Category: Commentary

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Ford engineers, I hate you.

I’ve changed the oil in most of my own vehicles for most of my life.  That’s a fair number of vehicles, most of the Fords, with some Honda’s, a Chrysler, and a Nissan thrown in there.

Sometime around the early 90’s the Ford engineers got stupid.   This was first witnessed making oil changes on our 1993 Ford Econo-line van with a 302.   This is down right stupid.  You need to be double jointed at the elbow and wrist to get up in there to get that usually HOT oil filter out.   It’s the only vehicle that I’ve routinely let someone else do it because it’s just such a pain.  I mean it really sucked.

The Kawasaki ZX-11 that I had wasn’t a bundle of fun with it’s cartridge filter.  But at least it was doable.

Tonight I helped teach Michael how to change the oil in "his" car.  That 1998 Ford Escort ZX-2.  

You have got to be kidding me.   If there’s a reason these motors don’t last, it’s simple because nobody change the filters.  It’s ludicrous.  It’s up high, in the back, under the alternator.  You can’t get to it easily from underneath, and you can’t get to it from the top either, at least not and see what you’re trying to do.

Yep, this car is destined for Jiffy Lube…  What a pain in the @$%@#.   The Excursion is a piece of cake.  But this, this is so dumb, that I’ll make darn sure what ever new vehicle we buy is serviceable without any special tools or double jointed anything.

Ford if you haven’t fixed this on new vehicles, you can count us out as potential customers.

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Duke Update V

Down to 113,000 Customers. 

I understand some folks are getting mighty testy out there…  Just keep in mind there are folks in Texas who won’t have power for a month.

Duke91908Outages

It sure would suck but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.  Man-Up folks.

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Duke Update IV

Now down to 212,000 Customers out.

Duke91808Outages

Note there are far fewer of these:

These

Which means the job is only getting harder for them to make headway.   I feel for those who still don’t have power.

We hope to get our cable/Internet up today, they’ve scheduled a visit between 11am and 1:30pm.   I’m not expecting much though as they think my area is clear…

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Duke Update III

From 529,000 yesterday at this time to 311,000 customers aint too shabby.

I understand that by the end of today they expect 85% of the 300k left to have power restored.   The bad part is that will be the bulk of the low hanging fruit though.   (That being affected areas or damage that fixing will restore a larger number of homes/businesses).   The remaining <100k will be smaller individual outages at the residential level.   Our neighbor seems to be one of those as they are still running on a generator from time to time.  Those individual outages will remain through next week (or so I hear).

Duke91708Outages

I think we’ll be looking to upgrade our generator.  I found the integration panel that I never installed and will figure out how to get that baby hooked up.