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Showing posts from January 26, 2014

The Nissan Leaf Gets a New Rear Axle

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Well, I finally have a salvage title for the 2013 Nissan LEAF (Actually I dont have the title yet, but I think they mail it to me. We are far from settled with the insurance company for sure. It has been six months since Angie was rear ended. The following chart shows a very sad and disturbing trend. Insurance companies aren't paying out. It should be criminal. I went shopping for a new rear axle so I can get the car driving again. The rear ended axle was so bent, the car couldn't move. The new one with no connecting bits was over a thousand dollars. The cheapest used ones I could find on ebay were over 500 dollars. I finally scored at a local used parts place for 95 dollars (removed) and with associated bits such as bearings, bushings, parts of the brakes. It took me a concentrated day with cancelled and moved meetings to get the axle replaced and the car running again. The accomplishment felt good. I am now configuring the car with tractor tires and other modifications t...
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I have received questions about the catastrophe in Atlanta over that last few days from all over the world. First of all, I think that the world has a lot bigger issues. There have been no deaths (that I heard about in ATL) regarding the weather and traffic. This is much better than a normal day in ATL when everything is going good! Lots of folks die on the roads here and all across the US on a so-called "good day". I was largely unaffected by the recent events. My commute was studied before I bought my house here in Duluth. It is about 4 miles (about 2 miles as the bird flies) from my work and I cross no rivers or other extreme constraints except for the railroad tracks. I left work on Tuesday at 5:00 PM and I made it home in about 10 minutes. I am a bit sensitive about getting stranded on highways and generally any sort of delays on the road. I was stranded (and subsequently lost) on the NY state Thruway as part of my commute in the 90s for about 16 hours. There were many h...
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Let it snow! We have snow in Atlanta. There was an inch on my car after work. I am cool with it although running all the defroster items in my all electric car "the fishcar" reduced my overall charge by about 10% compared to otherwise no snow conditions. It was a bit weird scraping my car without an engine running and of course, no snow brush or scrapers. I guess that is why these situations breed Yankee ingenuity. For my ancestors it meant family survival. I think that is a strong motivator to do things differently.
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We have been having a cold winter in Atlanta. Some days it has been as cold or colder than Moscow or Finland. They laugh at me when I show up at work with my parka and fur hat. Cold is cold. Dress for it. It has been so cold my lake has frozen. First time I have seen this, nothing close last year. It didn't totally freeze or anything, but it set up more like a Frozen Daiquiri or something. My truck has finally made it into the shop. I am getting the body work done, fixing the rust from up north. That has to be the single most thing I like about things down here in GA compared to NY. It's not the weather, really. I can dress for the weather and there is beauty in the cold and snow. The cars don't rust. My Brother calls it the "Tin Worms". The government isn't splashing corrosive material on my assets.
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