Day: June 4, 2024

Tues. Jun. 4, 2024 – probably should take better care…

Hot and humid, sunny. But if you are in the shade, it’s manageable. That describes yesterday afternoon too, although it was mid 90s or higher…

I walked home from the car repair place, took about 1/2 hour, and I was pretty warm by the time I got home.

Speaking of car repair… I do some maintenance. I check oil, fluids, tire pressure… I take care of tires and run a good spare. I monitor my gas mileage and pay attention to noises… that said, I have a tendency to let things go and then fix them after they break. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that my truck needs a bunch of stuff when I do take it in for service. In this case it needs front brakes, some heater hoses (21 years old), gaskets, and a lot of bits and pieces. It’s not getting the bits and pieces. Crumbling and rotten hoses? Oh hell yes. That leaves you stranded on the side of the road. Brakes? Yes. I’m hard on brakes, and you need to be able to stop. Noise in the power steering pump? Not a concern at this time…

They are supposed to be done later today. We’ll see. It should be around $2000 for everything. I said no to about $1200 in additional work that is either not critical, or can be done later. It’s not a restoration, it’s about having a reliable vehicle. And I can buy a lot of motor oil for the $900 a new oil pan gasket costs to install. Yeah, I looked several places and that’s not out of line. Apparently there is a lot of stuff in the way and the book says 6.5 hours… F you Ford. Oil pan that takes 6 hours??

I’ll swap the Expy for the Ranger and get it smogged, then I can proceed to get legal again. Although technically my parts truck needs to be registered as ‘non-op’ to be fully legal… and I don’t think that’s happening. If I’m not driving it, why should it be registered?

Didn’t get a lot done yesterday. Wasn’t feeling great most of the afternoon, then D1 needed chauffeuring around. Still not feeling 100%, but need to actually suck it up and do some stuff today.

Entropy increases. The fight against it never ends.

Stack the good stuff.

n

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