TOM WALKER wrote to ROGER NELSON:

 RN>> I'm just stubborn when it comes to things I've done in the past.

 TW> Ask Roy, I have a bit of stubborness myself. :-)  :-)

Your middle name should be mule...

 TW> And I hear you. I tried to wrok on cars wel past the tiem when a
 TW> reasonable man would have given it up.

     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
How many of those are around today?

 TW> . My last gasp was Oil Changes and I finally had to give that up a
 TW> little less then two years ago.

I've had a hip joint ailment all year long. When I came out of the house
the other day, I had a flat tire. Rather than remove it myself, I waited
for a friend of mine, who's 25 years my junior, to come over. He did the
hard work, I gathered the needed tools, jack and stands...

 TW> I guess  I should jsut rembember the good tiems as for over 50 years
 TW> I did almsot all of my repairs except Body work and Automatic
 TW> transmissions. And since for many years because of necessity I picked
 TW> my vehicles from the Consumer Reports "Worst Used Car Buy" list. I
 TW> even had my own Tow Bar so I could rescue the wife when her car quit.

8^) I have a 18' car trailer for that kind of work. I don't tell a lot of
people about it these days because when I had one in San Diego, everybody
and his brother would call me at all times of the day and night, needing
the use of my trailer. I finally bought another because Uhaul won't rent a
trailer to anyone who intends to pull it with a short-bed pickup.

 TW> Frotunatly I only had to do that four times. On one occasion I
 TW> changed the timing belt in the parking lot where she works. Adn twice
 TW> I had to rescue me secong son. He was a driver that was hard on cars.
 TW> He had two Mercurt Capri v-6's which had a Composition fiber tweeth
 TW> of the timing grar.

That's old school. Many Ford flatheads had one of those and the first time
it went out, it was replaced with an aluminum timing gear. Unless your
mechanic wasn't your friend, he put a composition gear back in.

 TW> He shucked it twice and I had to change it. It hapened enough that
 TW> the Mercury Dealer has a special gasket kit for Timing gear
 TW> replacement.

9^)

 TW> In the last several years the Realities of Old Age have really ghit
 TW> me hard. I had to give up working the San Diego County Sheriffs
 TW> Volunter Patrol after a little over 10 years

8^(

 TW>  and also My playing "Apprentice Machinist and General Maitenance
 TW> gofer" at the Campo Railroad Museum Facility also after a little over
 TW> 10 years.

Since I moved my CNC mill to my garage and got it up and running again,
bought a small 7" swing lathe and a 10" band saw, I've re-designed the
floating bowties on my 18" Q56 wheels and made them better than the
'prototypes' that were in service for over two years. Last week I started
a project to install a rifle scope to my Red Ryder BB gun. I made some
bases and mounted them to the BB gun and now I'm in the process of making
caps to hold the scope in place. My next door neighbor is into the gas
powered remote control cars and he's already got some projects for me,
just in case I run out of things to do. 8^)

The thing is, I'm not inclined to work on anything in the garage for any
amount of time before I get tired (legs and hip) and have to take a rest.
Sometimes I can last for hours, other times, just a few minutes at a time.

10mg of Hydrocodone Bitartrate and 200mg of Ibuprofen fixes that; but then
it's time to take a nap...and to think, just 8 years ago I was crawling in
and out of my 56, swapping old brakes for new rotors, replacing the trans
with an OD and not feeling a bit like an old man.


         R\%/itt


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 * Origin: Texas Lone-Star - Texan, American, USAian  (1:387/22)