Odds & Ends And All Things That Don't Fit Anything Else

[Johnny Acree]

Small engine repair hobbies make a nice profit checking the landfill for discarded lawn mowers weedeaters and chainsaws. Most of the time they don't need much to get them working.

 

[Coss]

I wish they would let us go through the dump station (they call it the transfer station, it then goes to a huge land fill area in Oregon) but your not allowed to remove anything from the dump station, they will take it from you if you try, or not let you leave the area if you do take anything.

 

[RSchneider]

Where I used to work back in the early 80's there was another business in the parking lot that had three trash trucks. They had their own pile of stuff they would keep before they went to the dump. I acquired about 10 fans (the ones that were made from the 20 thru the 50's). Every one just needed a new cord or the wires that ran from the base to the motor. The cord fix took about 5-10 minutes. I still have 5 of them to this day as my kids like them and I gave the others to them.

I also got a brand new 2 burner camp stove that was still in the box. It looked like it was about 5 years old, sitting in someones basement and they threw it away. All that was wrong was the left burner was cross threaded on and the threads were boogered up. So, a little JB weld, some patience and 10 minutes later it was fixed. My son still uses it today

The best was the Electrolux vacuum I got. It broke the cord about 3" from where it was attached inside. I fixed it, re lubed up the motor, cleaned it all up and put it away. It came in it's original box with all of the manuals and receipts. Never used it because I have a central vac. A customer of mine collects them and when he found out what I had, he needed to see it (the too good to believe story). When he did he was stumped that it was what I said it was. He showed me the value of it at the time and gave me $400 for it.

It seems that people have been throwing away easy to fix items for years. Especially the fans and vacuum cleaners which were super easy to take apart and service.

 

[Mel]

One of the problems causing our "throw away" society is labor cost. Before I retired from Texas Instruments I discovered 55 gallon drums of perfectly good electrical sockets scheduled to be discarded. When I asked why they were being thrown away, I was told that they could buy new sockets for less money than the labor cost of unscrewing the contact lugs to remove the old wires. SAD!

 

[RUCRAYZE]

Remember This tragedy ??


"Why is GM Crushing Their EV-1s?
The Continuing Fight against the California ZEV Mandate
By Noel Adams
(December 2nd 2001)

GM has taken steps to demolish their EV program:

Since January 2000 GM has been gradually taking steps to eliminate its Electric Vehicle program, going as far as taking EV1s and Chevy S10 trucks out of service with plans to send them to the crusher........."

 

[Coss]

S10's?? Why? I had an S10 and it was a great little truck (well it was until it spun a main bearing) other then that, there are still a lot of them on the road.
Where did you hear about taking S10 out of service?

 

[RUCRAYZE]

S10's?? Why? I had an S10 and it was a great little truck (well it was until it spun a main bearing) other then that, there are still a lot of them on the road.
Where did you hear about taking S10 out of service?

Maybe we are crossing wires. If this is in response to my post on the EV 1's it has nothing to do with S10- GM never sold them, only gave them for people (many famous) to test drive. People loved them, didn't want to give them back, there were protests when the took 'em all to be crushed.

 

[Coss]

I was simply going on the last line in your statement, it is:

"Since January 2000 GM has been gradually taking steps to eliminate its Electric Vehicle program, going as far as taking EV1s and Chevy S10 trucks out of service with plans to send them to the crusher...…."

If you notice, you did include S10, hence my comment.
I was wondering where you came up with that.

The GMC version of the S10 was the S15 Sonoma, great little trucks too.

 

[dbacksfan81]

I was simply going on the last line in your statement, it is:

"Since January 2000 GM has been gradually taking steps to eliminate its Electric Vehicle program, going as far as taking EV1s and Chevy S10 trucks out of service with plans to send them to the crusher...…."

If you notice, you did include S10, hence my comment.
I was wondering where you came up with that.

The GMC version of the S10 was the S15 Sonoma, great little trucks too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_S-10_EV

 

[AriLea]

Well said. I never even considered the almost doubling in traffic that self-delivering vehicles would cause. However, let's go whole-hog here. We wake up to find ourselves in a society where on-call autonomous cars are used by all. You wake up, get ready for work and your home smart system knows how early to order your vehicle so that it is ready when you walk out the door. Cool. You get to work and perform whatever task you do and by the time you hit the door, your car is waiting for you. Inside the car is your mail, groceries, and Amazon purchases ready for delivery to your house with you. It really isn't that far fetched that your autonomous car could check your mail and have the autonomous mail/package center load your mail (it'd be easier for them than driving to your house in yet another vehicle). You can already order groceries online and have them loaded right into your car... why not automate that as well? Anyway, we aren't incredibly far from these things being possible. Interesting times, these are.

There is one more elephant in the room. It seems with great power comes great responsibility. And humanity really hasn't moved very far from our animal-istic beginnings, (or that snake and tree, one of those). Someone is going to pack a bomb or bio weapon (or just used condoms) in one, and really deliver something news worthy. Of course, it's maybe just a one in a million adventure. But with 7 Billion people in the same bath-tub, even at 1 in 10 million that's 1000 evil floaters. Controls for that will have to be figured out.
I'm sure the autonomous Air Taxi will be first to spread far and wide, and first to figure out the social impacts and related risk management.