Colt Case Ingersoll Garden Tractors

@DavidBarkey 40 years ago and living with 3 school teachers, my favourite line was,"Those that can, do. Those that can't, teach. Those that can't teach, teach PE".

In my tool box is a book, "1001 ways to repair with duct tape". When a micro manager starts questioning when a machine failure cause will be found or the repair will be finished or my blood pressure rises. My first kick back is to tell them I need to refer to the machine manual, out comes the duct tape book, and I leaf through it for them. Twice, that was the last time the manager came out to question me. The next line for a new customer that is putting on pressure and insinuating that they could do the repair themselves is, "You have me for the remainder of the day. If I do not like you at the end of the day I will not be back". That ended one job and the owner begged me to come back a week later.

My favourite line when question about my capabilities is "I have not seen a machine yet that I can't make worse." Sadly that has happened a few times and I ate the expense and stood behind the job.

Tooting my own horn, I started doing industrial equipment repair privately 22 years ago and have never printed a business card. Unfortunately age is starting to play a role in what can be accomplished, between eye sight and shaking, circuit board repair is becoming harder to do, as is flipping shear blades and heavy slugging.

I think it is time to build a toy box at home, kicking back and playing with stuff.

Yes, That is me at the top of our tv tower this week, replacing antennas. Now that I have blown off steam and came down off my high horse. Lets have a nice day.

Good ramble @Spike188 !

@Spike188 "who says your not moving up in the world."
I can relate to much of what you said, don't feel alone. Back in late May on a Sunday afternoon I had a customer tell me if I couldn't get there that week they had two others that could. My week was beyond full so I said I doubted I could even look at it. Supper time last night they call seeing if I could stop soon. I said I thought you were getting someone else?

Picking and choosing work and slowing down sounds like a good plan. I have to work for while yet but cutting back sure looks good but there's so much work and not enough to do it. I bet in your line of work there's fewer and fewer qualified out there that "fix" things.

Hang in there

Wow... Deja Vu in the BigSky™ garage today,
Long overdue services for both our vehicles today...
Didn't realize that Toyota still sells gear oil in 1 litre cans, major childhood flashbacks to following my Dad around in the Sears Auto Centre, and admiring the shiny pyramids of Allstate Motor Oil stacked on the floor...

Looks like cans of tomato juice I like tomato juice.

Curious, Gerry, how much does the dealership sell the can for?

It was an expensive trip to the Dealership today
- straight 75w oil for Transfer case was $102.00/litre 75W-85 Gear oil for the front and rear diffs was $40.00/litre - add six spark plugs @ $44.00 each and it was a $700.00 trip to the parts counter
- all I could say to was 'at least I'm not paying labour costs to change all of this stuff...
- was surprised that the Toyota Gear Oil doesn't need an extra LSD additive for the rear diff in the TRD off-road edition of my Tacoma - used to be fun at Toromont Caterpillar - a 988H wheel loader takes about 200 litres of gear oil per axle, and you'd get a case of LSD additive when doing an oil change...

That's how it goes within the dealerships. On the other hand the transfer and transaxle oils do last a long time. I too got Honda original fluids for my truck, including the very important automatic transmission oil. Helps a lot when you can do the work yourself. The engineers for my truck had me really impressed with the ease of access to all the fluids. Including plug bolts matching the 3/8 ratchet exactly, so you don't even need a socket on. Made changing the fluids almost too easy.

Gonna give a couple of old Fords a bath today! One of these is new around here I’ll do a post about it as soon as I can.

Sitting inside, severe thunderstorm warning for Southern Ontario,
Was going to work in the tent garage on "Maxine" aka the 222, or Max's (the 446) little sister...
For some reason gets a little (lot) nervous about the tent garage and the 120 yr old Black Walnut tree that towers over it, especially because the branches are loaded with walnuts at the moment... not much point in a

Maybe I'll try and work on starting a new thread or two...

(edit - another doom and gloom forecast that fortunately wasn't so scary after all... )

Same here, the scare was bigger than the storm. Got a good rain though.

Nice picture Gerry!