Holar, Peepses!
I’ve had the privilege of traveling around the world quite a bit in my life. And I want to take this moment to say that as much as I’m discouraged by a lot of what’s happening in our country right now, I’m still grateful to live in this country. It is still an absolutely amazing country.
Despite their many faults, and it’s obvious imperfections, the structure and foundation of our government is simply amazing. Multiple times I have tried to think of a better system of government given the nature of humanity that would still allow for freedom, and each time I make the attempt, I come away with a greater appreciation for what the country’s founders accomplished.
Perfect, it was not. But wow. Just… Wow.
Anyway…
Having been out late at night last night after working one heck of a long day, I didn’t really have anything planned for the 4th of July.
I ended up just spending my time trying to get stuff done, mostly. I spend some time looking for A pickup truck to buy. I think I’m going to get a 2011 to 2016 Ford F-250 6.2 gas engine four-wheel drive truck. It has a towing capacity of 12,000-ish pounds, and though I’d like to have one with a towing capacity of at least 14,000 lb, 12,000 really should do for me. I don’t think any of my equipment and trailer combined with the more than $12,000… Maybe close, though. 😅
I missed getting a fantastic deal on an f250 in Rogers because I was fixing cars. I had wanted to stop by first thing in the morning, but I was so booked that I didn’t. The truck was selling for several thousand less than book value, and it was being sold by the daughter-in-law, I believe, of someone I knew.
Oh well.
So I did some looking around, getting a feel for what the market looks like for those trucks right now. I don’t want to deal with anything diesel because they’re just soak blasted expensive to own, and the savings that you get in miles per gallon is lost in the cost of fuel. So that’s a wash. And If all I need is to tell 12 or 14,000 lb, then I should be golden. Heck, not too many thousands more than 12, and I would need a CDL license.
I also spent a very long time organizing the garage and trying to clean stuff out.
It really is funny. I spend so many hours trying to go through and organize the stuff in the garage, and if I just stop and think about it, going out and working one good solid day would probably buy everything that’s disorganized three times over. I might as well just toss everything in one large bin, and sell it as it is, and go out and buy everything brand new. 😅
As it is, for the amount of time that I’ve spent working on it, I have probably lost 10 or 20 times more money that it would cost just to replace all of those tools by buying them brand new and having them organized from the get-go.
It just feels like a waste to go buy everything brand new just because it’s disorganized with incomplete sets of tools that need to be figured out.
But, if I just throw it all in a bin and sell it as is, then somebody else is really happy because they get a whole lot of tools at a very cheap price, and I’m happy because it’s a massive project that’s been hanging over my head, and it’s actually just stupid that I keep trying to organize it instead of just selling the whole lot and buying everything new again.
I think I’m repeating myself. 🙃
What else… I installed a battery in the new Volkswagen because the one that was in it was better than dead could be. And I put the battery that was deader than dead could be on my trickle charger in the repair mode to see if there was any possible chance it could be repaired. I doubt it, but hey, it’s worth a shot, no?
What else… I took a long lunch break and veged for a little bit before heading back out to keep working on the garage. I also cleaned out my van a little bit, and I spent some time working on the Volkswagen. I realized that someone had been in a minor front-end accident That tore off the bottom of the radiator support and pushed the AC condenser into the turbo cooler which in turn was smashed into the radiator.
So I ordered a new radiator support, and that’ll be a bit of a project to take everything apart and install a new radiator support, but I don’t want to sell the car to someone else, even if it’s functional, with that going on. I don’t want to be that kind of a person.
I’m likely going to make a decent amount of money on the car as it is, and I’d like to make sure whoever buys the car gets a decent car.
I also took the fan out to test it because it wasn’t coming on. I was able to jump the AC condenser fan and have it work by jumping it directly, and I was able to get the radiator fan to work by reverse jumping it directly. But if I gave power directly to the radiator fan assembly via the control module, it wouldn’t come on, so I’m guessing the issue is that it has a bad fan control module. I’m going to do a little bit more testing to be certain, but that’s my guess right now. I believe the factory instructions from Volkswagen are to replace that control module and then retest everything and see what happens. 😅
After all that, I spent a little time teaching Thomas how to identify the leak on his tire. He came out and found that his tire was flat, so we pumped it up, filled a squirt bottle with water and dish soap, and sprayed the dish soap all over the tire, finding a leak in what looked like a hole that was no bigger than a large needle.
I’m guessing that he must have run over a really skinny nail that punctured the tire but then popped right back out.
So that was the night. I ate dinner, vegged out a little bit more, looked at what my schedule is going to be like for Wednesday, and crashed.
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 