Pete J.

+1

Tom, you units aren't that old. I was working at sears when the electic eyes came in and that was less than 10 years ago. If you need parts Sears probably carries them. Sears has parts on the Sears.com web site under the Parts Direct tab. FYI the Craftsman brand door openers are mostly Chamberlin units. They also make Liftmaster units.

Harry, one point. These things have about a 10 to 15 year life span. How old is it and are you wasting time fixing something that hasn't got that much useful life left in it? Yea, I know. We all like the challenge of fixing stuff, but is it really worth the effort? If it is ten or more years old, go get a new one.

I have to go along with bill on this point. The sense of fair play has gone in the crapper. There are still parents who teach this but by and large we have let that value slip. I saw what mikemodeler saw, but I think my perspective may have been a little different. The two biggest returned items were tape measures and the California framer hammer. But what I saw, was a loss leader for Sears. Yes, they were returned a bunch, but they were returned by guys who worked with them for a living. I have actually seen a hammer worn out from use! Does that guy deserve a new hammer. Yea, but not for the reason you may be thinking. This guy uses tools for a living and when he exchanged the hammer there was a high probability that he was going to buy a bunch more tools. It kept him coming back to the store. When Sears stopped selling both of these items the tradesman quite coming into the store. The place use to be very busy. We hired people who had experience in working with tools to talk to tool guys and gals. They could give advise based on experience. When you go in a Sears now, you get an 18 year old who can hardly run a cash register much less advise someone on what tool they need. As far as I am concerned Sears was penny wise and pound foolish. They saved on returns at the expense of driving off their most profitable customer. Sad state.

Oh, thanks! I had forgotten about the diesel Chevette. Now you go and bring it up again. Yea, you had to drive a stake to see if it was moving. You remember the Cosworth Vega? Now there was a car. All tarted up in Black with gold pin striping, trying to look like a Lotus. Open the hood and you had polished stainless exhaust and Cosworth heads. They really worked on the suspension and had an good little car, but it really wasn't a production car. I think they build less that 4000. It was expensive. It could run with the best of them but it was still a 70's Vega.

Charlie, I have to agree with you for the most part. The K car was credited with saving Chrysler, but it wasn't because they were great cars. It was the change in engineering and manufacturing philosophy that they represent. They were relatively high profit margin cars for the time and that is what saved the company. They learned how to build cars in a more modern sense. The cars were troublesome and turned into rust buckets in a hurry. I lived in Michigan in the 70's and those car(as would most American cars) rusted out in 3 to 4 years because of the prodigious amounts of salt they used on the roads. I particularly remember one personal incident with a K car. I rented one and was on my way back to Denver, when a Colorado thunderstorm came through. I drove through a large puddle in the road and the car died. Now this would not have been memorable but within a few minutes there were three other K cars, bumper to bumper stopped by the same puddle. After a few minutes of drying out, we were soon on our way again. I swore at that point to never buy a Chrysler. There were a lot of inexpensive cars around in the 70's and 80's but it seems like in the long term only the Japanese cars provided good value for the time. Their quality control was so far ahead of the American cars at the time.

Steve, you are dead on. I was a tool and appliance department manager for 15 years. Denanher made the sockets and wrenches. Adjustable wrenches were Crescent. Emerson Electric(AKA Skil) made most of the hand power, bench power and floor tools until they changed to Ryobi in the mid 2000's. Stanley made the Craftsman tape measures and so on. I don't understand it but people are shocked too learn that Sears makes nothing. They never have. They are just the outlet for contracted goods. They were one of the first companies to use their purchasing power to buy large quantities and then rebrand and resell it for less that the name brand of the same product. For those who are interested, here is a list of source codes for all their products. http://home.cogeco.ca/~gbishop/Public/SearsSourceCodes.htm This code is the first three numbers on the model number on the ID plate. If you have the time it is fun to go through the list in your shop and see who's tool you actually have.

I learned that I don't equate a professionals time to how much they charge you. I am paying them for their skill and expertise. If it takes them 5 minutes or 5 days doesn't matter. I learned this when I was working with plumbers and other craftsman. I use to hear people complain all the time, "It only took him 30 minutes and he charged me $100." My response was "How long would it have taken you to fix it?" And most people would respond with either " I couldn't do it." or "Most of the afternoon." Well, then you paid him for his skill and not his time didn't you? I am really that way with medical people. I want the best doc I can have. What they charge me is really not important, but I also am not willing to allow them to waste my time either. My time is as valuable to me as theirs is to them. I don't mined a 5 or 10 minute wait. Heck, I could have that in the grocery store. If it is going to be longer than that, I understand. Things go wrong and dealing with people is not an exact science, but if it is going to be a hour, call me and let me know. Adjust the schedule and let me know when they will see me and I will be there then. That is just mutual respect for each others time.

More that it being a World market, it is that I am obsessed with good quality tools. I don't have a bottomless pit of money, but the advantage to Sears was that I could count on their tools passing the muster. They were forged wrenches with machined jaws, so I could count of a 1/2" wrench being a 1/2" and not some wonky dimension. The thing was forged so if I had to lay on it with a cheater bar the bolt would brake before the wrench bent, and they didn't break the budget. Snapon same way except they charge a lot more. I think what drives this is that there are fewer and fewer shade tree mechanics willing to spend the money. Most of what is sold at Lowes, Home Depot and Sears is to the guy who needs a wrench every 8 to 10 months and a cheap tool is fine. Tool guys are kind of dinosaurs in the general population and that is really a shame. The variety of good tools out there is just not there without mail order/internet and then you aren't sure what you are going to get until it shows up in your mail box. Really too bad.

Well you wouldn't want to waste the doctors time, cause that would just be rude.

A piece of jewelry Mark! I look forward to seeing it on Friday.

Right you are. From the early 70's then, but that doesn't make them any better. They tried everything to make them appealing such as adding racing and other types of graphics. Giving them snazzier names, even giving them to tuning companies such a Shelby and Cosworth(remember the Cosworth Vega) and they were still just cheap little cars that the Toyotas and Datsuns ran circles around. The quality control of the American cars was just pathetic at that time.

I think there are a whole raft of cars from the mid 60's when American manufactures decided they had to do small. The Gremlin, EXP, Chevette, Pinto, Horizon, etc. All were just what they were designed to be cheap little POS's. Can't think of a one that I would want to own.

It's an army thing! Actually the Corp of engineers. When they do flood maps they rate them by the likelihood of flood waters reaching the upper most area of the flood plane at least once in the period. Most people read that as it will only flood this high every 100 years. Not so, they are guaranteeing it will get that high at least one time every 100 years.

Epoxy works well also if you get the slow curing type but I don't have the patients for that. Sitting there holding an odd shaped piece for 10 minutes is just beyond my limit of endurance. Polyzap gives you enough open time to move things around and get it set. Since you are using aluminum, you can clean it up with a little acetone on a Qtip.

I know that they don't sound too bad, but the last time we had wild fires blow through town, the damage they did was phenomenal. This was in 2007. We had similar conditions. Very dry winter, temps in the high 80's and a 30+ dry Santa Anna blowing out of the east(desert). It burned 50 miles into San Diego. The fire plus the wind were a blow torch. When it got into town, it was so hot that there were streams of aluminum flowing down the gutter from the fire melting the rims and other aluminum parts off of cars. After it burned through a block of houses the only thing left was ash, a foundation and chimney if it was brick or concrete. We were lucky that the wind switched to an onshore flow just after it jumped the 15 freeway or it would have burned to the coast and likely take over half of the town with it. When the new shows these fires, you generally see some brush burning up a hill side. That is just what they can film because of the smoke. This is as scary to us as a hurricane is on the east coast.

You had me going there for a minute! Why would the alternator be mounted to the oil pan??? Answer-It's not! Just a prop. Very nice work as usual Mark. Going to be a stunner when done.

Holy gusts Batman! 93 degrees in SoCal today and 20 mph winds gusting to 40 with some remote parts of the county getting 100mph gusts. Tractor trailers flopping over like narcoleptic goats! Suppose to be three days of this stuff and then back to the 60s and 70's. The Santa Anna's are just crazy! I just hope some loony toons doesn't decide it would be fun to light something on fire!

I always liked a response that Bill Cosby attributed to his Grandmother. As a philosophy student in college he was talking to his grandmother about the half full/empty question and her response was priceless. She said, "Well, I suppose it depends on if you are pouring or drinking." That is a unique and true perspective.

I used Zap's Poly Zap for this one. Poly Zap was developed for gluing Lexan R/C bodies. It has more flexibility so it accommodates temperature expansion of dissimilar materials better. It is the sole super glue that I use. It also had very good non-fogging propertied. If you don't use kicker it won't fog.

I don't post photos on the site. That is a pain! I load them into one of the photo sites(most are free) and then with a single click I can copy a link and post it in my message. Far easier. I use Photobucket but there are many that I am sure work just as well. The really good thing is that this doesn't use up MCM's band with, storing photos and they load almost instantly.

Just back from Rubio's - una camarones y dos tacos de pescado- one shrimp and two fish tacos- For desert? What else Tums.

Ummm.......no! Maybe a phish taco but not a fish taco. Here you go! Ok, now all this talk and I have to go get three for lunch! See you later.

You have to come to either SoCal or Baja to get great fish tacos! For those who haven't tried them, put traditional taco out of your mine. It ain't the same thing. It is a little like fish and chips Mexican style. A soft corn taco shell, a crispy fried fish filet, a little shredded cabbage, and a sweet yogurt sauce. Squeeze a lime over the top and add a slice of pickled jalapeno if you like and you have fish served the way the gods intended. Throw in a cerveza and you have a surfers lunch or a lazy afternoon at the beach. There is a lot to be said for these little wonders.

Taco Bell is one of those really weird things in my life. Every once in a while I get a craving. Might have to do with the fact that in college we had a Taco Johns that was the same type of food. It was a very small trailer that was 90% kitchen with a narrow walkway across the end to walk in, get your food and get out. If you only had a couple of bucks it would fill you up. By the way my son showed me one of those facebook cards that said "No, b------, I am not going to Taco Bell for their authentic Mexican cuisine. I am going because I've only got $5 and I like Tacos."