What are you doing today? Thread

[ATC King]

This is the last of the snow riding this year.

[Arky-X]

This is the last of the snow riding this year.

Snow here today and gone tomorrow.
That's what they say about southern weather. If you don't like today's weather, just wait for tomorrow's.

[ATC King]

Snow here today and gone tomorrow.
That's what they say about southern weather. If you don't like today's weather, just wait for tomorrow's.

Weather can change quickly in a lot of places, but in the south, it's the humidity that really yanks people's chains.

It can be cool and dry in the morning, then complete ball sweat by lunch. The shop floor goes from safe, to a slip-&-slide in half an hour.

The only difference between rain and not is 1%. 99% humidity and not raining, to 100% which means it's raining.

No joke, the shop here has a floor squeegee hanging on the wall. I've been using it this past snow fall to clear the melted snow from the trikes on the floor, but it's really there for the summer humidity. I have to keep the tool boxes closed except for getting tools, to keep water off of them so they don't rust.

[coolpool]

^That much humidity...gross! I think I'd melt. Up here we're drier than a popcorn fart, especially in winter. For snowfalls less than an inch I use a gas powered leaf blower to clear the driveway, lol. I think we're around 30% humidity in the winter on average and it's not uncommon to get nose bleeds at night while sleeping. We were forecasted to get above freezing for the first time in over a month so me and the neighbor decided to sweep and flood the lake rink Friday knowing it would be used a lot this weekend. I made a few mods to the red neck zamboni by drilling out the holes to 1/4", added a sealed top with filler tube, leveled out the hitch to carry more water and put a floating level gauge on it. We used the neighbors 104 degree hot tub water which makes a nice bond with the ice. With the past temperatures we had the ice is ~3' thick and right down to the sand bottom now.

[coolpool]

Sunday, I took man dog and a co-worker who's originally from India and introduced them to snowshoeing; thankfully the snow was only about a foot deep in the open areas and less in the bush so it wasn't a hard slog. I picked up the trail cameras and we burned up some moose pepperonis over a fire for lunch which he enjoyed immensely. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of fresh moose sign in the area and hoped to find a shed antler for him but we didn't.

[knappyfeet]

That's off-pavement, not off-road.

C'mon now, you're sounding like those people on Advrider.

Haha!...you got me!

I would say keeping 1500 lbs of motorcycle and passengers upright in soft sand with street tires is "technical off-pavement " haha

[oldskool83]

DRIVING 2wd stake body in 3 inches of snow.........not fun.

[coolpool]

DRIVING 2wd stake body in 3 inches of snow.........not fun.

Add about a 1000lbs and maybe, just maybe a bit of fun, lol

[ATC King]

DRIVING 2wd stake body in 3 inches of snow.........not fun.

Which two wheels driving, the front or rear?


You may mean 1wd anyway, unless it has a locking diff, and that's all the difference in the world on a 2wd pickup.

Like a 18wheeler without diff and interaxle locks, it's worthless on anything other than dry pavement.

[Shep1970]

My tri-zinger needed a new red bar pad (old one is highly faded) and new red ones are unobtainable so figured i'd try to make one. The first take out is a bit short on rubber, figure i'll add 20% more mix today and it'll hopefully fill the mold pattern. The black bar pad is a new oem one that i copied, the old red pad had too many flaws.
Also we did end up purchasing 2 groms, (dealer is storing them) registered and plated. Now waiting for spring!!!



Edit a-few hours later-


and now i'm out of rubber guess i'll order more......nice cold winters day hobby

[Arky-X]

Which two wheels driving, the front or rear?


You may mean 1wd anyway, unless it has a locking diff, and that's all the difference in the world on a 2wd pickup.

Like a 18wheeler without diff and interaxle locks, it's worthless on anything other than dry pavement.

My 2WD Chevy has the locking rear diff and I realized one day the traction control (stabilitrak) was not letting the diff to lock. It needs 100RPM of wheel spin before it locks and the traction control would try to minimize wheel spin.
I was going uphill in a field with grass and started spinning and all the lights came on (oooohhhh!!! I'm spinning!!!!) I turned that off and you could feel the diff lock after it spun just a little and away I go.
Sometimes ingenuity gets in the way.

[ATC King]

Yeah, all that whizbangery gets in the way sometimes. I can't hardly operate a new truck, because off all the secret handshakes needed to turn things off or on.

Our 2wd Suburban (older, with no traction control) has a G80 locker. I compared it with my truck during the snow, seeing how they both would do up the driveway, which is fairly steep. The Sub made it up no problem, slow and steady, no run at it. My truck, even though it has the heavy camper shell and had about 50gal of fuel in it, couldn't make it with the open diff. I even tried getting a run at it after it failed in granny.

I've really been looking at the Detroit TrueTrac for a while now, to go in my truck. It seems like the most useful unit for me, with mostly street use. An air or electric locker would be nice too, but no more than I'd use it, the air lines or electrical stuff would probably have problems the first time I did.

That traction control stuff can really be a pain in off-road situations, where wheel spin is needed. I don't just mean in pickups either. Driving a car in a grassy field that's a little muddy, and the traction control is the reason it's stuck and won't move. It doesn't always want to turn on or off like it's supposed to either when they start doing weird stuff. Kind of like getting a 4x4 stuck before putting it into 4wd, then it won't go, because the wheels won't roll. Just sitting there, with a 4x4, stuck in 2x4.

[oldskool83]

2000 gas Chevy 3500. Has a radio so thats cool.

Now the 350x gussets i came up with after trying to buy a kit online turned out to be sheet metal. Sending out to laser cut this week.

[ATC King]

Catching up on some smaller projects.

Done an upper intake clean with some SeaFoam on my mom's car. I've used several pieces of specialty equipment to do this service while working in auto shops, but SeaFoam now has a retail product which includes something similar to an S-tool. Direct inject vehicles have serious issues, but even regular multi-port injected vehicles don't have anything other than nasty blowby fumes going through the upper intake (PCV valve), which decreases their performance over time, especially ones with variable volume intakes. The cheaper the gasoline, the nastier they get too, and mom uses E-Z Mart gas of the lowest octane (premium usually has more cleaning agents). This car hasn't ever been done, and with the SeaFoam 'kit', I noticed an immediate improvement in smoothness and MPG. I was just about to buy an S-tool before I seen the SeaFoam upper intake cleaner in Walmart. All my crap has carburetors, so fuel system cleaner in the tank does the same basic thing. Same thing for any throttle body systems.

Anyway, there was an immediate improvement, so I was glad that turned out well and I found a retail product that would do the job.

The other thing was replacing the battery tray on my '79 F150. It was getting to the point that I worried the battery would literally fall out, and I'd run over it. The inner fender needs repaired, but that'll have to wait; maybe another decade or two.



The bolts look rusty, but they are brand new on the inside.


Under the tray. Yes, the front tire shows through.


It's OK though, because the rust has been reformed.


One ORIGINAL, slightly used '79 F150 battery tray.


Back in black.


Now my battery falling out isn't an actual concern anymore.

[knappyfeet]

Also we did end up purchasing 2 groms, (dealer is storing them)

Congratulations on the Groms