I was making a joke about the shipping container that it's parked in.
Seriously though, those containers make great storage units.
What did you do to your non-G body project today? [2020]
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Seriously though, those containers make great storage units.
Ha! Yes indeed to 5spdcab and Turbo Zach! The car is in a 10 x 30 unit. Since the car pushes 19 feet in length, the 30 foot unit gives me room to work. The engine is the same 307 Y as the 84 Cutlass. That make life easy as well.
Picked this up as a non-runner over the winter, wanted to upgrade my rider for the house and gave this one a shot. Turned out it had a bad coil and started right up with a quick carb rebuild. Added two new front tires, sharpened the blades, two new belts, repaired the hood hinges and mended the severely cracked hood. I took the 5 speed transaxle apart because it was making quite a bit of gear noise in spite of working fine. I gave it a thorough cleaning and added two tubs of Lucas Red-n-Tacky grease. Also replaced the drive pulley on top since it was egged and wobbling terribly on the input shaft. Thankfully no damage done to the input shaft. All in I think I have about $400 in it including the purchase price. Gave it a good bath and buffed n polished all the green, it cleaned up pretty well. Will get the wheels and cutting deck repainted as soon as I can but it's ready to work for the season. I have the two bin bagger for it as well. I mowed my FIL's lawn for its maiden voyage and it never missed a beat, pretty happy with this machine, runs strong no oil smoke.
This is what I started with:
This is her now. I added a brush bar for a little extra protection up front. This generation has a very fragile hood that I don’t want to mess up again.
This is what I started with:
This is her now. I added a brush bar for a little extra protection up front. This generation has a very fragile hood that I don’t want to mess up again.
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A freak late polar vortex is hitting the northeast this weekend. The jetstream is in a big s pattern where it is bulged high in the west and dipping down really low in the east. The US has been stuck in this pattern for over a month. NYC failed to hit 70 degrees in all of April for the first time in 70 years. Its been a very cold late spring here, normally I have my heat shut off by now.
Same here. I am still in long-johns in the middle of May! I took my Grandson and launched the Whaler on Friday. We had a narrow window of tide and weather to get it in before the arctic blast and snow/rain squalls hit us. Now I need to go and see if it survived the 45mph winds.
The Mrs started preparing our new business, the plan is to go incorporated to avoid any risk to our personal assets. Costs a bunch more as a start-up but eliminates any possible headaches down the line. Primary purpose is to act as consultants/contractors once we retire from the military - nothing like selling your skills back to the institution that trained you. She'll probably start an Etsy store as she's pretty talented with a sewing machine. I'll be starting a subsidiary division focused on motorsports, R&D, and tuning. Maybe LS swaps too.
This will be my second venture into running my own business.
This will be my second venture into running my own business.
I too seriously want to go into business for myself fixing and/or modding cars when I retire from the military as well. The sad, boring reality is that fixing pays way better than the go fast stuff. I'd be curious to hear more about your plan there. This idea of mine is a good 15 years old and I really don't see myself going any other way long term. Modding isn't as recession resistant as repairing.
Yeah... my Dad was a mechanic and fixed irritating people's rusty sh*tboxes pretty much everyday until he died. That isn't happening here. LS swaps and tuning up here are very rare (even less so done well), especially in a government town where no one really turns their own wrenches but have money (recession or not) - so it doesn't matter that there are (LOL) plug and play options now (as potential clients aren't wrenching for themselves). I figure that I've built enough ground-up rolling business cards to know what's what. So committing a few hours once in a while to tune a car isn't that much of an imposition.
The rub is that I am still about 15 years away from retirement, so who knows where the hobby will be in that time. Chances are we will still have enthusiasts, and most shops won't know how to service/tune an early 2000s Corvette - much less be willing. But, as long as there is a desire, money will follow.
I'd rather do the performance stuff as it suits me, being that the Mrs and I expect to have two full pensions I'll have the liberty to do what I want at my own pace and on my terms. If it doesn't facilitate my learning and experience or building out the property/equipment I won't touch it.
I am going to have some very specific directions laid out before accepting any work - especially having a retainer in hand for the eventuality of a flaky POS.
fleming442 it is less about getting rich, and more about staying busy. 😉
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Too much house work & destroyed the yard.
Wife and I bought the house last spring and although its solid & straight, there was some water issues in the basement. Water was seeping near the bottom of the foundation in one of the closets and although it didn't really matter in there, it's not going to get better. With the basement being finished (and too nice for us really) if it leaks significantly its going to need carpet, drywall, insulation, ect so might as well get at it. The cost of this is less than fixing the basement if it does get wet. Plus, we wanted to get an egress window put in one of the basement bedrooms to make it "legal" and add some light & air downstairs and make it less of a dungeon.
Doing it ourselves cost about 1/3 to 1/4 of hiring it done. Wife grew up with her dad flipping houses and I am rarely afraid to tackle a project so we said why not. House was moved to this lot in the mid 80's and it is cinder block basement. Just had some hairline cracks in the block and the house is on real sticky clay so there really wasnt anywhere for the water to go when it down poured. Wife's family friend is an excavator operator by profession and waterproofs basements for a living so we hired him last weekend and we excavated around the basement, sealed the walls, installed drain tile & pearock. Used about 5 yards of pearock, 150ft of drain tile, and 30 gallons of tar to seal the walls.
Rented a mini skid yesterday and finished back sloping the yard and put the rest of the dirt back in the holes.
Still have to demo the old concrete steps and build some new wood ones for the front of the house along with till the rest of the yard and replant grass, but hopefully it will solve our water issues. The yard was all crabgrass from decades of lack of management from the previous owners along with being lumpy and having some old stumps scattered throughout so we aren't loosing anything. Just a lot of work to bring it back to usable state.
Wife and I bought the house last spring and although its solid & straight, there was some water issues in the basement. Water was seeping near the bottom of the foundation in one of the closets and although it didn't really matter in there, it's not going to get better. With the basement being finished (and too nice for us really) if it leaks significantly its going to need carpet, drywall, insulation, ect so might as well get at it. The cost of this is less than fixing the basement if it does get wet. Plus, we wanted to get an egress window put in one of the basement bedrooms to make it "legal" and add some light & air downstairs and make it less of a dungeon.
Doing it ourselves cost about 1/3 to 1/4 of hiring it done. Wife grew up with her dad flipping houses and I am rarely afraid to tackle a project so we said why not. House was moved to this lot in the mid 80's and it is cinder block basement. Just had some hairline cracks in the block and the house is on real sticky clay so there really wasnt anywhere for the water to go when it down poured. Wife's family friend is an excavator operator by profession and waterproofs basements for a living so we hired him last weekend and we excavated around the basement, sealed the walls, installed drain tile & pearock. Used about 5 yards of pearock, 150ft of drain tile, and 30 gallons of tar to seal the walls.
Rented a mini skid yesterday and finished back sloping the yard and put the rest of the dirt back in the holes.
Still have to demo the old concrete steps and build some new wood ones for the front of the house along with till the rest of the yard and replant grass, but hopefully it will solve our water issues. The yard was all crabgrass from decades of lack of management from the previous owners along with being lumpy and having some old stumps scattered throughout so we aren't loosing anything. Just a lot of work to bring it back to usable state.
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