McParts may be sinking

So, in other words, the EPA acts with a wide degree of discretion, and next to zero accountability? Yup, sounds like what I’ve been saying!

(I was trying to “trace back” the birth of this “unaccountable government,” and I realized…the Whiskey Rebellion Festival is going on, now through the 9th. Well, I guess I know what I’m doing this weekend! Gee, glad I decided to “chime in!”)

Rasie a strong glass of (preferably untaxed) spirits to our brave ancestors!

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They used to sell Black label jack, green label jack, yellow label Jack Daniels whiskey, 5, 4, and two year aged as I recall, then Lem Motlows Whiskey, (Lem Motlow owner or proprietor of Jack Daniels?) aged less than that in Tennessee, outside of the dry county it was made in, had a bit, crazy stuff, while primitive camping in land between the lakes, put on our clothes after running around wild, Drove (car related) into a campsite to get water, everyone was like elvis is dead, crying and lamenting, have you heard? thought we were hallucinating

Bureaucratic fiefdoms can result from agencies gaining influence and power and there should be some predetermined cut off for them but where would we be if the EPA had never been established and given the authority to clean up the air, water, et al?

The current partisan conflict concerning waters from tributary streams is quite interesting. We would do well to look at the results of the “Dust Bowl” and consider it worthwhile to get ahead of a problem rather than get caught with another serious problem. Currently our leaders are locking horns in a struggle that is as outrageous for the environmentalists as it is for their individual liberty opponents on the issue.

Of course the other alternative is to cut off funding,
Trump slashes Great Lakes funding by 97 percent in early budget plan

Sure there is…When you have idiot congressmen like this…

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/335886-gop-rep-on-climate-change-god-will-take-care-of-it

Or the appointed GOP spokesman…

https://thinkprogress.org/limbaugh-if-you-believe-in-god-then-intellectually-you-cannot-believe-in-manmade-global-warming-b69ab4f9136d

Or this wacko…

Or you have idiots like Michelle Bachman saying Co2 is Harmless…

https://thinkprogress.org/stumped-by-science-michele-bachmann-calls-co2-harmless-negligible-necessary-natural-ba603ff8ef05

I remember back in the 80’s when the Senate was debating the validity of the Star Wars shield and a scientist asked to discuss the state of the where the Lasers are now and how far we have to go. The scientist said - “Our Best lasers are at 10^8 and we need to get them to 10^16.” To which the Senator on the panel replied - “Gee - we’re half way there”. I sent half a glass of milk flying across the kitchen table.

Ron Johnson GOP Senator WI
Mankind has actually flourished in warmer temperatures,” he continued. “I just think the question always is what is the cost versus the benefit of anything we do to try and clean up our environment … I’m highly concerned about the climate alarmists that are going to spend a lot of money and have no impact whatsoever on the climate but have a great deal of harm on our economy.”
So drink the kool aid forget about pollution (including cars) and enjoy global warming, to maintain corporate profits.

You ARE aware that Reagan’s stubborn insistence on Star Wars helped end the cold war, right? The Soviet economy was reeling, and the USA was talking about anti-missile technology, and (to lead added credibility) developed a way to deliver heavy, militarily-significant payloads to LEO (there’s a reason the shuttle was so big and fat…DoD insistence.)

That led the Soviets to go on a spending spree to counter a largely theoretical US military space threat, that led to its insolvency. Witness the Buran shuttle, that flew exactly once. Getting the Soviets to spend deep to counter military technology we never really intended to field is one of the smartest intelligence coups of the 1980s.

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Now I forgot what I was going to say. Must be the wine. Don’t forget though that Congress allocates funding. The president proposes and can veto but Congress allocates the money.

Professor Philip Hamburger has written about how this all got started with the experts put in charge and the development of the administrative state. He says it had to do with the elite or knowledge class not trusting the will of the people that were just gaining the vote such as women, blacks, German and Irish immigrants around the turn of the century. They felt more comfortable with the experts in charge because who knew what the general public would choose otherwise. Believe him or not it is classic class warfare which our system of government was formed to prevent.

I hope everyone took a few minutes on Tuesday to re-read the Declaration of Independence and the tyranny that caused it.

Back to cars. Somehow still, sitting at a stoplight and revving up an electric motor just isn’t the same as an ICE.

Take us back to the founding fathers, own slaves women cannot vote, must scare the heck out of rich people, ie michelle bachman, giving a poor person the right to vote is like giving a robber a gun, so we are convoluting about the car companies are going to hybrids, then the loss of gas taxes to support the road infrasructure, so now we have all these hybrids using less gas, so less gas tax WI is actually got legislators thinking about toll roads, It should not be this hard,

That wasn’t the point. The point was the lack of science knowledge in our elected officials. I surely don’t want a senator like the one at the Star Wars hearings making science decisions when he doesn’t even understand 7th grade math.

:smile:

Back to the future…
It takes me back to my early years when we’d attach playing cards, using wooden clothes pins, to our bicycles so they’d be partially in the spokes to give that ICE sound as we rode. Feel the magic (and it was magical to us)!

Even then we realized that a quiet bicycle needed enhancement to sound more like a bunch of tire burning cubic inches!

I think we’re headed back to playing cards and clothes pins, but for cars this time. :wink:
CSA

Actually, I have been beside cars at stoplights that have had sound systems that were so loud I can feel the bass notes in my car. To me, this more annoying than a V-8 with glass packed mufflers having the engine being revved up.
As we transition to electric cars, Fram Purolator, Wix, and AC will be making voltage conditioners instead of oil filters and there will be those among us cutting open these voltage conditioners to check out the the farads of the filter capacitors.

How likely is it that the ICE powered automobile will become obsolete in the next 20 years? I saw a documentary on NPB from the late 1950s and horse drawn wagons were still being used on city streets.

Didn’t elected representatives bring us ethanol?How has that worked out for US?

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And speaking of Amazon, Amazon ran Cartalk 20 years ago.

There is a National electric code. It has certainly changed over the years. For example, GFCI outlets are required in kitchens, bathrooms and other damp locations. Now, this code was written and continually being updated by experts. I don’t think many Representatives or Senators would have the expertise to under the reasons behind most of the sections of this code. Now, should I as a home owner be allowed to wire my own home as I see fit? What if I use undersized wire and a fire results that spreads to my neighbor’s property? There is a.plumbing code. What happens if I don’t follow the code for an air break which results in a cross connection with the waste line and I contaminate my neighbor’s drinking water?
I grew up before the three prong grounded outlets were part of the code. When I was in college, I was making purchases at a nearby drug store. There was a lighted display case and as I was looking in the case, I touched the metal strip along the top of the case and got an electrical shock. I mentioned it to the proprietor and he said it was my fault for touching the case. I walked out of the store and left the items I was going to purchase at the cash register.
There is a need for agencies of the government to set standards and write codes. Legislators don’t have the expertise to do this.

There have been a few glancing mentions of cars in the last 15-20 posts. Could you please be more mindful to keep this discussion more on-topic? Thanks.

OK ok but in addition to playing cards, for that rumble sound with the bike, we used balloons but they didn’t last long but sounded great.

The thing with the NEC and building codes is that they are proposed national codes but are then adopted or partially adopted by individual states as they see fit. Even cities have different codes than their state or the national proposed code. Not to disagree with the professor but they are quite different than regulations prohibiting a farmer in South Dakota from draining a pond in a low spot or requiring blue additive to a diesel tractor in the middle of nowhere, or prohibiting development in an area because of the finding of a rare endangered moth. Just as an aside I was astounded to learn that 50% of the land in Wyoming for example is owned by the Feds.

I think part of my issue with car parts though is that unless you buy OEM from whatever source, you really have no idea of the quality of the part you are getting. They can look the same on the outside from an Amazon supplier but be total junk. You just don’t know because there is so much junk being sold. You come to rely on particular stores like NAPA but even so, they have junk parts too. For the layman, if you are not a professional mechanic, you really have no good way of judging the quality of the part.

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For the layman, if you are not a professional mechanic, you really have no good way of judging the quality of the part.[/quote] @bing

And McParts stores have learned to use all manner of deception to peddle junk to the DIYer. The NEW hard parts are one of their great rip-offs. CV axles, water pumps, alternators, etc., are advertised as lifetime warranty NEW parts but those parts have a much higher failure rate than rebuilts. And all lifetime warranties are questionable.

As the mom and pop parts stores fade away are their any stores that still offer brake lathe service or a shop press for bearings? What will the DIYers do with their Ford’s rear axle bearings and $100+ brake rotors? I don’t believe any of the McParts stores here do any shop work, just the one old independent store and the owner is my age… Old.

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Okay, Carolyn, I heard you loud and clear :mega:

A few weeks ago, I ordered some sway bar links for my car

I got 3 sway bar links, and 1 set of Ikea shoe horns instead. The shoe horns had the sticker and part number . . . complete with bar code . . . of the missing sway bar link. So as far as the automated process goes, my order was complete and correct.

Talking to an amazon person isn’t easy. There’s no way to directly do it. You have to go online, enter your invoice number, click on the item that you have a problem with, then choose from a list of options what the problem is, then choose to talk to somebody via email, or have them call you either immediately or in 5 minutes. I chose 5 minutes. They did indeed call within a few minutes

Then I explained my problem, and they did take care of it. It wasn’t that easy, unfortunately.

Oh, yeah, somebody mentioned that many people order car parts for future maintenance. I agree with that. My sway bar links aren’t broken. I just intend to replace them soon, as a maintenance item, perhaps next weekend. I also ordered some filters for stock. I like amazon’s “my garage” feature, because it makes it fairly easy to look for parts, but you then need to click on the “filter” box. If you don’t, it will display many parts which don’t fit your selected car.

They’re not always the cheapest, although they’re usually cheaper than most. But with prime, it’s sometimes not worth driving around town

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