Torture Device

Got bored this morning and started poking around on Wikipedia. Stumbled across the entry for "treadmill". According to that fine institute of knowledge, treadmills were first created as sources of power for mills, grinders, and other industrial needs. Then (and this is where it gets relevant), treadmills were used as instruments of punishment. That's right, prisoners used to be forced to walk on treadmills..... As this fat man runs on a treadmill this morning, it seems that nothing has changed - except I don't have a bushel of crushed grain when I finish my time on this thing....

Horrible Mess

Through the never-ending Winter, the garage has become an area to work (daily to keep the truck rolling) and a catch-all for just about every piece of junk imaginable. It's been far too cold to tidy up - now that Spring is arriving, it's time for a deep cleaning....

Paint It?

The idea to repaint the old truck has always been in the back of my mind. I don't like the mildew that grows on the current white paint, and the black wheels annoy the crap out of me. Looking through old photos on the internet, I found this one with a paint job I kinda like....

Of course, after last month's fiasco - in which the truck died and left me stranded - treating that truck to a paint job seems like a super-low priority.

(I'll be sure to post some photos and the story behind the breakdown at a later time - the story is good enough to preserve for posterity!)

Smooth Starting

Anybody know what that little curly thing is?

It's a "Choke Thermostat Spring", and that one is broken.

When the weather turned cold, the slow-starting truck turned into a no-starting truck. At any temperature under 20, I had to spray starting fluid into the carb just to get the engine to fire up. As you might guess, in Northern Vermont, the temperature stays below 20 a whole lot during Winter. I've been through two bottles of starting fluid in a month and a half. 

A little investigative sleuthing found two problems: the choke linkage was incorrectly assembled, and the choke spring was broken. The linkage was a free fix. The spring - which was used on just about every vehicle for decades - was only a few dollars, but took a week to arrive at the parts store. No doubt that such a rare part had to be special ordered in from Outer Mongolia....

Now, the truck fires up with just three taps on the gas pedal and a twist of the key. No starting fluid needed, in any weather. (Except that -22 morning. That took a whole lot of cranking...)

I like the cheap fixes.....

Lock the Doors? You Must Be Kidding...

I never lock the doors on the truck. Not because we live in an idyllic neighborhood with no crime, but because the lock cylinders won't turn. I'm not even sure I have the correct key. So, the doors never get locked, and I will never be able to say that I got locked out of this truck. Great, right? It's great unless you find yourself wanting to go some place like work or a store where you don't want to carry all of your possessions inside with you. If your vehicle doesn't lock, you kind of have to carry everything with you or risk theft (the easy kind, where the thief doesn't even have to work at it by smashing a window).

I think I've come up with a good solution. I found a small gun safe on sale at Tractor Supply and bolted that thing under the seat (and through the floorboards of the truck). Cover it with a old rag, and you'd never know it was there.

Covered up.

Ready for code entry.

Now, I've got a fairly safe place to store a phone, some cash, or anything else I need to secure.