Comments by "spaceflight101" (@spaceflight1019) on "Rainman Ray's Repairs" channel.

  1.  @popsports05  Power stations down there are looking for good people. Better pay, better benefits, better hours.
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  2. No sense in giving them free advertising.
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  3.  George  If, by "junk", you mean "imported", then yes. Unless your brakes are made by Wilwood, then you have "junk", with the lone exception of Brembo.
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  4. We had this discussion in Part One of this saga. The customer may have purchased the parts at the shop but had to wait for a service appointment. When my 2001 Ram died the dealer called me and said that I could wait 2 weeks for the OEM part or they could get one from the Auto Zone next door. My neighbor's family has owned a tire shop for 3 generations now. He gets really frosted when people bring Tire Rack tires and insist that he mount and balance them. When you buy his tires that's included in the price. Mail order tires pay $50 per wheel. He has to pay for the machines, he has to pay to maintain the machines, he has to provide shop space, compressed air, calibrated torque wrenches, and labor.
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  5. Back before cars became instrumented like the Space Shuttle one wire went from the switch to the light on the dash. Now that sensor tells the computer the oil pressure, temperature, and quality.
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  6. The dealer told the owner to take it to Ray's. Reputation is everything!
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  7.  @dragonflytoo  20 years ago I worked at a local shop that worked on Honeywell industrial controls. Devices that needed fixed began appearing that were sent by Honeywell. When the owner called them they said that they heard we did good work and they didn't have anyone to work on their stuff. They were happy and the customers were happy. They never questioned the cost because they knew what our prices were and they were good with that.
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  8. When I was around 30 I learned about hypoglycemia. Sugar shakes, I called it, and the cure was to take five and eat a candy bar. Nowadays it's called "hangry".
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  9. Playing a little BTO this morning!
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  10. They launched a big rocket last night a little after 1AM.
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  11.  @danjordan1979  yep. I planned to get up to watch but slept in. There's not much to see during a night launch.
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  12.  @danjordan1979  I was 17 in December of 1972. I stayed up to watch the broadcast moonwalk of Apollo 17 and wondered if we'd ever pass this way again. Today, we are a lot closer.
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  13.  @danjordan1979  It was an amazing time, the first era of space exploration, where the lone question was "How do we do this?"
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  14.  @danjordan1979  During the shuttle era, I accidentally discovered that if you began playing "Waiting For A Star To Fall" at T minus 16 seconds it synchronized perfectly with the events of the launch. The next song on my player is "Across The River", and those two songs carry you from launch to orbit.
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  15. The common cause of this is the evaporator freezing up and blocking the airflow. Check the refrigerant pressure.
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  16. If you remove the chrome covers the nuts are 3/4". If you use antiseize when you reinstall them rust will not be an issue.
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  17. I'd guess that they already had someone lined up, a friend of a friend of a friend, who's willing to work for less money.
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  18. Mechanical aptitude.
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  19. 50 years ago when you and your buddies spent a Saturday afternoon and a few cases of beer and pizza on headers it was fun. Cars had lots of extra room under the hood and the job was relatively straightforward and fun.
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  20. When the last shuttle mission to repair the Hubble was closing the doors an astronaut asked Houston if they should put never seize on the hinges. Houston told them no.
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  21. Complacency was determined to be a major factor in the losses of the Challenger and Columbia space shuttles.
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  22.  @MarcMercier1971  They never die on an empty tank. It's a corollary to Murphy's Law.
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  23. It won't get fixed before it's sold at auction.
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  24. Negative 0.5.
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  25. You know, they make transmission jacks for jobs like that. They can also be useful for lowering gas tanks and rear axles/subframes. I use one for working on and winter storage of my motorcycle. 47 years ago I was replacing the transmission in my Plymouth and wound up with a Torqueflite on my chest! Not good!
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  26. We had metal halide lights at Cheswick and the first area we upgraded to LEDs was the forced draft fan room. Better light, zero maintenance, and...zero spiders. Apparently the bugs the spiders eat can't see the LEDs and don't congregate around the lights.
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  27.  @Fevebblefester  Pennsylvania inspects passenger vehicles once a year and testing the parking brake is part of the inspection. Removing them removes the last line of defense when the service brakes fail. Should the service brakes fail and cause an accident resulting in injury, be prepared to answer, in court, exactly why you thought that it was a good idea to remove the E-brake.
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  28.  @ctech14367  Many Rust Belt states, Pennsylvania included, spread brine on the roads. It gets into places regular salt didn't and is extremely detrimental to things like brake lines. You want adrenaline? You'll get it when you step on the brakes and the pedal goes to the floor. Been there, done that. Twice. It sucks!
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  29. I have a project for you...go through all of Ray's old videos, and cull the doodly-dos and make a "best of" video and post it on here. I kinda miss it myself. I need to use my voice notes to record a sample for a ringtone.
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  30. Every day you drive, you take a chance that the steering wheel, brake pedal, or gas pedal may not be connected to anything meaningful. I've done all three.
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  31. Try different brake pads, of a different composition.
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  32. Some dealerships go the extra mile and provide a Carfax report and a professional mechanical inspection report, but most of the time it's "buyer beware". There was a Goodwill auto auction next to one place I worked, and all of us gearheads would go over there on auction day. 1964 Mercury, 1967 Plymouth, cars nobody wanted. If they couldn't get one to run we jumped in and usually got it going.
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  33.  @technicalprecision8651  When preventive/predictive maintenance was in vogue folks used infrared cameras to look for hot spots. Now they look at Mean Time Between Failures and the odds of the plant being shuttered instead of wasting money to fix problems before they fail.
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  34.  @technicalprecision8651  I was an E&I tech at Cheswick Power Station for the last 8 years of my 43 year career in industrial instrumentation and process controls. The station was decommissioned this past April. When NRG was the owner they subscribed to preventive maintenance. GenOn abandoned that philosophy and ran until failure because they knew which way the wind was blowing.
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  35.  @572Btriode  better be careful with that nuclear secret stuff!
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  36.  @sheerwillsurvival2064  one thing that makes this more difficult is the extensive use of computers to control things in cars.
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  37.  @sheerwillsurvival2064  In 1975 the only electronics were the radio, voltage regulator, and ignition spark controller. There were various warnings about what not to do to prevent frying these devices. I started working on cars as a kid, in 1967. You did a tune-up every spring and fall. New plugs, points, condenser, distributor cap. New wires if needed. Gap the points. Gap the plugs. Set the timing. Pull all 4 wheels and inspect the drum brakes. Clean the front wheel bearings with kerosene. Repack the wheel bearings with fresh grease. Find the sweet spot with the wheel bearing nut, then put a new Cotter pin in. Check the water level in the battery. Add distilled water if necessary. Remove and clean the battery cables. Clean them and the battery top with baking soda in water. Check the ground cable's connection to the frame. Check the starter cable connection. Stuff like that. My father greatly appreciated me being able to do the work.
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  38.  @karisalonen8984  They've been around ever since 4x4s replaced muscle cars as the vehicle of choice for those of us buying our first new vehicles. I was one of them, picking up my new 1977 F150 the week before Star Wars hit the theaters. Most guys lifted their trucks to put much bigger tires on them. The idea was to gain ground clearance if driven in deep snow. The current trend is to build a "brodozer" with the "Carolina squat". I went the other way with my truck. It handled like a barge, with copious amounts of body roll. A few months after I bought it Ford introduced the new Bronco, based on the F150. It had front and rear anti-sway bars. A visit to a Ford truck dealership and a trip through the parts book and my F150 was upgraded. I added BFG Radial All-Terrain T/A tires on white wagon wheels and had a truck that actually handled well.
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  39.  @karisalonen8984  Buffalo, New York was home to snowblowers powered by motorcycle engines. As they explained it to me, you need at least a 40 foot vertical throw to get over the snowdrifts.
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  40. Did I miss the part where Ray hooked up the diagnostic reader?
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  41. I agree, since it was out of the car for most of the day.
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  42. IIRC, the phrase "rocket surgery" is a quote from the movie "Mystery, Alaska".
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  43. I used to encounter this while commissioning process Instruments and valves in new installations.
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  44.  @FoamCrusher  give me a few minutes to find my slide rule, and I'll be right there. 43 years worth of industrial instruments and process controls here, retired Electrical and Instrumentation tech two years ago.
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  45. "Fuel system cleaning" sounds like snake oil to me. Use a "Top Tier" brand of gas and don't sweat it.
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  46. When I replaced the ignition switch on my 2005 Sportster, I used a Western Union splice, soldered with rosin-core 60/40 solder. Then came two layers of heat-shrink tubing, followed by self-vulcanizing tape. A little more than HD recommended, but I don't like surprises that leave you stranded.
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  47.  @icanopen  Beer and toilet paper too.
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  48. Did you drive your Chevy to the levee to see if it was dry?
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  49. Combination of the tires and 300,000 miles.
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  50.  @NoWr2Run  That's a lot of miles no matter how you slice it.
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