1st Gen. Lunch Table - General Discussion

Had my first recovery in the Tundra today. No action photos as I was more concerned with getting the fiber guy (who ran and spliced a new line for two hours in the pouring rain) unstuck and onto his next call without the boss finding out.

The aftermath. Drug this poor guy and his 2wd 2019 f150 about 600' to the paved frontage road. Backwards. No options for hooking up the front, but he had a factory receiver in the back. My receiver recovery shackle came in clutch for that.


Tundra did great even in street trim with the camper loaded. Nearly got stuck once with him attached, but plenty of maneuverability and control while not pulling a dead load.


Couple of takeaways:

Traction boards would be really handy in our extremely fine soils. The top 4-6" turns into a thick grease, while below that is a mostly hard bottom. I could have leap frogged him back onto solid ground without even starting my truck.

I need to finally pull the trigger on a kinetic recovery rope and a pair of soft shackles. I was using an old school yellow nylon strap with forged hooks at both ends. I was making damn sure to only statically load the strap, but a little jolt at the start of the pull would have really helped with the no traction situation. Rope needs to be 40'+. The strap I was using is only 15' and that doesn't leave much room for error.

 

I’m 6’0, but real skinny. I fit comfortably- but it’s still a very Italian driving position, short legged and long armed. You also definitely aren’t driving it with boots on, the pedals are real close together. With an aftermarket steering wheel and a small wheel spacer, a taller or larger person than me could fit fine.

Definitely get one if you come across a deal. They’re such low-risk cars. Cheap to buy, cheap to maintain, cheap to drive. I’ve been thinking of putting together a buyers guide…

 

Did Dale do his due duty and properly supervise?

 

The most bugless my condenser & radiator has been in a while.

 

Running spotter from the passenger seat as usual.

 

The Yaris was pretty quick for what is was. I remember watching Yaris class racing on TV once. You can also swap in a 6 speed manual transmission from out of a jdm Corolla Levin that had the “blacktop” engine. You’d have to reuse the front portion of the Yaris bell housing, then bolt on the rest of the Levin’s tranny to it. I was this close to doing that exact swap in my 05 scion xB, but prudence got the best of me. No doubt it would have been a fun project…close ratio transmission along with the 6 gear that was just a tad taller (that would lower the overall RPM by about 200 at 60mph).

 

Now he’ll have to bring a skill saw with him every time he goes to pick up a sheet of plywood

 

I’ll let ya know how it is @bmf4069

thought you’d appreciate my coaster as well.

 

I'm gonna have to get some royalties from them or something. Coaster would be better if it was a Sig, but I dig it.

 

Dude is a great wrench, but couldn't general construction himself out of a cardboard box. If he needs plywood I'll probably get the phone call.

Or you know, drop the tailgate

 

I have these albeit I've only used them for setting the tension in the winch, but they reviewed nicely

$20 JCHL Soft Shackle Synthetic Road Recovery Rope 1/2' X 23" 56000LBS Breaking Strength Tow Shackles for Sailing SUV Off Road Towing ATV Recovery 2 Pack

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C3LL3W8F

 

I replaced my house batteries yesterday. 944 pounds behind the rear axle on my RCLB made oversteer awful squirrelly going down interstate 90. When I built this place, I made sure my battery box was at the same level as the FGT tailgate so I wouldn't have to lift these 118 pound batteries in my old age.

 

Max9?

Ouch. I resemble that remark.

 

You Montana boys are built different.

Battery specs and total system capacity?

 

Batteries are 420 amp hours each x 8, Solar is 2240 watts. No electric bill at my cabin. The main cost of off grid solar power is battery wear and tear...about $350 a year.

 

It sucks that ya gotta buy them all at once to ensure they'll balance and match..

 

Not just that, maintenance is a neverending nightmare if you try to fix-as-you-go. Flashbacks I still have of our teams managing labs/datacenters with hefty rack-mounted UPS solutions. If you don't replace batteries in logical groups, you basically spend all your free time having units go down because one battery pack isn't within spec, chasing which battery it is in the series that's out of spec, replacing that battery, then a week or two later, another in the same pack goes bad. Ugh. So glad I don't do that much anymore. I'd love to have a whole-house system setup here though.

 

Plenty of juice!

Im always catching myself looking at off grid properties in the absolute middle of nowhere. It calls to me. Problem is the real cheap stuff is in the desert

 

Eight years I figured I got my money's worth. I could have milked another year out of them but I would just have to run the generator more so I would save little. If someone went through those 8 batteries and picked the best four, he probably could baby another 2 1/2 years out of them.
I don't know what electric bills are nowadays, but I'm sure it's more than $350 a year.
The real savings on solar is when you avoid paying a quarter million bucks to bring power to a remote location. If it were not for that, solar is pretty marginal.

 

I used to have a section of desert next to Big Bend National Park. I remember 24 years ago seeing some very large tracts along the boundary of Presidio and Brewster counties in Texas for twenty bucks an acre!

 

Rock Auto code...
300743638266692807
Exp June 6th...

 

I have done the numbers on solar for our house and said no.. but prices go up and I'm still learning about it.

 

When I worked offshore in the Gulf in the 80's and 90's some unmanned gas platforms had solar to run horns and lights to keep boats from running in to them. They were a hodge podge of different solar panels and different batteries and some were supplemented with little wind generators. The routine was you land the helicopter, run down the stairs with a gallon of water and a 6" putty knife and clean the seagull poop off the panels so the navigational aids would work again. They replaced the batteries one at a time, which was stupid but no one corrected them because no one wanted to carry those heavy batteries around.

 

You have seen some things.... It's a shame to see all that structure removed by destroying the platforms as they were retired, but progress... I love fishing that area. The sounds of those rigs and the gas excess burn at night fill my dreams of uncaught tuna..

 

I have done 7 off grid solar power systems but Never a grid tie system. Off grid there is no electrical inspection, and in my case no licensed electrician involved and no financing involved. I paid cash and did it all myself so the arithmetic penciled out nicely. But if you're already on the grid and you have to have an inspection and licensed electrician it may be 20 years for it to pay for itself. If bankers are involved it will probably never pay for itself.

 

In the 15 years I worked in "The Guf", I never once had a fishing license. We caught tons of Red Snapper in the winter and Amberjack in the summer, also some Kingfish and Ling in the summer. I liked the Snapper the best. If we couldn't catch, filet and bag 5 pounds per hour per man, the fishing wasn't considered good. We froze it in ziploc bags with some bottled water and packed them in a cardboard box with a platform number marked on it, loaded in the chopper on crew change, when we got to the beach the pilot circled so we could see if there were any gold and white Broncos belonging to Game Wardens and if there were, the box would stay on the chopper. But I never had to do that and my friends and neighbors were happy to eat all that good fish. In all those years I had seen two tunas.

 

Good times @Dook55

 

Anyone that remembers my rearview mirror falling off. I got it back on with some 5 min epoxy, it didn’t work the first time idk why but I tried it another just incase and it worked. Had to go a little lower than the broken glass, new windshield coming this fall lol it also leaks so once the rain pick up again I’ll have it replaced.

 

Thanks! Just ordered a new MAF sensor. The code basically covered shipping.