George Ure

If you own a 2001 Dodge Ram pickup truck, you might want to hurry up and sell it quick before it blows a water pump.  Yes, that’s right:  It’s time to whine about the Curse of Cars…Rammed, alright.

As part of our program to recycle and reuse around here, Ures truly has been up to his elbows over the past three (or is it four?) days trying to get his 2001 Dodge pickup, a Ram 1500 with a V-6, back in good running order. (I loose track when I’m having this much fun…sure, right…)

What started off as an exercise in simply changing out the water pump bas become something else…a kind of Zen of Dodge repair meets Psycho.  But about the only spiritual payoff I’ve been able to find has been new and creative ways to string obscenities into new combinations never-before heard on Earth.

The mildest spew of cuss words involved the removal of the fan shroud which involved first removing the clutch fan (a special tool, a $75 deposit, and a trip into town).  Why should I have to remove a million Lego parts to fix it?

In the old days of auto design, you would open up the hood, take off a couple of hoses and fan belt, toss on a new water pump and be done with it.  The process in the old days took something on the order of 45-minutes and even at that, there was time for a smoke and a beer – neither of which was particularly evil, at least back in the day.

Today, the process involves removing the radiator overflow tank, the windshield washer tank, associated plumbing and wiring.  Then off comes the fan clutch, then the air cleaner and then the shroud and THEN (if you’re lucky) you get to remove the water pump with the bypass hose placed when it’s nearly impossible to remove. See the bypass hose circled in yellow?

In some ways, its an admirable design, but Chinese boxes are, too.  It just damn near ensures that a person would be better off replacing an entire assembly.  No, make that replace the whole truck.

After a day of disassembly (other things are going on in my chaotic life while this simmers) you get to take the retrieved water pump into your nice, clean shop and prep it for installation. This wrecks the fine furniture purpose of the shop, but that’s the price of war.

Oh, wait.  The people who designed the packaging for the water pump didn’t seem to understand that the pump would slosh around in the box, so the gasket was, of course, broken.  So that meant another trip into town to get a gasket.

I’m not sure if the Devil himself had a hand in this design, but I’m, planning an exorcism, just to be sure, since it’s an unholy pain in the ass to work on.  That big Ram front end have to be leaned-over so the back and chest are sending hate mail to the brain now.

Since I’d noticed that the power steering pump was bleeding all over everything on the lower driver’s side, the trip to town was preordained, anyway:  I have to replace it, as well.  I concluded I should buy a lotto ticket about here, luck couldn’t be this far on one side of things, after all, could it?

Oh…a mystical Zen question, here:  WTF was the point of using ONE STINKING TORX-50 BOLT?  Screw consumers into the dealership?  I mean seriously, WTF?  I noted that and put that on my list.  I am now the proud owner of three Torx sizes, which I pray I will never use again.

On the way to town I asked myself “”How is it that Kenworth can build trucks which are just getting broken in at a million miles, and Dodge wasn’t able (back in 2001) to build one which would keep running past 90-thousand miles without major surgical intervention?  Is there any possibility that Japanese automakers have the brains God gave chickens and simply out-thought us here?”

The dashboard is cracking, too.  Another design fault – which I ‘m sure will be blamed on the Texas sun.  Maybe Detroit doesn’t get sun – or may – just possibly – it was the least-cost plastic selected…yah think?

With the power steering pump off the vehicle, next came the problem of getting the pulley off the power steering unit. Ha!  Nothing is simple in cars anymore:  A sane person, or back in the old days when “solid  engineering” didn’t take a back seat to functionality/serviceability, one would have installed a keyed shaft, some kind of locking mechanism, and the disassembly could take only a matter of a minute, or two.

But did the modern engineers do that?  Hell no.  Instead, they used a press-fit pulley which can only be cajoled off the pump shaft with a special too.  I had gear-puller.  Except, of course, when that doesn’t work.  Then you take the tools to the outdoor tool bench (leftover power steering fluid is leaking everywhere by now) where (more four-letter words) the diligent application of heat to the pulley,  circuit cooler to the shaft and a 250-foot/pound impact wrench MAY after you try for a an hour, remove the pulley.  Which is now bent.  Shit.

Oh, and you can’t skip around  this task because there’s a cast bracket that needs to be salvaged from this accursed design.  Unless you want to order a really expensive part,

A call to the local dealership about the price of the whole assembly hadn’t been returned by press time this morning.  I figure they were too price-embarrassed to call.  I only look like an idiot.

Oh, wait:  The design really gets better here:  Since it’s a press fit, I figured all I would need to do is take the (slightly bent) pulley over to the 12-ton shop press and it should go on.  Well, it doesn’t.  It only went part way, so this morning, while Panama puts up crime scene tape around the garage, I;’m off to buy a new pulley ($20) and rent the special tool that goes on the front of this spawn from hell, another $20 deposit, and tomorrow’s adventure will be putting the whole shitteree back together again.

I have more invested in tool deposits than in my trading account now.

In the meantime, I can only assume that no one in Washington DC ever didn’t anything more serious with a 2001 Dodge pickup than get drunk and drive it, because if they had actually worked on a two-owner, under 100,000 vehicle which is trying to fall apart, they would never:

• …have bailed out Chrysler in 1979 and
• …rescued Chrysler again in 2009-2011

Or, was the bailout part of a brilliant plan to subvert Fiat?  And, say, isn’t Italy’s economy in the crapper now, and did the Fiat-Chryslers deal have anything to do with it?  Hmmm…

Has Chrysler changed its ways?  No telling.  Since we are all having such a wonderful economic recovery, I won’t be going out to buy a new vehicle any time soon.  But you can damn sure bet that if that time ever comes again, I’ll be popping the hood and asking questions like:  “What disassembly is required to change out the water pump and power steering pump?”

“Can I change plugs in a half-hour?”  In real life, I am an air tool artist on machinery, but not on this rig.

And my kicker:  “Is the timing belt in this engine plastic or metal?”

At least THAT part Chrysler did get right – and it was one of the reasons I bought it.  No plastic timing chain…another engineering screw-job to save 18-cents and ensure lifelong employment for mechanics. Another way to screw the consumer at the 100,000 mile mark.

Once the glorious day of the trucks return to the road arrives,  Elaine’s car goes in for a timing belt and water pump change-out.  This will happen as a preventative measure.  She’s got a pre-Fukushima older Lexus that runs like a top.

And even though it’s a 2005 model Lexus (92,000 miles) , the incremental add-on to change out the water pump is about $300 since they’ll have the engine torn open for the (plastic/junk) timing belt replacement. 

Still, where Lexus shines is in customer service because they will  a) pick it up, b) do all the work, c) drop off a 2014 Lexus to drive while it’s in the shop, and d) do it for about the same price as the do-it-yourselfer, particularly if you value your time at $20-bucks an hour and count tool rental.  Oh, and some Prilosec and vodka.

Still, Letscuss wants somewhere around $1200 to replace the Mark Levinson Sound subwoofer on the rear window deck?  Over my dead body.  The failure is cheap plastic, not rocking out…so that really oughta be covered, but it’s not.

George II’s new Versa  four door may be the way to go:  For $14,500 he got a car which should make 100,000 before needing everything in the world worked on.  If here’s smart, he’ll just take his $0.145 per mile and throw the Versa away at 100,000 miles.

That, my friend is this morning of this morning’s rage:  ‘Merca is too effing stupid to buy quality…Where we lost that isn’t clear, but I think it happened about the same time, or shortly after,  the coup killed Kennedy.

You see, there was one American iconic car, once upon a time.  And Pappy almost bought one for the same reasons I would in a flash:  The Checker Motor company which made vehicles for the taxi industry and they were based on the million-mile idea.  Only thing is,  we were too damn stupid to realize its value when we saw it.  It took Japanese companies to realize that quality might mean something.

And as a result, we lost Detroit….a process which is dragging out, even through this week.  So to me, nothing symbolizes the failure of America to achieve quality over marketing, that the f*cking Torx T-50 and the afterbirth of  Dodge engineer – the water pump and power steering unit which is somewhere on the workbench waiting for me to calm down enough to just “get ‘er done.”

It seems obvious to me that “value engineering” really means building disposable cars to sell to who? 

Dumb and disposable people.

Does e-Squared Work?

Jury is out – as I am doing the first experiment suggested in E-Squared: Nine Do-It-Yourself Energy Experiments That Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality ($2 Kindle or $11 hardback).  If I suddenly find a bunch of money, then I will admit it may work. 

But the problem I have is that one of the tenets seems to be that you have to believe in it working, in order for it to work. 

Which I have a small problem with, because if what the author says is the FP really is all pervasive and natural, then I shouldn’t have to do much more than present my demands (reasonable or otherwise) and I should get what I want.

After all, gravity works without my active participation, right?  So does electricity…so the jury is out, but I will buy a lotto ticket this morning, just to make an easy path of things.

Meantime, though, at least one reader says it works:

Good morning George!
I too have downloaded the E-squared book and have gotten through the first experiment.  I put “out there” that I would recieve an unexpected gift in the next 24 hours.  The next morning I was in my garden raking, pulling old plants and just general cleaning and I found the rubber handle to my garden tractor lever.  Now you have to understand that my John Deere tractor is something I love and appreciate every time I mow my 3 acre hilly yard.  I spent a wopping $5000. on this lawn tractor used and last year when mowing under the swingset the handle caught one of swings and catapulted the rubber handle into the abyss.  I looked and looked for this handle to no avail.  Now my tractor was no longer perfect and every time I was on it I was reminded of this when I looked at the bare lever with no handle.  So when the FP brought this handle back to me I was delighted!  I laughed to myself and said out loud “THANK-YOU!!  No one can understand how happy I was to have that little handle back on my John Deere!!!  It truely was an “unexpected” gift!!!
Sincerley

Kelly

I dunno, Kelly.  That may seem meaningful to you, but I’m holding out for a lot more tangible (and did I mention fungible) evidence. 

Coincidences happen all the time, and because I am in slave/left brain this morning due to my truck experience, I’m demanding a certain large number from out of the blue, otherwise I’m a skeptic. 

I’m putting it out there as a “If FP is real, this is how much cash (or equivalents) I want.  We should know before Thursday’s report.

Tuesday at the WuJo

Fine report here from reader Sondra

Hi George!

     It’s the crazy nurse from LA (Lower Alabama)again.  I had been wondering when the next wujo event would take place.  I have two red thumb drives for work.  One is larger volume wise than the other so I labeled it with my name for easier sorting. 

Early last week I was looking for the unlabeled one.  I have a small basket by my computer that I keep them in and it wasn’t there.  I searched my office, my home, my car, and my backpack.  Couldn’t find it, remember thinking, wonder where it will show up, probably some place I already looked. 

Friday when I left work I took the labeled thumb drive and put it in my scrub pocket immediately after saving some files to it and unplugging it from my computer, it was the only one I had.  Went home and placed it on top of my calendar on my desk.  Put it back in my pocket when I headed to work this morning because I never got the chance to work on the files I brought home. 

When I got to work and went to plug it in, guess who was already in the usb port?

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I’ve been debating overnight whether to mention this, and Grady may (or may not)_ post some of this over at the www.nostracodeus.com website.  But the term BF has been showing up in our various scans of the web and it’s not clear whether there has been an outbreak of new “boy friend” or whether this is some kind of obscure mention of “black Friday” of some sort.

To be sure, on the business side of things, I think Robin Landry (who I’ve been meeting with) has a pretty good handle on how all of this may piece together and we’ll get into that in tomorrow’s Peoplenomics report for subscribers.

But for now, the whole “bf” is somewhat perplexing.

We are already watching a couple of things, like the bit astro conjunction next week with long-term astroecon experts like Arch Crawford are eyeing with some suspicion.  And then there’s the whole blow-up over Obamacare. 

But the one that really concerns me, because it seems to have been foreshadowed by the data work of others, is the possibility that the Israelis are about to make a huge mistake and go pop Iran by themselves.

The key data point to watch, suggests our resident war-gamer, is that Iran may only be one month from having enough enriched uranium to make a bomb:

Hi George,

Iran is reportedly reaching an important ” window” in their race to craft nuke weapons:  See this USA Today story.

Israel and Saudi Arabia cannot take the news lightly. Israel’s very existence is at stake, and Saudi Arabia, the Sunni Islamic center of the universe, is rapidly distancing itself from an unreliable U.S. administration. Robles is, Israel has nukes, the Saudis do not. And Iran want both nuke weapons and religious control of Islam in order to shepherd in the prophesied Hidden Mahdi.

Watch for an unlikely Middle Eastern alliance forming against Iran, giving credence to the old Arab saying: “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Why else would the Saudis drop nuke powerhouse America and stand seemingly defenseless against the growing power in Iran?

Happy Friday!

Curiously, we need to keep an eye on what the Saudis are doing, too, since the US relations with the Saudis have seriously chilled in recent months and there’s not much to drive a thaw in right.

Plus, if you were in a position to decide when to go to war (Israel against Iran) wouldn’t it make sense to drive down the price of oil in advance, knowing that there might be a real pop to the upside in the event of a strike?  So with that, we note the resuming decline in oil prices and wonder if we’ll see any outbreak of unusual call option buying in coming days…

For now, the markets are looking to open sideways, but next week could see a violent breakout – either to the upside, in which case an S&P of 2,200 comes into view, or we take out recent support and plunge.  You’ll want to plan on extra Maalox, perhaps.

Durable Goods

Just out…

New Orders
New orders for manufactured durable goods in
September increased $8.2 billion or 3.7 percent to
$233.4 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced
today.

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I am pleased to report, first off, that Elaine is almost back to her normal self.  So, too, is the computer which had lost its power supply…so most things are back to whatever it is that passes for normal, anymore.

Thanks to the readers who sent in explanations of WHY everything seemed to be hitting the fan, all at once.  Reader Pat for one:

DON’T travel (or buy anything) during Mercury Retrograde….I keep tellin’ ya.  Oh well, hope the rest of your trip is good.

Well, funny you’d bring THAT up.  And what morning would be complete without a note from Bruce:

Typical mercury in retrograde for us. We clear the calendar of any new projects while mercury is in retrograde. Good time to finish stuff up tho.

Also should have asked at the desk for a power supply. Most hotels have a box full left behind by travelers. If there is a large hotel close, ask there too.

Well, sadly, my portable is a Samsung and they use an odd-ball power connector size, so I picked up a Rocketfish- Universal AC Laptop Power Adapter 8 Tips MOST COMPUTERS RF-AC9023 which worked fine, except for the $65 hole in the wallet. Woin’t leave home without it, now.

When we arrived up here, the weather was perfect and even today, Branson is looking at beautiful, clear skies after getting a pretty solid freeze last night.  But we’ll probably take off early this morning and head south, since the weather is about to change on us.

Coming down into Branson, if you look closely, you can see just to the right of the vertical card compass there is a freeway visible, and then a hill, and then you can land on the airport (those stripes for the threshold area).  Normally I’d have been more properly lined up, but there was a bit of wind sheer – a northwesterly above, and nothing down low, so a gentle roll left to line up “on the numbers.”

That gray patch is really a 20-40 foot hill so you really, really, really don’t want to land short. 

So, more’n likely (barring a weather forecast change) we’ll be southbound this morning with a slight tailwind at the get-go with clear skies instead of 20 knots on the nose with rainy and showery condition (maybe with a bonus thunderstorm cell)  and marginal IFR later on this weekend. 

But that’s how life is sometimes:  You shave the odds in your favor – and besides, it gives us a chance to do it again in the future.

Not Harry Reid

So as we were walking into the local computer emporium in pursuit of the aforementioned power supply, I chanced to notice that the fellow at the front door bore something of a resemblance to Harry Reid.

I mentioned this fact to him…and he didn’t seem any much please by the remark.  I told him it wasn’t meet in a mean-spirited way, or anything.  Robin Landry, who I’ve been meeting with on market outlooks (more for Peoplenomics readers tomorrow on that) noticed the distinctive chill, too.  “George, I don’t thing he particularly liked that…”

I was running on fumes from lack of sleep and mentioned it again on the way out. 

Robin Landry gently  suggested I work on my people-skills a bit and then launched into a reminder about the dangers of flying cash registers. But I assured him no offense was intended. Which got me around to seeing people don’t hear intensions, too well.

I made a note to apologize next time I buy computer parts in Branson.

—

The people up here in Branson are just as helpful and friendly as ever.  The server at dinner last night was an art major at the College of the Ozarks, which is a pretty good school to consider, since the school places a big emphasis on mixing the “doing” with the “learning.”  Since so many students work, a lot of them graduate with zero – none – of that awful finance aid albatross around their necks.

Why more schools don’t do this is beyond me, but maybe it’s because college students used to be the ones doing so many of those “jobs Americans don’t want to do”.”  And, since so many are NOT working, it drives the immigration agenda, perhaps, but we don’t have any hard data to confirm that.

It just looks that way, sometimes.

—

And, in keeping with its fine tradition of making fun of me, my I-Ching Inbox decided with Elaine being down for the count for a day due to iffy lump crab, to send a constant stream of specials on seafood delivered overnight.

Touching, how Universe rubs our faces in stuff, now and then…payback for my Harry remark, I’m sure.

The Weekend Reader

With the onset of Fall weather in a few places, it’s time to consider putting something into your head besides the next episode of Elementary, which is a lot of fun, if you’re not hooked on enough of the boob tube already.

Reader Zero has a suggestion:

I got this book: E-Squared: Nine Do-It-Yourself Energy Experiments That Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality (Hay House Insights) by Grout, Pam (1/28/2013)  (About $11-bucks, Amazon – G)

someone like me…

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If this morning’s column turns out to be a bit shorter than usual – and missing a dandy feature like an incredible Wujo story which I had planned for this morning (damn!) it’s all because we had a power outage out here at the end of the string last night which took out the power supply in the main server.  I can restore from backups, or just write this morning’s column, so I picked the latter.  You’ll have to come back Thursday for the good stuff.

Normally, when something like this happens, it’s no more than a half-hour worth of nuisance because that’s about how long it takes to tear open the box, toss in the power supply, and reboot.  However, I didn’t have a spare power supply sitting on the shelf and…after three years of non-stop work, this one finally gave out.

Keen lesson in here:  Usually I have a space 600-650 watt supply on hand…but the last one hadn’t hit the “time to buy one of those” order (they’re not free).  So instead of our usual operating post, this morning’s column is coming from the Win 8.1 laptop and it seems to be working just fine, although we won’t known until this is actually published.

Message:  If you’re a serious computer user, a spare power supply is something (besides some plugin  hard drives) to keep on hand.

I know it may sound absurd to have a laptop in a metal garbage can (which is where this one lives) but in the event of something really bad – like an EMP attack on the US – odds are fair that a lot of cars will keep working.  But it will be the “hidden electronics” – the stuff which really glues modern life together (routers, power supplies and such) — that you may need some stock of.

Of course, the logical question is WHY would you want a computer at the End of the World?  Well, lots of people who prep have all kinds of stuff on hard drives which they really need to have printed out.  Without the hard copy, you’re “electron dependent” and that means when the power goes out, you could be cut off from your library.

Which then gets us to the matter of printers.  I just ordered a Brother HL-2270DW Compact Laser Printer with Wireless Networking and Duplex for about a hundred bucks.  Since I have hundreds of manuals on everything under the Sun, I thought it would be useful to print everything off and have backups on paper.

The wireless is a no-brainer.  But the duplex printing is really key.  Duplex (meaning prints both sides) cuts the paper use in half, which seems like it ought to pay for itself in short order.  Plus, the current Brother printer I have has been blazingly fast and still seems to work OK…it’s just I don’t want to manually flip pages.    Elaine has an older ink jet which takes 31-hours per page in draft mode.  She wins a new printer.

Weighing on the Weather

Our consulting war gamer did a fine analysis of correlations between the lack of hurricanes this year and cold winters.  But not much, if anything to be gleaned there.  1904 and 1913 (*if memory serves) were the only ones.  The original email is on the dead server which I need to operate on this morning.

And then came a dispatch from our Jakarta Bureau Chief

Hiya chief!

Weighing in on the weather:

For many years, I have (had) noted that everytime a TS or hurricane came through Houston, the following winter featured snow.  In ’72, we got back-to-back storms in July or August, as I recall.  The following January/February,we had feet of snow lasting a couple of weeks.  If you know Houston, you know that’s about as rare as down on frogs.  But the pattern holds up.  Snow after Katrina/Rita, snow after Carla, snow after Alicia, etc.

As for the feller writing in about the trees not turning, it’s called Indian Summer, though the term is no longer permissible and so most folks have forgetting about it.  Comes around every five years or so.  Never much of a worry down in Houston, where everything stays green until mid-December, when the leaves all die at once and fall off in clumps.  But always heard my northern cousins (Dallas area) talking about it.

For what it’s worth.  Could be worse.  Could be hot and humid all year ’round.  Enjoy what’cha got!

The Indonesian Bureau Managing Editor,

Bernard Grover

Hmmm…a thought provoking point there on Indian summers, which means I shall henceforth be referring to them as Zombie Summers…zombies being the modern catch-all for what we no longer dare speak which is nuts, but that’s ‘Merrica for you…

Oh and here’s an email on that point from reader Joe K…

George,

I’m an urbansurvival freebie blog reader for a couple of years now, reading from central Argentina.  This is my first email to you, in response to Saturday’s post.  Very intriguing to see those thought processes develop in you.

Good call on the evolution of “the Others,” now being represented by zombies.  But I still find your dismissing of this evolution as being about PoliticalCorrectness to be incomplete: the zombie Others represent our fear of being compromised into a life of stupidity and drudgery, and of those who have already succumbed. 
Wheres the noble savages were slaughtered in support of modernity – out with the old and in the with new –  killing zombies questions modernity and what it produces.

Thanks for your work!

Joseph

Yet another sage observation.  I know there’s a billion dollar business in there somewhere.  I have to come up with a way to monetize zombies.

Look,  if the humane societies can raise millions in support of dogs that bite people and promote the cult of picking up warm, steamy lumps of poop with plastic bags in foul weather, people will buy damn near anything.  Yet, we let these cult members vote! Is this a great country or what? 

I wonder if Adopt a Zombie has potential?

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