Recent content by Kestas

Spool down.

I turn everything off as a force of habit from driving cars from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. I don't bother idling to let the turbo spool down. My last bit of driving is a crawl through the neighborhood and that should do it. The worst thing you can do is come off of freeway speed to a dead stop and...

It's not too dusty where I live. I once ran a filter 110K until the computer tripped a code related to air flow restriction. The filter didn't look too bad until I shined a light through it and couldn't see the light.

burbguy 82 is correct. Quenching is not necessary to anneal pure copper. It will not soften it more. I wanted to avoid this often contested issue and not derail the topic in this thread.

As a metallurgist, my pet peeve is when people argue with me about metallurgical facts, especially those who talk about how they soften copper crush washers.

Here is an illustration of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

A spark plug socket wasn't the best choice to illustrate my point. But I have been in a situation where all I had was a Craftsman thin wall socket to fit a suspension nut I was working on. It broke, and I knew the replacement would break as well. It's at this point where I buy the appropriate...

On the other hand... if you run into a stubborn spark plug and the socket breaks, you can get a free replacement, but what good is that if you know the replacement will also break? That's when you're forced to step up the tool quality.

This was my spare tire. The hydraulics on my Mercedes sprung a leak and fluid ended up in the spare tire well. I didn't notice the fluid in the well until too late.

I think the rule of thumb is to replace the fluid at 5K, after most of the break-in has occurred. The thought of running the fluid further with all those contaminants is nasty. I've seen what lubricant contaminated with break-in debris does to bearings, and it's not good. I tried to talk to...

Couldn't you just decant it?

34 mpg 2020 BMW X2 This was the calculated average going from MI to FL.

Back 50 years ago I got water from gas stations many times. After a while I got pretty good at repairing the vehicles. It chiefly involved dropping the gas tank and drying it out thoroughly.

I also have a patio over a patio that was replaced 8 years ago. The contractor put a decorative flexible membrane as the top surface to handle the water. Unfortunately the surface quickly developed mildew spots that cannot be power washed off. It otherwise works fine.

As you said, I always considered floor space on personal property as something that should be conserved. There's never enough. I vote for mounting a fan on the wall or ceiling.