@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.
Microwaved frozen meal for lunch: red prawn curry. With shrimps, not prawns, a spicy red curry, julienned carrots, snow peas, green beans, garden peas, red capsicum, sliced zucchini, onions & jasmine rice.
Excellent value at $3.25
Tomorrow’s weather forecast is interesting, the temperature is expected to peak at 41°C at 5pm and drop to 24°C three hours later with overnight rain.
@joanna I say bullshit. It’s not fuel sales that make any money for such places. Fuel sales bring the customer into the shop where the action really starts.
/@kdfrawg
@kdfrawg AFAIK, New Jersey, no self-service. Oregon, self-service now permissible in counties with populations less than 40,000. California, no such restriction.
/@streakmachine
@kdfrawg Or bone-headed ignorance & pig-headed stupidity. The only restriction we have is no-one under 15 years-old is technically allowed to operate a pump. But no-one of that age-group is allowed to drive anyway. Learners can get a supervised permit at 16 in most states.