Text 1219, 258 rader
Skriven 2012-07-24 10:22:53 av Roy Witt (1:387/22)
   Kommentar till text 1154 av Richard Webb (1:116/901.0)
Ärende: Darwion award candidate
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23 Jul 12 22:39, Richard Webb wrote to Roy Witt:


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 RW>> YEah I know, and this one just has the hydraulics.  Has the
 RW>> air horn though, but the tank for the air horn seems to
 RW>> slowly leak air.

 Roy>> Might be a cracked hose too.

 RW> That's what I'm thinking, just a bit of a leak, and the tank looks
 RW> good. But, if you don't use the air horn you can see the air gauge go
 RW> down.

So there's a leak in the system, somewhere.

 RW>> I think it was aftermarketed to just use hydraulics for the brakes,
 RW>> and I'm not sure that was such a great idea.

 Roy>> Hydraulic assisted braking is an OEM heavy duty truck feature.
 Roy>> Especially if it's a diesel powered truck. Although I've seen big
 Roy>> block gasoline powered Chevys in 3500HDs using OEM hydraulic
 Roy>> assisted braking.

 RW> Right, this is gasoline, the usual 350 cubic inch v8.  I've
 RW> replaced the hydraulic booster pump twice now.  <arrrrgh>

That bad eh...

 RW>   I don't know what I'm going to do when it needs more work, my
 RW> favorite big truck mechanic around here retired, lost his lease and
 RW> threw in the towel,

That happens to a lot of em...

 RW> he's an old guy anyway.

Hey, we all resemble that remark...

 RW> I've been to two other guys out here
 RW> in the county who would apparently do big trucks, but one I don't
 RW> trust, and the other ... well I'm not really sure about him either.

That doesn't sound good.

 RW> HE doesn't act like he wants to work that badly.  The guy who sold me
 RW> this dOdge van says he'll tackle some jobs for me, but he's more of a
 RW> hobbyist, and a building contractor for his day gig.  The guy I might
 RW> trust if I could get him to show an interest in working seems to have
 RW> more business than he wants from the area farmers though,

That's a thankless job. Farmers usually don't pay the bill except on Gov't
subsidization day (spring) and after harvest day (fall).

 RW> and his dad lives down the street and across it from me, and we got
 RW> off on the wrong foot shortly after i moved in because his dog used
 RW> to be just let loose to ramble the neighborhood, and used to harrass
 RW> my dog, who's properly restrained when she's out.

A Rotty. Right?

 RW>  HIs wife ran to rescue their dog once and made a comment which
 RW> didn't get a sympathetic response from me, after all, my dog never
 RW> runs wild in the neighborhood, theirs does. <small town life>.

Then he shouldn't have a problem, unless he had a hefty vet bill at the
time.


[railroad bulls]

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 Roy>>> Charges of trespassing comes to mind. That's about all they could
 Roy>>> do.

 RW>> YEah that's about all they could do.  THe boes used to say
 RW>> though that the bulls sort of enjoyed whipping up on 'em a
 RW>> bit if they could catch 'em.  We may have been able to
 RW>> outrun those guys, but part of being small twon kids was
 RW>> that everybody knew everybody, and no doubt one of those
 RW>> guys would know at least one kid in the group, and parents
 RW>> would be notified, and the usual lectures ensue.

 Roy>> OTH, had one of those kids been beaten up by a bull, the shoe would
 Roy>> be on the other foot. I'd have feigned mild injuries whether that
 Roy>> bull caught me or not. 'He twisted my arm and kicked me in the
 Roy>> butt, dad!' Being a RR buff, my dad knew those guys too.

 RW> YEp, and in West Burlington they didn't really have to lay a hand on
 RW> us, just pick out the kid they knew, tell parents, let parents handle
 RW> it.

Which can be used against him, if the kids are smart enough.

 RW>> IT was just so much quicker to cut through the yard at the railroad
 RW>> shops than to walk around via the roads.

 Roy>> The only other way to the fishing ponds was down the two-lane
 Roy>> highway and over the guard rail at the bridge...

 RW> YEp, same sort of thing, cross the bridge over the main rail line
 RW> after going a good distance east, then come back in on a gravel road.
 RW> Just as easy to cut through the shops and their attendant yard.

That's what we thought.

[Chicago]

 Roy>> Riding the train into Chicago and back was quite an experience, one
 Roy>> that I'll never forget. I've forgotten most of the western shows,
 Roy>> but the trains still impress me.

 RW> ME too.  I'd rather take the train long distance than the
 RW> Grey dog, but often the Grey dog goes closer to where i want to go,
 RW> and is cheaper.

I did a pre-move scouting trip to Texas in 03 by Grey dog and swore off of
the dog after the trip home. I prefered the previous trip by AMTRAK vs the
dog.

 RW> STill, did some train traveling with my grandmother as a kid, and
 RW> always liked it much better. Get up and move around more, go to the
 RW> dining car to eat, etc.  Iirc they even had a bar car where Grandma
 RW> could ahve a libation when I went to Chicago with her a couple of
 RW> times.

Nancy and I did that from San Diego to Portland, OR and across Idaho,
Montana, N Dakota and Minnesota to Madison, WS...met a lot of interesting
people in the piano-bar car, dad picked us up there...after the Grey dog
dropped us off in Chicago and we stayed in a hotel overlooking Lake Shore
Dr and the lake for a few days, the trip back to SD was just as
interesting.

 RW>   That was a real special occasion of a summer when the folks would
 RW> let us go with Grandma to Chicago.

Being her first grandson, G-Witt made those trips special...


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 Roy>> That had to be around the lower East Side, maybe close to Calumet
 Roy>> City.

 RW> That sound very familiar, so I'm betting you're right on
 RW> that one.

I'm familiar with the area, and know where the refineries are/were.

 RW>> Part of the deal for his farmland was S.O. stock, and she still had
 RW>> quite a bit of it when she died.

 Roy>> Would have been nice to be mentioned in that will.

 RW> OH yeah it sure would have been, but they had an only child, a
 RW> daughter, and she did fairly well by it.  Mom aunt wasn't actually
 RW> profligate with her resources, but when you traveled with her or did
 RW> anything she wanted to make sure the world knew that she and hers
 RW> could afford the very best. When she was pretty far gone I took my
 RW> new bride to visit her when we honeymooned and combined it with a
 RW> convention in Chicago, auntie come out of her purse with a $100 bill
 RW> and told us where she wanted us to go for supper down near the Palmer
 RW> HOuse where we were staying.  HEr place was one of the first i ever
 RW> saw with central air conditioning in fact.

I got the 'we can afford it' impression from relatives living in Chicago
too. My grandfather's two brothers lived there and we'd pay them a visit
when something from Chicago was needed. Like our first TV in 1947/48. They
already had one and my brother and I watched TV all weekend while dad and
his uncle Walt went shopping for ours.


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 Roy>> I think I'm the only one in town who does custom machining that has
 Roy>> an 18" by 24" granite plate for checking the parts I make. It would
 Roy>> be nice to have a set of 'jo blocks' to go with it. Not that
 Roy>> anything I do these days has to be that accurate.

 RW> true, but it would be nice to know you could do that sort of
 RW> precision work if you wanted to I'll bet.

I can do it without the blocks, it's just harder to do is all.

 RW> I'm still beating the bushes around here for somebody does some
 RW> machine shop work.

I was asked to quote on a motorcycle job from one of my highschool machine
shop buddies, just last week. Some guy in Fredericksburg, TX was
advertising on a BMW motorcycle blog that he needed handlebar risers. My
friend gave him my phone number, but I never heard from him.

 RW> I'm trying to find soembody who'll do a device which will go into my
 RW> trailer hitch receiver on the van, I put one of those sections of
 RW> portable military masting in it, tighten the setscrew and then add a
 RW> fwe more mast sections. A friend of mine has such a system, but the
 RW> guy who rigged it up for him's no longer around here, and I haven't
 RW> found anybody else around here does custom work like that.

Interesting. I made a verticle-mill-pusher that fits into the receiver
hitch on my truck, on my mill. That's how I got that 2500lb monster moved
to the back of my garage. It also came in handy when I needed to move the
mill to the side after getting it to the back of the garage...one 12 ton
hydraulic jack and some inginuity got that job done, using the same
pusher tool.

 RW> I"ve got another local I intend to talk to though next time I see him
 RW> at a radio club meeting.  IF he's still got access to the shop, and
 RW> appropriate metal stock he'll probably fabricate it up for me for a
 RW> reasonable price.

That shouldn't be a very hard job to do. While shopping for receiver hitch
parts, I came across a universal hitch that could be used for that
purpose.

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 RW> I was quite sure of that one.  I thought I was taking a
 RW> shortcut down a hillside in the woods one afternoon, ended
 RW> up going down what was vertical bouncing off the rock after
 RW> I belly flopped when I tried to run off the cliff,
 RW> unbeknownst to old blind man.

Ouch!

 RW> NOw if i don't carry the white cane in the woods I've got a good
 RW> sized trekking pole that I can use to feel around in front of me
 RW> <grin>.

Blind men aren't supposed to be trekking through the woods on their
own...get a seeing-eye dog for that... 8^)


                R\%/itt

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