What's everybody up to this Labor Day weekend?

@asemaster; You are probably not in California. We are bunch of sue happy people here. neighbor’s kid had an accident at an icing rink, you guess the rest. Good luck if you tap someone’s bumper from behind.

lol. asemaster. everyone gives away the trampoline after a bit. a couple broken arms and they re gone.

we had a trampoline sports building open up in town a couple years ago. they had to close last year. too many injuries.

trampolines are the most dangerous toy ever. my daughter was so mad that I never let her go to the trampoline place…, until all her friends got hurt. then she thanked me for being firm.

Saturday, we had our last race at our lake side yacht club with the awards picnic afterwards. Kind of a sad occasion every year as the next day we start pulling boats for the year. Funny, it’s work taking them out but fun putting them in. So Labor Day weekend actually ends being, three “labor” days.

Lets see…stick to automotive…hummmm.

Well I’m going to check my oil on the old bus and take a trip to town for gas and blinker fluid…

While in town, I’m going to stop by the hospital and check out all the girls in the maternity ward.

Hot chicks for sure and after all, it is labor day.

Yosemite

I changed my oil. And I washed and waxed the buggy in preparation for the upcoming fall rains. I keep forgetting that I no longer have to take advantage of every good weekend day to do this stuff… I’m retired now… I can do it during the week now if it rains all weekend. Old habits die hard.

Oh, and I had a chance to pass on some helpful hints. There’s a young college fella that lives across the street from me whose dad clearly isn’t a car guy. He’s a nice guy, but neglect is his normal maintenance act. The young fella’s steering suddenly got hard and he found out the fluid was empty. His dad’s solution was to just fill it back up. He says it leaks now. I took the opportunity to explain the importance of fluid monitoring to him, as well as to discuss the power steering system with him. I offered to bring my ramps out and take a look-see for him, to see if I could tell whether the leak was rack related or pump related, but he declined. I emphasized the damage that running out of fluid can do, and that a simple fitting leak can become a very expensive rack replacement if nobody’s watching the fluids. The young fella is interested in cars, but is trapped by having to take his dad’s bad advice. I watched his dad totally destroy a perfectly good Tercel with complete and total negligence, and it broke my heart. The kid is a really good kid, and I’d like to teach him something, but I hold back because I don’t want to interfere with his (or my) relationship with his dad.

@asemaster‌

As I recall, you’re actually from southern California

You move away awhile ago, and have perhaps forgotten how lawsuit-happy everybody is here

Among my coworkers, every single one of them, whenever anybody ever rearended them while driving, they contacted a bloodthirsty go for the throat shady lawyer, and they collected a nice payout

This usually happened in a parking lot, and the cars were traveling at walking speed, 5 or 10mph

And every single time, the car was barely scratched, no whiplash, no concussion, nothing at all, yet greed rules supreme!

You don’t sound like a jerk, you explained yourself very nicely. I don’t think anybody took offense to your statements

years ago, a family friend had a party at his house. A drunken reveler fell down the stairs. This so-called good friend proceeded to hire a lawyer and sue the pants off of the homeowner. It was so bad, for the rest of his life, he never was able to get out from under the financial judgement against him

This was car related, yes?

yeah i agree with your sentiments about suits asemaster. when i lived in MA everyone sued and people didn t let their kids play with other kids because they feared getting sued.

its not like that here, but i still think trampolines are the worst toys ever. kids ALWAYS get hurt on them. i bet that’s why its being given away.

they should be be scrapped

my friend reluctantly took a free one. he got rid of it shortly thereafter and threw it away instead of endangering any other kids

I know this is a non car topic but those things are very dangerous. You really need spotters around it so if someone heads for the edge they can be pushed back on. Terrible thing for someone to end up paralyzed from hitting the ground with their head.

When he was about 8 our son fell off the neighbor’s monkey bars and broke his arm. Never ever even considered or thought about any suit. Our insurance paid and he was only out of commission a month or so.

I guess in answer to the question though, everyone is on the computer this weekend instead of out boating or fishing.

car topic ?
Car Talk !
Yep,if you’re lookin’ at it…that’s my weekend activity.
Laptop on Car Talk and Nascar on the tv.

( a big project I’m delaying will get done some other week. …when I get the gumption.
Last week my daughter pulled the soap dish / handle off the shower/tub wall exposing a long developing root problem ( since before we bought this house ) of gradual leaking through the tile grout micro cracks into the wall behind.
At the least it will be a ; -two wall, three feet from the corner each, three feet up, srtip tile / strip wall board / re wall board and re tile- job.
At the worst it could mean re wallboaring and retiling the entire tub enclosure with the probability of mold abatement measures. )

My apples are ready for picking. so the family will spend most of the day doing that. Then we fire up the barbecue and have a cookout. Hope the weather holds. Happy Labor Day!

Use Durock behind the shower wall instead of wall board, even the green stuff.

IMHO backyard trampolines are extremely dangerous. When on the tramp, your leg muscles rapidly become conditioned to responding to a surface that absorbs (and returns) much of the inertial energy of your body coming down. If you then stray from the tramp and hit the ground, your muscles don’t absorb the energy the way they normally would, and things break. Watch a gymnast on a trampoline and they will always dismount by stopping bouncing and rolling off the edge of the tramp. They’ll never go straight to ground. Unless a trampolinist is familiar with and knows this phenomenon, and knows how to properly dismount, and has spotters to help them stay on the trampoline, he/she can get seriously hurt. The average youngster on a backyard trampoline has none of these things.

Thanks Bing…THAT is exactly the advice I’m taking the time researching for and not in any hurry to race into the project.
it is something I can do.
But it’s also something I should research first and not hurry it up and screw it up.
( I can just see an AFV video of someone slamming the bathroom door and the tiles all come tumbling down )

Saw a lot of really great cars at the car show fundraiser for a wounded vet that lost his legs, hearing and vision on his right side. Wifey went also, and we were recalling the only 2 times we had seen our fathers come near to tears. I think it was a 58 impala big fins etc., green, parked on the street and within 2 days of purchase was rear ended by a drink driver and totalled. Her Dad had bought an MG, someone did not set the parking brake and it ended up loosing to a tree at the bottom of a hill. A lot of great cars there, but I think it sad we have to have a fund raiser for people that have lost so much serving our country, and they were only asking for used games and childrens books.

Well, my trampoline preparations (don’t worry @cdaquila‌ this will get back to automotive) were interrupted this afternoon by a neighbor with a dead battery. She was getting ready to take the kids to a movie when the car wouldn’t start. She called her husband at work who suggested she come ask the mechanic neighbor for a jump start.

So I drive one of my cars across the street and jump start her Highlander. She tells me she had to get a jump last week as well, but the next day took the car in for an oil change and checkup and they couldn’t find anything wrong. I’m looking at the original battery in a 2007 car and wondering what is wrong with these people. I don’t know who she took the car to but it needs a battery. I explained to her that an original equipment battery has an expected lifespan of 5-6 years and that she was getting close to 8. I explained to her that at my work we routinely test batteries over 3 years old with every oil change, and batteries over 7 years old are recommended for replacement without bothering to test them. I explained that she was on borrowed time already and that she or her husband should get the battery replaced soon.

Which leaves me wondering, how does a shop look at an 8 year old battery and tell a customer “We can’t find any reason you needed a jump start after leaving your doors open for 20 minutes.”?

And by the way, thanks to all of you for your admonitions about trampoline safety and dangers. We’ll still be getting it tomorrow.

And yes @db4690‌ and @galant‌ , I’m originally from Torrance.

Feeling sad a vet who loses his legs, and right side hearing and vision has the buds step up for a car show and fund raiser, and a great one it was but why should someone who gave so much under military duty be in a situation so bad he wants used toys and kids books. That is so wrong, yet politics … Sorry we need tax cuts for the rich for the trickle down effect, and need to cut social programs to pay for it? Yet evidently 50 percent of the people think they are part of the 1%

Manchester NH closed their main street down and filled it with hot rods and customs. They do this every year. I forgot and missed it this year. Darn.

So I stopped at a garage sale to pick up some kids books or toys, as I had 1 toy but not much else to donate to the wounded veterans program, the guy saw me looking around, his stuff was classic vintage, antique rusty gold stuff, he is like what do you need? I love the old scythes and wooden wagons, cast iron bookends etc. but said I am going to the wounded warriors car show and they are asking for childrens toys and childrens books so that is what I was looking for, he gave me 3 old Tonka toys to donate to them, there are a lot of really nice people in the world. Now what kid would not love a dirty old tonka dump truck or car, these days probably many , but if one kid loves it that is all that counts.

@db4690‌

years ago, a family friend had a party at his house. A drunken reveler fell down the stairs. This so-called good friend proceeded to hire a lawyer and sue the pants off of the homeowner. It was so bad, for the rest of his life, he never was able to get out from under the financial judgement against him

Typical alcoholic attitude, the drunk fell down the stairs and it wasn’t his fault. Just like drunk drivers that crash and hurt or kill someone, many of those who kill and maim innocent people contend that it was just an unfortunate “accident” and alcohol consumption was not the cause.

I’m going to the next village to take another look at the beautifully-restored Hudson pickup truck that one of the locals owns. This beautiful dark green specimen is from 1942, or 1946, or 1947 (the designs were essentially identical for those model years), and if I am lucky I might be able to talk with the owner.

Hudson never sold many trucks, and given the passage of several decades there couldn’t be many of them left, so this truck is a fairly rare bird.