RowdyRebel

Got my AC upgraded on Monday...unfortunately, that meant the gun racks I've been using to hang my hard hat, safety harness, hearing protection, etc. wasn't compatible with the new rear window. So, I got a couple pieces of flat steel & welded 'em together end to end (in order to have a long enough piece) and reinforced the weld with some short strips of narrower flat steel. Then I welded on some hooks, removed the 4 headliner retainer clips, inserted some of those plastic clips that expand when you put a screw into 'em, and used 4 screws to attach my new rear hooks (after I measured & drilled out the holes in the flat steel). Anyway, it works pretty good...keeps everything hung between the seats & off the floor, and the window opens from either side so that there's always glass behind my hanging stuff even if the windows are opened. At first, I was a little disappointed in the set-up of the sliding windows...was expecting a fixed piece of glass on each side with a center piece that slid open, and this window is 2 halves that each slide to the center. Now that I've had it a week, I'm GLAD the window works like this...especially with my hooks...otherwise, I would have had to put them to one side or the other and I would have had the same issue as I've always had with the stock coat hook....gotta slide the passenger seat forward in order to get at the stuff I had hung up there. Anyway, some pics:

Well, today wasn't NEAR as productive as yesterday. Hell, sat around until after the cup race before I even thought about doing anything. Got the oil changed, trans & diff oil levels checked, and chassis greased. Tire can wait for another day...and the rest of the trunk can, too. It ain't going nowhere. Still gotta get showered up (right after Hee-Haw is over) & grab dinner (which I'll probably end up skipping...hate eating this late)...and get paperwork done (during Ice Road Truckers) to turn in tomorrow. Anyway, a few pics...

I'm ready to get back to work where I can sit down & relax! Friday I got home from work and fired up the chain saw...knocked down the sweetgum tree that's been dead for years (only green on it was a 3-leafed vine that has grown up on it). Anyway, got it knocked down, most of it bucked up, and loaded into the bed of the Ranger, and the smaller limbs added to the burn pile in the front yard. I dropped the trailer, and used the Mack to move the trunk out of the road for the night when I parked the truck in the driveway so I can change the oil & grease it. (...and yes, I cut the tree so it'd fall across the road...nobody drives on it anyway since it really only leads to my house and a farm field). I also noticed the rear of the Ranger wasn't sitting straight...the right side was holding the weight just fine, but the left was resting on the fender. I looked underneath and the helper springs I had mounted between the axle and the frame when I was out west 3 summers ago for my brother's wedding...the right one was missing. So, I head into the garage to grab my 12 lb sledge hammer to remove the fender from the tire so that I can move the truck. Saturday, I woke up & got a good breakfast...'cuz I knew I was gonna need it. Went outside and knocked the last 2 limbs off the trunk (they were propping it up last night before I dragged it into the drive way with the Mack)...got them bucked up and loaded into the Ranger, too. By this point, the load of wood is well-rounded higher than the top of the cab. Parked it in the driveway, too, and then started unburying the lawn mower. I had to replace a nut on the tie rod so that I could steer the stupid thing...but found that the end of the tie rod was stripped & bent, too. So, I had to get creative...shortened the tie rod just a hair by trimming off the stripped off section, then cleaning up the threads and readjusting where the stop nuts were. A few years ago, I had slipped some pipe sections over the tie rods because they were bent, restraightened, bent again, and restraightened again, and were weak....wanted to strengthen them. Anyway, when I centered that extra pipe, I had enough thread left on each end to put it back together. It's SLIGHTLY toed in, but it's not like I'm running 90 mph down the highway....just mowing the yard. Anyway, had to charge the battery, too, because it's been a while since I mowed. Got 'er fired up, but had to stop twice to dislodge crap that got tangled up in the blades...but anyway, I got it mowed and then got back to the sweetgum job. Drove the Ranger around back to stack the wood up against the rotting shed...and when it was empty, I headed back around front to get back at that trunk. Even though I was cutting it into 18" long pieces, they were still too heavy to lift into the bed of the Ranger, so I used a hand truck to move them around back. When I got the trunk down to aroung 9' long, I couldn't prop it up anymore to keep cutting the end off...so I wrapped a chain around it figuring I'd pull it around back so at least I'd be cutting into soft dirt instead of an asphalt driveway....a little easier on the blade if it happens to hit the ground. Wrap the other end around the Ranger's trailer hitch....and spun the wheels. Ended up driving next door and swapping trucks to use the F250....and it got the job done. Cut another piece or two off it, stacked 'em up, and went back around to the front to clean what's left of the limbs from the driveway. I quickly decided I wasn't in the mood to pick all that crap up, so I called the sheriff to see if the recent rains have been sufficient to lift the burn ban, or if we still are prohibited from burning. He said I should be fine, that to the best of his knowledge it has been lifted....so I raked the limbs into a pile, grabbed a gallon of diesel (saved from past oil changes...dump the fuel filters into gallon jugs...usually use it to clean motorcycle chains, etc...) and poured it over the pile....then used a propane torch to light it. A cold beer (or 3) and a lawn chair under a clear sky by the fire....pretty good way to end the day. Anyway, still gotta change the oil & grease the Mack...and I've got a tire that needs to be swapped out....and finish cutting up & stacking the trunk (still got about 6' of trunk left)...get hooked back up to the trailer and get some sleep tonight. Compared to yesterday, it SHOULD be an easy day.... but I'm still ready for the weekend to be over...

Hell, this is from Jan 2008.... ...and yet the mine workers union endorsed him in 2008. Even with the mine closures, I'd be willing to bet dollars to donuts that the UMWA will endorse him again...and if they do, it only furthers my belief that the union bosses don't give a rats ass about the members.

Good on you for helping out...gotcha some brownie points with that deputy for sure.

Actually, it ain't too far off from that. Spent $300+ today after church restocking the freezer with frozen pizzas, the fridge with milk, and buying sammiches for the week. I also did something I almost NEVER do....bought cereal. Wal-mart had some that I haven't seen since I was a kid & didn't think they even made anymore....so I just HAD to buy 'em. They also had some Oreo cookies that were double-double stuffs....triple decker cookies with a double stuff layer of chocolate fudge and a double stuff layer of mint. Sounded too good to pass up. I really need to keep from going to the store when I'm hungry, but that's the only time I even think about buying groceries. My house hasn't had food in it for over 2 weeks! I swear Dozer usually eats better than I do....

So far the weekend has been a total bust. Picked up my new rear window Friday & tinted it out last night...but couldn't get it installed today. Couldn't get my 5th wheel top plate rebuilt, either. I did buy a new gas can...and disabled the stupid EPA-approved pour spout. The cap leaked, though, so I retro-fitted an old style pour spout & added a vent to the new can so that it isn't any different than a can you would have bought 10 years ago. Mixed some oil into the gas & poured some into my new chain saw, filled the bar & chain oil reservoir, and tried to fire it up to get some work done on the sweetgum tree that's dead in the front yard....but it wouldn't start. So, I have to tear into it to see if it's got the spark plug unplugged or something stupid like that (bought it off the shelf, so who knows...) Bought some more ammo for the Governor & my 1911.....Apple Creek gun range opened back up today (but I'm guessing it was crowded since it has been closed most of the summer). I figure I can swing up there next weekend (when everybody else is going to be at the gun show) and have the place to myself. I had also wanted to pull the bed off the F250 and try to figure out why it seems like it starves for fuel when running on the front tank. Problem started at the rear tank...then that cleared up at the same time the front tank started acting up. Ford wants $400/each for the OEM fuel pumps (I've had bad experiences with aftermarket pumps...so they aren't an option)...but supposedly there is a relay between the tanks that is only $200. That sounds feasible, considering how the problem developed...but until I get the bed off so that I can work without having to drop fuel tanks & crap, I won't know. Ain't got laundry done, either....but I did half-ass watch the nationwide race, and the truck race is on the TV now (even though I'm not really paying attention to it until I hear the magic words: "Caution is out") Oh well...weekend ain't over yet....still got tomorrow. Maybe I'll get something done...but I'm not going to hold my breath. I'll be happy if I just get the grocery shopping done so I have some food in the house again.

That's a SHARP looking Mack in the top pic.....LOVE that paint. Can't tell too well from the pic...is the nose dark blue or black? Either way, looks good! ...looks like you've been doing a little time traveling in that bottom pic, though. Let's HOPE that truck still looks that good in another 36 years!

Hell, the waving thing can be strange even within the same company. I have my truck set up to pull any trailer the company has. I've been affiliated with the company for several years now and so I've run with a lot of the guys in the area. When I'm pulling a dump trailer, the dump guys will wave and talk to me on the CB...but the tank guys ignore me. When I'm pulling a tank, the tanker guys will wave and talk to me on the CB...but the dump guys ignore me. We all drive for the same damn company. I just ran with them the other day....but I swapped trailers so now I don't exist to them. Only real difference is with the other O/O's....doesn't matter what trailer they are pulling or what I happen to be hooked to, the ones that know me wave & chat....and even the ones who don't know me will wave & give bear reports. Company drivers are just pricks.

Go to truckpaper and run a pair of searches. The first search, look for Mack trucks 1980 and older. You'll get 8 pages of 32+ year old Macks to choose from. In the second search, look for Peterbilt trucks 1980 and older. You'll only get 2 pages of 32+ year old Peterbilts to choose from. Which trucks are "junk"? I would argue that the ones that don't last are junk....and if Peterbilt owners took their trucks to even HALF the places Mack trucks go every day, they'd be in the scrap yard by the time they were 8-10 years old. Most of the older peterbilts that are still on the road have never been "off-pavement".

1st would be an extra low low hole for the situations that require a slow creep...and 4th would be an extra super overdrive to drop the RPM's at highway cruising or would allow you to spec "slower" rear gears without sacrificing highway speed (just keep an eye on the axle oil temp guages....) Other than that, you probably wouldn't use the 1st or 4th gear on the aux... Personally, I've gotten used to the 18...which is basically a 9 that you can split. The 310ME that I've been drooling over is basically a 9 with an extra low hole where the reverse would normally be (making it a 10 speed)....so I'd want to put an aux trans behind that so I could still split. That would REALLY give me a low low hole though....17.35 lo gear on the main trans...2.37 lo gear on the aux trans....5.32 rear gears....with 11R24.5 tires....it would idle at less than 1/2 mph. 1 mph would take nearly 1675 RPM. On the other end of the spectrum....0.73 top gear on the main trans.....0.81 top gear on the aux trans....5.32 rear gears....and the 11R24.5 tires would still hit 75 mph right around 1800 RPM. Not to mention, you have the entire low range of the transmission (6 gears) available to you in reverse with the 310ME.....helpful for those LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG backs to get to the dump site.... Dammit...I need to win the lottery or rob a bank or something so I can afford to make that swap.....

http://www.tremec.co.../3050-1_167.pdf Dang...looks nice. Been contemplating pulling the troublesome 2180 out & going to a 310ME....add one of these and I'd still be able to split...not to mention the EXTREME low-hole I'd have (310ME low hole is already considerably lower than my current low hole)....or the ability to swap up to 4.42 rear gears or better (instead of the 4.17's I've got now) and still have decent RPM's at highway speed.... ....now all I need is money to pay for all of that.

Haha! And as long as his VP keeps it up, plenty of pink slips will be handed out on November 6th. Biden dares: 'Fact check me,' Romney campaign obliges

Is the VIP lounge like Menards? Because I'm not allowed in there either without adult supervision...

Back in high school, I had one senile old teacher who gave me 3 detentions...all for the same day & same time... ...so I signed in 3 times, figuring I'd serve 'em all together. Office caught on & rescheduled the other 2. I got her back, though....one of the joys of going to the same high school as your parents is that some of your teachers are in their old yearbooks. Yup...she was one of 'em. A photocopy of the pic was circulated around the class a few days later, and when she asked who was responsible, I raised my hand. She told me to see her after class, so on my way out I walked past her desk. The pic was sitting there, so I picked it up....looked at the picture....looked at her.....looked at the picture...looked at her....then I opened my mouth: "The years have NOT been kind to you!" After that, she wanted nothing to do with me. She wouldn't call on me for an answer. She didn't care if I did the homework. She passed me with a "C" so that she could be done with me. She was the freshman english teacher....and every freshman had her for english class. If she had failed me, she would have been stuck with me for another year. Worked out great for me...

There was a time when a man could get elected based upon his own ideas and the policies he wanted to put in place. Anymore, though, whoever seems to dig up more dirt on his opponent is the one coming out on top. Obama has a history of winning elections by getting his opponent to drop out or be disqualified. In his 2006 Senate race, his opponent dropped out of the race after sealed divorce records were somehow released....papers which indicated that he enjoyed having sex with his wife a little too much! (...and if you saw her, could you blame him?) Down here (actually, a little north of here) this go-around, there are 3 Republicans who managed to get BACK on the ballot after the Democrats challanged their paperwork....the reason for the challange? They used paperclips instead of staples when they filed the paperwork to get on the ballot. Romney is being pressured to release 10+ years of tax returns....but Obama has yet to release his college records, birth certificate, or any OTHER documentation which proves he is who he says he is. The way I see it, you shouldn't press for openness and honesty from your opponent unless you are prepared to be equally open and honest about your own history....and if you're ashamed of what you've done in your past so that you feel you MUST keep it a secret, perhaps you are not fit to be president? Elections anymore boil down to the lesser of 2 evils...and then we wonder why we are where we are. Good men don't want their reputation destroyed by the lies and half-truths told by their opponent...so the only people who end up running for office view the power of that office as being more valuable to them than their own personal reputation. This attitude isn't exclusive to politics, though...it bleeds throughout our society. Used to be your word actually meant something...deals could be made with a handshake. Now, it takes a dozen lawyers and 1000 pages of fine print legalese to seal a deal...because if it isn't in writing, it was never agreed to...and even if it IS in writing, there is probably a loop-hole or two which will be exploited by whichever side drew up the contract. Most of the time, NOBODY reads the damn thing anyway before they sign their name to it, so what difference does it make? When you DO sit down and read the contract before you sign your own name to it, and you have questions about what you just read, the other party has no clue the clause is even in there or what it means...yet their signature is already on the document. The Constitution (as originally written) has only 4543 words...written in plain enough language so that the common man could read it and know what it meant. Those 4543 words were enough to lay the framework for our great Nation....and yet it would have to be written with 3 words per page to even come CLOSE to the number of pages in the Obamacare legislation. 1/2 of a word per page and the tax code would still use more paper. Is it any wonder why nobody knows what the fuck the law says anymore? We elect lawers to office...those lawyers write new laws only they can understand and appoint other lawyers as judges who will rule on the meaning of those laws. Good luck getting ANY court to take the common man seriously without a lawyer representing him.....they've written their own job security into the law....at the expense of everyone else. And they wonder why nobody likes 'em?

That's the great thing about a lot of places in this country....between Castle Doctrine laws and stand-your-ground laws, criminals have been put on notice: Pick the wrong victim, and it may be the last mistake you ever make. 'Round here, there is supposed to be a threat to your safety (or to that of your family) before you will be LEGALLY justified in the use of deadly force...as if we're going to ask the home invader "Are you only here for my stuff or do you intend to physically harm me?" Sorry...but that don't fly with me. Dead men tell no tales, and it's better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.

Constitution says ya gotta be 35 years old in order to be prez....and I ain't quite there yet. That & I ain't rich enough to fund a decent campaign on my own and my personal values ain't up for "compromise" in exchange for a campaign donation. After all, your willingness to give me money doesn't change the fact that you're wrong on the issue at hand. I am who I am, take it or leave it. It is an attitude that doesn't bode well in politics.

I don't see where anyone is pledging allegiance to any leader, political party, or any other individual or group...only to the Flag and the Republic for which it stands....One Nation under God...Indivisible...with Liberty & Justice for all. If a leader/political party is against the idea of liberty or justice for anyone, they are not representing this country well and therefore would garner no allegiance from any individuals who value the principals upon which this nation was founded. Death camps, etc. are the antithesis of liberty & justice. Communism also goes against the founding principals. All men are created equal...but that is where the equality ends. We all have equal opportunity to use the various talants God has given us as well as the knowledge and experience we have gained through our own life experience in order to strive to achieve personal happiness. That is the "Right to Pursue Happiness" talked about in the Declaration of Independence...specifically named as one of the unalienable rights we all have. Not everyone is the same...what makes one person happy is another person's personal hell....but we are all free to pursue our own happiness in our own way. When the government steps in and attempts to make your life choices for you, you lose the ability to pursue your own happiness. Instead, you are forced to live with what some government official thinks you should be happy with. I have no interest in allowing anyone else to determine what should bring me happiness. I also have no interest in being forced to fund other people's pursuits of happiness when they are too lazy to get off their butts to work towards it themselves. Just as my right to swing my fist ends at the tip of your nose, your right to pursue happiness ends at the tip of my wallet. If you think I should be forced to fund your pursuit of happiness, at the very LEAST I should have the right to sock you in the nose.

Not sure about the Eaton transmissions, but the Mack 18, 13, and 9 speeds are pretty similarly geared. Want to drive an 18 like a 9? Leave the splitter in the high split and the gear ratios are identical. The 13 is in the low split in the low range...so you'd have SLIGHTLY lower gearing down low...and smaller steps between the gears in the high range...but the top gear would still be the same since the 9 uses the same gear ratios as the high split.

Way down yonder....'bout 30 or so miles north of Ft. Defiance.

N/B I-57 Sunday....white pickup truck w/ a gooseneck trailer...and a red cab/gray (primer?) fender B-model loaded backwards..... Description sucks, I know...but I was headed S/B when I saw it & didn't really get too good a look. But, from what I DID see, it was a fine looking B ya got.

Sounds like they are getting power from somewhere...first thing I'd check would be pulling the fuse for the headlights. If the lights stay on, the juice is coming from a different circuit. If that's the case, you can either start pulling random fuses until the lights go off to see which circuit is supplying the power, or just trace the wires back from the headlight to find where the wires have rubbed through and are making contact with other energized wires (or possibly spot a butchered repair where a previous owner/driver/dumbass spliced the headlights into the first "hot" wire they found to get them to turn on). If the lights go out when the headlight fuse is pulled, the power is being supplied through the headlamp's circuit, so the most likely culprit at that point would probably be the switch. Does the circuit remain closed no matter which position the switch is in? If so, there's your problem. I absolutely HATE electrical problems....

Our founding fathers recognized the fact that our rights come not government, but from the Creator (aka "God")...because what government giveth, government can taketh away. A right which can be revoked at the whim of government is NOT "unalienable". A political party which does not recognize this most basic founding principal cannot be trusted with the power of the government.