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So, throughout the third act of Back to the Future Part II, there are two Doc Browns in 1955. One of them is the young Doc (the one native to 1955) who we don't see on screen until the very last scene (having, from his point of view, just sent Marty back to 1985 towards the end of the first film.) The other is the Doc from 1985, who got to 1955 by way of chasing the sports almanac there from 2015 to prevent TrumpBiff from existing. It's that older Doc who gets zapped by lightning and sent back to 1885 at the end.
At the beginning of the third film, young Doc (the 1955-native one) helps Marty recover the 1885 DeLorean from the cave, and in the process, learns that his older self will have been shot in 1885 for refusing to pay Mad Dog $80.
But... the Doc who wound up in 1885 is the older version of the same Doc who previously discovered the facts of his own eventual demise 70 years later in 1955. So he knows that if he doesn't pay Mad Dog $80, he will be murdered.
So why on earth didn't Doc just give Mad Dog the $80? He clearly has plenty of cash, judging by his shop, tools, icemaker, etc. And from the letter which he sent to 1955-Marty, it's clear that he was enjoying life in 1885 and did not wish to be rescued.
Doing so would erase the tombstone from the future, and prevent Marty from coming back to 1885, a plan which could have gone terribly wrong in a lot of ways. The entire third film could have been 5 minutes long. Marty finds Doc, Doc looks at tombstone, Doc says "Hmm. I shall have to remember not to **** that guy off when I accidentally wind up in 1885, 30 years from now," and then sends Marty back to 1985.
Serious question. How often do you change the oil in your lawn mower, string trimmer, chainsaw, etc.?
I have a gas push mower (not self-propelled), which I use approximately weekly during the summer. Actually, I make my son do it, and it takes about 10-12 minutes. My postage stamp front lawn is only about 35x40 feet, so it's not like the mower runs very long. It has only had one oil change in the 7 or 8 years I've owned it. Oil change was 2-3 years ago, and still looks mostly clean/clear on the dipstick.
My neighbor, who's lawn is only about 1.5 times as big as mine was trying to argue that oil somehow loses lubricating properties, or the additives go bad or something. He swears it is imperative to change it every season, no matter what. I think he is simply wasting money, as the oil he discards is clean enough that I offered to take it for the next time I do it. He also takes his car in for full synthetic oil changes every 3500 miles. I tried to tell him that synthetic will easily last for 5000 miles or more, and he clearly gave me a look that said you don't know ****.
I don't think I have ever changed the oil in my push lawn mowers. Have always owned craftmans or whatever is a similar price point. My latest mower that just broke on me I would just add oil to it every season. The drawstring on it broke, and it was not replaceable. A really really stupid design. I got the mower for free about 9 years ago so I can't complain to much.
I am about to buy a new push mower, have not decided between a EGO electric or a Honda gas mower.
I change my Honda mower's oil every year but I use the crap out of it.
Rleete, for your use I'd change every two years. I'd add an ounce of ZDDP additive as well as that motor has nothing but scuff surfaces inside (no roller bearings at all).
The only mower I've ever owned that lasted more than 6 years (without internal engine work) is the Honda HRX 217 I bought 12 years ago...
The entire mower was built by Honda and it has a plastic deck that I was worried about. It has proven to be indestructible.
It's beat to hell now but I have no plans to replace it. It's the single most durable piece of lawn equipment I've ever purchased.
All of the Briggs & Stratton powered equipment have had head gasket failures with in 5 years of use and the repairs did not last very long.
The Honda has needed nothing but basic maintenance, filters, oil changes, and blades over the last 12 years and it's still running fine. It's always started on the first pull even when my elf sized wife has used it.
It was expensive to purchase but inexpensive to own. I intentionally bought the non-electric start model as it has fewer failure points.
One thing everyone neglects is valve adjustments. Most lawn equipment have a primitive compression release that is controlled by the valve adjustment.
It is important to adjust the valves occasionally. I adjust the valves on the Honda at the annual oil change. I have never replaced the valve cover gasket.
Your neighbor is a fool. I advise my automotive customers to run fully synthetic oil (Mobil 1 best bang for buck) and 10k oil changes on their non forced induction appliance cars.
It's actually cheaper than dino at 5k and the car is in the shop 50% less time. I also tell them that it should use a quart in 5k so one extra quart will be needed between changes.
For 99% of my customers this works fine.
I have a geeky friend that did 24 Blackstone tests on his three cars to see if Amsoil was truthful regarding their 15k oil change intervals.
He did 4 tests at 2,500 miles intervals on Castrol GTX and 4 tests at 5,000 miles intervals on Amsoil.
The GTX was marginal at 7,500 and gone at 10 K
The Amsoil came back "OK to continue use" at 20K.
The cars were 2006 Pontiac GXP V8, 1987 Fiero GT 2.8l and a 2012 Toyota Prius.
Mobil 1 is 95%+ as good as Amsoil and 3 times cheaper...
String trimmer, chainsaws are all 2 stroke for me and don't have internal oil supplies.
We had a similar drawstring failure on ours... but it had a big nut on the assembly and I had an electric impact wrench. We had an electric start push mower until we sold that house and moved into a condo. I don't remember ever changing the oil on those types of engines.
I've had that same (or a very similar) Ryobi 40v mower for the last three years, and have given it a lot of use. Very happy with it still.
Yeah, I researched the crap out of these, and everyone had good things to say about the Ryobi.
It's quiet, no vibration, fairly light weight, and I love that I can stop it whenever someone walks past with their dog or a neighbor stops by to chat (this is a very pedestrian neighborhood) then just push the button and be on again. I wouldn't go back to a gas powered mower / snowblower / trimmer / anything else if you gave it to me for free.
Yeah, I researched the crap out of these, and everyone had good things to say about the Ryobi.
It's quiet, no vibration, fairly light weight, and I love that I can stop it whenever someone walks past with their dog or a neighbor stops by to chat (this is a very pedestrian neighborhood) then just push the button and be on again. I wouldn't go back to a gas powered mower / snowblower / trimmer / anything else if you gave it to me for free.
or chainsaw. I bought a DeWalt 18v, short bar but uses same batteries as my power tools. Still have my big Stihl, but it rarely gets used - the battery one is up for 95% of the work. Small chain = more frequent sharpening, but because is is small only half sized job. GF has an Aldi battery lawnmower, I'm impressed at the work it can do.
I just bought a new mower for my 24,000 sq ft property. The Yard Works mower that came with the house is about 6 years old and no longer runs quite right. I probably could've spent a few hours on it and tuned it up, but it also has a hole in the gas tank that I'm tired of patching every year, the ignition cut off no longer works right, there's a bolt missing in the handle, etc., so I decided it was time for replacement. For what it's worth, I never changed the oil in the 4 years I had it. It's a Briggs and Stratton engine with the "add oil, don't change" marketing gimmick. I don't think I've had to add more than once or twice.
I tested out a friend's Stihl battery push mower and was impressed by its performance in my tall grass. Ease of use and low noise are huge pluses, too. I really wanted a battery mower to make sense for me, but 35 minute run time means that I'd need to keep two batteries, having one charge while I deplete the other one, to do my whole yard, which takes about an hour and a half. At that point we're talking about spending more than twice the price of a decent gas mower, plus several hundred dollars for new batteries every few years. I ended up with a Troy Bilt with a Honda 160 cc engine that'll use maybe $50-60 of oil and gas per year. For a smaller yard I'd go with a battery mower, no question.
Incidentally, Honda specifies changing the oil after the first 5 hours of use in the name of break-in. This seems like overkill, but I'll probably go ahead and do it in the interest of hopefully getting the next 10+ years of use off on the right foot. The engine takes like half a quart, so it's not like I'm breaking the bank. After that, once a season will probably be plenty.
I like being able to increase the compression on my flathead briggs with a milling machine. The engine on my old mower is so worn that it doesn't move the compression tester needle, but it still fires right up and cuts the grass. Waiting for it to go boom so i can replace with a battery mower...but I have two spare engines.
If you find yourself in the position of being the chief engineer at a facility which hosts both a non-affiliated TV station which is just perpetually in the habit of being #1 in market 3 across damn near every timeslot by doing wacky antics on the air every day, and also an upstart cable network which has aims at taking down CNN and Fox, and takes itself very seriously, think twice before saying "Well, **** a goat sideways" in an internal email which includes the News Director of both sides.
One side will laugh and hand you another beer. The other will report you to HR. And this is like the seventy-teenth time I've had that conversation. Juana, the HR manager, now chuckles every time she sees me walking through the door.
My son graduates High School this year. He wants to go into engineering, and was accepted at Clarkson U., SUNY Polytech (Utica, NY) and R.I.T. Clarkson provided a much better financial incentive than the other schools; almost $10k a year. To provide incentive for him to save me money, I offered to buy him a car if he chose Clarkson over the others.
Naturally, he chose the most expensive option, and will be attending RIT in the fall.
FWIW - 5 of the last 6 packaging engineers I hired were RIT grads, 4 right after graduation, 1 with about 8 years experience. They were all good - better than I needed, actually - but then, they were all working-class kids with no delusions about having to actually do something to get paid.
I had to go pick up the first one for the interview, because he was mid-brake-job on his old shitbox Probe in the street in front of his apartment, and couldn’t get a caliper bolt off. It was Valentines Day. When I told the guys back at work, it was unanimous- if I didn’t hire him, I was an *******.
The RIT placement office was beyond helpful - I would call in the morning, and have 30 candidates’ resumes after lunch. When the time came, they scheduled interviews and provided a place. I think they were actually interested in getting their grads a good job. I would recommend the place to anyone.
Yeah, my son said the decision was based on the fact that RIT has about 95% placement after graduation, and their co-op program is second to none. He figures the extra is going to be made up in summer co-op work.
I like being able to increase the compression on my flathead briggs with a milling machine. The engine on my old mower is so worn that it doesn't move the compression tester needle, but it still fires right up and cuts the grass. Waiting for it to go boom so i can replace with a battery mower...but I have two spare engines.
JBWeld and coins are the proper low budget way to increase compression, no need for a mill. Found this old post about it. Can't find the actual PDF any more.
Actually, there may be some truth in this after all.
While searching for evidence to rebut your idea, I actually ran across an old article where something similar was successfully done by a race team in some spec series a while back. I accidentally closed the browser window and I can't seem to locate the article again (one complaint against Chrome- the History function never seems to work properly for me) but the gist of it was this:
The team in question used, of all things, US half-dollar coins. Apparently they used a small quantity of two part metal epoxy (ie: JB Weld) to attach one coin to the dished area of each piston, and then a second coin atop that. The use of epoxy apparently satisfied the problem of heat transfer, since unlike welding it provided a continuous bond across the face of the coin and did not create meaningful thermal isolation between the parts. Currency was chosen as it tends to be surprisingly consistent in terms of weight and volume, and as the amount of epoxy was both quite minimal and of course controlled by the fact that it was squished out as the coins were pressed under a weight during the curing process, they did not encounter balance problems. The copper-clad nickel construction of a 50 cent piece is apparently quite resistant to both heat and pressure in the combustion process, and the coins apparently suffered no damage during the time that they were run.
The team ran in this configuration for a nearly a full season, collecting several wins until they were finally found out during a protest. They successfully argued that they had not violated the rules, since the pistons were stock and had not been machined, nor had the head, deck, etc been machined beyond allowable limits. They were allowed to retain their points, though of course the rules were updated.
I wiki'd the specs on US coinage, and sure enough, the 50 cent piece is the largest (in terms of mass) US coin in common circulation. The weight is specified at a paltry 11.34 g, and the dimensions work out to a volume of 1.6cc. Thus, two 50 cent coins stacked would displace about 3.2cc.
Assuming an otherwise stock 1.6 engine, this would take you from 9.4:1 to exactly 10:1, which is actually a pretty good result considering the total investment of $4, as compared for $580 (plus machining) for a set of Weiscos.
This isn't what I expected to find, but it makes me believe that the fundamental idea may have merit.
I mean, I did come up with the idea, fabricate the entire story he was referring to from scratch, laid out the bogus magazine page from scratch in MS Publisher (edit: including fake, period-correct ads), altered the output to look like a scan of a photocopy of a 15 year old (from early 2000s perspective) British magazine story (which I did by printing it, then scanning the print, then printing the scan of the print, then scanning the print of the scan of the print, then printing the scan of the print of the scan of the print, and then finally scanning the print of the scan of the print of the scan of the print, all in lossless format the whole way across until the last scan. I am a stickler for authenticity), and provided all of the backstory to the MT crew in order that we could orchestrate the trolling at a really pro level.
But, yeah...
Ok, so I'm really very smugly impressed with myself right now.
Backdrop: I live in a nice, quiet neighborhood in northern Chicago. The sort of place where the houses and the oak trees are both 100+ years old, the neighbors all know one another, have solid jobs, maintain their lawns and properties, throw frequent block parties in the summer involving lots of alcohol and BBQ (well, the Yankee version of BBQ), aren't lefty socialists, let their kids play outside with no supervision, etc.
7:30pm. Doorbell rings. I open the door to find a young man dressed in yellow attire bearing the Amnesty International logo.
Me: "Yes, sir. How can I help you on this fine evening?"
Him: "Hi, I'm with Amnesty International, and I was wondering if you had a minute to talk about eliminating gun violence?"
Me: (reaches into right-front pocket, which just between you and I was empty. I'd set the .380 on a table to the right of the door)"Well, you not being on my front porch right now would be an excellent first step towards achieving that goal."
Him: (Blank stare, finally gets the message, and walks away without saying another word.)
05-04-2022, 10:21 PM
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