Lots to do.
Hot and humid here. Cleaned the air filters in the ac unit. Oh my.
Truck is older than I remember. Gonna have to do some things before the cross country trip. Oil change at minimum, possibly more. Brake lines are really corroded. Might need to have someone look at that.
Still no will. Sibs are a bit calmer. Mom is doing well.
Thanks to everyone who shared their condolences and concern. I’ve passed it along to my mom and sibs.
Perhaps some more later.
n
I have had some bad experiences with brake lines corroding on Chevy trucks. Not sure what your vehicle is or how old it is, but I have had the lines corrode through on 5 – 6 year old low mileage vehicles (i.e., about 50K miles). It is true that I live in the northeast and they do use road salt, but I figured if you’re selling 4-wheel drive vehicles for people to use in the snow, you might take the quality of your brake lines into consideration. But even though in both vehicles, a single line failed and that resulted in no braking whatsoever (except for the e-brake). GM said that this is not possible, that there should be some braking, but that was not the case. $1,500 to $2,500 per truck to fix (replace all lines).
On the other hand, my VWs never had any brake failures when they were over 10 years and over 150K miles.
Hot and humid here. Cleaned the air filters in the ac unit. Oh my.
Dump some bleach in the drain line. We just had our units serviced last month, and our primary system’s drain line clogged solid yesterday. I arrived home to a hot downstairs.
Of course, the problem manifested by the Nexia thermostat crashing repeatedly. That’s a new one to me. Once the tech came out and cleared the line, the thermostat stopped crashing — the POS is gone after the warranty expires next week.
Consider an EcoBee thermostat. Works well, nice interface, phone and tablet apps, no Google data collection, supports multiple remote sensors (I have 4 sensors). It has never crashed.
Consider an EcoBee thermostat. Works well, nice interface, phone and tablet apps, no Google data collection, supports multiple remote sensors (I have 4 sensors). It has never crashed.
We made the mistake of installing a variable speed blower which requires the manufacturer’s three-wire protocol to work at maximum efficiency. The AC is *not* variable speed, however, so standard wiring is theoretically possible but will require an expert to get right.
I’ll start calling around to get options next week. The unit upstairs is on a Honeywell programmable which has been flawless since I swapped out the control last year. The Honeywell isn’t “smart”, but it learns the heating/cooling capacity of the system and adjusts to match the scheduled temps on time.
Chicago is as destructive to vehicles (due to winter chemicals on the roads) as the salt air and winter chemicals are on the East and West coasts (I only lived there for 20-years). So a good, thorough, under-vehicle inspection is in order. Not just the brake lines, but also all suspension components.
More thoughts of support and peace being sent your way @Nick.
Funny, it is a low mileage 2006 Chevy pickup. The brake lines are on top of the frame rails (in the engine compartment at least) and are all corroded. Sounds like a class action claim to me, or at least a tech service bulletin and covered repair item…
you’d think that something like brake lines would be of a material that would outlast the other parts of the vehicle, but then it is .gov motors….
n
have had some bad experiences with brake lines corroding on Chevy trucks. Not sure what your vehicle is or how old it is, but I have had the lines corrode through on 5 – 6 year old low mileage vehicles (i.e., about 50K miles).
My Dad gave his 2005 Silverado with 120K miles to my son two years ago. One of the brake lines burst a week later. We, as a general rule of thumb, do not salt the roads in south Texas. Dad and Mom do live on Lavaca bay though with a constant salt wind from the bay but I doubt that would have the same effect.
Our earlier Chevy was a 2004 (or 2005) Avalanche (basically Silverado 1500). I was driving about thirty miles from home when the brake light went on. I stopped and saw that the master cylinder was low and there was brake fluid leaking underneath. I drove home slowly, allowing plenty of distance in front of me, just using the e-brake.
The second Chevy was a 2007 Silverado 2500HD diesel. We used that to haul a 36′ trailer with a fifth wheel. That one fortunately leaked when we parked it to attend a Christmas party several miles from home. When we were leaving, I remarked to my wife that it looked like a leak (dark fluid running out behind the vehicle). Sure enough, when we got into the truck, we could see the brake light on. However, for some reason, the diesel would not start at all, and we had it towed. After getting it repaired, my wife traded it in during a solo trip to Florida a few months later. The dealer made a lot of comments about the amount of corrosion on the frame. I believe it was barely 7 years old when it was traded. We now have a 2014 Silverado 2500HD diesel. I keep waiting for the next adventure.
In none of these cases would Chevy or the dealers we purchased the trucks from admit to any known problem with corroding brake lines. I did some research and could not find any recall.
Today is the 47th anniversary of my first marriage. We have been together 47 years, married three times, first to make us legal. She was 16 and I was 19. A second time, 12 years later, to give her the wedding she always wanted. And much later, in the Temple to be sealed forever. Three times to the same woman. When our kids had gone off to college I said “Lets go live abroad” and she said “Sure”. Having grown up in 7 countries as an Army brat she wasn’t afraid of adventure. In our decade long circumnavigation of the globe I have met plenty of ex-pats who’s spouses HATED travel, being away from friends and family, living in unfamiliar cultures and these women made their husbands lives miserable. I was so lucky to find a wife with an adventurous spirit, one who didn’t mind being the only Gweilo (westerner) on a crowded Hong Kong subway or the only white face in a Maori wharenui. I am so thankful that she has put up with me for this long. Now she is a more obsessive “prepper” than I, collecting books on “the old ways” and looking for a “bug out” trailer.
Today is the 47th anniversary of my first marriage. We have been together 47 years, married three times, first to make us legal. She was 16 and I was 19.
@Harold, Congrats ! And thanks for being a good example for the people around you.
We, as a general rule of thumb, do not salt the roads in south Texas.
TxDOT used a salt/sand mix on the crazy high toll road/freeway flyovers around San Antonio and Austin this Winter, right after New Years, but that was the first time we saw snow since leaving Vantucky.
The corrosion of your father’s truck was probably just classic GM penny pinching.
My Dad bought a ’72 or ’73 Chevy 3.4 ton with a flatbed. He hauled building supplies and feed on it. Moved me (huge surprise!) from McAllen to Austin in ’80. It was a strange shade of orange. The front edge of the hood started to rust through after a few years. Chevy said tough, you live in a tropical area. Yeah, 20 miles north of Mexico and almost 80 miles west of south Padre Island. It never went to the beach or even east of Weslaco.
He had a ’64 Chevy van he bought new in Oceanside. It never rusted. The Mazda RX2 they bought in Mobile never rusted. The Renault R10 never rusted. His Coupe de Ville and the Toronado, yep, no rust. Just the flat bed truck.
I think it was the summer of ’75 and he had a couple of bulbs out in the dash. I learned new cuss words because just bumping the twist-in sockets made them break. There were a lot of sockets to replace.
The roof on my 2005 Expedition is rusting due to standing water in the roof valleys. I am not worried about it at all as, the vehicle is on borrowed life anyway.
My Dad bought a ’72 or ’73 Chevy 3.4 ton with a flatbed. He hauled building supplies and feed on it. Moved me (huge surprise!) from McAllen to Austin in ’80. It was a strange shade of orange. The front edge of the hood started to rust through after a few years.
If you want a hint about GM rust issues in the 70s, watch the bootleg copy of “The Star Wars Holiday Special” that floats around the Internet and pay attention to the commercials. One GM spot shows a smiling union thug half-a**ing a solder job on a roof joint of a Cutlass Supreme. That’s the problem in a nutshell.
Lucasfilm isn’t the only entity who would like that video to disappear.
When my uncle passed, thirty years ago probably, they never found his will. He stated to his elderly mother that he had hidden it, but she couldn’t recall where…
Took the old 1998 Ford Explorer in for its smog test yesterday. It passed with flying colors, all original with 272K miles. I really didn’t expect it, and had been looking at a new replacement. I use it for trips to the hardware store these days mostly, and if I can get another couple of years out of it, fine.
It’s been a desert vehicle – no rust. But the front windscreen should probably be replaced because of sand pitting…
@Nick May I add my condolences for your loss as well.
Took the old 1998 Ford Explorer in for its smog test yesterday. It passed with flying colors, all original with 272K miles.
Whoa, a new target ! I am only at 196K miles in my 2005 Expedition …
When my uncle passed, thirty years ago probably, they never found his will. He stated to his elderly mother that he had hidden it, but she couldn’t recall where…
When my dad’s father passed away, they could not find his will either. Texas has a law that says that in the event of no will, the inheritance passes half to the spouse and half to the kids. The death tax was at a million dollars then so my dad and his siblings left all of the cash with Grandma. When they had to put her into assisted living, they sold her house outside Pottsboro, TX and split the money between them as it put her worth over a million dollars. She was not spending the money and her net worth was growing even with the cost of the assisted living place.
It should be an easy deal to replace the brake lines. My 99 Superduty rear lines corroded and failed. I just took the fittings down to the auto parts store. They had generic lines of various lengths with fittings attached. Just bought new ones longer than needed and coiled up the extra length. Add new fluid, bleed the breaks, and Robert is your uncle.
Yah, brake lines aren’t bad, at least so long as you can get to the fittings.
I had a brake line split once… as I was going downhill to a red light at a T intersection. I shifted the automatic transmission into Low, which helped, and stomped on the parking brake, which didn’t, and rolled into the intersection, which had cars passing in both directions, and hooked a hard left, missing cars — in both directions, mind you — by a fraction of a second. And then pulled over and caught my breath. That was a bit more excitement than I really needed that day. Annoying, too, in retrospect, as I avoided a multicar collision by pure luck rather than preparedness and skill.
If it is a Toyota pickup, definitely get the frame looked at. They had some bad corrosion issues and a couple of my co-workers received new trucks. Probably too late for that but you don’t want the thing breaking in half on the trip back to Texas.
SteveF. I grew up in Golden CO and we had a big hill to drive down leaving our neighborhood. There was a 4 lane highway crossing it about half way down. One of my friends liked to pretend his brakes were out. It had to be dark and it had to be a new passenger. He would start hitting the brake pedal and muttering at an increasing frantic pace that “I don’t have any brakes”. One time I had to grab the new guy. He had his door open and was ready to bail – we were probably doing 60. Good times.
This same friend liked to kill his headlights at night when driving fast on mountain roads. God does protect drunks and idiots…
@Nick, re brake lines. I grew up near Detroit, went to high school and college in the city. I remember salt on the roads. We always said it was a way to increase auto sales. I then moved to Iowa, where they used a salt mixture with calcium chloride on the roads: even more corrosive. Here in the Mojave Desert, there is some salt in the soil, but it is too dry for corrosion to be much of a problem. Metals last practically forever. Plastics not so much. Rubber is also a problem because of the ozone in the air and the reduction of antiozonants in rubber.
Brake lines have been the subject of studies for decades. Before WWII, many brake lines were copper or brass, but, while corrosion resistant, these were subject to fatigue. Sudden fatigue failures are not a good characteristic for brakes. The absence of copper or brass tubing in automobiles is not just due to their higher cost. Between WWII and about 1970, practically all brake lines were made of double wall terne coated steel. Terne is a lead-tin alloy, and actually is a good protectant for steel. This construction is also highly resistant to fatigue caused by vibration.
In recent years, with cars lasting longer, age has exposed new weaknesses. The industry is working on this, and some manufacturers have tried “improved” materials, with varied results. Volvo tried a material that looked good, but was actually worse than terne coated steel, so this is not a simple problem. The current compromise seems to be a 90-10 copper-nickel alloy. This alloy has had great success in marine applications, but is new to automotive, and tubing in particular. It has superior corrosion resistance, and appears to have acceptable fatigue resistance. Its big advantage is that it can be bent and flared more easily than steel. It is DOT approved.
In the aftermarket, there are pre-formed direct-replacement parts, which most shops prefer, and bulk material formed in the field. AFAIK, the pre-formed parts will be similar to OEM steel. They should last as long as the originals. For an older vehicle, that is probably good enough. Copper-nickel is likely better, but I wouldn’t trust many shops to make replacements. Stainless steel (300 series) is great, but reserved for very special vehicles, where cost and re-engineering are no object. Not DOT approved, avoid.
While you are having the hard lines replaced, don’t forget the flexible lines. The stress of disassembly and reassembly can cause failures. Better to put on new ones. And, don’t forget to replace the brake fluid. DOT4 is better than DOT3, and is acceptable in all vehicles, including those with ABS.
Good luck.
Thermostats: I have a Honeywell programmable, it came with the new heat pump system ~ 9 years ago. It is a certifiable POS, in that it doesn’t obey its programming. If I program it to turn the A/C off until 4 PM, at some point in the early afternoon it turns the A/C on anyway. I suspect the same is true of the heat function, but I very rarely ever heat my house.
Wills: Beyond the basic instruction to have an up to date one, don’t stash it in your safe deposit box. Or at a minimum, make sure someone in whom you have complete trust has access to the box. If you croak and no one can get to your box, things just got unnecessarily complex. In my case, my younger sister has mine, and I have those of her & her husband.
That is a feature. What the thermostat is anticipating how long it will take to get to your set point. If you want 74f at 4:00 PM the system may turn on at 2:00 PM to get your temperature to the desired set point by 4:00 PM. Smart thermostats learn how long it takes to get to the desired temperature. What you are telling the system is you want the temperature to be 74f at 4:00 PM, not change the temperature to 74f at 4:00 PM.
JimB, interesting comments. I do a lot of work on corrosion for my day job. There are definitely some good things happening with alloys, coatings, etc. In the case of my 1999 pickup, I have to think a majority of the issue was from running the lines inside of the frame rails where the salt mixture had lots of time to sit and work.
If the frame rails are C shaped, so the brake lines can be seen, OK. If they are hidden, I wouldn’t like that. I really like to inspect things.
Fighting corrosion is an ongoing thing. We have seen it is also cyclical: a problem shows up, and a hasty solution is applied. Later, the solution is “refined,” not always an improvement. Sometimes, there is a new design, and the bugs can’t all be swatted before production. There are many tradeoffs: function, producibility, cost, serviceability, etc. We like to criticize the manufacturers, but I would first walk a mile in their shoes. These things are not easy.
Thermostats: I have a Honeywell programmable, it came with the new heat pump system ~ 9 years ago. It is a certifiable POS, in that it doesn’t obey its programming. If I program it to turn the A/C off until 4 PM, at some point in the early afternoon it turns the A/C on anyway. I suspect the same is true of the heat function, but I very rarely ever heat my house.
Lots of alternatives exist as long as you have standard wiring. Right now, I don’t have an alternative to what the contractor put in with the new system.
Fighting corrosion is an ongoing thing. We have seen it is also cyclical: a problem shows up, and a hasty solution is applied. Later, the solution is “refined,” not always an improvement. Sometimes, there is a new design, and the bugs can’t all be swatted before production. There are many tradeoffs: function, producibility, cost, serviceability, etc. We like to criticize the manufacturers, but I would first walk a mile in their shoes. These things are not easy.
I am still wondering about Ford’s aluminium bodies on steel frames for the F-150s. One hopes that all of the attachments and corrosion problems were fixed. I sure am not hearing of any significant problems. But I tend to keep my vehicles a long time, the wife and I are both driving 2005 vehicles.
“In knocking Trump, Andrew Cuomo criticized for saying America ‘was never that great'”
https://www.lohud.com/story/news/politics/albany/2018/08/15/knocking-trump-cuomo-criticized-saying-america-never-great/1000315002/
I wonder which America this moron lives in ?
I’ve been all over this planet, I love coming home to Texas. I count northern Europe as the best place otherwise but it still is not the USA.
Hat tip to:
https://drudgereport.com/
Nick – my condolences to you and your family.
Brake lines – You can buy Delco replacements from Amazon at good prices. And recent GM full-sized pickups/SUVs are notorious for rusting brake lines. I’ve got the ones for my Suburban bookmarked in anticipation. Will probably just go ahead and buy them before too long.
“…the wife and I are both driving 2005 vehicles.”
Our newest is a 2006, have had it less than a year. Only 84k miles, and looks like new inside and out.
Our oldest are two 1968s. Had them 35 and 39 years. Yikes, they are now 50! Both are hangar queens.
Now that I have more garage space, I might look for more cars. We don’t drive much, so can keep some of them nice. I have one I bought three years ago, and I have not yet driven it in rain. A far cry from my earlier life.
Thanks again to everyone for their condolences.
Still no will. Still finding money tucked here and there. Still only looking in easy, obvious (for dad) places. Checking each old bank statement with mom to make sure it is a known account. If he stashed cash around the house, he stashed it in various banks too. This can be difficult as all of the banks have changed names more than once. Truly incredible amount of old paper here. Some is interesting. Found his draft card, and discharge papers, which he had requested officially at least twice since he couldn’t find the originals. I have the originals now.
Found a bunch of travelogues that he and mom wrote (really just a sort of daily diary while they were traveling.) Full of funny stuff and a had a nice time reading thru their first trip together with mom last night.
Checked out a likely wall cavity with my new inspection cam. No luck. Will be doing a ton more tomorrow. And some plumbing repairs.
@ harold, congrats on THREE weddings, esp as they were with the same woman! That’s quite a nice achievement the two of you have managed. I hope for the same.
And now to get some sleep…
n
I wonder which America this moron lives in ?
The Clintons dropped a dime on the Cuomo family a long time ago. The son has to live under the same restrictions on his ambition as the father.
Old Mario must have buried a few bodies. Literally. Maybe Bubba was speaking truthfully about Cuomo being a “mafioso” on the Gennifer Flowers tape.
I’m snickering over all the ProgLibTurds crying over Pres. tRump pulling Bennan’s clearance. Does anybody believe Brennan is shooting his gob off ‘cause he “loves” the FUSA so much. He’s out to make some bucks, period. He doesn’t work for the FUSA anymore or advise the Pres. He doesn’t deserve a clearance. And, the Pres. can pull a clearance for any reason. Boo hoo.
I’m snickering over all the ProgLibTurds crying over Pres. tRump pulling Bennan’s clearance. Does anybody believe Brennan is shooting his gob off ‘cause he “loves” the FUSA so much. He’s out to make some bucks, period. He doesn’t work for the FUSA anymore or advise the Pres. He doesn’t deserve a clearance. And, the Pres. can pull a clearance for any reason. Boo hoo.
The security clearance is money to those people. My neighborhood outside Tampa was filled with the perverted alcoholic Neidermeyer types who run the wars at MacDill. Once their 20 years were up, they’d go through the revolving door and head back into the building as contractors.
Yep, there is always a need for people with clearances to run programs at contractors, etc. Even a clerk can make good bank watching other people work (working “under supervision”) in restricted areas. I spent many weeks working in secure rooms without ever getting cleared because I was under the watchful eye of someone’s retired granny with an active clearance.
At Boeing, there are floors you can’t visit, doors you can’t pass thru, etc…..
n