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Showing posts from February 16, 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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Douglas and his family stayed with me in Duluth last night. I went to a funeral today for a church friend. Dennis always wore Hawaiian Style shirts, so many of us wore Hawaiian shirts with black arm bands. It was good. http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/news/2014/feb/19/dennis-marks/ Pic from last week.
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Back from Russia. I got to watch the Russian - USA Olympic Hockey game from the Russian perspective. We went to Sergiyev Posad, one of the Golden Ring cities and had hands on experience making Matyrosha (Russian nesting dolls). We also visited Lenin's tomb. No pictures are allowed in most crypts. We realized later we had visited quite a few significant dead people (and saints). :-) The dog statue is Malchik in Mendeleevskaya Metro Station. Malchik It's a long trip. I went through Rome because of the ATL ice event. The pic from the airplane is Zadar Croatia. It gets crazy here in Atlanta with ice and snow on the roads. Living on a perfectly level street, my four wheel drive truck and my bias towards using MARTA kept me very much unaffected. I have gasoline/generator and fireplace if I needed it. Since it was really all above 32F, I wasn't concerned about heat. Having temps in the 30s inside my house will only slightly affect my normal routines. The snowy road picture looks ...