Retirement Shop

[WarDamnEagle]

Forgive my gratuitous snow photo but this is the first snow we have had since buying the place in 2020.

 

[Michael B]

Very lovely Greg. Is that a new addition to the fleet I spy under new roof?

 

[WarDamnEagle]

Very lovely Greg. Is that a new addition to the fleet I spy under new roof?

1984 4Runner Michael. We bought it a few months old with around 6k miles. It was my wife’s work truck for a few years but has been at our place in south Alabama for hunting duty more or less for the last 20 years. Clutch slave cylinder froze on it last fall so I trailered it home for some TLC.

All 4 children learned to drive in it. Original color was parchment but number 2 son talked me into painting it bright yellow. Might change it back one day.

 

[Crush 4]

Just read through your whole thread, great work. I did a shop six years ago and the lighting has always been an area that needed improvement which I’ll be doing this summer. Have you considered any kind of HVAC? I have heat and a portable AC unit, but the AC doesn’t keep up with the hot Michigan Summers

Final question it look like in the earlier photos. I saw something with a black car cover that could’ve been a Camaro? Did I I spy that again great work

 

[WarDamnEagle]

Just read through your whole thread, great work. I did a shop six years ago and the lighting has always been an area that needed improvement which I’ll be doing this summer. Have you considered any kind of HVAC? I have heat and a portable AC unit, but the AC doesn’t keep up with the hot Michigan Summers

Final question it look like in the earlier photos. I saw something with a black car cover that could’ve been a Camaro? Did I I spy that again great work

Thanks; it's slowly but surely getting there. First post, second photo shows the HVAC plenum. It has a 4T heat pump which so far has done great summer or winter.

That is a 1969 COPO Camaro that a friend parked there while he sent off the transmission for some minor repair. There were only 69 produced and it's one of two painted yellow. He's won a lot of car shows with that Camaro.

 

[WarDamnEagle]

To my knowledge, we have never lost power in this house other than maybe a quick blip. We have a whole house, 50KVA propane generator and one of the first things I did after moving in permanently was to get a service contract with the installing company. House was built in 2004 and generator was put in at the same time. Long story short, I got all the paperwork with the house purchase and the company that installed it still had all the documentation as well. That was fortuitous as Baldor doesn't make generators anymore.

A couple of months ago they installed a new starter solenoid and battery and they must have done something wrong, maybe with the battery tender, because I noticed the panel was dead a few days ago. Of course I didn't call them and of course the power went out at 3:30 AM last night. Normally Alabama Power are pretty fast but as of early afternoon the power was still off. Now to be honest, even though I have an engineering degree, I've been a bit scared of this generator. The last time the tech was out though, I stayed with him and got a bit more comfortable that I wasn't going to burn the house down by running the engine in test mode.

Finally I got up enough courage to try to crank the thing. I tested the battery voltage and only got 3.4 volts. Obviously that's not good but I drove one of the Land Cruisers down and hooked up the battery cables. Panel immediately lit up - good sign. I reset everything, put it in auto and wonder of wonders it cranked itself. About 30 seconds later I heard a loud boom behind me and realized that the automatic transfer switch had switched. Immediate text from my wife, who didn't know I was doing anything, "power is back on".

So this is the first time that we have actually ran power into the house from the generator. I tested a couple of outlets and they are a steady 127 volts. There's a voltage adjustment on the control panel but for now I will leave it as is. Hopefully the automatic switch will work once the power is back on. If it doesn't automatically switch then I have to manually pull the transfer switch down. Really don't want to stick my hands that close to 400 amps.

 

[Waorani]

Mine went off about same time but I'm on Tallapoosa River Elec Coop. Came back on at 7 so no real frustration. I was on AL Power for many years and I like TREC better. Longest I've been out since at new place was about 6hrs one night when a drunk took out a pole/transformer. From the news it sounds like AP still has a lot of outages. Given the wind when the front came through I thought for sure I'd have some damage but as far as I can see, only one dead pine finally fell.

 

[WarDamnEagle]

Mine went off about same time but I'm on Tallapoosa River Elec Coop. Came back on at 7 so no real frustration. I was on AL Power for many years and I like TREC better. Longest I've been out since at new place was about 6hrs one night when a drunk took out a pole/transformer. From the news it sounds like AP still has a lot of outages. Given the wind when the front came through I thought for sure I'd have some damage but as far as I can see, only one dead pine finally fell.

We have one tree down across the creek but oddly enough it didn't actually fall until around 10 this morning......with me watching. Now that doesn't happen very often. BIL just left our house and said Alabama Power crews were working nearby so hopefully we will be back online soon. I actually drove our main road in both directions and didn't see any downed trees and/or lines so not sure what the problem is/was.

Very nice to have that generator in the meantime.

 

[Waorani]

I've been looking for a good deal on a commercial grade generator for years. Thought I had one locally a few weeks ago - 30kw powered by a Ford 460 but somebody else wanted it more than me. I made him pay for it though! Mostly just want it for a good deal and to tinker with more than really wanting a backup power source for the house. In the 40+ years I've been in this area the longest I've been without power was a couple of days after Hurricane Opal in 1995. Many others were out for much longer but I was lucky,.

 

[WarDamnEagle]

I've been looking for a good deal on a commercial grade generator for years. Thought I had one locally a few weeks ago - 30kw powered by a Ford 460 but somebody else wanted it more than me. I made him pay for it though! Mostly just want it for a good deal and to tinker with more than really wanting a backup power source for the house. In the 40+ years I've been in this area the longest I've been without power was a couple of days after Hurricane Opal in 1995. Many others were out for much longer but I was lucky,.

460 Ford for 30 KW sounds like overkill. My 50 KW is powered by a GM 5L V8 running off propane. It was not straining at all yesterday but I'm sure we weren't using anywhere near the full capacity of the gen set.

Alabama Power had us back on around 6pm yesterday so we were out for ~14 1/2 hours. My switchgear did not automatically switch back to line power - not sure if it's set up to do so. I know it's set up to automatically crank the generator and switch in case of power loss. All I had to do though was hit the Transfer switch on the switchgear control panel and it immediately switched back. Not sure how many milliseconds that transfer takes but it was fast enough that the digital clock on the oven didn't reset. I also had to manually turn the generator off via its control panel.

Again, very glad I didn't have to go into the panel and manually reset the transfer switch with the little metal handle that is clipped onto the side. That's way too close to those 400 amp cables and lugs.

 

[WarDamnEagle]

I have been using my Clausing 15 drill press quite a bit lately to rebuild my FJ55 door hinges. The more I use it, the more I like it. Perfect size for my needs and probably more torque than I could ever use. It's extremely smooth raising and lowering the spindle and I feel like I have complete depth control even without using the stop. I'm sure there are plenty of similar sized, more modern drill presses that are as good or even better but for what I paid, this one was a bargain.

 

[Michael B]

I lived for decades without a drill press, knowing I needed one. But due to lack of space I never bought one. Now that I have one in the shop, I use it frequently. Shop life is so much better with drill press.