Morning coffee

[mustang6984]

LOL!!! Blame it on the virus...too much time spent at home has given you computer eyes...

[RICH MUISE]

My wife had a tough night last night, but no different that episodes she's had occasionally in the past for 5 or 6 years now. She's pretty sure it's passing a kidney stone, but nonetheless, to make sure, the VA wants her to come in this afternoon for a virus test.
Got my yellow "thank you" sign made last night. Later I'll finish it up and put it in the front yard.

[RICH MUISE]

OK..while I'm waiting for my wife to get ready to go, here's some pics of recent and future projects............
Lots of this yellow stuff around town showing support and thanks to the First Responders and health care workers. They've not only got a tough job to do, they necessarily put their families in jeopardy to do it for us.
I just refinished the 4 light fixtures on the front of the house. They were brass at one time long long ago..looked like hell.  After disassembling them, I skotchbrited and painted them with Krylon Dark Metallic copper. I thought they came out pretty good. They go well with the dark brown I'm changing the downspouts to.Above the fixture is one of the new cameras. To the left you will see what happens when a carpenter tries to lay brick. When they put the front overhead door on years after the house was built, they did a horrible job of replacing the bricks. I've tried most everything to get that old mortar off the face of the bricks......it seems to be on there forever.  I can't believe they were so messy, and didn't clean it before it set up.
I'm going to get some 2 x 12 lumber and add some "heavy post looking" trim to cover it up. Also, I need to repaint the garage door and scrape/repaint the existing trim. I started redoing the front trim last fall, didn't get too far before winter snuck up on me.
Also, that chain link fence is going to be replaced with cedar. We did the back last (?)year.

[mustang6984]

Sign is nice...but I like the car sitting in the yard better!  Especially since the last time I saw it the poor thing was in the car hospital!

I like the lights too! They look really good! Good job!   

[gasman826]

muriatic acid for masonry cleanup

[RICH MUISE]

It isn't just lime residue, it's actually mortar that was smeared all around the joints. Power wire brush wasn't even touching it. If I don't cover it with the trim, I may get some artist's acrylics and paint the residue blending into the bricks. Years ago, when I was in the art/custom framing business, I got pretty good at mixing paints to get a desired tint. Many of my customers use to have me hand paint mats to extend the artist's images  onto the mats for a very unique effect. Colors have to be spot on to do that.
Problem with just painting the excess mortar is that the joint widths are way too wide in many of the repair joints.
A note on using artist's acrylics.........many years ago in Colorado I lived in a house that was about 10 feet above street level. I replaced the old sidewalk up to the front door with an 6' wide brick (pavers and edging blocks) winding staircase that had about 3500 bricks! I got halfway done the first summer, and when I was ready to restart the next spring I couldn't find matching edge blocks. I found out that the local brick company had run out that previous  year and had a truckload brought up from their New Mexico plant. Same recipe/formula, different local soils=different color! I bought the mismatched blocks, and played with some tinting techniques. What I came up with was mixing a 5 gallon bucket of water with some artist's acrylic's, and dipping them in that prior to sticking them down. looked like KoolAid. Couldn't tell the difference, even 6 years later when we sold the house.
I was buying those edge blocks at a local building supply in Colorado Springs. I was there one day when trying to figure out what to do about the mismatched blocks, when I noticed in the parking lot was a flatbed truck from a brick company in Denver! Drove up to Denver, and it was an old old yardman that told me and the manager why I was getting blocks by the same color name that were different from last years. Kinda like the old time parts counter guys.
Man, I can get off on some tangents, lol.!

[CobraJoe]

My turn to rant....

So this whole COVID-19 thing has left us pretty much home  after work everyday, and the weather has pretty much been $hit also. After a fairly mild winter, we got snow and rain Friday night and then rain for the major part of the day Saturday.
So, you can imagine how happy my wife and I were to hear that Sunday was going to be a bright, sunny day, in the low 50's.  We figured we finally had a nice enough day that we could get out of the house for a while and
go on a decent ride with the '39. Up until yesterday, we has only been able to go on short little trips with it.
We ended up going through town, out into Acushnet, Rochester, Freetown, Lakeville, Middleboro, Raynham and Carver. I nice long trip all on the backroads ending up in Plymouth with a nice ride along the harbor. Well, about two hours into our trip, I started to hear a light thunk, thunk, thunk, coming from the right front. I turned the car off and coasted to see if it was in the engine/drivetrain as my wife asked me what I was doing. (I guess she couldn't hear it since it was so faint) Realizing it wasn't the engine, I re-started the car and turned the wheel slightly right & left and could hear the sound change and explained to her that I think there is something wrong with the right front wheel/tire and we need to find a place to pull over, not an easy task on Tremont Street in Carver. I found a spot clear enough by Dunham Pond and just as I pulled off to the sandy shoulder, I felt the right front tire come apart. I got out expecting to see the rim scraped up and destroyed as well as the fender beat to to death. Fortunately, I was lucky and caught it in time, I was off the pavement before it could get ugly. The tires are B.F Goodrich Silvertown bias plies and they look to be fairly new so I was never concerned about them.
The car appears to have been finished in 2005-7 but has less than a thousand miles on the odometer. Not really sure what happened, are the tires past their shelf life, did I run something over and cause the tire to slowly leak until it lost enough air pressure for it to overheat and come apart?
I have these same ties on my '57 and I drive it hard and drive it everywhere without an issue. Now I am wondering, do I replace one tire, do I replace them all? If I replace all four, do I stay Bias-Ply or go to radials??
The good part is I called Haggerty and they had a ramp truck there in less than a hour; bad part is, no riders because of the virus. Now i needed to find a ride home from Carver, in the end, I lucked out as a friend was able to come and get us.
Okay rant over....thanks for listening. 

The wife, patientlly waiting:



The infamous tire:



The ramp truck:

[hiball3985]

Sorry to hear the trip ended that way. I would guess this is probably an age related problem. I would try and find the build date on them. These are more then likely a Coker tire or some other repop type. I have no experience with them but have heard a few bad stories from others. Tires aren't what they use to be, any more you are lucky to get 7-8 years before they start coming apart. I replace mine at 8 years max regardless of the mileage or how they look and that means most have less the 10,000 miles .

[Ford Blue blood]

Been there, done that!  But mine was at 75 MPH.  Posted about having old tires and was basicly blown off by the "know it alls" on another sight.  Just need to replace those old tires, many say five, but certainly any over five.  Mine were 10 and change, looked perfect, never been flat, parked indoors and had very little tread wear despite nearly 20K on them.

For me the $1890.00 repair and hours of labor just don't add up when the new set of tires was only $685.00!

Oops, got the wrong pic although that is the frame horn cover after being beat by the tread.

[CobraJoe]

I looked for a date yesterday while I was waiting for the ramp truck but couldn't find one. I crawled under the car when I got home last night, but I couldn't make out the last two numbers of the code below:



Jacked up the rear this morning and was able to read this code on right rear tire, looks to 2006:

[gasman826]

The way this scenario played out is part of the reason I have not put road insurance on my wagon and it is not about tires.  If I needed road side assistance, could I be exposed to C19.  I am confident that I would not be allowed to, or would I want to, ride in the cab of the rollback.  I would feel perfectly safe riding in my car on the rollback but the rollback's pre-C19 insurance would not allow me to ride in my car.  So, how do I protect myself or the rescuer who comes to give me a ride home.  Am I over cautious or just playing by the ever changing rules, I'm not sure but hats off to all first responders and I want to keep my exposure to them as minimal as possible.  I'm not sure which would piss me off more, being exposed to an enforcement officer or the $1000 fine for not staying home.

[hiball3985]

This is also a good example of why I always carry a good spare tire. I've never been on a tow truck and luckily I only had one tire sidewall blow out on my F100 truck, the tire was a 10 year old Michelin but the spare got me 65 miles home.

[57chero]

Regarding the brick/mortar mess, maybe try a small grinder with a 4-1/2" coarse sanding disc that has those little flap things on it so it would hit the high spots and clean it off of the brick without getting into the mortar joints.

[CobraJoe]

The nice part is Haggerty paid for the tow, well worth the $200 a year insurance coverage. A friend picked us up so it worked out well.
Called Coker this morning and I have four shiney, new WWW's on the way. Hey, $hit happens, could have been a lot worse.

P.S. I did have a good spare, nice lug wrench and jack too; was more afraid of damaging the wheels pulling the center caps off both of them with a tire iron....

[mustang6984]

If one has the time...a tow is best for our babies...especially THAT one! Well played!