DanD

If you're looking at used stuff and when you find one you're really interested in; take it into an independent garage that has no association with the people selling it. It doesn't matter whether the vehicle has been safety checked & E tested; get it checked, it may give you some bargaining power on the price tag. I'm not saying the seller might be trying to hide stuff; but things like tires can legally pass inspection, as long as two adjacent ware bars are not touching the road. That means new tires for you in a couple of months. Brake pads are another example, they can be worn down to 3mm of friction material remaining and pass inspection; but that means new brakes in 1 - 2 months. I have had some of my customers save a bunch of money on their purchase; just by having me go over the vehicle before any commitments were made. Fix it or drop the price. All I'm saying is that a safety inspection is not a warrantee; all it means is that on the day of inspection the vehicle passed all minimum requirements set out by the MTO. Requirements that were written 30 plus some odd years ago. Dan.

I'm getting old I know; but if I had a bunch of wood to split, this would be my choice. http://www.harborfreight.com/5-ton-log-splitter-61373.html For $280.00 I'd give it a try? Dan.

If your kids are anything like mine were when they were younger; they don't care if it's a cold swim as long as they're having fun. That being said I remember one time up there I had to pull my son and is buddy out of the water. Their lips were blue and they still called me a spoil sport making them come out for a bit. LOL Dan.

I'm with pikeslayer, hire a guide for a half or full day. I thought I could read structure and find fish on my own on the West Arm. I did OK; but after becoming friends with one of the guides at the lodge; I went out with him on his day off. Man did he do some schooling; he took me to places where we just boated past and never gave a second glance. You will learn so much from them that it would take you years to figure out on your own. Nobody likes the idea of spending extra money; but a guide in unfamiliar waters is well worth it. Hit up some of the lodges in the area or possibly some of the people here can give a line on a good guide? Dan.

Yea my dad got tired of replacing axe handles; so he went and found a steel pipe and had it welded to the head of the maul. We couldn't break it but we did manage too put a bend in it. LOL It seemed to come natural for us 3 boys to fine ways of pissing pops off. Dan.

Reminds me of this. http://www.funnypart.com/funny/pet-fish.shtml Dan.

If this fuel was contaminated from the gas station, it would have ran like crap right away; not after a few weeks. If there's still concern that it's the gas station, go and talk with them and ask if they'll do a water dip for you. It's this green paste that they spread on the long dip stick to measure the fuel level in the tank. If this green paste touches water it turns pink. I'd be looking at the on-board tank for things like the fuel gauge sending unit seal that may have failed or filler tube hose connections; that the water is not getting in with normal use of the boat. Can't tell me water doesn't get splashed to the inside of the boat? If I had a customer with this type of concern I'd connect my EVAP smoke machine to the fuel system. Pump it full of smoke; sit back and see if the smoke is coming out of places it shouldn't; like under the floor? The smoke machine only produces around 5Lbs of pressure, so there's no concern of damaging anything. Dan.

If you register the trailer as homemade, you had best be sure there is no VIN plate or a serial # stamped into the frame somewhere. The people at the license office don't care; because you're signing stating the information you have given them is true. It'll be the boys in the MTO uniforms that may get a little pissy; if the registration papers and identifying numbers on the trailer don't match. Dan.

My family has been (or use to be) into tobacco farming for over 50 years. During the 60's,70's and most of the 80's we always had local help; during harvest we'd board the crew and their wages grew to better then $150. per day/kiln. The last couple of decades it became harder to find reliable locals to show up every morning, let alone them wanting to stay in a bunk house. Most of the locals that use to work harvest were either high school or university students; the kids today are not willing to get dirty working on a farm; regardless of the wage. My brother had too bringing in Jamaicans or Mexicans for harvest; not because they were cheaper employees but because they were hungry for work and for them to get a contract with a Canadian farmer, was like winning the lottery for them. Here at my shop I wanted to hire a helper for the months of July and August; just a pair of hands to help out while we were rotating though our summer holidays. I was offering $15.00 an hour; I called some of the Coop kids that have come through here via their school. They weren't interested even thou the hours here, would apply towards an apprenticeship; when/if they found a full time position? Their reasons, wanted the summer off or got a job telemarketing; where they could sit on their ass for the summer. I did have one of the kid's uncle show up and ask for the job; but after shaking his hand I had to say no thank you to him. He smelt like the catch drain at the Labatt's brewery and it was only 10:30 in the morning? Point being people who have a good work ethic are working and their employer is making sure to keep them. The sponges that don't are doing what you said Cliff; sleeping in. Dan.

For me I think Patch Adams was one of his best roles. Dan.

The last I heard was to stay away from Saturn CVT. Again hearsay from my transmission rebulder; but he says you cannot buy individual parts for these transmissions. If it fails you pull it out and replace the whole unit. The problem now is that with Saturn being dissolved, so are the unique to Saturn parts; which are no longer being produced. Once the last transmission comes off the shelf that it there aint no more. Dan.

The cooler works fine; but its no air conditioner; it just made the ride up there comfortable enough that we could run with the windows up. Better then nothing I guess? Dan

Just got back from a week on the Montreal River; Elk Lake to be exact. Even the drive up and back was fun this year, as I took my 1950 Chevy on her first real road trip; since changing the drive train. I knew it was going to be a warm drive up; because there’s no AC in the Chev (yet); so I made up a swamp cooler; that kept us comfortable. All it is is a styrofoam cooler with a 12volt fan and a 90degree PCV elbow. Fill the cooler with block ice and plug it in to the cig lighter. Nice cool air that lasted for the 7 plus hour drive. By the way a cig lighter and ashtray were standard equipment back then on Chevys; signal lights and the heater/defroster were options. LOL I was planning on using the cooler to cool the bed room off for sleeping; but with the cooled days we had I didn’t need it. When we got too Elk Cabins we were greeted by Linda & Herman the new owners of the camp and they showed us our cottage and the boats for the week. I didn't realize the camp had changed hands from last year and it was a good change. They are great hosts, always easily found and ready to help with anything you needed; but they were never in your face, making you feel like you’re being watched. The camp is well organized, cabin more then large enough of the six of us; well equipped with a bonus of sat TV; sorry I like my movies. LOL The boats were decent, we had a 12’ Lund with a 9hp, 14’ Lund with a 15hp and a 16’ Legend side console with 50hp. The 14 & 16 had fish finders and I had my portable for the 12’. We switched boats around among us, depending on where we were going to fish that day. Never had to worry about fuel, Herman kept them topped up. The fishing itself was pretty good, even with the few days of heavy wind/rain and cold temps the water was always safe to go out on and the fish didn't seem to care. The average pike were around 16-24”, with lots of hammer handles to keep you interested. The largest of the week was 34” My son Andy with the pike of the week. A lot of the walleye were in slot; but we did manage to get a good feed for our fish fry, without having to toss too many back; there’s a good mix. The largest for the week was a 23” That's me with the weeks walleye. We really didn't target bass or perch but they were there and I think if we did go after them we would have had a lot more then the couple of dozen we did get in the boats. Mountain Lake which is down river of Elk is where most of the pike and walleye were holding. About a mile down the river’s outlet of Mountain Lake heading toward mountain cutes, had what looked like some great spots for walleye. 12-15’deep shelves, that had saddles all around dropping to 20-25’ and with waters as deep as 50+ in the center of the river. Didn’t get a chance to try them; as we were trying to beat the lightening storm that was coming in when we found them and it was our last turn in the “big” boat; they’ll be there for next year. That whole section of river and the two lakes, (I believe) are good for numbers; but I don’t think you’ll be taking any trophies home with you. Then again a couple of the guys got spooled and or bit off by something they felt was pretty big? All in all a good week, with family and a drive to camp that's actually has decent fishing in their waters. Dan

It be on hell of a tool if used to its fullest. No more Bull that "I was trying to stop, I wasn't speeding, whatever the excuse. Well lets see the air bag deployed in frame 35, the throttle was still at 2.5 volts (Approx 1/4 open) and there's no sign of brakes being applied until frame 38; after the vehicle came to a complete stop. Now what do you have to say? I like those bracelets, just don't put them on so tight this time. LOL Dan.

You'd think that the police would be using crash data more often along with phone records, to see if the driver is lying or not. The crash data that's stored in the vehicle's computer(s) would give you guys a mlli-second by mili second snap shots of what happened before, during and after. Things like throttle position, brakes applied or not, transmission gear, engine load ect. A whole lot of info that there's no way they could lye and not get caught in it. Or is the warrant that hard to get? I know we in the trade supposedly don't have access to this data; wish we could. It would stop people saying, my little Johnny said that the engine just started to make this noise for no reason. Plug in and be able to ask little Johnny why the speed was 140, engine rpm was bouncing off of 7 grand; but the brakes were applied. Honest dad I don't even know what a burn out is. LOL Dan.

The max pressure is just that do not go over it. The pressure your trailer tires wants is dependent on the weight they are carrying. You now know that the 30 something you have been running them at is too soft. Bump them up to 40 or 45 and then after a few road trips, go and read the tire tread. If the center of the tread is showing noticeable ware then there's to much pressure. If there's no visible difference then you've found the pressure they like and yes you may need to go up to the max pressure. If the outside tread still show excessive ware then you're into buying a different load range tire that can handle the weight. Dan.

Ask yourself whether this rod & reel is worth the friendship? If so, suck it up and forget about it; just watch your stuff around the sticky fingers from now on. Dan.

Like some of the other's have said you should be able to get 1000 -1500.00 out of it. About 2 years ago I picked up a 99 Silverado 2 wheel drive that was in a wreck and wrote off for 800.00. I wanted the fuel injected engine and computer controls for my 1950 Chevy Styleline 2 door sedan. The auto wreckers were asking 1500.00 - 2000.00 for motor, trans and the electronics to make it run. There's a lot of people out there now doing these engine conversions on their classic rides; I've done three now. To bad it wasn't a 2 wheel drive or I'd be interested in it for one of my customer's project car. Point being someone may want the truck for its parts to rebuild another vehicle? Dan.

I understand your concern about blowing air down the vent tube and the dirt. Why not try blowing air into the fill tube; you'll likely get some gas out the tube but it may also blow the restriction out if there's one? Dan

My 40 Honda had less then 30 hours on it and it began to stall out when the ambient temp was above 25C. Pull the hood off let it cool for a few minutes and it would restart & run perfect; ended up leaving the hood off for the rest of that day. Being that I had a shop manual for the the motor and a test chart for the Electronic Control Unit (ECU); I thought I'd try and trouble shoot this myself before taking it in for a warrantee claim. The problem was to get the electronics hot enough to act up I had to leave everything together and the ambient temp had to be in the high 20's. After it started stalling and by the time I got the hood off and the ECU unpluged everything tested good; it had time to cool. I ended up taking the motor to Bridge's Marine in Port Dover. They could not even get the thing to stall out for them; not until I told them to put the hood on set the motor in an outside tank that was in the sun. That's when they came to the same results as what I found. They called Honda Tech support told them their findings and the tech authorized a new ECU to be installed. It solved the problem but we still don't know what portion of this $500.00 ECU was failing; I'm just glad it was covered under warrantee. My point being your repair facility will likely have to reproduce the run time, temperature and load on the motor; which can be a very difficult thing to do. Here in the automotive trade the the car's computers have the ability to store what is called a freeze frame. This freeze frame shows us all the sensor readings at the time of the fault. With that info we can go out and duplicate the reading and hopefully cause the failure with the test equipment connected. Not sure if today's outboard's ECU have those capabilities? Dan

Like everyone else has already said WOW!!!! The best part of your reports is that there's no Bull propaganda written by an advertising company or the outfitter themselves. It's the real deal we're hearing; your the reason I finally pulled the trigger and went up to Eddie North's place. Thanks Mike. Dan.

Isn't that the truth. It only took me about 5 minutes to start my buddies boat, when he forgot the keys to his bow rider. Unplug the ignition switch connector from under the dash. Jumper-ed the battery feed to the ignition system with a 6" steel leader (Know your tackle box LOL) and then a pair of needle nose pliers to momentarily jumper the terminals of the ignition switch connector to crank the engine. I'm not as fast as the movies; but Gone In 300 Seconds. LOL Dan.

Kind of a different thing here; but a cop after the fact and no witnesses charged my son with careless, solely due to the car Andy drives and the cops dislike of it. What happened was a mechanical failure that caused the rear wheels to lock up when he was at highway speed. When the wheels locked it caused the car to spin out and it went into the ditch. When the cop got there (my son called them) he looks at the skid marks had a look under the hood and promptly wrote the ticket; not wanting to hear my son's account of what happened. The car is a 1987 Mazda RX7 where we removed the rotary engine and installed a 2002 5.7 LS1 Corvette engine and trans. Once the cop saw that it was game over for my son. Andy's not a gear head that has racing on the brain; not on the streets anyway. He's 26 years old and an automotive engineer and he was on his way to Detroit for a meeting with a couple of GM engineers, when this happened. He went to court and had the charges dismissed after he was able to prove to the court that it was a mechanical failure that caused the accident. My point being if a cop can be this one sided because of personal feelings; how can a civilian's report, well after the fact be taken seriously? Dan.

To do the search; it use to be something like 10 bucks, no idea how much now? The bad part though if it comes back as stolen, even many years ago; you'll forfeit the trailer. But it is the proper thing to do. Dan.

Yea you're right. But a large percentage of that 100 bucks goes towards Vaseline and other overhead costs. Dan