Good morning!!!!

[txdon]

Good morning! 30˚F, N wind, wind chill 25˚ heading to 45˚ with partly cloudy skies.

Have a tree estimator coming out today to see about removing a dead limb in the backyard oak tree. Too high and too large for me to do it safely. The landscape light repair person noticed it and would not go near it. He did get all 30 of the front yard landscape lights working and it looks really nice at night.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time on the phone with fedEx trying to find out whose house they delivered my pool floor robot to. after 24 hours they still could not tell me if any progress in the so called investigation had been made. finally in the evening the person that had my robot decided to call me and I went to his house to pick it up. His house had the same numbers as mine and his street started with the same letter so I guess the FedEx driver went with the auto fill street.

All the pool bots are working this morning, yeah!

 

[Popgadget]

Good Morning
37° and foggy this morning. High near 50 and might see the sun this afternoon.
No real surprises yesterday, I managed to give away my old 3D printer, a pair of utility speakers (that I built about 40 years ago), a large fresnel lens from a rear projection TV, some rack cases, and a few miscellaneous odds and ends. Sadly, you can’t tell that anything is missing. Didn’t even put a nick in the pile of stuff that I want to clear out.

Today might be a good day to clean off my electronics bench, it is an absolute disaster with no room to work, it’s a 10 foot long bench, and there is less than one square foot of open area to work on.

 

[RedNeckGeek]

Good Morning!!!! 55F @ 6:30AM. Windy with rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers for the afternoon. High 58F. Winds SSW at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch. Localized flooding is possible.

Mate, that's not a stone... it's a bloody BOULDER!

Oops, thanks for catching that. Should be 10 mm! Either way, there's not much chance of passing any of 'em, so a couple rounds with the laser seem to be in order.

I was pretty happy with the Subaru engine that came with the Ariens wood splitter, and the big Kawasaki V-twin on the DR brushcutter always started easily, too. Never got along too well with the B&S engines in older lawnmowers though. Oil leaks and hard starting.

Today might be a good day to clean off my electronics bench, it is an absolute disaster with no room to work, it’s a 10 foot long bench, and there is less than one square foot of open area to work on.

My main bench looks the same, despite several attempts to clean it off. Just running out of shelf space to put things.

It was supposed to rain most of yesterday, but the bulk of it missed us to the south. I took advantage of the lull by unloading the garden tools and dozen or so moving boxes out of the van, leaving the two pallets of firewood for a dryer day. I managed to pound in the pipe and mount the weather station, but so far have not been able to convince Weather Underground to talk to it. I seem to remember the same issue when I first started up north, but not how I fixed it.

Hang in there, gang, Friday's comin'!

 

[Engineer42]

good morning
light rain outside and warming temps
waking up slowly, not much planned for today so no sense rushing into it
I bet these warmer temps will motivate the forsythia to bud, already have spring bulbs popping up

dealer called, new brain for infotainment system approved, will take five days to get here.
will be nice to depend upon the electronics, hopefully operation will not be so slow.
by far the least impressive nav system I've owned.

annoyed to find car came with max tow package but no brake controller. There's a hole in the dash
for the unit. 135 for a Dorman part, double that for oem, and needs software update to make it work.
Have read online you can do that with an OBD scanner, but probably safest to have dealer install it, for a ridiculous
amount of money. Am going to research how to program a Dorman unit, see if this is within my and Popgadget's paygrade.
well....at least his. Brake controller is a must, can't tow without it. Car comes with electronic anti sway, but I'll be getting a weight
distributing hitch anyway. You need it all.

Drew I'd recommend the OEM. It will play better within the system. More money but piece of mind.

 

[daugen]

Drew I'd recommend the OEM. It will play better within the system. More money but piece of mind.

I agree. I asked dealer for a quote so I don't get a heart attack.
lots of stuff online about folks having problems with Dorman and others, most likely because they could not
get the programming right.

 

[PJSprog]

16°F and cloudy this morning, going up to 29°. Wind was cold this morning.

The big weather scare yesterday turned out to be a bust for us, and that's a good thing. We got mostly rain all day, then started getting some light snow after 4pm, and that didn't last long, just enough to cover grassy areas. Roads stayed wet from pretreat. Wind had most dried before everything else froze overnight.

We have Kawasaki motors in both our Husqvarna zeroturn and rider. Had no trouble with them so far. The last company I worked for made racks for them that they used to move the motors around the factory and stack in storage. I got to visit their factory on the outskirts of Maryville MO a few years ago. One of the cleanest factories I've ever been in. That place ran like everything you've ever heard about Japanese companies. It was an impressive place.

Sounds a lot like my workbench in the garage, Paul. I recently had to clear a spot to do a couple of things, and got aggravated at myself for letting it get that way again.

Good morning, gents.

 

[Popgadget]

How about the trailer dealer? They would likely have a lot more experience than the ford dealer, and you might be able to negotiate it into the sale of a trailer.

 

[sodamo]

66°F and no rain

A good day with tiller yesterday

First pass on my largest area and a start on second area. Likely this is gonna take time and multiple passes to get all that fibrous matter fully integrated. Hoping to get 2nd area, 1st pass completed today.

Good dental visit new permanent crown installed, fillings done. Sometimes I think it was cheaper without insurance.

H&F this afternoon at our house.

Only 26 days until our UK/Ireland trip.

Prayers for all
Be safe
Have a great day

 

[RedNeckGeek]

I agree. I asked dealer for a quote so I don't get a heart attack.
lots of stuff online about folks having problems with Dorman and others, most likely because they could not
get the programming right.

The Promaster van came with a towing package, but not a brake controller. I purchased a Redarc Tow-Pro Electric Trailer Brake Controller, followed the fairly straightforward instruction sheet, and had it working in an afternoon. It all fit behind the dash and up inside the footwell, and I only had to drill one 1/2" hole to mount the potentiometer type knob to control brake strength. Here are the electrical connections required for operation of the controller:
Red wire - Vehicle brake light
Black wire - Battery positive via fused lead
White wire - Ground at battery
Blue wire - trailer brake activation wire to electric trailer brake wire in trailer hitch wiring lead

By now I've accumulated about 20,000 miles of towing with this equipment, some of it with very heavy loads up and down mountain passes, and it has worked flawlessly.

 

[daugen]

How about the trailer dealer? They would likely have a lot more experience than the ford dealer, and you might be able to negotiate it into the sale of a trailer.

I'm sure on a generic controller that would be true and possibly on this oem one also. I will find out.

This is a 150 dollar part that Ford charges 380 bucks for, plus I'm sure hundreds in labor.
no rush to get it done, only need it when I get the camper trailer anyway.
my one ton trailer does not have brakes so no need there also.
This truck has built in electronic anti sway.
I think from an integrated electronics basis, safer choice is oem.
but this time I'm getting a quote first.

however, this truck has F150 bones and there are millions of them out there so someone
must have reinvented this wheel long ago, like Dorman. Funny, I pass the Dorman plant going to
see my rv in storage. Big place.
I need dealer to put weight distributing hitch on anyway.

last weight distributing hitch I had was of common design with big steel bars you had to tighten down.
I had problems with hand strength using them, and need a better design. So far choices are B&W hydraulic unit, which
uses what looks like a grease gun to pump up its control pressure, and the very fancy Pro Pride 3P hitch which
seems to be universally accepted as the best hitch. And also almost unaffordable at close to four grand.
Remember that most folks who want large camper trailers are going to get a fifth wheel, most of the weight equalizing hitches
are for smaller to mid range trailers. Not many people will pay four grand for a hitch on a 30 grand trailer.
So market for good conventional design hitch is around a thousand bucks. B&W is a 400 dollar jump up.
The Hensley design Propride must be made of wagyu titanium...