Coast Guard Drill Instructor

A couple of comments.

This is a female Coast Guard Drill Instructor.

Note:

1.  The recruits behind her are all female. This photo dates to March 18, 2021.  I wonder if the Coast Guard has retained separate recruit training for men and women?  I hope so, as that practice is a wise one that should be retained service wide.

2.  Note the M1911 campaign hat.  We've discussed the campaign hat here before, but it was once an Army and Marine Corps field hat that went into a use decline starting with the helmet but which was revived for DI use by the Marines in the 1950s, followed by the Army.  I know that Air Force DI's wear a blue one, but does the Navy now also? That the Coast Guard does surprises me.

Note also, Coast Guard DI's must wear the same hat irrespective of sex, as opposed to the hideously ugly separate DI hat foisted upon Army female DI's which should be ditched.

3.  Note the arm tattoo. . . of course.  I'll be glad when the tattoo trend is over, although its unlikely to pass on before I do.

Does anyone know what this font style is called?

 From the John Lewis mural in Atlanta.

Something we said in 2016:

We ran a long election post mortem in 2016. . .nothing like for the 2020 Election cycle of course, but pretty long, here:

Lex Anteinternet: The 2016 Election: I didn't see that coming. . . like all of the rest of the pundits. It's been a wild election year. Yesterday, Donald Trum...

One things, of many, we said there:

The voters who revolted are, no doubt, going to be accused of being racist.  But to desire the America they grew up in, which was more Christian, more employed, and more rural, doesn't make them that way.  The Democrats have been offering them Greenwich Village, the Republicans the Houston suburbs.  It turns out they like the old Port Arthur, Kansas City or Lincoln Nebraska better, and want to go back. That's not irrational.

 

Port Arthur Texas.  I listed to people discuss the upcoming election two weeks ago at the Port Arthur Starbucks and thought they'd really be surprised when Clinton was elected. Turns out, they were much more on the mark than I was.  And it turns out that people in Port Arthur like Port Arthur the way it was twenty or thirty years ago, and they don't like a lot of big, hip trendy urban areas that they're supposed to.

Will Trump be able to do that?

Well, any way you look at it, it's going to be an interesting four years.

Trump will have to act on his populist world view.  I'm certain that it will be only momentarily before the pundits will start opining about how Trump, now that he is the President Elect, will moderate his views, etc., but there is no reason whatsoever to believe that. So far, his entire behavior has been true to what appears to be his basic character. We can anticipate that he will continue to act that way. And an electorate that, essentially, voted to rip everything down wants it down.  I suspect, therefore, that's what we will get.

I also, quite frankly don't think that this is universally bad. As noted, I never supported Trump, and I did not vote for him yesterday.  I'm in the camp so disgusted by both political parties and their candidates that I could not bring myself to hold my note and vote like so many others did. But I do think that Trump will listen to the blue collar element of American society, and somebody needs to.  I do not think that this segment, which knows its being forced out of work by a combination of forces that are not of its own making, but which are more than a little the fault of policies favoring the wealthy, will be quiet.  Clinton would not really have done anything for those people other than to lament their status, Trump will have to do something.  And I also think that Trump will actually nominate justices to the Supreme Court who do not feel compelled to stick to it, such as Justice Anthony Kennedy or who have a social agenda that colors and informs their decisions.  Justices who decide the law are needed on the Court and I think they'll actually be appointed.

Did I get it right?

Am I the only one who finds Steve Carell's uniform in Space Force to be considerably better looking than the actual Air Force/Space Force dress uniform?

Just asking.

But seriously.

Did you get, or take, Veterans Day off?

Just curious.

The answer here would be no.  I don't think I've ever worked anywhere where it was a day off.

Cooking Stoves in the 1910s

So, following up on this item:

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror/ A Hundred Years Ago: 1920 Direction...: Nice coal burning stove.  This highly modern AGA stove wasn't introduced until 1922 and they're still being made. This is just ...

In the 1910-1920 time frame what would have been the most common fuel for cooking stoves?

My guess is wood, but until the other day, I hadn't contemplated coal fire cook stoves even existing.

Looking into this, I found an interesting article on this on a site called On Line Old House.  Another interesting one appears here, in an article called Foodways in 1910.  Both articles make similiar points, but this one noted:

Coal became more and more popular through the 19th century as railroads brought it from distant mines and as forests near cities were cut down. By 1900 it had replaced wood as the main source of home energy. More and more, the household was becoming dependent on spending money in the market rather than upon family members’ labor. People switched to coal because it took less work than wood. It was a more concentrated energy source, so less of it needed to be hauled. Also, it burned longer and more evenly. Cooking was easier and tending the fire took less time.

Yet another interesting article appears here, noting how technologically advanced stoves were actually becoming, and some were supposedly capable of burning gas, coal or wood.  And, by that time, electric stoves had appeared.  On the same site, another article appears, that notes:

The typical cookstove in the 1880s was cast iron or steel and “was a wood- or coal-burning monstrosity” (Cohen, 1982, p. 19). The typical urban house in the 1880s used a coal-burning stove, although it might have had a gas range if it was very modern (Cohen, 1982, p. 5). In the 1890s, housewives across America most likely continued to cook on a coal or wood-burning stove (Cowan, 1983, p. 155). Cooks brought in wood or coal, fed the fuel into the stove by hand, and had to carry ashes away, which made it hard to keep the kitchen clean. Temperatures were hard to regulate (Cohen, 1982, pp. 19-21). During the nineteenth century, coal became more popular than wood because of availability and price, and the fact that coal was a more concentrated fuel that burned longer (Strasser, 1983, pp. 40-41).

All of this is really a surprise to me as I've simply never thought of coal as being a primary cooking fuel.  Apparently in urban areas it was.

Yet I still feel like I'm missing part of the picture here for some reason.

So, if a person lived in the Rocky Mountain West in 1910-20, would they have been firing their stoves with wood, or coal, to heat up that pot of coffee in the morning.

Can anyone recommend a good introductory book on radio?

Not like "News Radio", or radio disk jockeys or the like.  I mean the technicalities of radio. What sort of antennas go with what and the like.

July 14, 1920 Summer camp.

A few of the boys for summer school, arriving at Naval Training Station, Naval Base, Hampton Roads, Va., July 14, 1920

Youth summer camps are something I'm wholly unfamiliar with as I never went to one as a kid, and I never knew any other kids who did either.

How about you?

Panoramic Photograph Equipment?

We have a category here called "The Big Picture" that features panoramic photographs and, for that matter, panoramic photos are also a separate category item here.  We like them.

Camp Kearney Remount Station, California.  December 1917.

Indeed, we like them so much we've used in them for our various blogs for header or footer photographs.

Big Horn Springs, Thermopolis Wyoming.  April 8, 1918. This is our header photograph for our Railhead blog.

But in spite of that, there's some things we don't know about them.

Laramie, Wyoming.  October 1908.  This is the header for our Painted Bricks blog.

And one of the principal things we don't know is what the photographic equipment used to make these photographs was.

Panoramics were enormously popular from the late 19th Century up through World War Two.  After that, for some reason, they really faded from the scene, and even though you'll occasionally see them today, and you can in fact make them with your Iphone, they aren't what they once were.

How were they done? The camera equipment was obviously special for them, but I can't really find out anything about it.  A search on the topic reveals very little in the way of information.

Advertisement for early panoramic camera.  I have no idea in general what panoramic cameras were like.

If you know, comment below.  We'd like to know how these were done.

Caffeine in shaving cream?

Stepside

My father's 1956 Chevrolet pickup truck, the only one that he ever bought new.  I've bought two new ones in my lifetime.

The box on my 2007 Dodge 3500 has some rust and I need to do something about it. That's caused me to ponder truck boxes.

The 3500 has, of course, a fleetside box.  Dodge made stepside boxes at least up until 1980, although they were clearly on their way out then.  I'm not sure of the mechanics of it, but the stepside boxes Dodge had at that time appeared to be identical to the ones they had dating back to the 1950s and they may have actually been.  I can recall at least one crew cab third series Dodge D model, the ones they quit making in 1980 or so, being retrofitted with a long box stepside by somebody locally.

Indeed, I'm halfway tempted to do that to my 3500. . .  

assuming it'll fit, and I don't know that it would.

Why on earth would somebody even consider that?

Well, in pondering it, I'm not too convinced that the traditional stepside isn't just as useful as the fleetside.

Okay, what are we talking about anyhow.

1/2 ton Dodge pickup truck from early World War Two.  This truck is a classic stepside.

Stepsides are the type of pickup truck box every single pickup had until 1955, or maybe 1958 depending upon who you read, when Chevrolet introduced the Cameo and started pickups on the long trail (road?) to being ruined.  Ford followed suit in 1957 and the race was on.  The characteristics of the two boxes are quite distinct.

Military M715 Kaiser pickup, the last purpose designed military truck that was a stepside.  Dodge W300 crewcabs, some with stepside boxes and some that were fleetsides served contemporaneously with the M715, but had been designed as a commercial truck.

Stepsides are like the trucks pictured above. The box is truly a rectangle.  Outside of the box are fenders that cover the rear tires. The steps are the small metal pieces attached to the exterior of the box between the fender and the cab.  They do allow a person to step up to the box, or to mount things, like gasoline cans, to them.

Fleetside boxes, on the other hand, are flat on the exterior and have wheel wells over their rear wheels. All modern trucks are now fleetsides.

The popularity of the fleetside can't be denied and its certainly the case that hte first Chevrolet fleetsides are striking to the eye even how.  By extending the gunwales to the exterior of the wheels, moreover, a little more room was created within the box.

Indeed, my father, who had owned both, had no use for stepsides after fleetsides came in.  He didn't understand why anyone would want a stepside, and I've held that view for many years myself.

But I'm beginning to change that view.

I have owned a stepside, that being a heavy Dodge 1960s 4x4 truck. At no point did I find the capacity of the box really diminished and frankly I found the steps really useful. That truck had been fitted for external Jeep cans, which I also really appreciated, and the spare tire was carried externally as well, which was really handy.  Indeed, in thinking about it recently, it seems that those features may outweigh whatever extra carrying capacity I gain with a fleetside, which isn't really all that much.  

And perhaps its my imagination, but stepsides didn't seem to rust as much and, because of their construction, their boxes were really tough.

Hmmm . . . . 

I wonder if an old Dodge stepside box would fit?

How long do you keep your vehicles?

I just hate changing vehicles.

This topic comes up as somebody I know well, who must have a truck due to his line of work, has taken up the practice of trading them in when they reach about 75,000 miles.  This same practice was the one that the state and Federal government used to employ with its motor vehicle fleet and maybe it still is.

It isn't the one I employ at all.  Indeed, in the back of my mind, with at least my last two trucks, including the one I currently own, I've more or less assumed that I'd keep them as long as they ran decently.  My current one I seriously hope to keep until: 1) I can no longer drive due to the passage of time or the passage of me; or 2) electric vehicles are the norm.

Everyone in my family says this is nuts. At age 56, they maintains, I'll long outlive an 07 truck and will end up replacing it at the point at which its junk.  Indeed, they all maintain that I'll soon be putting more into the vehicle than buying a new one would cost.

Well, not yet, and on top of it I don't think that argument makes sense given the modern price of trucks, which has hit the super high level.

Indeed, that's part of my difficulty in grasping this argument.  When my father drove his trucks into the ground it probably did make sense as they never got up to 100,000 miles before they were wrecks and during their last few years they were in the shop all the time. But modern vehicles really last.  My 96 Ford F250 diesel made it up to 175,000 miles before it started to have engine problems, which it sadly did, and it started to rust away.  I'd never even had the brakes worked on the entire time I'd had it.  The current 07 Dodge 3500 is going strong at 175,000 miles.  For that matter, the 97 Dodge 1500 is at about 150,000 miles.

On Monday here I posted an item about diet, which I realize has nothing to do with vehicles, but one thing it did was to link in a post to a blog which referenced buying less stuff.  It didn't mention it in this context, but I note that as I'm continually amazed by the degree to which people are so ready to buy trucks here which are extremely expensive and yet they don't really expect them to last long term.  As most of them are purchased by way of loans, and therefore are even more expensive than the negotiated price, that makes them a major and continual expense that people seem willing to engage in.  I guess my thought, perhaps naive, is that if I spend that kind of money on a thing, it ought to really, really, last.

Of course, vehicles are rolling stock and they do not last forever.  They do wear out, or they can wear out.  But well maintained, they don't have to wear out that quickly.  The logic of frequently trading in is that way they retain their value, but the counter to that is that if you do that and are paying with a loan, you are always paying on loans.

Additionally, I never have a 4x4 that I don't end up customizing in some way, with that usually being the addition of a heavy bumper or grill guard and a tool box.  Now that I know what the situation is with differentials, in order to really have a truck outfitted the way that I want it to be, I need to swap out the open rear differential with a torsen differential and put lockers on the front axle.  A person can't, however, buy a long bed 4x4 pickup with these features, or at least not a diesel American made one.  Let alone one that is also a crew cab, as  is.  You have to add the differentials yourself.  Sinking brand new differentials into a brand new truck would be silly, let alone expensive, and for that matter new tool boxes and bumpers aren't either.

All in all, I guess, I don't get it.  I don't understand why people don't get trucks or cars of the type they really really want, and just keep them.

Did you work January 1?

Laborer working a press, January 1, 1920.

Yesterday was a Wednesday, but I didn't post a Mid Week At Work item because it was a holiday.

But I did go out to see if I could find a parts store open so that I could buy oil to change the oil in my truck, as it was overdue.  I found that all the chain stores were open, so I spent my day doing that.

When I say I spent my day, I mean it.  I haven't changed my own oil for awhile so I couldn't find a tool I needed and had to go to the store twice.  And it was a cold day and the 3500 won't fit all the way into the garage, so it was a project.  I bought a fuel filter too, but I'd forgotten that getting to the 3500's fuel filter is nearly impossible, so I didn't change that, even though I have the water in the fuel system light on.  Chances are a I have a loose connection.

Anyhow, so I spent the day doing something that I thought would take me just half a day, which was a disappointment, but probably not as much of one for people who worked a full day.

Did you work?

Doggone these are cool.

1919 Griswold Waffle Iron Advertisement

Has anyone  here ever used one like this?

A request of our readers who use Chrome.

If you use Google Chrome on your browser, is this site working well for you?

If it isn't, can you indicate what any problems you are experiencing are?

The Clearance Dilemma

The 2007 Dodge in the high country.

I have a 2007 Dodge 3500 4x4.  It's the crewcab with a long box.

It's a great truck and I have no intention of trading it away any time soon, even though my wife feels that I should be trading it in, and even though there are a few valid reasons to do so.*  Indeed, I have no intention whatsoever of getting any new vehicles in the future whatsoever.

It's been a great truck.  It's had a few problems over the years, as they all do, but by and large, as a vehicle with 180,000 miles now on it, it's been remarkably trouble free.  As I'll post here shortly in another thread, it's also been a very safe one.  It preforms very well, in that context, on highway ice and snow, and I've had it on some dicey roads to say the least.  There are things that it doesn't compare favorably to in regard to newer trucks, but there are things it compares more favorably with, in my view.  For one thing, it has a standard transmission, something which is now a thing of the past with American full sized trucks. Automatics, the favorite of urban dwellers, have taken over.

But there's one thing.

As a very long, and stock, vehicle, it doesn't have the kind of clearance that I'd like.

Another 07 in a parking lot, photographed from the cab of my 07.  This one has about the perfect tire size in my view, and is leveled (not lifted) about 2".  It looks great and has better clearance than mine.  Of course, he isn't towing any stock trailers either.  I wish I'd run up and taken a photo of the tire size.

I've whacked rocks with the front differential and slightly dented it.  And I've high centered it on snow nearly annually.

I'm tempted to try to boost the clearance, and that would mean larger tires.

It came equipped with 265/70R17s, and I have an off road (that will also do highway) example of that on now.  That tire is 31.5" in width.  It will, as is, go up one tire size. Which gives you an additional .5" of clearance.

That's right.  One half inch.

Hmmm.

High lift 1983 Dodge crewcab on a used car lot. Didn't this lift go a bit too far?  But It looks like it does have good clearance.  It also has a full sized crew cab, something that isn't the case with the 07 for some odd reason. The box here appears to be a short box, which isn't what I'd want.  The tires on this truck are likely 35" tires, maybe 40".

On the other hand, there are off road tires that will fit 17" rims that are 35" in width. And that would give me an extra 1.5".  That doesn't sound like a lot, but it may be.

40" tires are also made for 17" rims, but I'm not going there.

The father of all modern 4x4 trucks, the first generation of the Dodge WC truck from World War Two.  These had great clearance, but this 1/2 ton model was also too high and prone to roll overs.

I'm tempted to go with 35" tires, but that means the tread width is also wider, which I really don't want if it starts to impact performance.  I like narrower tires over wider.  I don't want to float on wet roads or mud.

And some people claim that if you put 35" on, you need to lift the truck or put on a leveling kit. Others claim that isn't so.

Second model of World War Two WC 4x4 truck. This 3/4 ton truck was about perfect.

What would also be the case is that it would impact the gear ratio by making it higher.  My gearing is the lowest possible but that would effectively make both 5th and 6th gears overdrives.  A person can adjust this, I think, by changing the ring and pinion gears in the axles, but I hadn't planned on really doing that.

And of course it might mean that I'd need to lift it as well, or a leveling kit that also lifted the rear.  Modern trucks are canted forward on purpose, for fuel efficiency purposes, and a leveling  kit does just that.  It lifts, probably about 2" in this case, which would be fine, but that also means if you have a trailer on the rear, it's going to have its nose in the air.

All of which leads me to believe that maybe no more than one tire size bigger, if that.

Which really won't achieve much.

The two Dodges.

_________________________________________________________________________________

*It's starting to get some rust over a wheel well.  It has a crack on the body of the box.  My brother in law, who is a diesel mechanic by training, warns me that sooner or later it'll need some major engine work, as old as it is.  And it needs a selection of odds and ends repairs to really get it back into ship shape if I'm keeping it, and that's money into an old truck.

Blog Mirror: Today in World War II History—October 4, 1944

Linked in due to the item on Al Smith:

Today in World War II History—October 4, 1944

POSTED: Friday, October 4, 2019 by Sarah Sundin

I know I must sound like a broke record on this, but I've commented on the time below.

I'm 56 years old, a mere whippersnapper compared to the American front runners.  And I'm in good health.

Are you or were you as spry at 56 as you were at 46?

And nothing is working: Was Keeping the old ones. . .

 

Truth is confirmed by inspect and delay; falsehood by haste and uncertainty.

Tacitus.

So maybe Tacitus would be approving my automotive delay. . . or not.

Recently I posted this item:

Lex Anteinternet: Keeping the old ones. . .: I don't like to trade vehicles. The 97 Dodge. Indeed, I sometimes wish I'd found a truck just like I wanted, a one ton 4x4, ...

In that, I described our struggles with keeping the old ones.

The truck in question, a 1997 Dodge 1500, is now in the shop.  In the end, it needed a new clutch and a new gasket in relation to the air intake manifold, and some new other stuff.  Thankfully, it doesn't appear to need to have a rebuilt engine.

It's not as if I wasn't aware of that it had issues that needed to be addressed.  I just delayed in addressing them.

Saturday we shipped calves.

Television shows and movies like to show ranchers and ranch hands driving really old trucks.  For example, the Robert Redford character in An Unfinished Life drives a mid 1960s 2x4 pickup truck as his only ranch truck.  He's supposed to be a Wyoming rancher.

I've been around ranches my entire life and with one single exception I've never been on a ranch in which relied exclusively on older vehicles, and I've never ever been on one that had one vehicle. The exception is one that I know very well and at that time that reflected the extremely hard working nature of the ranchers and decisions reflecting what they'd spend money on, and what they wouldn't. As times improved, they retired their older vehicles.

Oh, every ranch tends to have some older vehicles, and quite a few of them see some use too.  Old trucks are used as feed trucks and the like.  But by and large ranchers depend on newer vehicles.  Indeed, at the shipping it impressed me that I personally, by far, have the oldest vehicles.  Of course, I don't drive my truck in heavy use every day either.

But maybe I've been foolish.

The 97 is out of commission while its being repaired. The 07 D3500 is in Laramie, but it needs body repairs if I'm keeping it (it has some rust) and I need new tires for it.  As I've never been happy with its clearance, I'm going to put 35" tires on it this time, larger than the standard, which means that I need to probably put a leveling kit on it as well.

Right now I'm down to the 97 Jeep and the 62 Dodge for daily drivers. But the 62 needs new tires in a major way as well.  The 97 Jeep is hanging in there, thank goodness, but the heater is stuck on for some reason and I haven't been able to dig into it to figure it out.  It's not at the controls like I thought it was.  And while I like the Jeep, it snowed in Montana over the weekend which means that we're living on borrowed time here. The Jeep isn't really suitable for highway travel if I have to go anywhere, even for just the day.

Delay is preferable to error.

Thomas Jefferson.

So maybe I've just flat out been approach this incorrectly.

I just hate to spend the money on a new truck, or for that matter a fairly new used truck. They're very expensive and that means that you are usually tied up in payments for them for several years.  At age 56 I don't really want payments for anything and on top of it with two kids in college I'm not keen on getting tied up in loans anyhow.  If I borrow money, it would tend to be for a business purpose, like for cattle, which I can calculate in such a way that it'll pay for itself.

Truck payments, for somebody like me, never pay for themselves.  At best I may be able to partially deduct depreciation on a truck as any truck I get is going to get some agricultural use.  But this is distinctly different from trucks used by farms and ranches which are really a business tool.  Mine is mixed use.

Too add to it, I'm being stubborn, at this point foolishly stubborn, regarding standard transmissions.  I'm now intellectually yielding to the fact that Dodge, Ford and Chevrolet automatics for diesel and gas trucks are every bit as good as the old standards. But I haven't owned an automatic pickup truck for decades and the thought both irritates and worried me.  Automatic transmissions in and of themselves have evolved enormously since the last truck one I had, in a 1974 D150, and when I drive the newer ones its clear to me that I'm not really up to speed on their use.  Added to that, it really aggravates me that standard transmissions, which really are better for a truck, have become passe as so many urban Americans have decided that they must have a full sized pickup for no discernible reason.  I get that automatics are a lot easier to use in urban areas, but most urban pickups are used by folks who really don't need a truck. That market is defining the trucks, however.  Unless, of course, you are a Japanese manufacturer who exports all over the globe, including the rougher regions of the planet. They make standards.

Grant us a brief delay:  impulse in everything is but a worthless servant.

Caecillus Statuius

And in the back of my mind, I'm pretty convinced I'm looking at the final generation of internal combustion engine light vehicles.  My wife says I'm nuts on this, but then it wasn't all that long ago that she insisted that electric vehicles wouldn't gain a foothold.  Most people here thought that as well. But now Ford has an electric F150 its getting ready to introduce.  Harley Davidson has an electric motorcycle.  It's only a matter of time.

And there's something in my world outlook that the thought of constantly looking towards new vehicles offends.  My wife's outlook, inherited from her grandfather from what I can glean from family stories, is the opposite.  We almost never get a newer vehicle for her withotu hearing, immediately thereafter "for my next vehicle. . . ".  It drives me nuts.  I'd gladly have gotten one good pickup when I could first afford it and have kept it running forever, if I could have.

But doing that is tricky and a lot of people who really know cars say you shouldn't try it.  Indeed, a business savvy person I know trades his off every two years, and he's a rancher.  He doesn't intend to keep them any longer than that, which means that they're always being paid off.  He's convinced he comes out ahead in that fashion, and he may well be correct.

Well, at any point, I wonder if I've waited too long.

Keeping the old ones. . .

I don't like to trade vehicles.*

The 97 Dodge.

Indeed, I sometimes wish I'd found a truck just like I wanted, a one ton 4x4, back when I first bought my first new truck, in 1990, and kept it.

That wasn't realistic at the time.  I did get, however, at that time a very nice, in my view, 6 cyl Ford F150 4x4. I loved it.  I traded that away a few years later when my son was just a baby to get a F250 diesel 4x4, a great truck, that I loved.  I still miss it.  That one went in 2006, however, when a single cab truck would just not work anymore for a family of four.  At the time, it had 165,000 miles on it and was just starting to have a few problems.

Its replacement was a 2007 Dodge D3500, a one tone 4x4 crew cab.  I still have it.  It now has 168,000 miles on it, which shows I guess that I drive about 160,000+ miles over a decade, quite a bit by the standards of some, and not so much by the standards of others.

Seven or so years ago the D3500 was supplemented here by the purchase of an even older vehicle, a 1997 Dodge 1500.  My son was getting near driving age at the time and we needed something so we bought that.  He's still driving it.  It has 155,000 miles on it.  And we added a 1997 Jeep some years ago.  That's my daily driver.  It had a lot of miles on it when I bought it and now it's at 165,000.  And my daughter is driving a ten year old Jeep Liberty.

And then there's the 1962 Dodge. We'll forgo discussing that.

Only my wife's car is newish.  She's not a fan of keeping the old ones.

Anyhow, I hate replacing vehicles which means that I likely keep them longer than I should.

In my heart of hearts, I just can't really grasp why a vehicle ought not to basically last forever.  I know that's not realistic for something that's a collection of moving parts, but that's sort of how I view it.  I figure that you get the vehicle you like, and then you keep it.

That's somewhat ironic, truly, for a person who has owned as many vehicles as I have.  I should know better.  My first vehicle was a 1958 M58A1, a surplus Army Jeep, that I bought at age 15 and had only a little into my legal driving years.  It seemed old when I got it, and was in mixed condition, but in thinking back now I own vehicles that are older now than it was when I got it.

After that I had a 1974 Ford F100, then a 1974 Dodge D150, followed by the addition of the 62, which I still own, and a 1954 Chevrolet Deluxe Sedan.  Then I added a 1974 Toyota four door Landcruiser.  The Landcruiser died in 1990 and I bought the brand new Ford F150, and then the F250, and then the D3500. In the mix, at the time I owned the F150, was a 1946 Jeep CJ2A and a Mercury Comet which I inherited.

I've omitted the things that I've owned with my wife, as those vehicles were largely hers.  If I add them in, there was the Nissan Pathfinder (a great 4x4), a Chevrolet Suburban and then a Tahoe.

Of everything listed, only the Pathfinder, the F150 and the D3500 were new when purchased. The Suburban and Tahoe were nearly new.

If it had been up to me, I would not have traded off the Pathfinder, which was a 1993 or 94.  And then, if it had been up to me, we would not have traded the Suburban.  I didn't like the Suburban, but I never grasped why we traded it for a vehicle that was similar to what we already had.

Of the vehicles listed, of course, most are now long gone.  The Comet went to the person I bought the F250 from, along with the F150.  The Chevy I sold when I inherited the Comet.  The F250 I sold when I bought the D3500, and it was having rust and engine problems at the time.  With high milage, the D3500 has done much better.

Which brings me to my current post.

The 97 1500 has always had a few problems with it, the biggest one being that it's been anemic.  It's equipped with the 318 engine, or what I call the 318,and its just never had a lot of go.  Recently it's been having a lot of problems and we endeavored to find a replacement.

We failed.

The reason we failed is that between my son and I we can't find anything that really fits the bill as well as it does and, moreover, which is affordable.  I can't bring myself at age 56 to buy a vehicle that's as expensive as they currently are.  They've just gotten enormously expensive.  That's why my Jeep is a 97.  When I decided I'd like to try a Jeep again, the new ones were way out of price range for what I was willing to pay, and most of the used ones were absurdly priced.  The one we found was on a salvage title due to an accident early in its existence, and so it was affordable, the way I define that. And it's been a great 4x4 car.

The replacement for the 97 1500 would have to be a pickup truck and it'd have to be a standard, that latter requirement being one I apply myself to my own vehicles but attempted to dissuade, unsuccessfully, my son from. The only thing we found that looked like a good option, financially, was a fairly new, slightly lifted, F150, but it was an automatic and was therefore rejected by the intended user, even though he'd be using a vehicle (we'd own) that was much newer than anything I drive.

So we determined to fix the 1500.

That's been a really odd experience and I've come to realize that by and large most mechanics now approach old vehicles like this with the concept that you don't want to fully fix them, but rather just maintain them in acceptable condition until they're replaced by something newer.  As a result, certain problems have just lingered for years.

One of those is the odd lack of real guts in the 97  Given as its a 318 I've just attributed it to that, but recently one mechanic said that he'd measured compression and that it was quite low in one cylinder, 70 lbs. That caused us to feel that it had to be replaced, but as we couldn't find anything to replace it with, we then thought of rebuilding or replacing the engine.

It used to be, back when engines gave up around 65,000 miles or so, that there were shops locally that routinely did that. But as one mechanic has explained to me, as engines now push 200,000, that's just not the case any longer.  So the options consistently seemed to be to put in an ordered engine.  My research on that dissuaded me from doing that however.  I did find a local shop that will rebuild them, and does a lot of racing engines, so there is a local option.

But in the meantime as the old truck had a brake problem develop and a scary rattle show up, it went back to the shop and it was determined, by a different mechanic, that the front brakes needed to be worked on and an axle u-joint had gone bad.  That was expensive, so as long as we were looking at rebuilds, I had the shop fix the loose steering as well. This truck has had loose steering for years.  They were reluctant to do it, given that its an old truck, but in explaining that I really wanted them to do it, they did.

And they are of the opinion that the truck really doesn't have low compression but that a leaky air manifold gasket is responsible for the check engine light being on intermittently, so that's being replaced. If they are correct, and they are confident they are, that should be the old truck back into pretty fair shape.

Not that it's been cheap.

In the meantime, the tires on my D3500 are nearly completely shot and I need to replace them. More money.

I've really liked the D3500 but it has a few issues as well.  One is that I've never found the clearance to be really adequate.  I've thought about lifting it slightly with a leveling kit and having a larger set of tires, and perhaps wheels, put on the truck.  Now, if I'm going to do that, I need to do that, or I'll be stuck with the current tire size for years.  As its now old, only cost keeps me from experimenting with it, I suppose.

I also now have rust above a wheel well, and a crack in my box.  Bare minimum I need to do something about the rust if I'm going to keep it.

Which I suppose I will. This is the last year for standard transmission Dodge trucks and I'm not keen on automatics.  And the trucks I have looked at on the lot, and I have looked at some, are gigantically expensive.

I guess on that latter point I can convince myself, therefore, that I'm saving money. Sort of. If they last for years, I guess.

On it all, at age 56, I'm perhaps oddly of the mindset that anything I buy now, or repair now fully, I will have until I die . . . or electric vehicles make them obsolete.  I may be unique that way locally, but I'm pretty convinced that we're in the final generation of combustion engine vehicles right now and in another decade electrics will be coming on really strong.  Indeed, they already are, and only solving battery longevity and recharging rates is really keeping them back. Once that's solved, and it will be, they'll start replacing everything else.  Or at least I'll be surprised if they don't. That's not advocating for anything, it's just guessing.  If I'm wrong, well maybe in a decade I'll be back on the lots looking at the newest diesels.

I'll note that I haven't mentioned the Jeep much in this tale of semi mechanical woe.  I really don't need to.  It has problems now as well,including that the heater is stuck on and I haven't figured that out quite yet, but it's remarkably durable in every way.  And Jeeps, it seems, you just keep rebuilding after they endure the last year's worth of automotive use.

So the perils of keeping and riving old vehicles.  I've often wished that while I was in school I'd taken mechanics classes along with everything else and really knew how really dig into them.  Having said that, one of my brothers in law did just that and he doesn't work on his own often.  Indeed, he doesn't keep the old ones either but trades vehicles off when they are nearly new.

A few queries for the few readers.

Do you drive old ones, and if so why?

Turn your own bolts?

Any experience with lifting, at all, D3500s and changing wheel and tire sizes?

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*This draft post was started in 2016 and I never finished it.  That shows both how I really do keep the old ones and, moreover, how old some draft posts are here.  As there have been developments on the automotive front  here, as noted in the post, I finally finished it off.

Some things throw back.

Note:  I have a lot of old threads I started, but never posted.  The ship has sailed on the topics for a lot of them, so they're just going.  But this one didn't have any text.  I'm not sure if I ever intended that it did.

Anyhow, a modern Royal Enfield motorcycle painted by the Indian manufacturer to look like a motorcycle in World War Two service.  I wonder how it would actually do in rough country?