Beautiful morning so far. I hope you're all having a similar experience as you get yourselves out of bed or off the couch or the floor or wall or ceiling or what have you. I don't know your life. Today has a high of 74 here and man that's great because next week we're looking at our first 100 and that's not something I look forward to. At least I have access to a really good swimming pool. Okay it's WRUP time let's see what's going on. Read more

How's everyone feeling? Good? I hope it's good. The weekend is here and I hope I can go see Top Gun Maverick. That's a sentence I haven't said since I was a kid. That movie was an inspiration to me and it's why I definitely became a Navy fighter pilot. Don't look that up. I actually re-watched the original a few days ago and wow, the movie is still cool but wow the dialogue is mostly bad. And I say that as a guy who repeated that line "I feel the need -The need for speed" over and over during recess while my friends and I tried to see how high we could go on the swings at school. Top Gun is still a good movie but it doesn't feel like it held up super well. It's not really a criticism so much as an observation, I still think everyone should watch it. Read more

Alright, alright, it's wrup time again. Thanks for joining us on another weekend in the beginning summer weeks, or at least it feels like it here lately. Temps are getting high, snow is melted away, wildfires are popping up here and there, water restrictions are set to take effect any time now, welcome to CA. I'm feeling salty... Read more

Okay so it's been a wildly busy few weeks for me, but I have about a week off now so I can relax a bit and get some stuff done at home. That also means maybe I can get a decent WRUP in. Let's find out. Read more

Good morning everyone. It's WRUP time and I have to be kind of quick about it because I have a very busy day ahead and it starts pretty soon. Let's go right to it. Read more

Hey everyone, I'm late. How about that shit... Read more

Good morning everyone and welcome to another weekend. This time it's Easter and April is indeed living up to it's adage of showers preparing to bring the May flowers. This is great because CA is dry AF and we'll take every little bit we can get. Hopefully this also means there's snow piling up in the high country because the snow pack is only like a third of normal last time I saw. So bring the rain, I say.

The only down side to this is that I had planned on starting the front end rebuild on my truck this weekend. I drive an '01 Dodge Dakota RT and it's a got a 360 V8 so the front end is a little heavier than the vehicle is really built for. A few months back I noticed my front tires really wearing improperly and it was starting to pull pretty hard to the right. After I took a look I noticed that the lower control arm bushings were needing some care and that the boots on the lower ball joints were looking cracked and worn. I started acquiring parts beginning with upper and lower ball joints. If those fail your wheels will essentially fall off, so that's no bueno. Then I figured I may as well do front shocks if I'm going to have things apart already and I started looking at good polyurethane control arm bushings but held off for the time being. After some time I noticed that the right side lower control arm itself actually had a couple of places that were completely worn though where the bushings had failed and the metal shell was contacting metal to metal. This explained the hard right pull and some of the tire wear. So ultimately I just decided to buy lower control arms for both sides. They come with bushings and ball joints installed, so I'll have a couple of extra ball joints since I had already picked up a set, but that's okay. Then I decided that I may as well also pick up some new outer tie rod ends because they're probably taking extra wear with the control arms clunking around. I am not going to get upper control arm bushings yet. I may come to regret this decision but I've dumped something like $800 into the parts plus two new tires already. Speaking of tires, the current ones have been on for nine years and I'll be rotating the still good rear tires to the front and putting the new ones on the back. My truck is two wheel drive so it won't be hurting a transfer case and the deeper tread always goes on the back when you're doing two tires. That helps avoid over steer from the front end having higher traction. I'll keep an eye on the wear after replacing front end parts and if it all looks good then I'll match the two new tires with two more in a few weeks. After that I'll have get a new radiator because I found a hairline crack in the current one and with summer coming I just don't need to blow it up and be forced to get a new one at a potentially inconvenient time. Anyway, new control arms, bushings, upper and lower ball joints, shocks and tie rod ends plus two new tires for now. Once aligned that ought to make it drive a ton better. This rain has to stop first though because I don't have a covered space outside to work with, and frankly it's pretty miserable to work on cars in the rain anyway. Can't keep your hands warm. Read more

Welcome everyone, to a new weekend and a lovely spring morning. Yesterday it was 85 degrees and boy is ever too early in the year for that. But don't worry, by Monday here it'll be in the low 40s and rainy -perhaps snowing. I shouldn't complain. By the middle of June I'll be wishing the days were only 85. So I guess I'm just a middle aged dude talking about the weather on the internet while I drink coffee. Let's change that. Read more

Good morning everyone and welcome to April. Yesterday was the first and there were no shortage of joke headlines to be had. But before we get to that, hopefully everyone's doing well this early weekend. I, myself, have begun spring time outdoor cleanup and fire clearance. Doing so has been both productive and frustrating as my walk behind field trimmer took very little maintenance to get up and running, yet after a couple hours of work decided it was no longer interested in starting. The riding mower took a little more as I needed to change the rear tires, but was running shortly afterwards. Unfortunately I also found a fuel leak and needed to change fuel lines and filter. Then it was running badly thanks to a bad breather tube so that too had to be replaced. Now I actually think the starter is bad because it will barely turn the engine over, even with a good whack, which is a legit way to un-stick a stuck starter. So hopefully this weekend I'll be able to cannibalize a starter from another riding mower that has a bad rear end and we'll be back to riding and mowing. But in between working out bugs a lot of work has also been done so at least there's that. Read more