What Irked You Today?

[imarriedawitch]

13 minutes ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

That's fine, but it doesn't work for me.

I'm actively trying to build muscle and lose lard, and I need to see daily results.

Muscle weighs more than fat, so my weight can stay about the same during the process, but I'm not as responsible about working out OR eating right as I want to be, and daily weighing keeps me honest.

I need an accurate scale that shows me if I've gained or lost even half a pound...

When I'm on my own I pick up one of the pre-made family size salads with my groceries. That provides me 3 or 4 dinners where half my dinner plate will be salad, then all I have to concern myself with is preparing one thing to go with it. 

[Ace-Garageguy]

37 minutes ago, imarriedawitch said:

When I'm on my own I pick up one of the pre-made family size salads with my groceries. That provides me 3 or 4 dinners where half my dinner plate will be salad, then all I have to concern myself with is preparing one thing to go with it. 

I'm sure that's great for you, but it's not my approach.

[espo]

3 hours ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

That's fine, but it doesn't work for me.

I'm actively trying to build muscle and lose lard, and I need to see daily results.

Muscle weighs more than fat, so my weight can stay about the same during the process, but I'm not as responsible about working out OR eating right as I want to be, and daily weighing keeps me honest.

I need an accurate scale that shows me if I've gained or lost even half a pound...

Having fought this battle recently myself and have lost 40 + pounds this last year going from 3X to a very comfortable fitting 2X. Diet has played a very large part since I'm a cookie and sweets hound. I tend to eat more breads than I should but do enjoy dipping bread in Olive Oil with fresh baked Garlic added. Learned to stop with the Ice Cream every night and have gone to just two meals a day with better foods and salads. In the last year we have been going to a freebie exercise class for Seniors at the local Library. Also joined a Snap Fitness Gym in our area. They have discounts for what is known as Silver Slippers for those of us of an advanced age. Great array of equipment and free weights to play with. 30 minutes on a life cycle bike will get your heart started in the morning and will also take the pounds off nicely. Can't tell you how much better I feal now, especially when I look at my pictures from last year's birthday to now.  

[Mark]

I have dropped about twenty pounds since March (233 to about 210) mainly by switching out one meal a day for either a diet drink or protein bar, six days a week.

For a while, I was slow on exercise as I'd messed up one shoulder trying to break up a couple of cast iron boiler pieces that were too bulky/heavy to get out of the basement. 

Another guy at work did pretty much the same thing, he was diagnosed with a torn ligament.  I probably had the same issue, but it's okay now.

I had to rent a vehicle last week, as my car was in the collision shop getting a ding taken out of it.  I took the opportunity to get a pickup, finally got rid of that cast iron (920 pounds of it, the biggest piece must have been around 400 to start with).  Next day, a tree that had been sitting in the yard (already cut up) went away.  

With the shoulder no longer being a thing, the bicycle came out a few weeks ago.  Did 20 miles yesterday at an average of 11 miles per hour, if I can manage that a couple of times a week then the weight loss should really kick into gear.

[Ace-Garageguy]

1 hour ago, Mark said:

I have dropped about twenty pounds since March (233 to about 210) mainly by switching out one meal a day for either a diet drink or protein bar, six days a week.

For a while, I was slow on exercise as I'd messed up one shoulder trying to break up a couple of cast iron boiler pieces that were too bulky/heavy to get out of the basement...

I gained 10 to 12 sitting on my backside for six weeks after I broke my ribs, and it came back off pretty quick.

But lately I've developed a bad habit of losing a few pounds and then getting a bag of chips and some dip, or a package of cookies and a quart of milk, or a pint of ice cream, or a pizza...and it all comes back real quick.

                                                   

I didn't really believe the popular refrain that metabolism slows with ageing, but it sure seems that I used to burn calories a whole lot faster with no more effort than I'm putting out now.

Used to be I could eat "right" all week and then chow down on weekends, and the weight would still come off...but not any more.

I need to see a steady decline, even if it's only a pound a week, to stay motivated to keep with the program.

So I need scales that don't read + or - 10 pounds.

[Tim W. SoCal]

8 hours ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

my old spring-job bathroom scale was becoming erratic, never giving the same weight twice, even 30 seconds apart.

So I bought a brandy-new whooptee Chinee ( what else?) digital-readout scale.

It's even worse.

Made sure the floor was entirely level and solid where I put it, and that it wasn't rocking even the slightest bit.

Even tried it in different parts of the house.

As much as ten pounds difference in displayed weight, 30 seconds apart.

I have one of those whooptee Chinee scales... If you step onto it with your right foot, bending your left knee at a 90 degree angle while holding your left foot straight behind you with your toes pointed at the floor and stick your left index finger up your right nostril while you hold your breath, the weight results are consistent.

[stitchdup]

9 hours ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

I'm getting more serious about managing my weight, and my old spring-job bathroom scale was becoming erratic, never giving the same weight twice, even 30 seconds apart.

So I bought a brandy-new whooptee Chinee ( what else?) digital-readout scale.

It's even worse.

Made sure the floor was entirely level and solid where I put it, and that it wasn't rocking even the slightest bit.

Even tried it in different parts of the house.

As much as ten pounds difference in displayed weight, 30 seconds apart.

On the way out the door to return it.

Man, I am SO sick of garbage consumer products.

EDIT: No wonder there are so many people out there saying "I've tried everything and I can't lose weight". 

Yeah, well, if your scale isn't accurate...

are you sure its not an over active thyroid? lol

[Tim W. SoCal]

  Where I work, we don't have enough Techs to cover the maintenance and repairs of our fleet of vehicles, so the Powers That Be hired an outside contractor with several "highly trained mechanics" to help take up the slack. The vehicles they mainly work on are based upon a 1987 Chevy S10 with a 2.5 liter, throttle body injected engine. On this particular job, the trouble was the engine cranking with no start. The contractors spent two days replacing the D.I.S. module and coils (twice), the spark plugs and plug wires, the crank position sensor (twice), the fuel pump relay (twice), the in-tank electric fuel pump (twice), the fuel filter, the fuel injector (twice), the throttle body injection unit (a $600.00 remanufactured part), and the ignition switch. When these "repairs" didn't cure the no start issue, they called for the vehicle to be transported to our repair shop. The cause of the problem ended up being a broken timing chain. This is normally a basic and straightforward diagnosis with one telling symptom being the engine cranking abnormally fast due to no compression. This wouldn't be so bad if this poor quality of work, lack of skill and misspent money wasn't so common with this contractor. Anyway, due to the damage and mileage on this engine, a remanufactured replacement engine is being installed.

Edited 23 hours ago by Tim W. SoCal

[johnyrotten]

27 minutes ago, Tim W. SoCal said:

The contractors spent two days replacing the D.I.S. module and coils (twice), the spark plugs and plug wires, the crank position sensor (twice), the fuel pump relay (twice), the in-tank electric fuel pump (twice), the fuel filter, the fuel injector (twice), the throttle body injection unit (a $600.00 remanufactured part), and the ignition switch

Full parts cannon Salvo. 

[Ace-Garageguy]

10 minutes ago, johnyrotten said:

Full parts cannon Salvo. 

Typical clueless don't-have-any-idea-how-an-IC-engine-works "technicians" today...

[johnyrotten]

15 minutes ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

Typical clueless don't-have-any-idea-how-an-IC-engine-works "technicians" today...

The smoking gun that was mentioned was the rapid cranking.  Their internet was probably not available, youtube university was closed.

[Tim W. SoCal]

49 minutes ago, johnyrotten said:

youtube university was closed.

 

[Ace-Garageguy]

53 minutes ago, johnyrotten said:

The smoking gun that was mentioned was the rapid cranking...

Yeah, no compression, she just goes ring-ring-ring-ring-ring really fast. Unmistakably obvious to an actual mechanic...

Edited 21 hours ago by Ace-Garageguy

[stavanzer]

I want one! Who cares If I have not worked on a car since 2002!

It will look good on my toolbox.

Edited 21 hours ago by stavanzer

[Mark]

One of my older brothers (now deceased) used to love those parts-cannon guys.  He used to look for those cars where the owner threw a bunch of new parts at it and then gave up...he'd buy it for cheap to get it out of the driveway, figure out what was actually wrong, then fix that and end up with a car with a bunch of new parts on it.

One of the last ones was a mid-Nineties front-wheel-drive Dodge he found on eBay in Pennsylvania.  Shade tree mechanic up the street put a new long block in it, it was overheating after that.  Took several hours to get it home (buddy with a ramp truck backed out at the last minute).  Takes it apart to look at the water pump, compares the new car to the one being replaced, everything looks the same.  Takes the water pumps off, they are different.  

Turns out the long block was sold for multiple applications, but included a minivan water pump that turned in the opposite direction and used a different drive belt routing.  Gets the correct water pump, puts it on, ran fine that day and a few years after that, until the next parts-cannon car came along.

[Rodent]

6 hours ago, Tim W. SoCal said:

a remanufactured replacement engine is being installed

A friend's son works on Post Office vehicles and mentioned that the supply of core engines has dried up so the P.O.'s supplier of remans can no longer supply them.

[Tim W. SoCal]

2 hours ago, Rodent said:

A friend's son works on Post Office vehicles and mentioned that the supply of core engines has dried up so the P.O.'s supplier of remans can no longer supply them.

We're still getting engines and transmissions from Jasper, but they ARE getting fewer and farther in between...

[Tim W. SoCal]

7 hours ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

Yeah, no compression, she just goes ring-ring-ring-ring-ring really fast. Unmistakably obvious to an actual mechanic...

Not only that, but if they'd done something as simple as removing the oil filler cap on the front / top of the valve cover and peered into the opening while cranking the engine, they MAY have noticed that the rocker arms weren't going rockety-rock...

[Tim W. SoCal]

7 hours ago, stavanzer said:

I want one! Who cares If I have not worked on a car since 2002!

It will look good on my toolbox.

I don't have this patch or know where to get one. A friend e-mailed me this picture after I had ranted about ANOTHER YouToob video by a "self trained" dirt floor shade tree "mechanic" that actually knew nothing of what he was attempting to "fix".

[stitchdup]

7 minutes ago, Tim W. SoCal said:

I don't have this patch or know where to get one. A friend e-mailed me this picture after I had ranted about ANOTHER YouToob video by a "self trained" dirt floor shade tree "mechanic" that actually knew nothing of what he was attempting to "fix".

they are on etsy, amazon and ebay

[johnyrotten]

8 hours ago, Mark said:

One of my older brothers (now deceased) used to love those parts-cannon guys.  He used to look for those cars where the owner threw a bunch of new parts at it and then gave up...he'd buy it for cheap

I used to hunt the auctions a few years ago, bought my Mother a Nissan that ran roughly at the lot,turned out to be a disconnected injector. Car had a brand new timing belt, and all new tune-up parts. Whoever did the belt didn't check their work, and we reaped the rewards. 

[Ace-Garageguy]

Mightily irked: went into the shop at 08:00 to work on the DeLorean, finish-machine 4 parts for the Chevelle on the lathe, and do the front brakes on my Blazer.

Key turned in the lock, but just won't open the door.  

Oh well. Gang aft agley.

Guess I'll go for a hike instead. 

[Tim W. SoCal]

6 hours ago, johnyrotten said:

I used to hunt the auctions a few years ago, bought my Mother a Nissan that ran roughly at the lot,turned out to be a disconnected injector. Car had a brand new timing belt, and all new tune-up parts

   A shop that I worked at years ago had a customer who was a used car dealer and bought cars at auction. When he was choosing prospective purchases in the auction lot, he would routinely do something like pulling a plug wire from the sparkplug and insert a straightened paper clip between the sprarkplug clip and the inside of the boot, then reattach the plug wire, thus grounding the plug wire and causing a misfire. Sometimes he'd disconnect a manifold vacuum hose or unplug a sensor. He said this scared his competition from bidding on vehicles he wanted and kept the bidding and prices down.

[johnyrotten]

1 hour ago, Tim W. SoCal said:

   A shop that I worked at years ago had a customer who was a used car dealer and bought cars at auction. When he was choosing prospective purchases in the auction lot, he would routinely do something like pulling a plug wire from the sparkplug and insert a straightened paper clip between the sprarkplug clip and the inside of the boot, then reattach the plug wire, thus grounding the plug wire and causing a misfire. Sometimes he'd disconnect a manifold vacuum hose or unplug a sensor. He said this scared his competition from bidding on vehicles he wanted and kept the bidding and prices down.

I've seen the bidding wars that comes from that handy work. My friend had a small used car dealership. He would pick up something with a bad engine/transmission or police impound and a parts car to go with. The police impound cars were interesting at times. We picked up a 2017 jeep grand cherokee, perfect except for the interior, every seat and panel was cut and pulled apart.  They even sliced the seat belts.

[stitchdup]

51 minutes ago, johnyrotten said:

I've seen the bidding wars that comes from that handy work. My friend had a small used car dealership. He would pick up something with a bad engine/transmission or police impound and a parts car to go with. The police impound cars were interesting at times. We picked up a 2017 jeep grand cherokee, perfect except for the interior, every seat and panel was cut and pulled apart.  They even sliced the seat belts.

i bet that jeep crossed the border more than once