As regards syrup, I like Log Cabin because it has no high-fructose corn syrup, but in truth any syrup including honey is too much sugar. None of it is necessary, and none of it is really healthy.
I didn’t know what good syrup was until I moved to NH. Even though NY is the second largest maple producing state, I never used it until I moved to NH. Never going back to the imitators.
The only basic industry on the county next door(Highland)besides tourism and farming is Maple syrup and the Maple donuts are horrible if they are allowed to get cold,some back to earthers are tapping around here,more power to them-make mine Log Cabin.
I’ll take boiled down tree sap over a concoction of corn syrup, liquefied sugar, caramel color and a bunch of chemicals that are hard to pronounce.
I’ve got about a dozen huge maple trees on my property and the whole neighborhood makes a deal out of getting all the kids out to help tap the trees and make syrup.
I’m lucky not to have a sweet tooth. But I like syrup on my waffles. Most of my “vices” are meat related; smoked oysters, pork rinds, pickled herring, smoked eels, as well as chesses, especially old and aged.
A true food paradise for me is the Baltic ferry from Sweden to Northern Germany. It has a non stop, all you can eat Smorgasbord with the most incredible seafood, cheeses, rye breads, etc. All free too! You only have to pay for your beer and Aquvavit.
Hello there – could you please bring this around to cars somehow? Thank you.
@cdaquila Sorry about that, but it’s the car ferry from Sweden to Germany.
See this is what I mean? I DRIVE off to work, I DRIVE to the gym, I DRIVE to the supermarket, and by the time I get back here we’ve already been prompted to get back on topic, and I’m not supposed to mention my syrup preferences. I grew up on something called King Syrup. Comes in a bottle with a red label with a picture of a lion on it. It’s real thick, once you put it in the refrigerator its almost impossible to pour. To me everything else is just colored sugar water. Recently I learned that “Maple Syrup” is actually a different thing than “syrup” so I bought a bottle to try it. Its good, but not $7 for 12.5 oz good, and its still watery compared to King Syrup. It might be a regional thing because I never see the stuff when I’m on vacation. People look at you funny when you bring your own syrup to a pancake breakfast.
I don’t see how mention of "a non stop, all you can eat Smorgasbord with the most incredible seafood, cheeses, rye breads, etc. All free too! " could ever be off-topic under any circumstances, unless the issue is that it is too far away for me to DRIVE there to have dinner tonight. 
We just built a road for a guy to be able to drive to His maple trees,His 4wd Dodge can get there now,the only problem I see with tree syrup,is that roots on something vigorous as a sugar maple tree can also pick up soluble pollution in the ground,The way people used to dump oil,stale gas,paint thinner,battery acid,paints and other chemicals on the ground has me concerned in a few places.
@TT,would the reverse osmosis syrup makers remove heavy metals and things like that?I hear tell that Red Maple also also produces a good syrup.
(Actually now,this aforementioned Guy could probably get his wifes Tercel to the tree site in good weather now)
This thread seems to have played out, and as the “O.P.” I would like to extend my sincere thanks to all those who contributed ideas and suggestions. This discussion has been very helpful to me. I agree with those who said I was overthinking this greatly. First let me say what I’m NOT going to do. I’m NOT going to pay $40,000+ for a truck. That’s insanity. I’m also going to try my best NOT to buy another project car (i.e. moneypit) like the used hearse I brought up in another thread (unless I stumble into a true bargain). I’m tired of incessant repairs, going on trips and wondering if I’m gonna need AAA to get me home, etc.
I think my best course of action is to buy a new Honda Fit (although I’ll go to the auto show when it comes to town and give that Mazda 3 and possibly the Toyota Corolla another look-over). Good, basic, reliable, efficient transportation, that’s what I NEED, anything more is a WANT. For assorted reasons which are personal and off-topic, I’m going to try to hold out another 6 - 9 months on this purchase. I’ve got about 11 months left before the registration & emissions are due on my '93 Festiva and I don’t plan on renewing them. Preferably I’d like to drive it to the Festiva Madness next year and sell it to a REAL ENTHUSIAST for cheap, but I don’t know if it’ll hold together that long?
I’m gonna try and keep my Jeep Grand Cherokee for a while, possibly use as an initial tow vehicle. Since its a '96, if I renew the registration on that next year, I can put ‘historic’ tags on it and the registration & insurance fees will be minimal. As was pointed out to me, even at, say, $800 twice a year for repairs is way cheaper than depreciation & deterioration on a new truck.
AND, I’m going to keep my EYES and EARS open for a bargain, both for a pickup truck AND a boat. Yeah, I need to chill out and be patient. When the time is right, the deal will present itself to me.
So thanks again everybody. This board certainly attracts a diverse and intelligent bunch of posters. As I’ve said before, if I ever hit that PowerBall, I’m going to arrange a big picnic cookout and all of you will be invited all expenses paid. All right, time for me to try to ignite another lively discussion now. . .
Hankscorpio: Like an aviation enthusiast flying commercial.
Well, I’ve got another update. My Jeep broke down - - again. The day after Thanksgiving it broke down and cost me an oxygen sensor and serpentine belt tensioners. Now, the day after Christmas, I’ve got an electrical short draining the battery, plus about 2 inches of water in the passenger side footwells from the recent rains. (I’ve already had the sunroof and the windshield sealed / re-sealed.) I’m done. I give up. Jeep has got to GO! Its not reliable enough for me to trust. For the time being, I’m going to try to recharge the battery and possibly I can drive it to work, disconnect the battery, drive it home, disconnect the battery etc.
After the 1st of the year, I’m going to knuckle down and buy that new car. . . its way past time. And the boat / tow vehicle? That moves to the back burner. Next summer I can do like many of you suggested, go rent a boat I’d say at least 2 or 3 times. Perhaps by summer 2017 or 2018 I can revisit the idea . . .
P.S.- $800 twice a year is reasonable - - $800 every month is out of the question. . . . I’ve got to stop here because the smoke coming out of my ears just set the smoke detector off! :neutral:
I wonder if the rain leak is causing a current leakage to the frame of the car and is draining the battery. (I thought of that because our outdoor Christmas lights are out. It is raining and the outdoor outlet is a ground fault protected outlet). At any rate, when a car gives that much aggregation as your Jeep does, it’s time to move on. I had a 1955 Pontiac back in the early 1960s that caused me all kinds of grief. I finally got rid of the car to save my sanity.
@“Ed Frugal”
Do you have a digital multimeter?
If so, you could perform a parasitic draw test . . . with any luck, you’ll find your culprit soon enough
What happened . . . the tensioner failed, causing the belt to fly off, wrecking the O2 sensor in the process . . .?!
But it does sound like the end is near . . . I imagine the presumably rusty floorboards aren’t the only rust . . . ?
Driving old vehicles can cost more than driving a newer vehicle unless you can do the work yourself. $800 for a belt tensioner and oxygen sensor seems high, perhaps there were more parts involved. Some of the invoices that I see from “good independents” are 20% to 50% more than dealer prices.
Repairing the water leak shouldn’t be too difficult. Those vehicles have plastic drain hoses for the sunroof and they crack. Remove the A-pillar trim and inspect the drain hoses. Open the sunroof, pour water onto the sunroof trough and observe where it drains to. The water should trickle out near the wheel wells, not down the A and B pillars. You could also just apply duct tape to the sunroof opening.
Nah, the “check engine” light has been on for at least a few months. I was already fed up from the last round of repairs, so I was like, “-expletive deleted- it, it runs, emissions isn’t due yet, I’m just gonna drive it like that for awhile.” The tensioner failed, causing the belt to fly off - on a highway where heavy traffic was travelling at 70+ mph with barely enough shoulder to get it out of the travel lane, on Black Friday, just past nightfall, in the rain. Not wanting to get killed, I drove it home anyway and probably came very close to cooking the engine, I could hear the coolant boiling when I parked it in my driveway (but I DIDN’T get squashed out on the highway).
Yeah, I do think my mechanic is kind of high, problem is anytime I try to go somewhere cheaper, they never seem to get it right on the first shot, and I end up going back a second and third time trying to get it right. At least this guy gets it right the first time.
Seems like in years past, when I try to diagnose and repair stuff myself, I always end up replacing half a dozen parts and the thing still doesn’t work right and it ends up costing me 3 times as much as if I had just paid to have it done right the first time.
After my mechanic strongly recommended the Dodge Ram truck, I guess he noticed the look on my face and the conversation pivoted and I said something along the lines of I guess I can’t blame Chrysler for the problems with my Grand Cherokee since it was a vehicle that had “SAT” for a lo-o-o-ong time before I acquired it. He said, No, we get a lot of Grand Cherokees, they are quite trouble prone, but they also have a very loyal following, he said the Wranglers are actually more reliable than the Grand Cherokees.
The water getting in the passenger compartment has been a recurring problem. I’ve had the windshield re-sealed, and I actually sealed down the sunroof with Gorilla Glue and spray painted black over it (I’m bald on top and every time I’d drive it around on a sunny day, I’d get sunburned on top of my head. I now hate sunroofs. You should have seen my reaction when the Honda salesman tried to talk up the sunroof, I told him I’d pay extra to NOT have a sunroof.) Now the water only gets in when its a HARD rain. Actually I THOUGHT I had that problem solved until yesterday. . . .
I drove it out to visit relatives for Xmas dinner and it POURED down rain while I was there. When I came out I noticed the dome light didn’t come on when I opened the door, but otherwise it seemed fine. Being dark, late, and having a belly full of food, I figured I’d check it out in the light of day, but this afternoon when I came out the thing was dead as if it had been sitting for 20 years. I removed the battery and have it on my trickle charger in the basement now. Yeah, I kinda figured the problem is water shorting out something.
So my battery charger has 3 settings, 2amp, 4amp, and 6 amp. Am I right to charge it on 2amp? I was always told the battery would hold the charge better if you re-charge it as slowly as possible, or is that more “old Dad’s tales”? For future reference, I guess its too late now as I already have the battery charging?
Do you think I could just drive it (as a backup vehicle) and disconnect the battery every time I park it, at least as a temporary “fix”? Back when I was young, a friend had an old car with some parasitic draw issue he couldn’t track down, and he drove his car like that I think for over a year. When you’re young and broke you do what you have to do. . . now that I’m thinking about him & his car, I believe that car was a Chrysler product too, Dodge something-or-other, I remember his father berating him, said if he’d bought a Chevy instead of a Dodge he wouldn’t be having those problems. . . oh boy, old times. . .
Maybe I’ll just throw a tarp over it when its sitting on my driveway. I can’t think where else the water could be coming in from, and I don’t want to spend any more money chasing down problems when I know I’ll just have more problems in a month or two. (Throwing good money after bad). That’s money I could be putting towards my new car.
Response to @Nevada_545 , yeah, let’s see, belt, belt tensioner, idler pulley, labor charges, oxygen sensor, labor charges, diagnostic charge to determine that oxygen sensor was really what needed to be replaced. . . oh hexx, it never ends. . . I wish I had the tools, time, and talent to do all that stuff, its difficult by myself and no one knowledgeable around to help / show me what to actually DO.
I tell you, I have the utmost respect for “gearhead” types who can dive into machinery and figure it out intuitively, we’d all be back in the stone age in a month without people like you (all of you). Please know that Ed Frugal* greatly admires your skill and knowledge. At one time I thought I’d like to learn to be a mechanic, but I’ve been told I don’t have the proper temperament to be a mechanic - I’d be paying for a lot of new windshields after I got frustrated and threw a wrench through them - so I’ve been told.
My big mistake was, I stumbled into what I THOUGHT was a good gig back in the early 90’s (well, I guess it WAS a good gig at the time, but the times have changed drastically) and ended up not pursuing my education. Now I’m a 40 something laborer with a bad back working for a dying company that would cut off its own face to spite the Union. Hopefully I’ll qualify for a rumored buyout that may be coming next year, and go back to school, so I may yet find that proverbial pot of gold at the rainbow after the storm, hope springs eternal, huh?
*Ed Frugal - screen name, not my real name.
@“Ed Frugal”
Replacing an oxygen sensor, belt and tensioner is not that difficult.
If you don’t have it already, buy a Chilton or haynes book.
As far as the belt and tensioner goes, no special tools involved, AFAIK
The oxygen sensor does require a special 7/8" tool, which kind of looks like a 3/8" drive crowfoot. Depending on access, you might be able to replace it with a regular 7/8" or 22mm combo wrench
Why don’t you just install a cheap battery disconnect, so that you don’t have to disconnect the negative battery post with the wrench, every time you park the jeep
“a 40 something laborer with a bad back”
you actually described me right there, except you could substitute mechanic for laborer
But it really doesn’t matter . . . we’re both blue collar, so we’re in the same boat
as far as school goes, do it. All of my relatives with advanced degrees have good careers, and the schooling definitely was worth it
Among all of my relatives, I’m among the least educated and least successful, in terms of money, property, belongings, etc. But I put in an honest day’s work, I have my houses, my cars are owned free and clear . . . I pay cash for used . . . and I’ll hopefully get a pension, if I don’t die on the job
@db4690 , yeah, you’re right, I already feel like an dumbaxx for not tackling that myself, if circumstances were just a little bit different. . . at least I’m not using my real name, on the off chance any of you are in my neighborhood. . .(I’m a little embarrassed by my own stupidity… . )
“But it really doesn’t matter . . . we’re both blue collar, so we’re in the same boat” ". . . and I’ll hopefully get a pension, if I don’t die on the job " Oh my, it’s like this everywhere, isn’t it? I saw @kmccune post a similar sentiment in another thread. Most everybody at my job over 50 says the same thing, ". . . I don’t want to die in this place. . . " a few of them have though, over the years.
On paper at least, I’ve got a really good pension coming to me, but every year when they send the funding statement, there’s more and more people collecting, and fewer and fewer paying in as companies shut down, I don’t see how its still solvent in 20 years. . . they’re backed up by the PBGC, but if it comes down to that, we only get like 33 cents on every dollar of benefits earned.
(One plant that employed 250 will close, the Union will organize 2 dozen school bus drivers, 9 office workers, and a dozen janitors and claim the Union is growing because they lost one company and gained 3 new companies. Must be the New Math. :neutral: )
@“Ed Frugal”
Yes, you are smart not to use your own name
Sometimes I also think about just how many details to include in my stories. Because one of my colleagues might be reading, somehow figure out who I am, and think I’m talking smack about them
There are some 70-something guys in our fleet, who have no plans to retire. They can’t be forced to retire, unless they somehow can’t perform their duties anymore. Some of the older guys, their wives got sick and passed away, and they would rather work, than sit at home, all by themselves
One guy retired with well over 30 years, but he was always a loser when it came to finances. He never owned a home, his credit was shot, he didn’t pay his bills. He gave the bill collectors the shop phone number . . . years later, they are still calling. We just answer the phone, say “such and such doesn’t work here anymore” and hang up. The sad part is he has a lot of kids, some of whom aren’t out of the home yet. Apparently he’s always lived in gang-infested areas. He’s even lived in projects. I think he’s spent a lot of money over the years, getting his kids out of the messes they’ve caused. He’s no role model. I’m pretty sure he stole a bunch of stuff from the shop and sold it on ebay. Can’t prove it 100%, but pretty sure.
There’s a couple of employees here, I consider them to be free-loaders. They aren’t union members, but the union will protect them, if it comes down to it. They pay some sort of fees, which they get reimbursed later on. They can’t vote, and they despise the union. Yet they’ll let the union help them, if their job is in jeopardy
So when the union representatives come by every once in awhile to discuss the latest contract negotiations, or whatever, these freeloaders are eating their lunch about 50 feet away. And everybody can see them. And they’re laughing, because they get the same protection we do, except they get it for free in the end.
“I hate you, and I spit in your face. But I expect you to help me.”
I respect somebody’s freedom to make their own choices
But I don’t respect that smug and greedy attitude
We had Jeep GCs at the college for a number of years. There was always something broken on those things. If often wasn’t something that would make the Jeep unusable, but it was always something. Even when they were running right, it was still like driving something from WWII. They had the V8s, and man, did those things suck gas!! I’ve taken them on trips, and I was astounded at the amount of gas they used. When we replaced them we did so with Hondas.