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Good evening.
I was able to get the padding down on the motorhome floor and I changed the spark plugs. I thought there was a miss and sure enough one plug had a shorted electrode. The plugs were like new but not my preferred brand so it has a set of Motorcraft plugs, new old stock made before 1978 I got them for 2.10 each including tax and shipping. Having worked as a Ford Parts Manager I actually remember what the plug part number was before they went to the new type (and all the problems we had when they first changed) , I then laid out the new front carpet that has been in the box since February and put it in place so it will flatten. On the very last spark plug I dropped it and when I got down to pick it up I felt a rib go
I don't know what happened but it is either out of place or broken. I took a spill Monday but didn't think I was hurt but that may have been the root cause.
Tom (PM) I hope you get some relief from the pain. I have been there and it isn't any fun for sure and crimps your ability to get things done.
Fiatfan, I worked at A Lincoln-Mercury dealership in 1969 and young and foolish my brother and I both bought Comet Sport Coupes. They had 428 CID Cobra Jet engines and 4:30 drag packs. We raced them that summer when they weren't broke down. We often were winners and I ran a different class because I added ram air so we did one time both win our class the same night.
That car broke me of racing and broke me financially too ![Wink Wink](https://bigbluetrains.com/images/smilies/wink.png) It was a real disappointment because you could not keep the valve guides from wearing. We sold 7 cars total with that engine and I can't tell you how many heads total were replaced under warranty Mine had 4 heads and an engine replaced in the first 9000 miles and even under warranty I just could not afford to drive it so I got a used 71 Country Squire. I just can't get excited over fast cars but my second oldest, a Ford master Tech for 30 years has a foxbody mustang with a 700+ horsepower engine that he races. He is a real gearhead (and a train nut too)
We have had sprinkles today but we still need a good soaker. Perhaps tomorrow.
Don, I hope you are doing great. I am anxious to see the log cabin come together. I got a photo of the one I lived in. It was taken just before they tore it down. A real shame.
One other thing. I am 78 years old, and yesterday I made my first ever fried green tomatoes. I was very pleasantly surprised at the taste. I really like them. I breaded them using an egg dip and bread crumbs and deep fried them untl golden brown. It makes me wonder how many other things there are to be sampled. I never turn up my nose at foods, they are always worth tasting and I know how tastesw change over the years so something you like when you are young you may not like so well as you age and visa-versa
Good night to all.
Charlie
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Greetings, gang.
One more sunny day before the clouds move in and bring varying chances for rain through Saturday. 61 now headed for 83 later with only light winds.
Very routine day yesterday. Gym and a short bike ride. followed by pretty much nothing. Today looks to be pretty quiet also.
Charlie - I'm also still in the process of trying new foods. One food I never enjoyed was salmon. My mom made a salmon loaf when I was young I hated the taste of it. A few years ago I was in Detroit at an "authentic Brazilian restaurant" and tried it again. Yep, still can't it. Which leads to another topic - how many people have actually been to Brazil to say that the food served was actually authentic? Anyway, moving on.
All stay safe.
Tom
Life is simple - Eat, Drink, Play with trains
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Good morning good people. We had a downpour around 3:00 yesterday, not long, maybe 20-30 minutes, but heavy. I just checked the rain map to see how much and it says there's not been a drop anywhere within about five miles of us for at least three days. WHAT THE... then I saw the footnote*
*if you think you saw rain and we say there was none, it had to be a mirage, remember, you live in the desert and we're the government and can't be wrong.
That explains it all, those puddles in the gutters are all a figment of our imagination, so I'm logging that in my diary as a 1/2" of imaginary rain.
Thanks Charlie, I'm doing uh, OK, really slow healing this time. See the massage therapist and chiropractor tomorrow, that should help bunches. Let us know what you did to your rib, sounds like a trip to urgent care is in order.
Got time, and I hope the stamina to play around with the log material Jim sent me. Need to find a way to flatten two sides consistently and put notches on the ends without them breaking off. Should keep me off the streets and sitting down for a while.
Tom, years ago we had some guys from Italy come here for training, and I asked them if the Italian food here was authentic. "How do I know", they say, "we can always get Italian food at home, here, we eat American"...
Everyone have the best day every today, stay safe, stay cool and always keep your powder dry....
Don (ezdays) Day
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Good morning folks
It is 70 going up to 85. You can feel the humidity creeping up.
I spoke with the doctor's assistant yesterday and they gave me something for the pain. They are thinking it might something to do with the nerves in either my neck and/or back. I need to get X-rays of my back the next time I see the doctor which will be in three weeks. Unfortunately due to work, physical therapy, my wife's doctor appointments, dropping of the car, Labor Day, and the doctor's schedule that is the earliest I can see her. I took the pill last night and I feel I slept better than I have in the last couple of weeks. I am having some pain but not like the other day. I have physical therapy tonight.
I built another Accurail kit. This time it was a New Haven wood box car. I am not sure what will happen tonight. It is trash night so we will see if I get any modeling done.
I hope everybody has a good day.
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Don - a thought just occurred to me (yeah, scary). Can you just squeeze the logs with some needle nose pliers?
Tom
Life is simple - Eat, Drink, Play with trains
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Charlie et al.
A food story my father told me.
During the war they crossed the Atlantic in a troop ship that had been a British liner. One day, they were served tripe* for lunch. Most of the guys looked at it and decided to wait for dinner. There was one fellow a "big Ontario farm boy" who had resolved that he was not going to be frightened by anything that other countries considered food, so he took a helping and cut off a mouthful. He worked at it for five minutes and then said "It's no use fellows. The more yu chew it, the bigger it gets.
*Tripe is the lining of a cow's stomach. I think it was the inspiration for bubble wrap.
David
Moderato ma non troppo
Perth & Exeter Railway Company
Esquesing & Chinguacousy Radial Railway
In model railroading, there are between six and two hundred ways of performing a given task.
Most modellers can get two of them to work.
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(08-18-2022, 08:01 AM)FiatFan Wrote: Don - a thought just occurred to me (yeah, scary). Can you just squeeze the logs with some needle nose pliers?
Tom Yet another quick way to make wood chips....
Good morning all, I'm still trying to take it slow and easy, I feel like I can do more, but my brain keeps yelling, "that's stupid"...
Won't know if it rained last night until I go out. According to the TV, we were in for a doozie, but according to the county rain map, all those storms missed us. But then a few days ago we had a downpour and the rain map showed nothing, so let's hope there are puddles around when I go out this morning.
Today is Friday again, I hope everyone has good plans for the weekend. Me, I'm staying close to home. Rest a lot, trying to devise a way of getting those notches onto my logs. Since the Dremel wheel works, I'm thinking of lining them up and gang notching a bunch at a time.
Don (ezdays) Day
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Good morning folks
It is 81 and a really nice day thus far. High will be 89. Weekend will be hotter but hopefully the humidity will stay away. A possibility of showers on Sunday.
Having physical therapy last night meant that not much got done. I did get the trash out to the curb and water the plants. During lunch and breaks at work I built a PRR 40 ft steel box car Accurail kit. I also worked on a New Haven wooden boxcar kit also from Accurail. I had trouble with weight staying glued so I cold not assemble it. I will try today. The third car I worked on was a Burlington covered gondola. It is a kit I picked up somewhere for a couple of dollars. It came in a Roundhouse box but it is an Athearn blue box model. As a matter a fact I believe it is a Bev-Bel model. Everything went well with the kit except the screws that came with it are not Athearn and therefore do not fit the trucks. I have extra Athearn screws so I will finish it later.
For the weekend I still need to trim the weeping cherry tree and weed the side garden. Not sure what else I will do around the house but there is always laundry. I will need to make a run for gas for the car probably to Delaware and then there are runs to the produce store, grocery store, and PetSmart. I need to spruce up the car and get things out of it since Monday it goes into the auto body shop for at least two weeks.
I have a couple kts to finish by replacing a broken truck on one, and adding the correct screws to attach the trucks. I have two Con-Cor Tropicana reefers that need washers added to the lid of the coupler boxes to tighten the seal and stop the couplers from bouncing excessively. Then there are a slew of cars to tune up. I have a couple new locos to test.
I hope everybody has a good day.
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Good morning.
I got the new carpet installed in the motorhome and it was a great fit. I was even going to send the company an email telling them how happy I am but somehow over the last 7 months I deleted the order and email so I will have to check my bank statement to see where I bought it. It fits like original equipment. I also got the speaker wires to the newer doors installed. I can put the dog box cover on today.
We had a heavy downpour for about 15r minutes yesterday but we still need a good soaker. Thunderstorms a possibility for the next 3 days.
Don, I am really enjoying reading about the trials and tribulations of building an N scale log cabin I am sure yours will be a notch above.
My youngest son went to an auction yesterday to bid on some train items. He had one person bid against him but he prevailed and came home with 28 athearn locomotives and 128 cars plus over 95 buildings including the Walthers steel mill complex complete along with all the track and electronics that are on a 20x20 layout. There are also 12 hotmetal cars and 28 iron ore cars for the steel mill. He has paid than 700 bucks total. I think he did very well. He is 56 years old and is a bachelor so he has quite a train collection in all gauges, but O gauge was him biggest collection until now. I told him he was going to have to build a big building but he said he still has room to cook, shower and sleep. He also has a scratch build oval of 15 inch gauge in his yard along with a steam locomotive he built from scrap brass items powered by a gas engine in the tender.
Cheers and a good day and week end for all
Charlie
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Greetings, gang.
Cloudy and cool this morning. 63 now headed for 75 and maybe less cloudy this afternoon. Got about a quarter inch of rain overnight.
Exercise day yesterday. Swam a half mile and worked out at the gym. Then rode the bike for 7 miles. Goofed off after lunch until about 3 and decided to take another 7 mile bike ride. Today is laundry and again a bike ride. This afternoon I may head to another town about 45 minutes away for a car show.
All stay safe.
Tom
Life is simple - Eat, Drink, Play with trains
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Good morning good people, yeah, it did rain, not so much in our neighborhood but there's lots of flooding and wind damage other places in the valley. We don't have a lot of road runoff going to the sewers, rather just about every neighborhood and large developments have "catch basins", depressed green areas that usually serve as parks and even larger parks with all the park do-dads... TV new shows kids playing in the waist-deep water, some idiots bring their boats and kayaks to show off with. It's really a good thing, the runoff winds up refreshing our ground water table, and not in the sewer where it would need to get treated before getting dumped somewhere. The folks up north are dealing with lots of flooding into their homes as a result of the wildfires they had earlier in the year.
As usual, I got an extra couple hours sleep this morning. I need it since I'm still running at around 50% energy-wise. Got to move something just a few feet this morning but will have to wait for Pat to come over since I'm still restricted to under 5# of lifting. I guess it's the dependency that gets to you when you get older. Fortunately, for me, this is only temporary. I see the doctor this week so maybe I'll have a bit more leeway. Lifting those heavy logs that Jim sent me is a chore but I got a few little guys that said they were getting bored laying in the bin anyway and didn't mind helping.
I hope everyone has a great weekend, stay cool, stay dry and have fun....
Don (ezdays) Day
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We went to see the mouth of the Grand River today. This is about a 90 minute trip but we've never done it before. The Grand is a major river in Southern Ontario and the outlet for our local river.
The mouth has been tamed and is no longer natural.
On the way back, we stopped at the RCAF museum in Dunnville. We were the only visitors but got a friendly reception.
David
Moderato ma non troppo
Perth & Exeter Railway Company
Esquesing & Chinguacousy Radial Railway
In model railroading, there are between six and two hundred ways of performing a given task.
Most modellers can get two of them to work.
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Good morning all, wow, 2/3 the way through August already, I have been thinking about what to do for Christmas presents, and from the looks of things, it's not too early. I' surprised that all the big box stores don't have their Christmas stuff up yet.
We had some nice rain last night. I could hear it but was way too tired to get out of bed to see whats going on. Pat came by and we got rid of my weed problems, more rain, more weeds. I just hope that the HOA weed police have a bit of mercy and didn't start issuing weed citations yet. One would expect them to understand that most folks can't deal with these things during the week. But then they are the supreme rulers of the subdivision and so I expect a citation the next time I check my mail.
Not much going on today, just going to do whatever I feel I can and still stay in the limits the doctor set. I see him on Wednesday so we'll see how much progress I've made.
I hope you all have a great day.
Don (ezdays) Day
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Well good morning.
I got conned big time last night. ![Wink Wink](https://bigbluetrains.com/images/smilies/wink.png) My son stopped by with a small box containing 8 ore cars, a scale test car, and 2 REA stake body trucks for me. Then he asked if I wanted to sell him my US Army gun (on rails). Of course I asked if the box of goodies was a bribe ![Smile Smile](https://bigbluetrains.com/images/smilies/smile.png) I told him he could have it along with all the other cars and locomotive that made up the AHM army train. I don't run it and I really need the shelf space for other displays.
I put the section of carpet on the dog box cover and put the dog box back in the motorhome. I also took the pedestal off the drivers seat to paint it and install new ball bearings.
I searched for new bearings on line and I discovered that walmart.com had an offer of 100,000 for only $13,119.13 and there was a 5 star review. I wonder what I could use the left over 99,976 bearings for ![Wink Wink](https://bigbluetrains.com/images/smilies/wink.png) These search engines are absolutely useless any more. They are getting paid for the ads that pop up and what you are searching for is buried deep in the results. Ebay gets so much of my business because I usually get good hits without all the garbage on their searches.
I had been trying to figure how to raise the seat a bit and discovered that the pedestal has 4 holes for height adjustment. the section that telescopes was jammed and missing the pins so some work with a wire brush inside and a little luhe and a new pin I will be able to raise and lower the seat as needed.
We got over 2 inches of rain overnight and it looks like we may get some more today. We needed it. I hope the rain continues all over the country in the drought stricken areas. Maybe we are in the begging of a new weather cycle.
Don and Tom, I hope you will continue to heal.
Cheers
Charlie
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Hello Blue
Rain overnight, high in the 70s today. Still cloudy, might rain again.
The classic car weekend went well. Woodward Ave Dream Cruise. Car buffs travel here from all over for this weekend event.
S.J.
TCA.....Detroit3Railers.....Glancy modular layout(Detroit historical Society)
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