Coffee 12-3-11

The Folgers is hot & waffles & bacon are cooking. Join us! We went to a spaghetti feed and auction fund raiser Thursday night & won a gallon of real maple syrup! I guess we are all set for the year! The fund raiser is a sad story. A fellow who works at the hospital is a husband and father of four. He's never smoked a day in his life and yet has lung cancer & will not live more than a few more months. The family has never been on a vacation together so this fund raiser was put together to see if enough money could come together to give them a few days for a special memory. Well, my gosh, it went viral so to speak. It was hoped 3 or 400 would turn out. Over 800 showed up!! The next day the word went around that $27,000 was raised!!! Now they are talking of a vacation as hoped and the rest into a college fund for the kids. You should have seen the tears and laughter. Most things at the auction sold at appropriate prices, but one whoopie pie sold for $100.

Welcome to December! The warmest November on record is behind us. Might we hope for the warmest winter on record?

The Axeman is jogging along. It works so well I'm finding I forget to empty the ashes. During the dead of winter I empty almost every day, but when it's warm as it has been it's easy to go 3 or 4 days, then forget & 6 have slipped by & now it's heavy!

Hope you all have a super weekend!

Good morning Fred. That gallon of real maple could use a more loving home in Malta N.Y. Please send asap as supply is low Sorry to hear about thae fellow with cancer. It is real great when people come together and show support when it's needed.
No good breakfast for me today, just a bowl of Shredded wheat. Going to get the beast up and running. Have spent the last couple months working on other peoples stuff and it's getting a little late. Stopped and picked up the last of the pex-al-pex fittings needed to complete the job last night. Hopefully there will be no unforeseen road blocks today and by the end of the day will be back on the coal train

Sounds like some good people up there in ME Freddy.

I spent yesterday from 7 am until 9 pm fixing a 01 Jeep Wrangler with a buddy -- the crossmember pulled out of the rotted out frame & was hanging, transfer case & tranny & all, by one bolt! I feel bad for the next guy that has to do driveline work though - he'll have to do some cuttin'! Only way we could make it safe though. Tough job! Also patched a rot hole & changed the oil, then drove it 18 miles back to the owner. Long day.

Now have to do it all again installing a turbo in my brothers truck! Gotta run!

Damn, that bacon smells good.The Folgers is hot & strong as usual. You da man Freddy Yep, a really good thing when a benefit like that comes together. 22* here on the hill this AM with the old Hitzer idling along nicely keeping the old homestead at a nice 72*. I might have to turn her up a number or two if winter ever gets here. Another couple weeks of gun season & we'll be out running our sap lines. Got a friends 50th anniversary going on in McGraw tomorrow & that just about covers social activities. Have a good week-end all. Keepin Busy SMITTY??

Good morning all,

Up and out early this morning so nothing for me. My son is out starting the car because we had our second day of frost. - Wahoo!!! The Harman is humming away and all are happy. Except my son who has to go out and start the car. I'm off this morning to the church - it's our week to tidy it up after the week's activities. Then this afternoon I'm doing something I've wanted to do since I moved to this area - my daughter and I are going to go see the Annual Illumination of the Antietam Battlefield at Sharpsburg, MD. As you know that's the scene of the worst loss of American life on a battlefield ever. Tonight they will light 23,000 candles to commemorate each of those lives. They will use the candles to outline the roads and major areas of the battle. It's only about 2 hours away but they say to come early because thousands of folks show up and you will be in line for a couple of hours if you don't. So our plan is to go early and stop at Harper's Ferry if we get there too early. Like having to stop at Harper's Ferry will hurt my feelings. Anyway, got to go... I hope everyone has a great day and gets everything done they need to. Take care, Lisa

Wow, Coffee time already!
Nice Fund raiser, Freddy, thats a good community. I bid $5 for that gal of Maple syrup !

Most mornings for past week or two, we have had frost on the pumpkins. But the days warm up to the mid 70's !
The DVC500 is easily keeping the nighttime chills at bay.

Got that old Wisconsin AEH engine running yesterday. Rebuilt the carb on Thursady night. The durn float had a hole in it, had to solder it up. Mounted it on the engine yesterday. Put some gas in the tank, watched it flll the glass filter bowl, wrapped the pull chord around the starter pulley, gave it a yank, and she started up on the FIRST pull !!!!
I'll try to get a short video of it running.

Morning all, just a cup of your finest then I'm off to the gym Freddy, the wife & I joined _it's now called a wellness center- a gym since she had to go off her cholesterol meds. I didn't realize how out of shape I became since the knee replacements, couldn't help but to know I gained weight but I figured the new knees were heavier . So anyway now I can be stiff & sore from arthritis & exercise.

The Folgers is good. The wife is bugging me for pancakes, Freddy won’t share his real maple syrup but that’s alright I am going to use 100% all natural synthetic maple syrup made with high fructose corn syrup and real caramel coloring and all sorts of other miracles of science that guarantee a consistent quality bottle after bottle. No good years, bad years here, it’s all good.
That was a real nice thing you all did up there Freddy. It sounds like an excellent turnout especially considering the current economic conditions. I don’t know why bad things happen to good people but it does.
Today’s agenda is work around the house and tomorrow maybe run to Cabelas. Halushki is on the menu for tonight, we have been eating a lot of cabbage lately, I don’t know what’s up with that but the flatulence is fantastic.
November was easy on the coal bin, I looked at last years records and it was similar but December and January coal usage took off. Could history repeat?
How do you keep working on those puss cases SMITTY? I would drink a lot too if I had to look at that crap everyday. I do not miss crawling around under rusted out cars and having rut falling in my eyes. That was a long time ago, those days are over.
009to090; that’s the difference between being a mechanic and a parts changer, a mechanic fixes what he has and a parts changer changes parts until it works. Is that an old Marvell carb? It looks a lot like what the old Farmalls had. I know a lot had Zenith carbs as well but I don’t think they had a split float but hey, that was a long time ago.

Have a good weekend, gotta go.

Good coffee Freddy! 24* this am here and a couple inches of snow. It got up to 62* here on Wednesday! I guess it was warmer here than in Florida that morning!

It must be a Maine thing with the benefit supper's and all. I went to one last weekend. The guy had a heart transplant and is doing great. He had to wear a surgical mask the whole time at the hall. Awesome turnout! We have another benefit spaghetti feed in my town tonight for a friend of mine that passed away about a month ago. It's been planned for 2 months now. He went downhill pretty fast and was my brother's best friend. He also was the deputy chief and 35 year vet of our fire department. I know the family very well. His wife wanted the firemen as pallbearers and I was one of them. Sad day. The money raised will help pay for all the hospital costs.

Not much on the agenda for this weekend. Burning about 60lbs a day right now keeping the house at 72*. The wife will put up the tree today and she wants to go finish up her xmass shopping tomorrow. I've already put up the outside lights and had to fix em twice......GRRRRRRRR.......I need a couple more extension cords cause I keep blowing fuses! I guess I'll stay home with the little one tomorrow and watch Patriots game. Have a great weekend all.

gaw wrote:009to090; that’s the difference between being a mechanic and a parts changer, a mechanic fixes what he has and a parts changer changes parts until it works. Is that an old Marvell carb? It looks a lot like what the old Farmalls had. I know a lot had Zenith carbs as well but I don’t think they had a split float but hey, that was a long time ago.

Yep, its a Zenith 161-7. Farmall's used these on their machines too. Very simplistic, I like working on them. They are built and should last forever, as long as you can find a rebuild kit for them. The rebuild kit I got, had a inferior new Idle Mixture Screw. It wobbled in the hole, just slightly too narrow. The old needle was in better shape, so I reused it.

I should maybe take a second cup. Out early to fix a technical problem at my mothers, now off to cut a Christmas tree. I was supposed to go hunting tomorrow but it's not looking like that will happen.

Oh well, maybe next week.

Good day to all!

Good morning everyone, it's an overcast 37* here in SE michigan, we still have 3-4" of snow on the ground, I scraped the driveways yesterday so the feeble sunlight we had could warm up the concrete and melt the snow,, and it worked!! So the place doesn't look like the owner is a lazy lout. The forecast is for 41* and rain, yuk.

Freddy you NEED that gallon of syrup, with all these people you host for B'fst every Saturday, your syrup budget must be staggering !!

I put up some plywood panels over the front of the coal storage building, but didn't hang any canvas over the remaining openings,, and sure enough, the little snow we had has frozen the top layer of coal that spills out of the building [It's full ] . So today I'll have to shovel away the crust of frozen snow/coal, pile it beside the doorway, and dig out my coal for this week's loading of the AA's hopper. I sure wish I'd found time/energy to get my Auger rigged up so I could just hold my 5 gallon pails under the auger's outlet and fill em, that way the coal would be coming from the middle of the coal pile instead of the exposed front edge of the pile.

So between ice-cold rain showers, I'm going to try to hang some canvas over the door openings. Thankfully it's not windy.

Reading Freddies comment about ashpans, I realize I've done the same thing, I don't think I've emptied the ashpan since Wednesday,, it will be 3/4 full today.. The AA and EFM stoker boilers are so automatic it's easy to forget to tend to them. Gotta love it.

OK, time to get moving.

Greg L

I'll take a nice glass of pop instead of the java. It is always nice to see a community come together to help out a deserving family in their time of need. It was a balmy 15 F this a.m. and it is not suppose to rise above 30 F today. We did have ten inches of snow but it melted this past week and our new fresh snow amounts to a half an inch. I have a lot on my plate for today, I'm currently waiting for a customer to arrive and I am expecting another customer to show up this afternoon. Today I continue work on the prototype chair. The seat was finished yesterday and I dry set it for fit purposes. Today will be devoted to making the legs. My wife is busy taking down the fall decorations and putting up Christmas stuff. Plugged in the tree and none of the lights worked. So, since I am unwilling to purchase another tree, I cut the existing lights off and put new ones on. It took a couple of hours fishing the lights through and around branches to make it look nice. I found two wires had heated and melted. I guess the fuses that did not blow really don't protect you from a possible fire. Ok, I can now finish writing this, my customer showed and I had to attend to them. I am now off to the shop for the afternoon. I hope everyone has a good weekend and wish for snow.

The snowman.

Too late for coffee, time for lunch! I have been out in the shop, now it's too late for coffee...time for lunch!

This mornings adventure was an aftermarket radio install in our Lincoln Navigator. A few weeks ago I installed a used factory radio, and found out afterwards that the cd player didn't work. I pulled that one last weekend, and the ebay seller graciously refunded my money (and shipping costs!). Crutchfield said they had just what I needed for a smooth install, and they included some sort of gizmo that keeps the steering wheel radio buttons working. I should have taken a picture of the wire harness, WOW is all I could say when I was finished. Power & speaker harness, subwoofer harness, mystery gizmo harness...you get the idea. Anyhow, I got the new Kenwood installed and I must say...it came out really nice. Looks great, works perfectly...and the buttons on the steering wheel still work! You can plug an Ipod into this thing, and setup a bluetooth capable phone to work through the radio. $211 for all the parts and the radio, so not too terrible.

I am also guilty of an overflowing ash tub this week...I went 4 days and I think 3.5 would have been the max. No big deal, just some extra ash in the base that I will scoop out later this weekend.