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Showing posts from May 5, 2019

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...

The So Cal Adventure continues

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Angie and I have been adventuring in Southern California. Traffic is almost funny here. You are on highways (not me very often) up to 8 (or more) lanes doing a stop-and-go to 20 miles an hour. When will we finally solve the problem not as a more lanes are needed, but as how do we make a single lane go faster? There are lots of different types of parallel ports (multi-lanes) on computer interfaces. I don't think we've applied these same protocols to highways. Think about how fast USB is these days, or the previously considered impossible 10GB over Cat-5 copper (both single lane). With the increased speed in a single lane you will need to give up some freedom. Fine, if you want freedom stay in the slow lanes with your 8085 8 bit processor. The fast lanes will enjoy car-to-car awareness and safer speeds consistently well over 100MPH, not stop and go to 20 MPH. Aircraft pilots know all about the freedom -safety-speed tradeoff. An article about the anthropology. Here are some pics f...