Eucalyptus regnans (mountain ash) is a native tree, the world’s tallest flowering plant, often reaching 280 feet tall.
Today I bought some ham which had been smoked using wood from the mountain ash species.
It’s very tasty indeed.
@matigo The expected cool change is coming through, temperature is down to 26°C now.
41°C outside. I was wondering why my reverse-cycle A/C wasn’t pushing air as fast as it should. Turns out the filters were half-clogged. A quick hit with the vacuum cleaner fixed that issue.
Damned hot outside but cool inside now.
@teeg Extremely tropical here just now. It’s 39°C and expected to hit 41 or 42 later before a major cool change tonight.
@teeg Welcome to our little offshoot of reality. The oars are in your cabin, there are life vests somewhere and as soon as we finish all the beer, there will be something you can use to bail. The captain tells me we stick to tropical waters: no icebergs will come along.
@streakmachine Here's a pic of a B230K piston. Nasty-looking beastie.
// @kdfrawg
@kdfrawg The car I recently crashed had a warped flywheel, often the clutch would shudder violently on takeoff. The answer was to have another go at it, and it would grab a better part & work smoothly.
My mechanic suggested that approach as it was only a "minor' inconvenience. The plan was to have the flywheel machined at the same time the clutch pack was replaced as about half the engine had to be dismantles to access it. Big expensive job to do before the clutch wore out.
It had done 260,000 km by the time I killed it & there was still plenty of meat on the clutch.
@streakmachine I used to have a Ford Cortina (1978 model) It suffered no top end damage when the timing belt let go one time. I was on my way home from a fishing trip with a social group I'd not been with for very long. I was stuck in a town where I knew some people but none were at home.
In desperation I phoned a fellow who lived in the next town along the highway, not even knowing what his job was.
Turned out he was a mechanic & his workshop was within 500m of my breakdown location!
I took his spare V8-powered pickup* home that night & we exchanged vehicles three days later.
*It was a typical mechanic's truck: rusty, dented, the bonnet wouldn't shut properly because of a dodgy hinge.
Reading up on the features of my recently-acquired 2012 Mazda2: it has a timing chain, not a belt & is a non-interference engine. This means if the timing chain should somehow fail, the pistons do not move far enough into the cylinder head to come into contact with any open valves.
Having experienced a bent valve stem with a car with an interference engine, this is a good thing. The piston in that case drove the edge of the valve into the aluminium alloy cylinder head, leading to a $600 repair bill. This was in 1982, $600 went a heck of a long way in those days.