RowdyRebel

Yup...IF I had to do the job, that's what it WOULD have looked like...

Pic with that spring out... Make sure the good axle is up on something that will keep the bad axle elevated, and chain the one you'll be working on to prevent over-extension. A 2-ton engine hoist and a 3.5 ton floor jack was enough to get mine up onto a pair of old steel rims....one side at a time. You probably won't have to go quite that high, so a couple timbers ought to be sufficient. You won't have to remove the brake drum, either (I had removed it because I wasn't sure how much of the brake system I'd have to remove to be able to weld the crack in my axle housing). Once the truck was propped up and secure, I used an old steel rim to hook the engine hoist to in order to raise & lower the side I was working on...could probably also just wrap a chain around the axle though. Used my floor jack on the other side. The engine hoist also came in handy for raising the tires back up to the axle when reassembling everything....MUCH easier than trying to lift them friggin' things myself.

It's probably the Hendrickson HAS series suspension... http://www.hendrickson-intl.com/products/product_detail/has_40lh.asp If you buy the airbags from Mack, they'll say Mack on 'em. Buy 'em from NAPA or anywhere else, and they'll say something different.

I do my own tire work, too. Ain't too tough. Main thing to remember WHENEVER you have something heavy to lift is to keep your back straight and lift with your legs.

Is that the bar that's got a Z shape to it? If so, it didn't seem TOO hard to remove or reinsert when I had my rear end apart welding on the axle housing...not sure about cost, though.

Cook County (Chicago) went 64.38% Quinn, 28.61% Brady St. Clair County (E. St. Louis) went 48.38% Quinn, 46.67% Brady Jackson County (SIU-Carbondale) went 45.20% Quinn, 44.19% Brady Alexander County (Cairo) went 49.78% Quinn, 45.32% Brady There are 98 other counties in Illinois....ALL of which tipped in Bill Brady's favor. In several counties, Brady won over 70% of the vote...some places nearing 80%. I'm in Union County, where the votes went Brady 55.26%, Quinn 36.24% If it weren't for Chicago, Quinn would have had his ass handed to him big time.

Under the proposed concealed carry legislation, any property owner or business owner could effectively make his property or business a "gun-free" zone by posting signs. If the signs are posted, your permit to carry is nullified....you do not have the right to carry on that property or in that business. However, violation of this is not a crime...you will simply be denied admission or asked to leave if already inside. If you choose to disarm so that you may enter the property or business, and the property or business falls victim to a criminal attack and you are injured, the property or business owner is civilly liable for the injuries you sustain during that criminal attack. In other words, they have the right to post the sign...and you have the right to sue them if a criminal act occurs while you are present. I merely ask that the state assume the same liability in the locations where the state has mandated I be disarmed. I find it to be quite foolish to disarm a law-abiding citizen, since cops are rarely around when you need them and are under no obligation to respond to any individual's call for help. Yeah, that's right. You can't sue the cops for not showing up when you call...even if your life is in danger. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1976377/posts That being the case, I'd like to have the tools I need to ensure that I can adequately look after my own safety, as well as the safety of my family. I've never quite understood why a bank is allowed to hire an armed rent-a-cop to protect the federally insured (and replaceable) money...but a parent (at least here in Illinois) cannot carry a gun to protect his/her irreplaceable children. Everybody needs a hobby, and I find the law to be quite interesting. If you're going to play the game, you've gotta know the rules.

Only what was coming out of the speakers in my cab. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-u-Ql6_Gm8

I've heard gunpowder works too. It's got a sweet taste to it, I guess, and from what I've heard they seem to like it. Leave a ring of it around their nest and over the course of a few weeks, and thinking it is food, they take it down inside the nest to store. Make sure they have a good supply of gun powder to take down into their nest for a few weeks....and then shove a fuse down in there. Make sure it's long enough that you can light it a good ways off. Then install the in-ground swimmin' pool ya been wanting to fill in the crater.

I wish some of these employers would walk out into their parking lot and make a note of who has who's bumper stickers on their cars. You voted for Obama? Obama wants to increase my cost of operation? You are fired. Until you figure out that what is good for me (the employer) is good for you (the employee) because without me (the employer) you have no job, you won't have a job here. Bottom line, if your boss ain't making money as a direct result of the work you do, you won't have a job for very long. Carrier I'm leased to JUST opened a terminal in my neck of the woods...built it from the ground up...easily the NICEST shop in the company (complete with a pit for the under-truck work needing to be done). Then Pat Quinn won the election and raised personal & corporate income taxes. Now there is talk (rumors, anyway) of the new terminal closing. Actions have consequences...and so do votes. Unfortunately, people don't take their vote seriously enough...or they vote for all of the wrong reasons...and we end up with a bunch of knuckleheads in office trying to buy the votes of the ignorant masses (or as Neal Boortz refers to 'em "dumb masses" instead of abiding by the State & US Constitutions from which their power is granted to them.

I'm not saying I'm not polite with the officer....just that I won't turn on my 4-ways and slow down (showing that yes, I do see you back there and yes, I am going to stop...I'm just looking for a safe place to do so) to go 1/2 mile up the road to that big gravel parking lot I know is there when they light me up. I pull over as soon as I am certain I am being stopped. I got stopped the other day for the novelty tag I had on the front bumper below the registration plate. Even though there is NOTHING in the Illinois law which prohibits novelty tags, I was written a warning for "improper display of license plate". When I argued, he offered to write me a ticket....and I SHOULD have taken him up on it. At least then the judge could tell him he was in the wrong. It's all BS. They can write you a ticket for anything...whether you broke the law or not. It's then up to you to take the time off work and go to court over it, where they know the judge is more likely to side with the cop since the cop is assumed to have no reason to lie. There is no such thing as "innocent until PROVEN guilty" in traffic court.

How do I feel? How the F*** do you THINK I feel about it? Why not publish a list of everyone who chooses to exercise the "right" to an abortion? At least the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is found in the actual TEXT of the Constitution....not "interpreted" in through a series of questionable court decisions. I've been corresponding with my state rep over the proposed conceal carry legislation....used that to reinforce the urgency of one of my points.

I've made the attempt to find a safe place to pull over when I got lit up in the past, and it NEVER ONCE bought me any good will from the officer. So, these days, I pull over quickly when I see that they lit me up...and if that happens to be mid-curve just over a blind hill, so be it. I'm not concerned with officer safety anymore...that's THEIR job. Besides, if another motorist runs 'em over before they get the ticket written, it might just get me out of the ticket.

Awww....come on now. That 8 hour charge to go 40 miles in an electric car doesn't emit any emissions from the tailpipe. Never mind the carbon footprint left at the power plant from the coal burned in order to generate the electricity required to charge that car for 8 hours....or the carbon footprint created during the extraction and transportation of the coal from the mine to the power plant...or in the manufacture, installation, and maintenance of the transmission lines which get that electricity to the outlet the car is plugged into.... My 10 mpg F250 leaves a smaller carbon footprint than one of these new "green" electric cars. ...and ethanol is another friggin joke. During the manufacturing process for corn ethanol, it takes nearly as much energy to produce a gallon of ethanol as you get from burning a gallon of ethanol. If I remember correctly, it's somewhere around a 1.25:1 ratio.

They have to be able to afford to pay for their next shipment...so when they see the price they will have to pay is going up, they will raise the price that you will pay them. If they couldn't raise their prices in anticipation of their next shipment, several things would happen: 1) Gas stations would be more likely to run out of gas, since they would be more inclined to try to "wait it out" for as long as they could when their cost spiked following an incident affecting supply (i.e. hurricane, middle east regime change, etc...) hoping that prices would come back down before they ordered their next shipment. 2) Gas stations which received a shipment today would have the competitive advantage over stations which received their shipment tomorrow at the slightly higher supplier's price....until they received their next shipment at an even higher price. Each shipment would see an even greater spike in pump prices because rather than seeing the daily anticipated cost fluctuations, you would see the actual cost fluctuations with each shipment. 3) Once the temporary disruption in the supply chain had been rectified, gas stations wouldn't be able to lower their price to remain competitive when their anticipated cost per gallon receded after the spike. The first station to receive cheaper fuel (and therefore could begin lowering their prices) would sell their cheaper fuel faster, enabling them to order their next shipment of even cheaper fuel from the supplier and lower their prices even more....meanwhile, the guy across the street is stuck with a tank full of fuel nobody is buying because he can't afford to sell it for a competitive price. By pre-selling the expensive fuel when they increase the pump prices in anticipation of their cost from the supplier increasing, they can pre-sell the cheaper fuel when the price is on its way back down in order to remain competitive on their pump price without losing money and going out of business. At least that's my understanding of it....but I could be wrong. I've never owned/operated/or even worked at a gas station...just spent a lot of money buying their product over the years.

Yup. Even made the news on the other side of the pond.... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1314099/Illinois-trooper-killed-2-sisters-126mph-crash-demands-compensation.html This is a more recent one.... http://www.pantagraph.com/news/local/article_aab90730-1e69-11e0-88ba-001cc4c03286.html Some of the WORST driving I've seen in this state has been by those with badges & guns.

'cept I had stopped at the store on the way home, so TECHNICALLY I was past the 14th hour....and so it really wouldn't have been good for me had the guy not left the scene. That's one of the problems I have with the current rules. Under the old HOS, I would have been perfectly legal. With what we've got now, I have to choose between wasting time driving all of the way home, getting in my pickup, driving all of the way BACK to town to go to the store that I just drove past on my way home in the big truck.....or stopping on my way through town and running out of hours before I leave the store. Anyone who thinks I'm going to shut down 15 miles from home and get a motel room for the night just because some arbitrary rule dreamed up by bureaucrats who have never seen the inside of a truck say I am "out of hours" is out of their flippin' mind.

I had a car try cutting me off the other day....cost him his rear view mirror. I was in the left turn lane waiting in a line of traffic, easing up towards the intersection along with the cars ahead of me. This knucklehead must have thought he was better than everyone else and shouldn't have to wait in line like everyone else to make his left, so he tried muscling his little Ford Focus in line ahead of me. Only problem was, I couldn't see him because he was in the lane to my right (the go-straight-or-turn-right lane) and I had a big'ol hood blocking my view of him. Long story short, when the car ahead of me made their left, this little gray car whips in front of me and stops blocking BOTH lanes....his rear view mirror dangling by the wires. He gets out, wanting to exchange insurance information. I told him there ain't no way in f***ing hell I'm giving him my g** d**** insurance information because MY insurance ain't paying for HIS f***ing stupidity. He kept saying that "we should exchange insurance information" and I kept refusing, asking him what the F*** he was thinking driving his car into the side of my truck like that. "I needed to turn left" Well then you should have been in the left turn lane like every-f***ing-body else. Go straight and turn around to make a right...or go around the f***ing block....or wait patiently for someone to LET your dumb a** in....but DO NOT try to f***ing force your way in front of a g** d*** truck who can't see your tiny little piece of s*** car over the big-a** f***ing hood. Then he was back to "we should probably exchange insurance information". No way in f***ing hell am I giving you my g** d*** insurance information because my f***ing insurance ain't paying for that s***. Like a broken record, he asked again for my insurance. I told him if he wanted my insurance info, we'll get the cops out here. They'll write you a f***ing ticket for improper lane usage, and I'll be more than willing to give THEM my proof of insurance....but the ONLY way he was getting my f***ing insurance information would be through the police. "I don't think we need the police out here, but we should still exchange insurance information." I walked over to my truck and grabbed my cell phone. When I started thumbing through the contact list, he went to talk to his female passenger. About the time I found the Chief of Police's cell number (his mom used to live next door to me....I bought that house off him after she passed away) in my phone and hit the "call" button, the knucklehead in the car came back to say "She says she'll just pay for it." I guess it was her car he wrecked. Anyway, as the police chief's phone was ringing, the knucklehead got back in the car and drove away from the scene. I told the top cop what had happened...he asked if there was any damage to my truck. Not even a scuff. Don't worry about it then. Stupid people piss me off. Wouldda been great TV, though, 'cept for the fact that not much coming out of my mouth would have been able to be left unbleeped. Got my point across, though...

This was the first truck I went to look at when I got serious about buying a truck: I have always been a Ford guy...got a pair of Rangers ('86 & '92) and an F250 ('96)...not to mention the '47 8N. Family has had a lot of Ford's too over the years... Too many electrical issues with that LTL-9000 though...NONE of the dash switches worked. The brake lights were the ONLY lights that worked. 475 Cat ran strong, but the jakes weren't working. Windshield wipers didn't work. Granted, there were a lot of unplugged things up under the dash...and a lot of those issues may have been solved by just figuring out what needed to be plugged into where.... ...but I needed a truck I could put to work right away, couldn't afford to buy a "fixer-upper". Wouldn't have had to buy any new hats if I had bought it, though...still have a lot of Ford Trucks hats.

There was a company converting Kawasaki KLR's to diesel...getting CRAZY huge MPG numbers out of 'em with monstrous torque to boot. ...but for the price they were asking, you could buy more than a couple gas burners.

I heard that same commercial and wondered the same thing. Puerto Rico is a US Territory...not a State. From wikipedia:

http://www.wimp.com/animalvoiceovers/