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You have to feel bad for that driver. Between being given a bad route, having to back up a full mile, and then his trailer axle drives going out twice, he was having a supremely bad day.

Don't knock it, until you try it! 86F is nice, perfect to knock the heat off you, without that cold shock when you first dive in. :D

My wife finds it amusing that I get severely irritated every time my phone rings. :D It's a podcast, audio book, and music player to me, the phone app is just an unfortunate add-in, from my perspective.

I was this way when young, in fact my favorite pool was a family member just a mile from your place, who had a large rectangular pool under the shade of a tree... it stayed cold right into August. But now I keep my pool heated to 85 - 87F. :D If I forget to put the solar cover on overnight...

Never seen this fuse block conversion, and I don't own a Yanmar. But if it's just a fuse panel and contains no relays, then there's no reason to have a negative wire going to the block. Fuses are only required on one "side" of the circuit.

It doesn't come a bit later, on holiday weeks?

New policy, they will only deliver to front door. I guess their brief marketing push to "give us the passcode to your house so we can leave packages inside" must have back-fired... hard! Trouble is, we have 10 exterior doors on this house, and no two drivers can agree on which is the "front"...

Great TV adaptation of an even better book series. Lou Diamon Phillips was quite a change from the Henry Standing Bear described in the book series, I think I liked the version in the book better, but the rest of the characters were pretty true to the original. The only thing I didn't like...

The chair is interesting, as I lived in a house prior to this one, where very similar things would happen. Never a chair, but other similar things. If there were ever a thread, I could go into details. One problem I had in that house, was retaining house sitters. This was at a time when I...

As an actual EM engineer, and I have seen at least a few of these investigations carried out using E-field probes and Gauss meters, by people who have no clue how those instruments even work. And when did it become assumed fact that a "ghost" is the primary source of electric or magnetic field...

Yeah, whatever gets painted this round will be with HVLP. I'm not beyond using a rattle can for a quick touch-up or for getting paint on a small mod, but as soon as I'm working an area bigger than a square foot or two, it's time to pull out the HVLP rig and set it up. And note there's been no...

Yeah, if I'm painting the whole thing, that's the route I'd be going. At this point, I'm leaning toward doing my mod's (some welding and cutting to move battery boxes from tongue to aft of fenders), sanding and spot-priming those areas, and then hauling the thing down to the local heavy...

Up early this morning, and did a few hours of "work" work, before reviewing my list of home projects and required shopping list. I headed out to the truck with plans to stop at Tractor Supply, Lowes, Walmart, and the beer store, but the truck had other ideas. Cranked over once, then dead...

Huh??? The top speed of my ZTR is right around 11 mph (10.6 mph, IIRC), and I've been mowing 4 acres at that speed every 3 - 7 days, for 15 years. I slow down for driveway crossings and a few tree surface roots, but other than that, it's levers full-forward 100% of the time. The funny thing...

I haul stuff all the time, and I can honestly say I've only lost one thing off any of my vehicles or trailers in 35 years of driving. I strap my stuff down, usually re-check my straps after a few miles, and make sure nothing can fly out. It's really not that difficult. That one time I lose...

That's the challenge... this trailer is OEM'd in gloss black. So if I'm going to switch to satin, it means a full repaint "Feather sanding"? Gloss is either removed, or not removed. This isn't a clear-coat finish.

I'm making some more modifications to my log-hauling trailer, and also replacing the decking. Trailer is a 2016 model, or thereabouts, and has always been stored outside on dirt, under shade of trees. It's actually holding up quite well, only very minor surface rust where the old PT decking...

Good point. I can't imagine any scenario in which a ladder comes off my truck at highway speed, quietly enough for me to not notice it has happened. :oops:

Florida: Not only do they have a lot of gaters, but the targets they're chasing are much more likely to be elderly or children. Florida has the 2nd highest fraction of retired residents in the whole country, just slightly nosed-out by Maine. My mother, who has a waterfront retirement home...

I also used to have trouble getting drowsy while driving when I was a teen, even into my early 20's. Then things reversed by my late 20's, and I was routinely doing straight-thru 15-hour and longer drives, such as Philly to Disneyworld or Michigan... sometimes round-trips with nothing but a...

I'm hearing the same from my wife, who wants to paint our bleedingly-expensive solid oak kitchen cabinetry, right now. What looks "dated" today, is chiq next decade, and antique after that. Hell, the rest of our house is already antique... give the kitchen a few more years!

A crowbar, I'd just take. No one is coming back for that. But a ladder or jack, I'd put to the side of the road where the owner might be able to come find it. Oddly, the thing I've found on the road more than any other object, is fire extinguishers. Usually pretty damaged from falling off a...

Wow... were they in that truck? The way it's pancaked, you'd assume anyone inside must've been crushed to death. I've never been scared to the point of sh*tting myself, but I'd guess that being in that truck at the time and seeing that jet headed for us at 160 kts, might get the job done.

I remember one summer in Harvey Cedars NJ, probably around 1985, seeing a full-size fan hauling a 30’ish ft. Baha cigarette boat rear-end a larger truck. The boat had slid forward on the trailer, rode up onto the winch stand and the bow punched thru the rear window of the van. But the trailer...

I’ve been hauling boats in and out of the water for 45 years, every weekend some summers, and honestly never had that nightmare. :p Even someone with zero experience should understand Newton always wins, inertia is real. If there’s some reason you can’t hook it on with the winch, then at...

lol... that's a good one! Sorry to be laughing at your pain, Mike. But sometimes, all you can do is commiserate! I hope you're feeling much better, very soon.

Thankfully, they're distinctive and scary enough that most probably know to avoid them. I suspect the reason brown recluse bites are more common here, despite both being not too common, is that the BR's tend to hide in places you'll be blindly reaching, like the back of a seldom-used closet or...

That's the one! Never even heard of anyone being bit by one, locally. I do know a few people who have suffered the disfiguring and nearly-crippling bites of brown recluse, although they're also pretty rare, here.

Depends on whether solenoid power comes from "battery hot" or "key hot" source. The OEM connection for Deere solenoids is from key hot, at least on 3-series and similar.

You get those up in IN, too? I see them very occasionally here in recent years, but they're not very common this far north.

... and to add to what LouNY was saying, this might mean turning your key back to Run position after shutting down, to actuate any solenoid valves. I have to do this with my rear and loader 3rd function valves.

I assume the "lip removed" area re-grows as grass over the subsequent weeks, and that only the pure-clay area remains clear?

I think some interesting things came up, in the course of it. Hey... you stuck around for 13 pages, too! :p

Not worth it, unless you have some specific high probability risk. Most can afford to replace a $29k tractor if needed. It’s gonna suck, maybe ruin your year, but it’s not going to break most folks. Insurance only makes sense for the things that will truly break you, such as liability or...

It might be a good substitute for flight, if we could have better access to rental cars and hotels from train stations, like we do from airports. Last time I took Amtrak, I found they didn’t even have a taxi queue at the station where I was dropped, the station was so desolate I was expecting...

I was on a train for the first time in over a year, Barcelona to Zaragoza, just a few days ago. I wasn’t watching the speed reporting the whole time, but I did see it up around 320 km/h at least once. That’s 200 mph. Overall, a nicer ride than the Philly to DC Amtrak high speed rail I rode...

That would be old! My grandfather’s first job as a kid or teen was delivering milk by horse and wagon, and he said the mode was already outdated by then, in more populated towns. He was born in 1915.

I sure do wish I knew some good plastic surgery jokes, right about now.

Most of our local papers started going online about 20 years ago, and by 10 years ago many stopped printing paper copy. I’m surprised any still print, other than the biggies. I assume Wall Street Journal and Philadelphia Inquirer still make paper copy, but I haven’t bothered to look in maybe...

I think that’s an unfair assessment. Seems to me the OP was asking a question, confused that they couldn’t make sense of the numbers for their own case, and wondering what scenario would make them fit. It didn’t sound like ridicule to me. KennyG supplied some good numbers, but I’m sure cases...

I was the kid delivering them, mid-1980’s. I loved the office buildings and medical offices, since I’d get to dump several or run down a corridor just dropping piles outside each door. Easily collections, too!

Votes are won on sentiment, not facts.

Brilliant! Well just conveniently ignore the fact that Californians are still breathing the same air as Nevada, Oregon, and Arizona. :ROFLMAO: “As goes California, so does the nation,” or something of that sort. It’s true, and not always bad for the rest of us, as Californians frequently...

Was there really only one? I enjoyed the movie, but never really dug into the filming of it. I assumed any production like this would have had at least three identical vehicles used in the filming, likely with one or more of them getting specific modifications as required for specific...

Yes. If you expect to be buying prior to a rate drop is the time to do it, before prices climb. You can always re-finance. It’d be nice to pretend it’s possible to time right with the drop, and avoid the need to refi, but timing the entire agreement period to closing and knowing when the...

Gorilla Nuts!

Passed a guy on the street in Spain recently, wearing a new shirt that read, “Steve McQueen | The Original King of Cool”. Dude still gets respect!

Yes, bigger pump, but then also bigger engine required to drive it, since same pressure at higher flow = more horsepower demand. Also, you need to upgrade any smaller line, fitting, and valve sizes to be compatible with higher flow rate. An easier way to build a very good fast splitter is to...

sometimes this is just a method of pausing to choose words. Obama was the master of this, he won two elections on mostly being a very good public speaker who chose his words very carefully, but remember his speech pattern…

Yeah, I can appreciate keeping it natural and just varnished, but it’s out of place in an old house, and actually looks pretty odd if you’re used to seeing them kept authentic. Ours were all stripped down to bare wood and re-primed/painted by prior owner, so only have 1-2 coats, not hundreds of...

You would cry if you saw some of the old-growth woods that have been covered in paint the last 300 years, in this house. :ROFLMAO: Even our “new kitchen” cabinets, installed 1892 or thereabouts, are painted white. It was the style of the time, when good clear solid wood was less a novelty...

Fiber is only put about 10 inches down, IIRC. I suspect gas has to be set way deeper than that.

I usually keep a 3-saw line-up, with the smallest being a top handle: 1. Husq T435 top handle, 35cc, 12" bar 2. Stihl 036 Pro, 63cc, 20" bar 3. Stihl 064 AV, 85cc, 28" bar I run RS-33 full chisel yellow chain on the two Stihl's, and whatever small gauge (PICO) chain the local shop has for...

Modern pet peeve: YouTube reaction videos, especially those titled "hears __ for the first time!", when __ is Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, or any other band that no one on earth can pretend having not heard before.

Oops!

Wow... Y2K finally reached east Texas! I designed some of the first triple wavelength optical transmitters Verizon used in their residential optical networks, ca.2002.

re: PTO pump... most hydraulic systems won't work without a reservoir, due to fluid expansion and contraction, and the need for cooling. So, even if you could rig up a PTO pump, you'd still be short a reservoir, and usually a filter, at a minimum. Bypass valve would be another component you...

Same here. The PA's are usually younger and cuter. But here's the thing... a good doctor will pick up on clues that may point toward a serious or even life-threatening illness, which a PA just going through the mechanics is likely to miss. My father died from Lukemia that was initially...

Exhibit A: "Grammer" :p

I don't know why, maybe it's because of the additional load created by laying down whole trees, but that one actually makes me pucker. I'd have no problem riding the steam roller at Talladega, or the snow cat on a cable in @BigBlue1's post, but this one does bother me.

Perfect example of Excel breaking a pefectly working function, for no good reason: =INDEX('[ITEM MASTER.xlsx]Items'!Description, MATCH(1,([@Item]='ITEM MASTER.xlsx'!Item)*([@[Rev.]]='ITEM MASTER.xlsx'!Rev),0)) Obviously calling named range data up from file ITEM MASTER.xlsx. But for some...

Yep. Understood. But other than the "slow" part, the rest all sounds like it's geared just for me. :-) Oh, and I'm running this mostly on huge multi-socketed PC's, none fewer than 32 physical cores, with NVMe drive arrays. Point being, "slow" may not affect me as much as the average user...

If there's money in it, you might get some takers. We get the driveway guys, but not as much seal coating as them wanting to grind up and replace my perfectly good 7000 sq.ft. of driveway. What I see more are roofers, claiming there's hail damage, and that they can get me a new roof for free...

-- Redd Foxx :ROFLMAO:

My friend, mentor, and former cutting partner was about 35 years older than me, and had about 30 acres of old-growth PA hardwoods on his property, when I moved into my current house and started heating with wood. He always heated with wood as well, but was getting to an age where doing it all...

Here's the thing: I'm an engineer trying to run a design/build business, not a programmer! Every hour, heck every minute, I spend dicking around with a database is another hour for which I'm not doing billable work. So, I have absolutely zero interest in learning SQL or VB. My goal is to use...

Yep. And even that final bit of the movie, the "Vendetta Ride", actually happened. I think the only major plot point of that movie which was totally made up was the final gun fight between Doc and Ringo. More of their creative license was in the area of time compression, just to make the...

50 years late is better than never! (y) I love all those old Eastwood westerns. Josey Wales, Pale Rider, For a Few Dollars More... but I'd guess it's debatable whether they're "good movies" in some regards. They're infinitely enjoyable, but there sure are a lot of holes in plot and...

I had a case like that, about 10 years ago. Very long story short, it was the VP above me who asked me to fill out a record of discussion, for us to both sign when I had been tasked with ferreting out some false claims and falsified data being presented by another employee in my department...

Someone posted a meme in the Groan thread last year, that all of their teenage punishments are now things they desire: 1. Stay home, no parties 2. Go to bed early 3. Loss of telephone privelidges There were others...

If I could redo my wood management system today, it would look like yours. Good job! I arrived at was probably the most efficient system that could be had, based on the equipment I owned at the time, namely a tractor without pallet forks. But a heavier tractor with pallet forks really changes...

I used to laugh at how old people lost touch with the pace of technology, and now here I am. No, short of having Siri almost always fail while attempting to use ChatGPT to answer mundane questions, I have not played at all with using AI. I should be getting on that bandwagon, tho. It would...

Thanks! I am firming up my opinion that Access is the best next step. Maybe it won't stay there, maybe I'll be hiring someone later to port it up to a more robust database, but Access is within my grasp and something I can do on my own as a good next step from Excel. Right now, I'm very busy...

It's possible to find a middle ground. One guy I knew ran a large development of lower-income housing, and one of his very few rules was, "no un-registered vehicles outdoors." That took care of situations like @Gem99ultra's neighbor, he'd have been limited to the number of junkers he can fit...

Yeah, simple things like "Fill down" can create a huge mess and ruin months worth of data, if applied with a filter on! The behavior of filtered used to be more predictable and obvious, but like everything in Excel, has become more unpredictable or hard to predict in recent years.

Wow... getting into the details. You asked for it! :ROFLMAO: I tried to avoid any duplicate data entry, when creating the spreadsheets. But because your "form" is your "table" is your "report" in Excel, I do have may cells that auto-populate by pulling data in from other sheets. For...

I'll admit I didn't follow the countertop topic real closely, but are you doing something where the thickness is that critical? Even a free-standing range has a good inch or more of height adjustment in the feet to match up to an existing countertop height. Everything else is usually taller...

Until now, it has been entirely me, which is why Excel was a great starting point for this system. But now work has grown to where I'm having to bring in contractors and outsource, and I'm getting tired of manually transferring all records for them, and printing everything they need on paper...

MS Access is a database. Or are you referring to commercial ERP software?

Unfortunately, you have to dump ALL the fluid to get at it. Since it sounds like you just put all new fluid in there (I forget... is that one 5 or 8 gallons?), you might want to try to clean the whole area and your pans real well, and see if you can manage to salvage most of it. Filter it on...

It's definitely an annoyance. I can usually fix it with just a few minutes, but it can really frustrate other users, and hose things up when they try fixing on their own. The reality is there are no problems, until Excel's built-in intelligence "fixes" them. Things like named ranges inside of...

We have a square mile of granite in our kitchen, all installed 1995, so 30 years old this year. It's as fresh as the day it was installed, and my family do NOT take good care of it at all. I don't understand anyone claiming granite is delicate. That said, it would not be my first choice...

15 spreadsheets, each with maybe 4 to 6 tabs. A fairly sizeable chunk of data. And there are good reasons for keeping it in separate files, regarding potential data corruption and restoration. Plus, we keep financial transactions in separate files from item master and BOM's, as well as stock...

Thanks! This is exactly the sort of advice I need. The largest half dozen spreadsheets are only 450 kB, which is actually a surprise to me, given how large the arrays are, and how slowly some of them update off SSD-cached NAS thru 1 Gbps link. The total ERP system, 15 spreadsheets, is under 3...

Unless you go full-retro 1950's, with the chromed steeel edge banding! We had that in one house I lived in, with a kitchen built in 1953, until my parents re-did it in the 1980's. They did laminate counters with mitered edges, which softened the corners a lot: Of course, there are miles...

Hi folks, Nothing to do with tractors, but with a wide and varied group here, I'm guessing there are a few who could offer me some advice here. I implemented an ERP system for a small manufacturing business in Excel, a collection of about a dozen spreadsheets with error checking and a huge...

I should have added one thing: You'll see a lot of advice to break up your yearly nutrient (fertilizer) requirements into at least 5 applications, usuallly 3 in spring and 2 in fall, and to avoid fertilizer application in the hottest part of the summer. I always suspected this was for this...

"Everyone hates a lawyer, until they need one." This might be one of those times. Of course you can do your own dig and find the problem to prove your point, but that could lead to claims that you somehow caused the damage, and could become very expensive for you.

If you fertilize heavily, then yes, sprinklers overnight will often bring mold. Best to run them early morning, so the lawn has a chance to dry out within a few hours. Most molds and fungi can be treated, but turf fungicides can be crazy expensive!

Most of these trucks hold about 1000 cubic feet of wood in log form. 1000 / 128 ~ 8 cords. No, it's never going to be the same as a split and stacked cord. Heck, you'll never manage to re-stack the same cord to equal the same volume twice. But it's close enough for firewood!

I'm sure it was stated back around page 4 of this thread, but what's the intended use? I also have a whitewood staircase in my 1775 carriage barn retrofit, and stained it all nice and pretty. But realizing its intended use was as a work shop, I haven't gone out of my way to protect it at all...

When I was a kid, I was told, "more than three shakes, and you're playing with it."

"Every neighborhood has one, and here, I'm it!" :ROFLMAO: People always comment how nice and quiet our neighborhood is, 10 houses spread out on 130 acres. I always tell them, "it was quiet, until I moved in!" :p

By the standards of the time in which it was built, definitely. But not so much in today's world full of cheap McMansions. I'm heating just shy of 8000 square feet, roughly 6500 in the house and 1500 in the carriage barn converted to a shop. That's not huge or tiny, but the bigger issue is...

Multiple wood stoves. Used to be 6 or 7 in this house, counting the various old thimbles. Prior owner had whittled that down to 4, and now we're down to 2 wood + 1 gas free standing stoves.

Ours are definitely longer than 8 feet, and I'd guess CalG's 20'ish feet is close to what I see loaded on logging trucks here. They logged out the property behind mine when a neighbor built his house, and I remember the lengths being roughly that long. But 8 feet would be a nice length, since...

Hey... just thought of something. What lengths do these guys deliver on log trucks? All of my space is set up for 15 footers, based on me owning a trailer with a 16 foot box, and 15 feet being the largest multiple of my stove cut length that will fit in that trailer. If they deliver much...

Duh.. I'm a little slow tonight. :ROFLMAO: I use red cedars as my stringers in the wood lot, since they last damn near forever in the mud, and they're not worth splitting and stacking anyway. But for the 24 hours these logs will be in the street, yeah... just setting the first few...

That may be true. Harvesting is traditionally my favorite part of the process, but time is so limited these days. I can fell and stage several cords in a day, but then I have to haul it home and unload it. Overall, it really works out to only a cord or two per day, from felling to being...

Well, it's under compression, not sheer, so not critically loaded. Wall board will keep everything in position. :D It's also out of the weather, so probably won't suffer corrosion nearly as fast as the fasteners I've seen rot out of decks. There was a big fuss about this, maybe 20 years...

Yeah, a grapple would do it. I've been avoiding buying one, just because of storage space and the PITA of getting it on/off my pallet forks. I use the pallet forks almost daily, for other chores. But maybe that is the best solution.

I like the PT lower plates on all that framing, but be aware that ACQ will eat uncoated nails faster than a fat kid eats cupcakes.

If the functionality is limited to notification of unregistered or illegally transferred (e.g. stolen) plates, and no data is stored for future reference, then I'm fine with that. But if any location data is kept on captured plates, which might be used to later track owner daily movement, then...

Most of my software runs on Linux, as stated in my post, just not Mac OS. This is mostly 3D modeling and electrophysics simulation software, for high frequency, thermal, flomerics, and particle physics. But even stuff as basic as my 3D CAD software (SolidWorks) isn't supported on Mac or Linux...

One thing I need to figure out, is a way to more-gently set logs down into my closed-side trailer. Here's the trailer: Out in the field, I use that winch to drag logs onto the trailer, and it works great. But if I'm having 8 cords dropped in my cul de sac, it'd be much faster and less...

That's fine for kids or home use. I've owned several Mac's and used to run Linux. But I wouldn't even think of trying to run a business on either. Most of the engineering software I use is not even available for running on a Mac, and although you can emulate, it's too slow for memory-bound or...

After reading that, I thought, "who cares about memory?" :p Our state did away with license plate stickers, maybe 15 or 20 years ago. I believe the law enforcement vehicles have forward looking cameras with plate reader software and satellite connectivity, so the silly little sticker is...

I already know a few suppliers, as we got bids a few years back on harvesting out a few hundred cords of tornado damage at a property I help to manage. So I'd call those companies first. And I don't care that much about the cost. I'm not paying double for one over the other, but $100 one way...

Of course they existed. But the practice of making them the primary front-line of patient interaction was increased orders of magnitude by the financial constraints ushered in by the ACA. Talking with several physicians about this, it's not that your doctor doesn't want to see you personally...

For the first time in at least a decade, I’m out of logs! I usually always have a backlog of 15 foot saw logs, at least 5 - 15 cords worth, but I just worked through all of my 2024 and 2025 felling. I'd normally be making some calls and getting the trailer ready to go fetch more, but I've...

Not to mention, the trend over the last 10 years to make everything "softer", to where I can no longer distinguish the active window among my dozen open programs, from the several inactive. Remember when Windows colored the active window with a dark blue header and bold border, and all active...

So the first side is cold, by the time the second side is toasted! 😀

Most manufacturers these days will have a dual spec for coolant antifreeze. Changes every 6-10 years on their specially-formulated OEM coolant, or every 2 years with generic.

Cool morning here, so I also got some splitting done, the first since winter. But what I’m splitting now won’t be burned until 2028 or 29. All red oak, this morning.

This all started with the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and was fully predicted by many. Here we are.

It only toasts one face? We had an old Kenmore or Frigidaire pop-up, but with steel casing and elements on both sides of two slices.

Calling @Complete Turf Care . It’d be interesting to get a pro’s take on this.

Grub damage normally appears is large patches, usually circular, like this: One give-away is that you can often grab a tuft of grass in the damaged area, and lift it almost like a carpet, as the roots have been eaten away. It's tough to say if that's what is happening in your photos, but we...

Membership?!? I haven't bought anything from Horror Freight in more than 20 years, but I'd never heard they went to a membership model. Used to be you'd just walk into the store or hop on their site, and order whatever you wanted, one price for everyone.

Yes, that was it. Google is your friend. Just search "zero turn vs. zero steer", and you'll have enough reading for a few evenings!

About 1300 of feet of my trimming is against stone walls (house built 1700's), and then I have another 60 or 100 feet along a concrete walkway, but all the rest is just mulch gardens. I can control head hold-off distance well enough on pointed stone walls I do every week to not eat string, but...

Grass ain't that tough! :p Each spring, I run a bed definer around each of my flower beds, which total nearly an acre. Probably something close to 2000 linear feet of edging. I follow this with the string trimmer on the "mulch" side of that edging, blasting out all the little tufts of grass...

Does it reverse like a bumper car, when you turn the wheel over hard? I guess the real level of difficulty is going to depend on getting the steering ratio high enough for quick maneuverability while still low enough to have very fine control for running near obstacles without bumping them. I...

Yep. Zero turn, as in two levers. Not Zero Steer, as in steering wheel.

Prior owner of my house left the 757 ZTrak in the barn for me. First time I fired it up, I figured there was a 50/50 chance I was going to run into a door jamb on the way out of the building. :ROFLMAO: Fast forward a year, and I could have done ballet on the thing. I can't imagine there's...

I suppose. Whenever I see new controls for something, especially when I was a kid, all that runs thru my mind is, "I gotta try that!" I was also the kid who had so many ER visits for broken bones, that the nurses used to joke about just keeping my file out on the counter, to be ready at all...

So, for those of us who load string into a trimmer just a few times per year... how long does soaked string retain its advantage? I mean, if the thing is sitting for weeks in a shed after spooling it onto the trimmer head, isn't it just going to return to its formerly-dry state after a short time?

Man... that's crazy! Feet are one thing, but I get whacked in the face or safety glasses with something coming off the trimmer several times every year! I'm sure I'd be blind by now, if I ran that thing all these years without glasses. I weed whack in shorts, but they're longer Carhaart duck...

No advice on fluids or RK tractors, but one very general comment on temperature / gloves, etc. People often think that because something is hot to the touch, it must be bad. But hydraulic fluids and transmission fluids are often spec'd for 180F or higher, whereas your hand is not going to be...

You are missing out on a heck of a lot of fun, then! Move north. :p Snow is the only thing that makes the dealing with the cold and shutting down the swimming pool worth all the effort. :D

Front mounted, sure. But I did the rear snowblower thing for years, and will probably never go back to that.

Ok. That's normal. Like jjeff said, "break-in service". Gets rid of the assembly lube and the first several hours of everything seating in.

Yes, of course. But JTKub said his TYM specified 50 hours for engine oil. It’d be crazy if that was every 50 hours.

Every 50 hours, or just first 50 hours? I can’t recall another machine with an oil filter that required every 50 hour engine oil changes. That’s normally just walk-behinds with single-cylinder engines.

I think you’re right on the first part of that, ZTR -> ZT. But I always thought Zero Steer was that weird configuration of ZTR with a steering wheel. I just hopped of my ZTR, two hours of mowing this evening, and roughly 100 hours per year. I don’t know why anyone would want a steering wheel...

lol... two pages of "cold start" advice. :ROFLMAO: Sorry, that's my fault. As @gengine guessed, I saw "Wyoming" just peaking in at the very top of my screen, and hadn't realized that was his profile name just off my screen, not the OP's.

That's a surprise. I've been doing business on ebay as both a buyer and seller, since about 1996, and have never been screwed on a deal. Sure, I've received an item here or there that didn't meet expectations, but every time I've contacted the seller and we've worked something out, usually a...

That's definitely a problem, here. With DPF, you don't exactly want to leave the thing indling uselessly in the driveway. But I'm frequently starting the tractor to just move one object, such as unloading two pallets off a truck yesterday, or even just to move it out of the way to access my...

I probably could get away with less frequent, but it brings me peace of mind, makes me look over everything else at least once per year, and really isn't costing me much. I was always told it was best to change oil at least 2x per year to flush out any corrosive combustion deposits that collect...

Well, that's one of the problems. I change it yearly, but that's only ~100 hours here, so nothing ever has a chance to get very dirty.

I guess one advantage of the speed feed head is that, with it being so much faster and easier to load, there's less incentive to always buy the largest line your trimmer head can handle. They also likely hold more length of a smaller line, which becomes a PITA to load on a traditional head, but...

Heck... I can barely tell new fluid level on a dipstick, half the time. I'm always flipping the thing over to the smooth (non-hashed) side, and holding it in a reflective light, just to find the wet mark.

It seems the days of individuals selling interesting used items on eBay, the original intention and marketing push of the site, ended maybe 20 years ago. Anymore, it's almost 100% second-rate vendors of new product, Asian knock-offs and the like. You still find some mom-and-pop stores selling...

I'm hoping the 780 ft spool of .095 square line I bought for my Stihl will flow thru the new Speed Feed 400 head I just bought. The line isn't that expensive, less than the cost of the Speed Feed head, but I hate throwing away anything that's perfectly good and useable.

How much do you actually get on a programmable thermostat? I installed 10 (no joke, big house!) when we moved in, replaced the old Mercury-tube Honeywell dial types, but never bothered to inquire about rebates for them. Programmable thermostats aren't all that expensive, until you start buying...

That's always the coolest thing about these forums. When you cross someone local, who's willing to lend a hand to someone new. (y)

lol... In defense of the dentists, most GP's don't have saliva flying off 50,000 RPM water-cooled tooling at their face, all day. :ROFLMAO:

The rare homeowners using Ø.155" diameter line? :p I'm also only ever using bump heads, they're just too convenient for what I'm doing, and I don't need super heavy duty trimmer lines for most of my chores. But when the Speed Feed max's out at Ø.095" line, and the Stihl 25-2 max's out at...

All these stories about neighbors borrowing tractors. I guess where I live might be unique, but I couldn't even imagine any neighbor having the audacity to ask to borrow my tractor. The closest thing I could ever expect to that would be a neighbor mentioning to me that they were renting one or...

On one side of the aisle, anyway. On the other is usually someone who's just been broadsided.

Yep, I think that's the one I saw, I'll re-watch tonight when I have more time. But seeing that screen shot reminds me of how much I hate her marketing, which is like so many others. We don't need the fake drama on every splash screen, YouTube content providers! If the content is good, people...

Yeah, it'd be good to find that, before I tear open this package! Last video I saw from her on this topic said they acknowledged the problem, and had promised a fix, but were overdue on delivering.

I wish they still made the 450. I just bought a 400, which is tiny for my 36cc trimmer, because they Echo/Saindawa replaced the reliable old 450 with the troublesome 500. I received it yesterday, and will install when I use the trimmer this weekend.

I used to use a Ford 3000 on occasion, spent hundreds of hours working on the ground next to one, as my friend skidded the logs I was felling with his 3000. Great little tractor, but his was a gasser model. You might do well to have a diesel mechanic give the engine a once-over. As gengine...

Yeah, I knew there'd be some such examples! :ROFLMAO: It's actually why I was careful to say "those quick hitches" and not just "quick hitches". I don't know anything about "AUTOSAVER88" or their products, but I'd stick to the name brands we all know, like those included in that GWT video...

Oh, that one's easy! Lawyers. Of course, high liability and lawyers are one big reason I'd rather have any difficult surgery here, than in most other countries on earth. Double-edged sword! :ROFLMAO:

My grandma didn't pass until the early 1990's, deserteagle! :ROFLMAO:

Heavier may be better, in theory. But I've never heard tell of any of those quick hitches failing, in reading this forum. Then again, I think my iMatch was the heaviest of the bunch? :ROFLMAO:

Same. And I wasn't sure what sort of respiratory bug I was picking up from that water, but I'd often have trouble breathing for a few days after swimming in the lakes at our boyscouts camps, scattered around eastern PA and the Poconos.

I was working a lot in Germany 25 years ago, when they were debating this very issue. The plan or compromise they came to was that every company had to be held liable to take back everything they put out into the world, which fell outside the range of materials which could go into the regular...

In many cases, yes. Some of things were are asked to recycle, plastics in particular, are just not worth the cost and energy of doing it. But don't let one poor decision drive another. Corrugated cardboard and aluminum are both extremely recyclable, and well worth the cost of doing so. Glass...

It's a trade-off. Increasing ride comfort by providing higher profile tires always hurts cut quality, as the edges of the deck bob and dip with tire compression on the outer tire in a turn, made worse by weight shifting off the inner tire and allow the deck to come up on that side. Every 3/8...

Yes. It is 100% compatible with both of my former Woods attachments, Herd spreader, and Country Line (DeVilbiss) boom sprayer. I did have one plug aerator that wasn't compatible with any quick hitch, they had set the lower link mounts too far apart, but an afternoon with the welder and a...

Did you grind with a diamond grinder before applying, or just chemical etch? I did the diamond grinder, and it seems I can't remove that epoxy without removing the concrete below it. My shop is also used for a lot of woodworking, and I've gotten glue in many places, but never lost any epoxy to...

Same. I've always done my own, on every vehicle I've ever owned. I don't care so much about the cost, but I like to know it's done right, and it makes me get under the vehicle at least twice per year to eyeball other things. Moreover, I can do an oil change in about 15 minutes, and if I do a...

When we travel, we take two ridiculously huge suitcases. Two for her, and a side pouch on one of them for me. :ROFLMAO: That's an exaggeration, but not by so much as you'd think. My clothes must be twice the size of hers, so the difference number of items packed might be 6:1, or greater.

Same system here, most haulers provide two large (96 gallon wheelie) bins, one for trash, one for mixed recyclables. But our recycling will ONLY take corrugated cardboard, news print, aluminum cans, glass bottles (but not other forms of glass), and type 1 plastics. They will not take the...

Wow. Yeah, I guess I'd be shopping around too, at $400. I think they were something like $260 when I bought, and came with one free set of bushings. I seem to remember my total was just a little over $300, with a second set of bushings. But I will say, it's a flawless system. Very robust...

I have what may be the cleanest collection of Victorinox Classic SD Swiss Army knives ever kept. Several manage to find their way thru the laundry, every year. Usually this happens when I strip down and hop in the shower, and my wife sneaks my dirty clothes from the bathroom floor to the...

You just reminded me of the way my grandmother used to rinse out, dry, and reuse ziplock baggies. She was a teen and young adult, thru the depression. Even though they could afford to throw away and replace ziplock baggies, she just couldn't bring herself to waste anything.

Screw that. You're old when your child starts getting AARP membership offers in the mail. :p

lol... you just reminded me of the last time I rented a truck. It wasn't U-Haul, I think it was Ryder, but I had reserved the smallest dock-height truck they had available with a lift gate. I was moving just one 2200-pound object from a location with a loading dock, to my own garage... four...

Always clearly labeled. 90% of the tubes you're going to come across in any place selling tractor stuff are either Lithium complex or Polyurea. Most brands will color them differently for easy identification. IIRC, Deere's Lithium is green and their Polyurea is red... but I might have that...

"Yellow eyes! So help me God, he had yellow eyes!" -- Ralphie

This is a PITA in a commercial environment, but at least workable, given volume and staffing dedicated to the task. But what are homeowners supposed to do in California, have 16 different trash bins at the curb each week?!? :rolleyes: Or are they expected to cart their own trash around town...

I love my Deere iMatch quick hitch. I looked at some of the other options before buying, but the few others available at the time all seemed to just be cheaper compromises on the Deere design. Maybe that's changed in the years since, but on the other hand... buy once, cry once!

Our haulers will reject our recycling can if they find batteries in it. I ain't hauling my own garbage and recycling, that's what I pay them for! So, into the trash the batteries go, along with the felt-tipped pens.

Wow. Sand! Looks like salt water. Lakes in PA look nothing like that. Fertile soil and weather that loves to make everything grow, ours look like this: It's nature, it's beautiful, but I don't want to wade into it. :ROFLMAO:

Yep. And that's what's usually happening, as it's rare for any of my chains that haven't hit metal or ceramic to have any tooth much more than a few thousandths off the rest. :ROFLMAO: You're dealing with customer chains, I'm sure you see all sorts of things I don't, since I'm taking care...

Nope, never saw any, and maybe "sludge" is the wrong descriptor to use. I just always assumed that at least some particulates you're draining out with the old oil may have started settling to the bottom of the pan as soon as the motor stopped turning, and that pulling the plug would be a better...

Quoting myself here, but I just looked, and it seems the 450 was discontinued. Some sellers are getting bad reviews because they are advertising 450's but shipping 500's, which of course are a defective design. So, if you want a SpeedFeed for now, you're stuck with the 400, which is reliable...

Can that do the same job of extracting any sludge from the bottom of the pan, as pulling a plug on a fully-warmed engine? Seems to me that mechanical erosion of anything in the bottom of the pan is going to be much better by pulling the plug, versus extracting oil out the top.

Oh, get out into the water, and the lakes are great. But their shores tend to be totally gross, by comparison to a real beach, at least in this part of the country. Give me sand crabs and seaguls over Canada goose crap and stinky mud. :p Of course, I'm willing to accept that things can be...

I dug into this a bit, and it appears the issue is isolated to the SpeedFeed 500 heads, which is a new design using a metal spool. It does not appear to affect the 400 or 450 models at all, both of which have a plastic spool with a metal threaded bushing inside. The theory is that the metal...

What the hell kind of tractor is that?!? I'd have left them, roadside. This is better:

Going back to the history of this area being a lot of smaller farms which sell to dairy producers, at least back in the 1970's and 80's, this might explain why I could still taste the change-over in our store-bought milk. Obviously, the farming business landscape has changed a bunch, in the...

That's the one I have! :ROFLMAO: Hate the thing, since you have to disassemble and then carefully wind line onto it. It's not a huge deal, I've been doing it for years, but that Echo Speed Feed system looks soooo much better. Same. I've been using Echo square profile, either .095 or .105...

You touch more saws and chain that probably any of us, so you definitely have better methods worked out from sheer repetition. But for a DIY'er / home user, I'm cutting a crap-ton of wood, 10-20 cords per year. This makes my time a big factor in each step of the operation. So, excepting some...

Employees like that always make the decisions easier, when the company forces a down-sizing of your department. :D The other is whiners. A whiner who does good work might keep their job as long as things are going well, but they're the first one out the door when upper management pushes a...

As a kid, I could always taste this in the store-bought milk, as well. I remember nearly every spring, telling mom "the milk tastes like grass!" Mom would explain that this happened when the cows switched from winter feed back to grazing, and by the second or third glass your tastes would...

I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I've personally never seen my own line break inside the head. It's always about 1/4" outside the spool, just outside the eyelet, where maximum flexure would be occuring at the eyelet.

Saw that happen, once. Local company with a large fleet of trucks, I knew the owner and was good friends with one of the mechanics. Owner had his mechanics do a quick service on his nice new Cadillac CTS-V at the end of a Saturday morning shift, when everyone just wanted to get out of there...

Company, being the operative word. Waste disposal regulations and penalties for companies are orders of magnitude more punitive than any individual will see.

Doesn't everyone? What else would you even do with it?

Our perspectives are likely very different, between California cities and small-town PA. You have massive homelessness and illegal immigrant problems, that simply don't exist here. Outside of center city Philly, we don't have homeless people. It's too F'ing cold to survive even one winter...

Whoa... good memory! I do remember hearing a big scandle about that, now you mention it.

Same. The 1000 ft. or 500 ft. spools aren't all that much more expensive than smaller spools, so I figured I'd might as well just buy a lifetime's worth in one shot. I hadn't factored aging into the math, possibly throwing away half a spool before I can use it due to it going brittle. But I...

We had just one working dairy farm still in my family, when I was a kid in the 1970's and 80's. They did pretty well, with 180 cows and 280 acres, which is big for this area defined by 100-acre Penn's land grants. I remember my great-aunt telling me that the only way they were profitable after...

I think the rose-colored glasses of historical memory is another factor. People forget how much trash littered our own highways in the 1970's, at a time when the Boy Scouts were at peak popularity. Anyone remember the "crying Indian" PSA from the 1970's? Wasn't that part of a campaign against...

Hah, you just made me think that my bulk trimmer line storage location atop the wall header and jammed between the rafters just under a hot metal roof might not be the best location. :D I have a fully air-conditioned shop, but that space isn't unlimited, and outdoor tools and supplies usually...