Busy week, I've been offline; but I'm back now.

This was a rough week and required all my time, but I'm catching up now! We ran across a flower I don't recognize, and I am wondering if any of you know what it is?

I know it's a 'weed'; but I'm using many weeds for medicine, so I like to I.D. the weeds I run across. Besides, the purple flowers are stunning! Please sing out if you know what this is.

Back to the fun....

Lost a tranmission in a buddy's Ranger, and he needed the truck; so we changed the transmission.

We had trouble getting the right transmission from the only salvage that had one. We took it back, and were lucky enough to find the correct one the next day. This truck requires the installer to compress the pressure plate fingers, as you reinstall the transmission...a real pain!

We had trouble getting this beast out:

The two screws at the top were almost impossible to reach, and we ended up using 3 feet of extensions; and directed the from inside the cab!

We ended up using pieces of all thread on several critical bolt holes, which allowed us to tighten them alternately; to seat the pilot bearing. The truck is back on the road now.

Next came some demolition work:

This is a front porch on my Son's house about a hundred miles away. It was cracked up, and needed replacement; but the debris has to come out first. This is a day's work of driving, and jackhammering, and the concrete was all different strengths. Likely why it broke up so badly. We will rebar it to the concrete that is still solid, and form up the rest, where we need to.

Next came a blown out exhaust gasket on a land Rover:

Another friend in need, sometimes it sucks to have a machine shop, LOL!

I can see the reason it failed, the sealing surface was badly machined at the factory. I'll remove the broken studs, and mill the face back flat the way it should have been to start with. It is a real pain to set this up on a mill, because there are few clamp friendly surfaces on this casting!

I'll post on this by itself when I'm done. I have to admit, it's handy to be able to make and modify parts!

I've been delaying a trip to the homestead, but it can't wait much longer. I need to add vents to the container, before I begin storing the Gator there full time. They will also be important for the satellite machine shop that will go in the north end of this container! Need to move more food into storage too, starting to fill up.

Just not enough time in the day, SMH!