Got us a new wor-shing machine
A Gas-O-Line powered Maytag
Clothes wind up smelling like two stroke oil but no one seems to mind .
This week's contest on BAT is for subscriber's choice of hood ornament
Chief Pontiac on the 1950 model has to be one of the better looking ones out there .
Likely considered un-PC by the woke lib-tards today .
Took the photo at a car show about twenty years ago .
A Morris Minor two door saloon
Single piece windshield and horizontal grill slats makes it a post 1960 model with the 49 hp, 948 cc engine and a pucker factor inducing top speed of 75mph .
And the keys are right in it . The owner must figure any dingbat dumb enough to try to steal it could not sort out how to drive it anyhow .
A couple months ago the front suspension on Annie's car started to rattle . As I don't drive it all that often it really was not foremost on my mind but eventually we narrowed the source of the clunking down to worn out sway bar links .
So a month ago I ordered some new ones from Fleabay and when they arrived I gave the seller positive feed back and five stars for his prompt service and chucked them on my workbench where they got lost in the clutter . . . and there they remained sealed in the plastic bags on my bench gathering dust . . .
. . . until yesterday when I went to gas up the car for Annie and I just couldn't stand the rattle any more so I screwed my courage together to tackle that potential can of worms .
Hey Look they have Zerks grease fitting which the original ones don't have .
Hmmm OK . . . I suppose that's a good thing .
Waaaait . . . WTF is that ? look at that hole in that Zerk fitting . . . That's supposed to have a tiny little sprung ball in it to keep the grease inside the ball joint . . . and that one is missing .
Yep , chineseum of the best kind .
So I jacked up the car , pulled the front driver's side wheel off and proceeded to remove the sway bar link . Top bolt required the use of a pickle fork to exert pressure on the somewhat loose ball joint in order to have enough resistance to unscrew the nut . But when I put the pickle fork on the lower ball the whole thing just came apart .
OK . . . so that makes removal a whole lot less trouble as I can hold the ball with the Vice-Grips while I undoo the nut on the back side . Usually getting the old sway bar link off requires the use of a Sawzall to cut that ball stud off cause there is no way to keep them from spinning .
Sometimes the man upstairs smiles at fools and gives us a break .
No wonder that thing was making a racket .
Cleaned the thing off on the wire wheel . Look at the state of that ball . That has been compromised for quite some time to get that pitted .
Greased and installed the new link with the two good Zerks fittings on the driver's side . The passenger side appears to be a replacement and still seems to be tight so I will wait to replace that one till I can find a new Zerk fitting for it . . . Took the car for a spin and the clunking is now gone .
The appearance of competence is intoxicating .
Now about those Toyota front brake calipers on my bench . .
O'l Filthiecus is all proud of his Fartboil Bunsen Burner and he never fails to remind us of it .
See he's a confounded Canukiestanian and he's more messed up than most but its not really his fault . He's surrounded by Lib-Tards and it seems they have done a job on him . Right now he is more messed up than that sketchy giffy cat that's has been making the rounds on the interwebs for a while .
Just look at the steep price for that heap , and he has to use their proprietary cup to make his Chai Tea too . Plus those three and a half ounce Lindal valve butane canisters must be about ten dollars Canukiestanian at Canadian tire . God only know how much more they gouge him at the Late-Soy-Boy Emporium he bought the glorified Bunsen Burner at .
I don't know . . . is a man bun required attire to enter one of those establishments ?
Jeezum . . . Banish the thought and pray old Glen hasn't strayed that far on us .
For true versatility you really can't beat liquid fuel and those stoves are still lower priced than that Fartboil thing . But for the sake of argument I will stick to the butane / propane mix stoves .
Behold the Hank Roberts Mark III Mini stove . Production date circa 1989.
About four and a half inches across , fits in your back pocket and all the components are stored inside the two halves .
See Glen , here it is running on one of the Lindal valve butane / propane mix cans and I can put a real skillet on that rig so I can cook bacon and eggs instead of just boil Chai Tea .
Maybe if you have one of these adapters , but you are going to have a heck of a time keeping it from tipping over .
Now if you insist on the can mounted stove , Wallyworld sells a nice Coleman labeled rig for eighteen and a half dollars American , that's a whole lot less than that Fartboil thing . Just like the Mini Mark you are not stuck with their proprietary cookware and you can put a skillet on it to fry eggs and bacon too .
And if you really got to have that Bun-Boy Chai Tea you can add five dollars for a stainless steel cup that you can actually throw on some coals in a pinch and you are still under twenty five American dollars .
And when you peel the red plastic decoration off the thing you'll find that underneath you have honest to goodness French GAZ Bleuet cause Coleman bought out the company a few years back .
And it breaks down to the size of a cigarette pack for transport .
Now the advantages of the canister type stove is that it packs down real small and you are not dealing with smelly flammable liquids and the hazard that may imply . The disadvantages beyond finding fuel for it way out in the sticks , is that once it gets much below freezing they are useless as they will not vaporize the fuel . So if you really are counting on it to work in the cold . . .
. . . your best option is liquid fuel , and these here can run on Coleman white gas , regular unleaded car gasoline or even 100 octane aviation fuel . In a pinch a tank full of 50 / 1 chainsaw mix won't do it any damage either .
Some , like the Optimus 111T on the right , will run on Kerosene and probably even some of that rotgut Canadian Club swill the bums drink up there in Soscratchyerbum .
And I was just thinking I probably ought to put some new blades on it when with a mighty crash the choice was made for me as I caught a curbing paver with the mower deck .
Funky looking forked tip isn't it ?
That's seventeen years of grass wearing away hardened steel
Saturday we had the annual Volvo's By the Sea meet at Mike Mack's place here in town .
As its only a six mile run from my house and lobster rolls were on the menu that was not to be missed.
Plenty of the newer swedes as well
Then on Sunday we had the Spurwink farm Fly-In .
As Marty was fogged in over in Ossipee New Hampshire , he rode his new Motoguzzi over here . . .
. . . and we made the ten minute run to Phineas Sprague's place in my Volvo .
A sweet butterscotch colored Ford Woody wagon among others kept us company
All kind of neat cars come out of the barn on sunny days
A sweet looking Ford A pickup
And classic airplanes too . This one formerly Kermit Weeks's Beech Stagger-wing that Donnie Mains got in trade for the replica Gee-Bee he built .
A nicely redone Cessna 140
A Rotax powered all composite Petrel amphibian
14K $ will buy you a Sky Ranger
A couple Sonex kit builts
Departure time after the pancake breakfast
