can be a source of preignition (knock,) which might not be heard above the noise as it could be at low rpm. Also, with a high output engine, 20 seconds gets the vehicle to pretty high speeds – jus’ sayin’. Yes, your engine probably has a knock sensor, but why take chances?
Engines designed for steady state high output have design features not commonly found in automotive engines. You might not do damage with several wide open runs, but you could be decreasing the life of the engine. Take a look (so to speak) at some of the cars put into the hands of the magazine testers. These can be thrashed after just a few thousand (and less) miles. Hard driving takes its toll.
Now, just the opposite. Remember, Ford said a very high percentage of cylinder wall wear occurred during the first minute of operation? What is the best way to reduce this? Well, obviously, do fewer cold starts! Not practical? Thought so. What I am about to state is discussed endlessly by car nuts, but here goes anyway. When starting an engine that has “rested” for a few hours, and is below 100F (one definition of a cold start,) immediately bring it up to about 2k rpm and hold for a second or two. Notice that a lot of engine controllers do this by design. Don’t let the engine idle any more than absolutely necessary. Instead, when the oil pressure is up (usually 5 seconds or less,) start driving. Your goal is to reach operating temperature as quickly as possible, without undue stress. Ideally, drive at no more than 2k rpm (maybe 3k for small engines,) until the coolant is up to normal. Whatever that distance or time is, double it for the automatic transmission to get warm before doing any really heavy throttle operation. After a brief shutdown, you can just start and immediately do just about anything.
OK, we all know people who don’t follow the above advice, and they get good life from their engines. Maybe I’m wrong XXXXX too cautious.
I keep a UH-60 in the garage. Just in case.
I would be impressed if you kept 500 gallons of gasoline in the backyard. I have a friend who keeps 500 gallons of gasoline in an old propane tank in his backyard out in the country. Since 9/11 he has a lot of trouble getting it refilled due to all the anti-terrorist paperwork.
I usually take a minute and let the engine settle before driving away. I use the time to write the mileage in my book…
My old Expy takes a while to get up to temp, which is normally only noticeable on cold mornings with no heat. I’ve got a big radiator, and an extra oil and tranny cooler (cop car.) I don’t think any of that is valved or limited on my older truck (08) so it takes a while to heat.
I’m off to bed. No reason to get run down and possibly sick as a result.
n
@lynn, I tried to do that in Cali on a jobsite 15 years ago and it was hard then due to environmental safety and permitting requirements. We were on tribal land, which is the only reason we were eventually able to do it. (we were running 12 or more boom lifts on a construction project and needed to be able to refuel on site.)
I store about 35 gallons during hurricane season. I’ll be topping that up this week as I’ve got empty cans sitting here. So much to do.
n
“Read John Ringo’s Last Centurion. It’s starting to look like prophesy. It has some things to say about replacing farmers with politically connected tyros.”
This is what happened in Zimbabwe. It takes real skill and determination to replace crops with famine. Robert Mugabe and his cronies showed the world how it is done
@DadCooks “it will be nigh near impossible to restore it due to the Medi-don’t-Care “rules”” I don’t know what’s available to you, but we have medicare through Kaiser Permanente and we get our meds through their mail order three months at a time – which allowing for transit time lets us order them enough ahead of running out that we have been able to easily build up a reserve; saves a couple of dollars on the co-pay as well. On the last cycle I had to skip my insulin to avoid going past expiration on what I have on hand, still about six months following the recent order.
When starting an engine that has “rested” for a few hours, and is below 100F (one definition of a cold start,) immediately bring it up to about 2k rpm and hold for a second or two.
Back when I was a utility planning engineer, we defined a cold start as anything below 300 F. All of our steam turbines had a stop and soak at 1800 to 2000 rpm until they reached an inner core metal temperature of 300 F. Usually took 20 min to an hour if they were ambient. Then it was slam open the governor and get through the first critical at 2200 rpm (10+ mils of shaft vibration due to harmonics, normal vibration is 2 to 3 mils). Then stop at 3,600 rpm, synchronize, and start making some power.
When we bought the 15 GE Frame 7E gas turbines, we did not know how to define a cold start / warm start on them. We talked with the GE guys and they did not use the concept anyway. So we used the last start was in 48 hours as warm, etc. Come the first inspection period, we were ready for the worst. We had a complete spare set of combustion pots, 9 if I remember correctly, maybe 11. $25,000 each. We pulled the existing pots and the GE engineer condemned them all on the spot. I went out and took a look, you could see the cracks with a naked eye.
So we put the new pots in and sent the heat stress cracked pots back to NY ? for a possible rebuild. We got another set of spare pots from GE and the same problem happened, all pots condemned. Me and another engineer started looking at the run logs and found out that almost every start was a cold start with an average of three days between starts. We ran them for an average of 7 or 8 hours per start. System dispatch was rolling through the gas turbines on a numerical basis (Dec 1, Dec 2, Dec 3, Dec 4, Dec 1, Dec 2 …) which allowed them to get cold. And then I left TXU so I doubt anything changed.
When starting an engine that has “rested” for a few hours, and is below 100F (one definition of a cold start,) immediately bring it up to about 2k rpm and hold for a second or two.
BTW, the radiator on my 2019 F-150 has an electric louver system that holds closed (no air flow) until the engine comes up to operating temperature. And both fans are electric. I am really hoping that louver fails open for the day that the electric motor(s) fail. I believe this to be so as you can look through the grill when the engine is off. And, it comes up to operating temperature quick ! About a half mile and the heater is too much already.
I store about 35 gallons during hurricane season. I’ll be topping that up this week as I’ve got empty cans sitting here. So much to do.
I store up to 36 gallons in my truck in the tank. I have not decided whether or not to fill any of my 5 gallon cans yet. Things need to get worse first.
Lynn, I’ll bet that thermostatically controlled louver is for the intercooler. The radiator is probably controlled by a thermostat in the coolant, as usual.
That Wikipedia article on Gasoline Direct Injection (GDI) was interesting. I was surprised to read that in 2016 approximately 50% of the new cars use GDI. Also interesting was the claim of a possible doubling of deaths from increased black carbon emissions if 100% of the fleet adopts GDI. However, that would be from 855 to 1599 annually, a fairly insignificant number. Oh, the lengths we go to meet govt regs.
A lot of engines will have to be opened up and cleaned of carbon deposits at ~ 100k miles with Direct Injection. Toyota claims to have solved the problem before introducing the latest Camry engine by having a small port injector squirt gasoline onto the intake valve from behind, but I remain skeptical.
Again, a few MPGs at best for this experiment with the fleet. Anything coming in the pipleine has to contribute to the manufacturer meeting 54 MPG CAFE in case a Prog replaces Trump. I don’t see that happening (meeting the MPG standard) unless every vehicle becomes a hybrid or, like Britain, we sunset gas engines in 2040.
The new Escape has *3* cylinders in the base model. The production could shift to making the current generation all hybrid easily.
People could get needlessly panicked enough by the virus to replace Trump. Not that a Prog CDC would fare any better. There would probably be *more* stupidity like the early patient release in San Antonio.
I’m not buying that the a**clown Mayor in San Antonio was clueless about that situation, but, again, with the leadership vacuum in Texas from Austin, the Progs are “feeling the Bern” already.