glitchwrks

1099 "contractor" is the norm for many jobs nowadays. A former employer got his pants sued off over 1099 workers in NY state, since NY has a very strict definition on what's a contractor and what's an employee. Amazon is a major offender, considering everyone 1099. They won't build a warehouse in a state that won't allow their classification of employees as contractors. Sometimes 1099 is a good deal for the worker, often it's not. I know for me, I went in thinking I was getting a W-2 job and at the end of the year I owed the IRS a fair bit of money -- since I didn't realize the distinction (and the company made no effort to let me know I wasn't W-2) I had no real deductions. I'd heard that California in particular is cracking down on it, after realizing how much they were losing in payroll taxes.

Someone brought one to White's Truck Stop show last year or the year before. I think White's was this weekend, but we're out of town.

Soak, soak, soak, apply heat, beat on the end of the wrench with a reasonable sized hammer or use an impact. If you get it to loosen, add more penetrating oil and tighten it back up. Back and forth seems to let the penetrating oil get in there and start to crumble the rust. Don't get too excited if it feels like it's coming off, keep working it back and forth instead of trying to just spin it out.

Good looking truck!

I usually buy Stanadyne since that's what the pump and injector shop I use recommends. That, Power Service, and Howe's all smells like biodiesel to me. I have had to buy Power Service and Howe's before due to getting bad fuel and the next stop only carrying one or the other of those two, they seem to work alright. The extra lubricity is supposed to help prolong old pumps, especially distributor type, and from experience it really seems to help cut down on injector drip on old worn injectors.

Bet that concrete is fun to drill in. I finally had to buy a rotary hammer for some 1960s poured concrete walls. Pretty sure they're made with fly ash and steel slag from the foundry we used to have in town.

Similar configuration to our log truck on the farm, though 11 years newer and much cleaner! Not sure how power would be with an automatic behind the 427. It would still have to be better than the '77 C60 we ran for a long time, 350 SBC 5+2 manual transmission and electric shift rear end.

I keep trying to get my parents to build an equipment shed/shop out of containers for the farm. I guess as long as I'm the one working under the machinery in snow and mud, it won't get done

Congrats! Been looking for a building myself too, finding the right thing is always a challenge. NY winters were bad enough to work in, you'll get half the year back for time to work on projects 😛

That's for sure! It appears I had just the right preload on the rear leaf springs though, the load traveled very nicely. We'd apparently forgotten a 3-ring binder with manuals on top of one piece of equipment, it's still sitting where we left it. Here's the repair I did on the driver's side of the box: I put some clear silicone caulk in there and then squeegied it flat with a putty knife, and rattle canned over it. The driver's side had the bigger, uglier damage spots. The passenger's side had less visible damage, but one was a leaker and I'd filled it with silicone caulk some time ago. I tried to scrape the original patch job off, and couldn't do anything with it! It holds on really good to the box material, apparently. Here's a look inside the box: Pretty full! None of this stuff can really be stacked, it's too heavy and we didn't have a dock/forklift anyway. Had to manhandle everything with the liftgate. The pallet jack wasn't very useful inside the truck, so we mostly muscled the equipment racks around by hand. I'm glad there were four of us!

I can't imagine how much uncertainty there is in trying to get this going. Doing small control systems enclosures (stuff smaller than a mini fridge) is hard enough in QTY 5 or less. Prototypes are basically still all hand-built, too expensive to have a chassis company run just one. Hopefully they find success and can offer something folks like!

Back from Michigan with a truck totally full of typesetting control systems! Little truck did great, the only problems were in Ohio -- the roads are so rough, I lost both by speedometer and CB radio! I was able to fix the speedometer, the cable had completely backed out. I'll post some pictures later on.

Drove the truck to the farm on Thursday, came through a massive downpour and thunderstorm around Covington on I-64. Came up Sandstone mountain in 3rd gear doing about 30 MPH. Offloaded the metal lathe and some other stuff, reorganized inside. I took the opportunity, since it was hot and dry, to fix up some of the goofs on the box. I cut off the two bolts they'd used to presumably secure a sign to the side over some old damage, drove them into the box framing and caulked around them. Then I filled all of the rough spots where the box had been scraped and damaged over the years with clear silicone caulk, then squeegied it flat with a putty knife. Not as pretty a fix as Bondo + sanding, but it's very waterproof. Then I spray painted over the caulk. It really helped the look of the truck! I used up the last of the can of paint to touch up some spots on the cab, and spray the white-and-rust air conditioner condenser on the back of the cab. Tomorrow I make a 400 mile trip to Michigan to pick up some typesetting gear.

Nearly forgot, my wife goes with me on long trips usually...and falls asleep in the passenger seat, which is *not* a suspension seat

Wish mine had the 6-speed instead of the little Spicer 5-speed it's got. You really have to wring the engine's neck between shifts when loaded. Unsynchronized first is no problem, but every time I have to drive through a northeastern city, some guy in a midlife crisis compensation vehicle thinks I'm revving to race 😛

Not all of our Ford trucks have been red, but a lot of them certainly have! Here's the 1969 F-600 flatbed dump (factory Ford bed!) and 1985 F-350 diesel: The F-600 is really badly faded, the bumper and grille had been primed in this picture. Sold it when we left NY, 391 V-8 and 4 speed would've made for a miserable trip. The F-350 lives on the farm now, still works hard, 6.9L International V-8 diesel, 4 speed T19 transmission, 2WD. I had this 1993 F-250 diesel for a while: 7.3L International V-8 diesel, ZF5 overdrive transmission, 4WD, excellent pickup truck. Started having "transmission problems" and the shop told me it wasn't worth fixing, turned out to just be totally worn out clutch linkage bushings for the push rod to the master cylinder. Sold it to a guy who wanted to plow with it after it pinholed the oil cooler and sprayed oil everywhere. Seen above moving a blue 1984 Ford Ranger factory diesel!

The supposed awful ride is probably the #1 comment I get about the little Midliner I have. I thought it was a huge upgrade with its spring suspension seat and isolated cab!

Cabover with suicide doors, too bad it's being left to rot!

They'd better! I believe it's the official soda of Maine, despite being made in NH. I think the last time I found it for sale was northern MA or southern NH. I hear some folks don't like how it tastes 😛

https://sservi.nasa.gov/articles/nasas-original-lunar-images-are-housed-in-a-former-mcdonalds/ Not even kidding!

A friend of mine in the vintage computer world was part of the recovery efforts on some of NASA's other archived tapes. Apparently there's just such a massive quantity of the stuff that it's super hard to prioritize its proper care. They ended up setting up shop in an abandoned McDonald's and getting super specialized tape gear up and going to read back images sent from space probes.

Hey, at least it makes good old trucks cheaper for those of us who will drive them!

I believe my Midliner is ex-Penske service, there's yellow under the white paint and Penske start-up information on the driver's visor. I know they get hate for being "frog dog" trucks (our local Mack parts dealer laughs whenever i call in, told me it was "totaled" when I needed kingpins!), and it is of course *made* by Renault, but they do seem to be solid little trucks.

I just put new drain valves on the little Midliner box truck I've got. It has a three-tank system with no air dryer as well, though it did have some goofy Haldex automatic purge valve on the wet tank, which had failed. The pull-type valves are significantly more convenient and if you stick with no air dryer they will probably get you to blow down the tanks more often. I bought Tramec-Sloan 1/4" NPT valves and just drilled out and tapped the old plugs that held the old drain valves. Two of them were metric (a Midliner is really a French-built Renault) and the other was the goofy integrated Haldex thing. Now I also don't have to worry about finding an oddball part if one should happen to break on the road. I plan on replacing the air system at some point and when I do I will put an air dryer on, for all the reasons stated above. I figure that, until I actually replace everything, there's no point in using an air dryer on the current system.

We ended up switching to biodiesel blend on recommendation of the equipment shop that did our injection pump and injector rebuilds, D&W Diesel in Albany, NY. Apparently for pumps designed in the high sulfur days, the added lubricity helps a lot. They said to run Stanadyne if blended fuel wasn't available. I always thought the fuel islands where blended fuel *was* available smelled exactly like Stanadyne!