Further Adventures in Chineseum . . . BMW sway bar links

 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 . . 

 

Lessons in versatility for Mr Filthiecus

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 .

 Yes,  we love him just the same . Unfortunately in his evident distress he has fallen for the Gear-Queer marketing scheme aimed at the pajama-soy-boy man-bun crowd . Its OK , we forgive him . But friends don't let friends run astray , so it falls to us to correct the failures in his ways .

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 .

 And here I have it running on one of those tall eight OZ butane canisters that cost me a $1.68 at the local Vietnamese grocer . That's more than twice the fuel for one fifth the price of the Lindal cans . Can you rig up that Fartboil thing on a tall skinny can like that ? 

 

Maybe if you have one of these adapters , but you are going to have a heck of a time keeping it from tipping over .

 And here it is running on one of the green one pound Coleman propane cans . Those run under four dollars American around here . That's a whole lot of cooking time right there . The point being that as it is fed by a hose and does not depend on the fuel canister to provide stability , you can use multiple different sources of fuel and as you are not stuck with the proprietary cookware you can do more than just boil water with them .

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 .

Seventeen years of mowing

 

 The Crapsman riding mower has been rode hard and put away wet.

  

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

  

Yea its time for new ones

Wheels and Wings Weekend

 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.

 Everyone was happy to see another PV belonging to a new member that just joined the club

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 restored Stinson 108-3 from the 1940s

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

For those of you on mobile devices the embedded video wont show so hit the link below

https://youtu.be/IbLC2zwlL9g

Ten pounds of crap in a two pound bag

 How do you put new thirty one inch tires on a truck that is not currently road legal . . . ?

You run them to and from the tire shop . . .

anyway you can . . . four in the back of the Golf. . .

. . . . and the spare on the front seat . . . yea I got a few funny looks along the way .

As the the Honda van is temporarily DOA , the old T-100 that has been parked since 2017 when I rebuilt the infernal combusted engine is going back on the road . But the old tires were near twenty years old and though they still had good tread , they were dry rotted and did not hold air for more than a day at a time .

Don't much care for the knobby sidewall pattern on these new ones , but choices are limited when you try to keep the price of four new tires under five hundred dollars . That there is about one third the value of the truck . As the front brake calipers are old and dragging , new ones have been ordered from Fleabay and will get replaced when I muster the courage to tackle that project . I fear that I might have to remake some of the brake lines as they will likely snap off when I try to replace the calipers .

Ran my DIY bumper through the planer to clean it up and gave it a coat of paint .

Chipmunks got evicted from the air-box too .