Learn the Basics of Auto Mechanics

*I chose this topic because I wasn't getting enough contracts here living in the states. Me being me not to bitch or hiccup I rejoined the workforce as an auto mechanic for the same shop that my drag truck is at. (Let me tell you that ALL new cars are pieces of shit or at least they're built with garbage parts) I wouldn't own one.
 Nevertheless, I began twisting wrenches at about the age of 10, started with lawn mowers and snow blowers and worked my way up to automobiles in short fashion. Now, knowing the basics, I have to dedicate an hour a day after work to catch up on the various new systems, systems upgrades with special respect towards the computer controled vehicles. There's a damned sensor on everythinhg. I've never needed a gadget to tell me my tires were low, my oil was low or that I needed servicing but oh yeah - Americans tend to be some lazy bastards, no offense.

 I'll be 55 in October and from the beginning of this blog I had shared that anyone can do anything, now I'm proving it.

by Matthew Wright

Updated July 02, 2018

It can be difficult to make your own auto repairs if you don't know the basics. Mechanics have their own lingo, tools, and specifications that anyone can learn. Whether it's an emergency or routine maintenance, let's explore some of the car repairs you can easily do at home with a few tips.

Auto Repair Essentials

Mechanics require tools and there are a few essentials that you'll need to make most car repairs. A beginner's set of tools can include screwdrivers, a few wrenches, pliers, and a good pair of channel locks. Add a jack, penetrating oil, and a little safety gear and you're good to go. What you don't have means a trip to the parts store, but eventually you'll have a garage full after enough repairs, so don't worry about that.

You will also want to get your hands on a good car repair manual. A manual that's specific to your model of car can give you great insight into where parts are located and any special functions or techniques you need to use. Remember, while cars are essentially the same, different makes and models do have subtle differences that can lead to a lot of frustration if you're using generic tips.

The other thing to consider is when it's okay to buy used auto parts. Yes, you can save some cash at the junkyard, but you're also taking a risk that the part won't work. In the end, a bad choice can end up costing you more money.

In an Emergency

You're driving down the road and a tire blows out. Or, your car won't start in the morning and you need to get to work. Do you know what to do in these emergencies?

It's a good idea for every driver to know how to jump-start a dead battery because calling a tow truck in to do it can waste both time and money. Also, this can be especially tricky on some newer cars. Do yourself a favor and familiarize yourself with the procedures on your car before it happens.

In case you can't get your car started, you might be able to get a friend or family member to tow you instead of calling the truck. Learning how to properly use tow straps is key to making this happen without damaging either car and to keep everyone safe.

Diagnosing Common Problems

What's leaking under my car? Is the color of my exhaust okay? Should my engine sound like that? We've all asked these questions and you can get a pretty good idea of what's causing many problems without going to the mechanic.

When it comes to fluids, you can usually identify them by color. Grab a paper towel and dab it in the leak. If it's green or pink, you're probably looking at coolant. Power steering fluid is yellowish and transmission fluid is a redder color. Every fluid has a distinct color, so this is a pretty easy one to diagnose.

Your exhaust can also lead you to necessary repairs. White, blue, or black smoke coming out of your exhaust will each point you in a different direction. It may be a problem with engine valves or your head gasket and it's best not to delay when you see these problems because they can get worse.

In addition, you should be listening for unusual sounds and which part of the car they're coming from. There are also common signs that you're low on power steering fluid and when something may be wrong with your brakes. Other common car problems include overheating and that unbearable moment when your car simply won't turn over.

The good news is that there is a reason for everything in auto mechanics. It's just a matter of narrowing it down to the real problem. That is why mechanics—pros and amateurs alike—use onboard diagnostics (OBD) to help them find these problems quickly.

Basic DIY Car Repairs

For some car repairs, you may be better off getting it to the mechanic, However, there are a number of things that you can do in your own garage. Some tasks like changing your oil or flushing the coolant are good DIY projects that can save a lot of money each year.

Beyond regular maintenance, almost anyone can change a headlight bulb or any of your rear lights. For these jobs, it's a good idea to have that repair manual so you don't turn a small issue into a big problem.

Many home mechanics can also tackle things like plugging a tire, replacing spark plugs, and even changing a turn signal relay. However, we don't suggest taking on those projects unless you know how to check your oil or top off your windshield washer fluid first.

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For Hudson Bay Polar Bears, The End is Already in Sight

 *I can't blog this but I will link it as I care more for animals than I do for humans.

The polar bear has long been a symbol of the damage wrought by global warming, but now biologist Andrew Derocher and his colleagues have calculated how long one southerly population can hold out. Their answer? No more than a few decades, as the bears’ decline closely tracks that of the Arctic’s disappearing sea ice.

BY  YALE ENVIRONMENT 360 • JULY 8, 2010

*Luckily there's a brighter picture!

Hudson Bay ice update: more thick first year ice habitat for polar bears in 2018 than 2004

Despite pronouncements from one polar bear specialist that “ice in Hudson Bay is in rapid retreat” a look back in time shows that there is more thick first year ice over the Bay this year for the week of the summer solstice than there was in 2004 – and much less open water than 1998.

Ice coverage for some other recent years are shown below compared to 1998, the year the ice breakup pattern on Hudson Bay changed. Speed and melt sequences vary according to the amount of thick first year ice present, discussed previously here.

PS. If you’re wearing white today, flaunt it! Tell your friends and colleagues that you’re celebrating the success of polar bears despite such low summer sea ice since 2007 that 2/3 of them were predicted to disappear.

There are tons of graphics in this article > https://tinyurl.com/y9hp5jbt

IS TRUMP INSANE ENOUGH TO BLOW UP THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION?

The World Trade Organization was created in 1995 with the primary purpose of regulating international trade, ensuring that trade between its 164 member nations flows, in its own words, “as smoothly, predictably, and freely as possible.” Given that these words are in direct opposition to his ethos as a human being—not to mention the fact that the U.S. entered the organization before he was in office—you could probably have guessed that Donald Trump hates the W.T.O. with every fiber of his papaya-colored soul. On the campaign trail he called the organization “a disaster” and, as with NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the Iran deal, threatened to pull out of it post haste. And while he hasn’t made any moves to do so during his first year and a half in office, having more urgent fish to fry such as separating toddlers from their families, passing a giant corporate tax cut, and fighting with kneeling football players on Twitter, a terrifying new report suggests he’s finally ready to scratch that itch.

According to Axios, Trump has told top White House officials that he wants out of the governing body, having “[threatened to withdraw] 100 times.” A source who has discussed the subject with the president, and who knows such a move would “totally [screw] us as a country,” says that Trump has frequently told advisers, “We always get fucked by them [the W.T.O.] I don’t know why we’re in it. The W.T.O. is designed by the rest of the world to screw the United States.” While some aides have attempted to hold the president’s hand like the small child he is and explain to him that, in fact, the U.S. has done very well with the W.T.O., the arguments have been lost on him. (He apparently has not considered the 2018 “Economic Report of the President,” signed by him, that states: “[T]he United States has won 85.7 percent of the cases it has initiated before the W.T.O. since 1995, compared with a global average of 84.4 percent. In contrast, China’s success rate is just 66.7 percent.”)

Perhaps even more disturbing, considering the catastrophic global fallout that would result from the U.S. leaving the W.T.O., Trump’s economic advisers seem to be treating the president like he’s a thoughtful, rational human being rather than a capricious, unpredictable carnival barker:

[The] advisers do push back in the moment when he raises the idea of withdrawal. But they’ve never put in place a policy process to take the idea seriously, according to four sources with direct knowledge of his private comments. That dismissive attitude in the face of Trump’s insistence could ultimately prove to be a mistake—as history has shown with other policy ideas of which aides do not approve.

Take this one out the door @ https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/06/trump-world-trade-organization

Israel loves to play the victim

 Really?

What was this?

Israeli / Saudi Arabia Tactical Nuclear Strike on Yemen 2 stage dual warhead ! Bunker Buster Weapon ! A nuclear bunker buster, also known as an Deep Earth-Penetrating Weapon (EPW) First blast is the first stage blasting the surface layer and second blast (a few second later is the Main Charge detonating deep under the ground. This is not the Big ass Nukes of yesteryear. !

Care to read the rest?

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/09/...

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Trade War Basics

 In the end what you will witness is a "redistribution of wealth and spending". The US as the top world superpower days are over and you are witnessing the downward spiral.
I don't like or dislike it, it's the nature of the beast, no one, no group, no product or service remains the best forever, handle it.

My S-10 revisited

 I only received 3 emails on my truck and this post should answer all the questions.

This truck has every trick in the book, brand new carb, brand new nitros with 10pd bottle, relocated oil filter, fuel cooler, 12" rear - 3:83's, brand new Hoosiers, almost new exhaust with crossover, line lock, MSD, Too much to even add here.

At present I'm asking $12,000 but that's about to go up as I'm having more work done as far as the torque converter and possibly another transmission.
*I also have 2 videos with sound to share, will make a couple more at the track.

The price is firm. *******************GUARENTEED 9 SECOND TRUCK

*I went and took pictures of the suspension to answer 2 emails and as you can clearly see, you couldn't build the suspension and exhaust for under 10K unless you have your own machine shop.

Cold start.

Flashing 7

 Fuel cooler.

Laddered frame.

 Narrowed 12" w/ 3:83's

 Pro drive shaft loop.

 Brand new Hoosier 33x18" 50L - 15's

 Track required kill switch.

Is America Nearing a Second Civil War?

While some bemoan Punch and Judy politics the real issue tearing apart the country aren’t the stark ideological differences between Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, but rather the divide between those who want enforcement of federal immigration law and those who defy and obstruct the enforcers. 

This is an issue — and a debate — that has been percolating for years, though it arguably only came into full focus with President Donald J. Trump’s signature campaign promise to “build the wall.” In time, building a wall along the border of the United States and Mexico became a euphemism for enforcement of federal immigration law, including a crackdown on so-called sanctuary cities. 

As with much in this debate, sanctuary cities are nothing new.

The usual left-wing bastions became safe spaces for illegal immigrants years ago. However, cities and counties that prohibit local police from some or all cooperation with federal authorities charged with enforcing immigration laws gained new infamy after 32-year-old Kate Steinle was murdered along San Francisco’s famed Embarcadero waterfront by Jose Ines Garcia Zarat, a Mexican illegal immigrant who had been deported five times from the United States and had seven felony convictions to his name.

Just as Arizona tried to enforce federal immigration law during the presidency of Barack Obama, California has gone in the opposite direction and become a sanctuary state.

At stake isn’t just the potential loss of federal money, which in the case of California, the most populous state, is significant. California, where reportedly 10 percent of the workforce is in the United States illegally, didn’t just increase the stakes. It poured fuel on the fire with its open defiance of the feds.

As a result, a dangerous and divisive atmosphere not seen since the Civil War is engulfing America.

Then as now, the differences between the two sides are seemingly irreconcilable. And ironically enough, the battle lines are the same with Democrats once again taking what amounts to the secessionist position.

In Oakland, San Francisco’s neighbor across the bay, the Democrat mayor, Libby Schaaf, used the full weight of city hall to warn her constituents about impending raids a day before U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement made 150 arrests. 

Meanwhile, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra threatened state prosecution of businesses that disclose the legal status of their workers to federal authorities. This despite the fact that Becerra, a Democrat, swore an oath to “support and defend” and “bear true faith and allegiance” to the U.S. Constitution.

Under these circumstances it isn’t far-fetched to imagine a situation in which a sheriff or police chief, encouraged by the political leaders of a sanctuary city or state, physically hinders the feds from carrying out a raid in their locale.

Not only would this escalate the issue, but also it could turn what has been a heated political debate into civil unrest and even, dare I say, insurrection.

California’s deliberate undermining of the legitimate and lawful exercise of the federal government’s authority is beyond unconstitutional. It presents a danger for the Union.

Dennis Lennox is a political commentator and public affairs consultant. Follow @dennislennox on Twitter.

More than just my bank

 I won't go into details yet Fidelity Investments offers so many "free" options with free advice that I've been with them 7 years and will never go to another bank in this lifetime.

 See for yourself > https://www.fidelity.com/what-we-offer/overview

HOW ISRAEL COULD TAKE THE FIGHT DIRECTLY TO IRAN

The conflagration this past weekend between Israeli and Iranian forces is being billed as a new stage in the longstanding, albeit to date largely covert, war between the two adversaries. For the first time, Iranian troops perpetrated a direct attack on Israel, initially by sending a drone across the border from Syria and then by firing the anti-aircraft missile that downed an IDF jet which had reentered Israeli airspace after conducting a retaliatory mission.

The events were significant both because of the success in downing the Israeli warplane, the first such occurrence in decades, but also because it evidences Iran’s growing foothold in the Syrian theater, a development that Jerusalem vehemently opposes and has vowed to prevent at all costs. Overall, Iran’s actions suggest that it feels sufficiently emboldened to use its own forces to harm the Jewish state.

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The incident constitutes a strategic shift, according to Lt.-Col. (ret.) Yiftah Shapir, a career officer in the Israel Air Force and the former head of the Military Balance Project at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, “as it marks the first occasion that the Iranians openly engaged Israel, whereas previously this was done via its proxies. It may be,” he qualified, “that the Iranians misjudged the [intensity of the] Israeli response and that the status quo will be restored for a period of time.”

By contrast, Saturday’s flare-up was not the first time that Israel directly struck Iranian assets. In December, the IDF reportedly destroyed a military facility being built by Tehran in al-Kiswah, just south of Damascus. Notably, in 2015, Israeli strikes killed at least six Iranian troops in the Syrian Golan Heights, including a general in the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Also targeted was Jihad Mughniyeh, son of the notorious former Hezbollah operations chief, Imad Mughniyeh, who was himself killed in an Israeli-attributed 2008 car bombing in Syria.

Furthermore, the Mossad has been implicated in the assassination of multiple nuclear scientists on Iranian soil, not to mention the deployment of the Stuxnet cyberweapon, a computer worm developed in conjunction with Washington that wreaked havoc on Iranian nuclear installations even after being discovered in 2010.

So whereas the latest confrontation along the northern border was in some ways exceptional, it does not inevitably entail a long-term escalation or that the conflict be brought out into the open, although these are both distinct possibilities.

In fact, while the political and military echelons have made clear that Israel is not seeking an escalation, its so-called “red lines” – namely, the transfer of advanced weaponry to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iran’s military entrenchment in Syria – continue to be violated; this, despite the IDF having conducted well over 100 cross-border strikes to protect its interests over the past 18 months. Additionally, Iran has started construction on a subterranean facility in Lebanon to manufacture long-range precision missiles that could allow Hezbollah to target, with great accuracy, critical Israeli infrastructure in a future war.

Taken together, these developments raise the question of whether Israel’s deterrence vis-a-vis Tehran and its Lebanese proxy may be weakening, which would necessitate modifying its military strategy.

“ISRAEL’S [decision-making process] now depends largely on what the Iranians and Hezbollah do moving forward,” Brig.-Gen. (res.) Nitzan Nuriel, former director of Israel’s CounterTerrorism Bureau, told The Media Line. “Throughout the years Israel has taken action all over [the region] to make sure that its interests are met. Israel needs to use all the tools available to it, including through its allies.”

While one incident is unlikely to cause a dramatic change in Jerusalem’s calculus, it is possible that the IDF could eventually adopt a page out of Tehran’s playbook by taking the fight directly to the Iranian heartland.

To this end, most experts agree that a full-scale military operation targeting Iran’s atomic facilities – the likes of which Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu reportedly advocated for in 2012, but which was shelved due to opposition from the defense establishment and the Obama administration – is currently off the table. While the debate previously centered on the possibility of setting back Iran’s nuclear program would justify the risks in such an operation, today the political climate has rendered the discussion moot.

The signing of the Iran nuclear deal in 2015 effectively ended the possibility for such a mission, the ramifications considered untenable. On the one hand, with the US still committed to the agreement – in addition to Russia, China and European nations – the political fallout from any major military foray into Iran would dwarf the backlash in the wake of the destruction of the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1982 and the atomic facility in Deir ez-Zor in Syria in 2007. 

On the other hand, since the accord was forged Tehran has deepened its penetration into Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip, all but ensuring that the targeting by Israel of its atomic infrastructure would ignite a war on all three fronts.

Moreover, as US President Donald Trump mulls withdrawing altogether from the deal, any Israeli action targeting Iran’s nuclear program – military or otherwise – could be self-defeating as it could hinder the American leader’s efforts to either reimpose “crippling” sanctions on the Islamic Republic or at the very least strengthen the atomic agreement by addressing, perhaps in a follow-up pact, Tehran’s ballistic missile program and regional adventurism.

Nevertheless, Israel has non-military options according to former Mossad chief Danny Yatom. “Israel should consider all possibilities, including targeting Iran directly, but as part of a grand strategy. I would not exclude the potential that Israel will also use proxies,” he contended to The Media Line.

“This could include mobilizing the People’s Mujahedin of Iran [MEK], for example, which may have carried out the killing of Iranian nuclear scientists on Israel’s behalf. Jerusalem has allegedly provided funding, training and possibly arms to the exiled anti-regime group.  

The Paris-based MEK maintains a presence in Iraq and covertly in Iran, from where it has been accused of fomenting civil unrest, including the recent week-long nationwide protests. Recently delisted by the US as a terrorist group, the group also purportedly has links to Saudi Arabia and therefore could act as an intermediary between the Jewish state and Riyadh to facilitate the coordination of their positions. The Iranian dissident organization also monitors Tehran’s nuclear program (in fact it was the first non-state actor to reveal it) and might therefore serve as an additional intelligence source for Israel moving forward.

Full article @ https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/How-Israel-could-take-the-fight-directly-to-Iran-542785