Convex Mirror inserts for Aero Mirrors

Great idea; my old Chinese repro ones were rust pitted after 17 years so I found a set of "Made in Germany" marked ones. They could be Chinese for all I know but the chrome finish on them look fabulous. The right one is convex while the driver's side is flat. They are the same ones being offered by Sierra Madre Collection. This is a much more cost effective solution; in my case these cost me $200.00. If your mirrors are not pitted this would be a great way to go.

The silver backing was peeling off the mirror that was on my Spyder when I bought it. I took it out and went to the local glass shop where they may me 3 replacements for $20. (Their minimum order). I’d take a WAG that they could do convex mirrors as well.

A convex mirror the same size as the original glass, a few dabs of 3M Gorilla Snot, and Bob’s Yer Uncle.

Forgot to mention:  Both of those that I show up above are $3 each.

Yeah, but it looks like crap and has 2/3 of the area that the original mirror has.

The full sized convex replacements aren't very expensive.  I did that on my Speedster and they made a significant improvement.  I've also replaced the flat glass in the Coupe's Raydyots with convex and it's been much better.

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I did what Gordon did until I sprang for the Sierra Madre mirrors (which are now twice what they used to be).

Make sure you want to do this, as once those mirrors are stuck, they're almost impossible to remove without breaking the glass of the aero mirror.

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Hmmmmmmm………

$3 convex mirror from NAPA or a new Aero convex mirror from Pelican Parts for $140 more……..  Per side.

I think I’ll stick with what I’ve got.

Call me crazy, but $100 is a small price to pay to avoid stick-on truck stop accessories.

Geez, those have certainly gone up since I bought mine. 😱

Gordon can't help himself.

Not only is he a cheap Yankee, he's a cheap baaastaaaad from near Baaaahhhhstaaaan.

LOL, sorry, Gordon, couldn't help it.

Who's behind whom now?

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Holy supply chain, Batman.

Dredged out my Sierra Madre email receipt from October, 2017. That $106 mirror was $62 back then.

Think what it would cost today if it were made out of plywood.

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@Sacto Mitch posted:

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Holy supply chain, Batman.

Dredged out my Sierra Madre email receipt from October, 2017. That $106 mirror was $62 back then.

Think what it would cost today if it were made out of plywood.

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Meh. It’s a relative bargain.

@DannyP posted:

Gordon can't help himself.

Not only is he a cheap Yankee, he's a cheap baaastaaaad from near Baaaahhhhstaaaan.

LOL, sorry, Gordon, couldn't help it.

Who's behind whom now?

Nothing wrong with that. But IMO, it’s the little things that make the difference between a $25K Speedster and a $50K one.

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It's starting to look like the difference between a $25K Speedster and a $50K Speedster will be about five years.

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@Gordon Nichols posted:

Hmmmmmmm………

$3 convex mirror from NAPA or a new Aero convex mirror from Pelican Parts for $140 more……..  Per side.

I think I’ll stick with what I’ve got.

Paint the edge cream with plastic paint

@IaM-Ray posted:

Paint the edge cream with plastic paint

My concave Sierra Madre mirror spit out it's plastic ring and deposited the glass neatly on a rug.

Fortunately, bathroom silicone caulk is a reasonable facsimile for said imitation eggshell. Two plastic rings broke in shipping so I'm happy the surviving mirror lasted two years on the car.

I must admit, Sierra Madre must have invested quite a bit to train it to drop the mirror on the nearest rug.

Not if you have a (fake) Persian rug on the floor of your garage like some of us do....

So now I gotta put up with "Mr. Smahty-Pants" from Wallkill.

Go ahead.  Make fun of my accent but there are a lot of people out there that sound completely and unabashedly like me.  Like dees guys:

And this whole family of Hawaiians:

no worse than that dallas drawl....i actually had to figure out what she was trying to say..

I retired a hard-working member of the family today.......    

My trusty Ariens Snowblower.  I got it used back in the 1980's and if my local Ariens repair guy is right it was built back in the mid-1970's making it around 45 years old.  I've repaired and refurbished it many times over the years, upgrading the motor from a puny, 6hp Briggs and Stratton to a beefier, 12hp Tecumseh that would power through anything, as well as adding (for a while) lawn mower and chipper-shredder attachments as the seasons changed, so you can see that it got a lot of use over the years.   It came with us to Rhode Island where it blew out five neighbors during the infamous "Blizzard of 2004" and then returned with us to Grafton to take care of the driveway ever since, not to mention doing runways for our two Jack Russells in the back yard in the shapes of famous race tracks; Watkins Glen, Summit Point and Daytona's Road course.  It has eaten snow, leaves, small branches, mouse condominiums, one or two pairs of gloves and an occasional Worcester Telegram newspaper, buried in the snow, and kept on blowing - A true Hero, indeed, after all these years.

Being a true New England frugal Yankee, I would have kept it going forever except that (1.) a few key parts, like the power unit's basic housing, are truly worn out, (2.) my local Ariens parts guy (who is even older than me by a few years) has retired and closed his business and (3.) the other Ariens place for parts tells me that they stop carrying parts for anything over 30 years old, which means that those key parts are all No Longer Available and I'm stuck.

So.......   I stripped it of it's chute cleaner-outer-gizmo (those are always handy), drained the gas and oil out of it, removed the battery and drove it slowly over to the Scrap Metal Recycling place in Auburn where I got $16.20 for it as scrap.  Didn't seem fitting for something that has worked so hard in well over one hundred major storms over it's 45 years, but there you go.  That includes the year that we got a total of 11 FEET of snow during the season.  It still could blast snow up over the huge drifts and accumulated piles throughout the season - A true workhorse.  

All I could do was watch as the yard crane took it away...

Tomorrow, I pick up it's replacement, a brand-new Ariens snowblower (I know, don't faint - I bought a new one, not a used one).  The new one is roughly equivalent to the old, with the added touches of dashboard controls for the auger/impeller, chute rotation and elevation - Something I always had to run around to the front to do on my old one, AND I added one "frill", just for me, because of the mild frostbite I got when working on the farm as a kid - handlebar hand warmers built in.  THAT is something I'm looking forward to.

So what does this have to do with cars and/or Speedsters?

Well, on my way home from the scrap yard I stopped at the NAPA store and bought a second Grote 12004 Convex mirror to put on the passenger side of Pearl to match the driver's side.  I got the Autozone one off with a gentle spray of Carb cleaner between the Autozone mirror and the Areo mirror glass - Spray, wait 2 minutes, get your fingernail under the frame of the Autozone one and it popped right off.

Now I have matching, $3.00 Grote Convex Outside Mirrors on my Speedster, just to spite Dave Lear, resale price be damned.

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Sometimes, Gordon, the letting go is the hardest part. Looking back is always more painful than looking ahead.

Where are the snowblowers of yesteryear?

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I know, right?

Lawnmowers have come and gone, yard tractors have come and gone, the only other power tool that is still hanging in there is my trusty Pioneer chain saw and I can’t get parts for that any more, either (but, OTOH, I’m not cutting down trees any more).  It’s like the manufacturers don’t want us to repair our tools with new parts -  Just go out and buy new tools instead!   Phooey!

@Gordon Nichols posted:

The new one is roughly equivalent to the old, with the added touches of dashboard controls for the auger/impeller, chute rotation and elevation - Something I always had to run around to the front to do on my old one.

Gordan, sorry to hear your old friend has gone on to that great snowdrift in the sky.

Speaking from my Providence snowblower experience, you may find those added touches very useful. The guy across the street from us was an FBI agent permanently assigned to keeping an eye on Rhode Island politicians (go figure). His kid was 8 years old and over time, he got into a habit of pelting me with snowballs while I was clearing the sidewalk.

After I upgraded to the snowblower with the dashboard chute rotation and elevation, I found I could bury the little rascal in about 3 seconds after his first snowball hit the back of my head.

The first time I got him (from across the street!!!) his expression of surprise was priceless. After that, he got such a kick out of it he'd pelt me just to get buried in snow. It was fun, but I don't miss dealing with snow on such a regular basis.

If I want to see snow, I'll just drive the speedster to the top of the volcano.

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@Michael Pickett posted:

...His kid was 8 years old and over time, he got into a habit of pelting me with snowballs while I was clearing the sidewalk...

I'm not really sure from this whether it was the FBI agent or his son lobbing the snowballs, but it's a good story either way.

I never realized a snowblower chute is adjustable for both elevation and  windage.

Maybe it's only the better ones.

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@Sacto Mitch posted:

.I'm not really sure from this whether it was the FBI agent or his son lobbing the snowballs

The 8 year old was the trouble maker. His dad stayed way too busy investigating RI politicians to engage in snowball fights. I'm surprised they didn't just assign each candidate an FBI agent at the beginning of every election (regardless of party).

Guessing who would be indicted next was an entertaining spectator sport.

It still is a spectator sport!  Of course, the most famous was the infamous “Buddy Cianci”, the past mayor of Providence.  I once pit crewed for a driver at Summit Point Raceway and he turned out to be Buddy’s step son.  Small world.  Good driver, too.  

Buddy got thrown into the Federal slammer for seven years for, among other things, shaking down the snowplow owner/operators for kickbacks for contracts (got him on a RICO charge).  He was just the very visible tip of the iceberg of the “Organized Crime  Capital of New England”.  

Buddy was a VERY polarizing character who pulled Providence, RI up by it’s bootstraps to turn the armpit of New England into one of it’s prettiest and more desirable places to live, work and go to school in and be proud of - If you could ignore graft and corruption.  He got out of jail, started the most popular radio talk show in southern New England for a number of years before he died of a heart attack or, as Buddy would say in his own accent, a “Hot Attack”.  He even had his own popular line of Italian foods, like a marinara called “Mayor’s Own Marinara Sauce”!

You know…….  Providence, Rhode Island is the kind of town (and state) that @edsnova could really sink his teeth into.  Organized crime, crooked or questionable politicians, polarizing radio talk show hosts, remarkably powerful dockworker unions (even today), one of the strongest teacher’s unions in the country and on and on, all giving journalists an endless stream of great stuff to write about.  Heck, I think the guy who broke the Cianci stories at the Providence Journal newspaper earned a Pulitzer!  

But then, Ed has Baltimore with pro’bly more of everything that Providence has……….    😉🤔

Getting pictures to show up in the body of a post seems to be one of the cumbersome things about this particular format. Every site has glitches, but on this one - getting a picture to show up on every kind of device is harder than on some others.

If one uses the little "Insert/edit image" button across the top of the reply bar, the chances of those pictures actually showing up to anybody but the OP are not great.

Case in point: I have a $135 Chromebook I use as a tablet replacement - it's cheap and has a real keyboard, which is pretty fantastic for a sausage-fingered pipefitter. However, on it I cannot see any images in Gordon's "snowblower" post above. I can see them on my "real" machine (the one running Windows), but not on the Chromebook.

About once a week, somebody will post a picture-heavy post, and "Image Not Found" will appear on 75% of the pictures.

There's an easy way around this. To the lower right of the "reply box" is a paperclip icon and "Add Attachments" in a blue font. Clicking it brings up a prompt for an upload feature, which then attaches the images to the post. When you use this, they are visible regardless of the browser. There is a box when you are adding these attachments to "insert image in post", and do you know what? Clicking the box inserts the image in the body of the post - wherever the cursor is at the time.

It's cumbersome, but it works -  and everybody can see the images you are trying to share, regardless of the device.

A 45-year-old snow blower in Massachusetts would have to be some kind of record. Well done, G!

The year after I left (i.e. was thrown out of) the Providence Journal Bulletin my former housemate locked on to the first of two mighty scandals that would propel him to a Pulitzer prize and a job at the New York Times.

The state's bank deposit insurers were taking literal paper bags filled with cash, presaging the collapse of the system and the freezing of depositors' accounts, and John Sullivan had the goods on them ahead of Mike's neighbor and his crew. (Getting the story ahead of the FBI—rather than via a leak from the local cops on the task force—is the mark of a real reporter). Google the RISDIC scandal for more on that amazing story.

The next year he and a couple others dug into the state's supreme court. They found the chief justice had established a patronage empire on the ashes of the ousted, mob-connected former chief justice. There were high salaries, slush funds, land deals, ticket-fixing—the whole schmeal.

Good times.

@edsnova, wow, I'd forgotten the RISDIC debacle. Your ex-roomie knocked it out of the park on that one.

So, with all of the mob ties, arm twisting, subtle persuasion and good natured thuggery, do you ever wonder why both you and your ex-housemate both wound up in other cities than Providence? Maybe someone had plans that needed for you to be somewhere else?

@Gordon Nichols posted:

I retired a hard-working member of the family today.......    

My trusty Ariens Snowblower.  I got it used back in the 1980's and if my local Ariens repair guy is right it was built back in the mid-1970's making it around 45 years old.  I've repaired and refurbished it many times over the years, upgrading the motor from a puny, 6hp Briggs and Stratton to a beefier, 12hp Tecumseh that would power through anything, as well as adding (for a while) lawn mower and chipper-shredder attachments as the seasons changed, so you can see that it got a lot of use over the years.   It came with us to Rhode Island where it blew out five neighbors during the infamous "Blizzard of 2004" and then returned with us to Grafton to take care of the driveway ever since, not to mention doing runways for our two Jack Russells in the back yard in the shapes of famous race tracks; Watkins Glen, Summit Point and Daytona's Road course.  It has eaten snow, leaves, small branches, mouse condominiums, one or two pairs of gloves and an occasional Worcester Telegram newspaper, buried in the snow, and kept on blowing - A true Hero, indeed, after all these years.

Being a true New England frugal Yankee, I would have kept it going forever except that (1.) a few key parts, like the power unit's basic housing, are truly worn out, (2.) my local Ariens parts guy (who is even older than me by a few years) has retired and closed his business and (3.) the other Ariens place for parts tells me that they stop carrying parts for anything over 30 years old, which means that those key parts are all No Longer Available and I'm stuck.

So.......   I stripped it of it's chute cleaner-outer-gizmo (those are always handy), drained the gas and oil out of it, removed the battery and drove it slowly over to the Scrap Metal Recycling place in Auburn where I got $16.20 for it as scrap.  Didn't seem fitting for something that has worked so hard in well over one hundred major storms over it's 45 years, but there you go.  That includes the year that we got a total of 11 FEET of snow during the season.  It still could blast snow up over the huge drifts and accumulated piles throughout the season - A true workhorse.  

All I could do was watch as the yard crane took it away...

Tomorrow, I pick up it's replacement, a brand-new Ariens snowblower (I know, don't faint - I bought a new one, not a used one).  The new one is roughly equivalent to the old, with the added touches of dashboard controls for the auger/impeller, chute rotation and elevation - Something I always had to run around to the front to do on my old one, AND I added one "frill", just for me, because of the mild frostbite I got when working on the farm as a kid - handlebar hand warmers built in.  THAT is something I'm looking forward to.

So what does this have to do with cars and/or Speedsters?

Well, on my way home from the scrap yard I stopped at the NAPA store and bought a second Grote 12004 Convex mirror to put on the passenger side of Pearl to match the driver's side.  I got the Autozone one off with a gentle spray of Carb cleaner between the Autozone mirror and the Areo mirror glass - Spray, wait 2 minutes, get your fingernail under the frame of the Autozone one and it popped right off.

Now I have matching, $3.00 Grote Convex Outside Mirrors on my Speedster, just to spite Dave Lear, resale price be damned.

I think I would have found a prominent place in my yard for such a faithful workhorse and let it revert to nature naturally.
This is my Aunt Billy Jean, my mom’s youngest sister, showing me the ins and outs of a combine that she and my mom worked on as kids.

BTW, it’s D L Earl+476. It’s always confusing because people confuse the second L with a 1.

That's some cool history, David!

45 years? That's all?

I have a 1968 24" Ariens with a 7hp Tecumseh on it. It doesn't have any rust on it, I guess I got the "good" steel. My Grandfather purchased it new. It has NO safeties at all, but boy does it huff some snow!

My Grandmother used to run it, and once she was in her 60s put a 110v electric start on it. I rebuilt the carb and put a new muffler on it. I keep air in the tires and leave the chains on. EVERY time I'm done using it, I close the fuel valve and run the bowl dry.

This machine has never failed me. The only thing I had to fix was weld/repair a skid on one side. I coulda bought a new skid, but why? A little steel, grinding, paint and good as new.

Dave, sorry about messing up you name, and that combine reminds me of a guy in my old farm district neighborhood who "inherited" a 1946 vintage John Deere A that was in the barn when he bought what was left of a small farm in an estate sale.  

He looked all over it trying to find out where the starter was until he asked my Dad, knowing he was an old farmer, to drop by and show him how to start it.  After setting the throttle and spark advance and making sure it had gas and spark, my Dad grabbed that big ol' flywheel on the left side, bounced it against the back of the compression stroke to give it a little boost and then spun it quickly in the opposite direction to get it to the spark part of the forward stroke.  It took a couple more tries until it finally caught and those two old horizontal cylinders started chugging, sending up a small cloud of blue smoke til the cylinders cleared.  

The guy stood there in semi-fear for a few seconds with that big flywheel spinning on the side, but then got into it and wanted to try starting it himself.  After a little practice, he got pretty good at it, later restored and painted the tractor and has been running it in parades, hauling a wagon load of hay bales, happy little kids and parents for years, now.  I suppose that OSHA would have a conniption, or something, just looking at a totally exposed, 100 lb. spinning flywheel in the open while the thing is running.  

Times have certainly changed.  Back when your Mom and Billy Jean were working the combine, everyone just knew enough not to get close to spinning wheels and moving belts.  Somehow, a lot of us have lost that common sense.    

I can't see me doing that with the snowblower, though, unless I was blowing confetti or something.....   And at a slow pace, too.

I had an epiphany last night. I think that machine is a thresher, not a combine. You pull it behind the tractor and it cuts the rice plants, then beats (threshes) all the grain off the stalks, spitting them out and sending the rice to a buckboard.

Gordon, that “big ole flywheel” is the power take off. You ran big leather belts from there to the corresponding pullies in the unit you were driving. Look on the picture I posted, you can see the main pulley in the top.

No, the flywheel on the left on a Deere a and b was the engine starting flywheel - There was no electric starter on them.  Look closely at it and you'll see that the flywheel isn't wide enough to safely run a leather belt on it (something like 3" thick).  This is a later model (around 1950) with the electric starter so they put an enclosure around the flywheel for safety so some farmer didn't get wrapped around it.

There was a big power take-off pulley on the other side that typically had the 6" wide belt running to an attachment out in front of the tractor nose.  You can see it in this photo:

IIRC, the PTO pulley went through a gear-reduction to get it to run slightly slower than the engine (which never ran very fast in the first place).  We didn't have Deere tractors on our farm (ours were all Fergusons) but there were plenty of old Deeres around the neighborhood and they could always out-pull a Ferguson in the tractor pulls.  The Fergusons all had the PTO at the rear of the tractor and also drove a 6" wide belt.  I have a cousin who inherited a couple of 1942 Ferguson tractors and is still using them, today!  My dad had a 1946 Ferguson that was one of the first made after Ford went back to civilian production after WW II (Henry Ford bought the license to manufacture British Ferguson tractors here in the USA).

Wow.....   A short trip down "Memory Lane"!

One last nostalgia bit before we go.

The first vehicle I ever drive. My uncle charley let me drive this around his back yard when I was 10-11.

@Gordon Nichols posted:

Times have certainly changed.  Back when your Mom and Billy Jean were working the combine, everyone just knew enough not to get close to spinning wheels and moving belts.  Somehow, a lot of us have lost that common sense.

For the record, farming has historically been (and remains) one of the country's most deadly occupations. Back when Mom and Billy Jean were working the combine, no small number of people were killed or maimed by a piece of farming equipment "gone haywire" (a colloquialism which makes the point). Everybody respected the machinery, but that doesn't mean nobody lost an arm or life to it.

Lots and lots of them did.

Also: thinking back on the sheer idiocy of several generations of farm kids learning how to drive on probably the most dangerous of all possible mechanical conveyances (an old tractor) makes me wonder how any of us actually lived into adulthood. I chipped an elbow as a 10 year old riding on the hood of a lawn tractor, holding onto the front end with one hand and flailing the other around in the air, bronco-busting style, while my uncle (a year older than me) threw the hydrostatic drive forward and backward (successfully) trying to throw me.

We called it "Cub Cadet Rodeo".

Stan, your tails of injury make me wonder how you made it this far.  And given that I am a few years older and not nearly so beaten up, I should make it to 120, at least.

All this talk about snow-blowers, heavy machinery and farmland injuries reminds me of a time, back to the beginning of this thread, we were talking about convex mirrors!

@Lane Anderson - I feel like I'm about 120 some days. Today is one of those days.

I'm kept upright and ambulatory primarily by means of supplements and pharmacology, sheer willpower, and a schoolmarm MD. I'm worth considerably more dead than alive (at least until my life insurance term expires), but my wife assures me that if I die, she'll kill me.

I never had any inkling I'd make it past 30, and am fond of telling myself (and anybody who will listen) that if I'd have had any idea I'd live this long, I might have done things differently.

But I know I probably wouldn't have.

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@MusbJim posted:

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...All this talk about snow-blowers, heavy machinery and farmland injuries reminds me of a time, back to the beginning of this thread, we were talking about convex mirrors!

Jim, like many of our threads, reading through this one has been like working towards a Liberal Arts degree. You spend a lot of time learning a little about a wide variety of unrelated things but, while entertaining, in the end you have nothing useful to show for it.

I do now understand something about antique farm tractors, but probably not enough to drive one. And I'm more confused about threshers and combines than I ever was, growing up in the city.

What surprises me is that no one brought up the difference between concave and convex, or the best way to remember which is which.

That could be the most useful thing I learned in college.

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Concave, convex, who cares. Check out these guys starting a Rumely:

https://youtu.be/cxoHScg9J9o

The next one that popped up was a distant relative of @Michael Pickett, starting a Fordson tractor, which looks a whole lot like a Model T engine.  The reason I think it's a distant relative of Mike's is what he shows us on the opposite side of the engine.  No wonder it started so easily.......

Reminds me of how I modified an early magneto onto the farm's retired 1930 Caterpillar tractor but never did get it to fire up.

BTW.......    What are those rear wheels - Convex or Concave?

I sprang for German convex mirrors sold by SM a few years ago. At the moment they are "out." I bought 3 of them and in all cases the surround seal failed and the glass fell out. They replaced one of them because it was within in a month or so. The others they refused to replace. I try to avoid doing business with them any longer. Greg says he is working on a supplier.

Since we're waaaaay off topic here anyway, I'm gonna ask (probably knowing the answer) what is it about old machines like these that attracts us so much?  They're noisy and inefficient and yet we love 'em, probably for some of the same reasons we love our plastic clown cars - an intimacy with the processes that actually make it go that you just can't find in modern cars.  There's a certain childlike amazement that comes from knowing that your forward progress is due to mixing gas and air and throwing a match in it, causing a continuous sequence of explosions that a bunch of gears, rods, levers, and whatnot convert into motion.  Those tractors are some of the most basic examples of this.  I love it when the local Model-T group shows up at Cars and Coffee, as they're basically tractors with more seats and working suspensions.

I recently read about a guy who got pulled into a wood chipper because his jacket got caught in it.  That would be a terrible way to go.  Be careful out there.

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@Lane Anderson posted:

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...what is it about old machines like these that attracts us so much?

It could be we're drawn to them because they're so much like us.

They're antique, no longer of much use to anyone, cantankerous, most of their parts are rusty or plain worn out, and they're difficult to get started in the morning.

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My wife was raised on a farm in NW Illinois. The most fertile soil you'll ever find. Her dad had a feed lot that held about two hundred head of cattle and also raised about 900 head of hog at any given time.

Their 1000 acres provided all the feed for both, plus they grew and sold corn and soy beans.

They had perhaps a dozen vehicles of all vintages, back to the turn of the 20th. century and all but one or two were operable all the time. I was fascinated by them as a city boy. They rigged one old tractor to run backwards. It towed the water tank out to wherever the hog pens were every year. They moved them because the hogs produced all the fertilizer they needed for a given area so each year a different piece of acreage was fertilized for free.

Her brother eventually decided to start a side business and bought the most Rube Goldberg machine you ever saw. Bigger than a 6 by, it was a seed cleaner. Supposedly,  soy beans for replanting did much better if hulls etc. were removed before planting. He started running around that part of the country selling the service to other farmers.

Well this thing had more belts, mostly exposed without safety guards, chains, chutes and plumbing than I've ever seen on a vehicle. You threw the on switch and stepped back. It would work noisely for an hour and a belt would get thrown or a chain would break, or a clog would develop somewhere in the system and then it would take from a half hour to a day to get it back up and running again. It even bagged the beans, if it ran long enough.

Didn't take more than a season or so to decide that the behemoth wasn't going to produce much profit so he sold it off.

That brother was always coming up with dubious, half baked ventures, including a wind farm where there turned out to not be much wind. Proof positive that doing your due diligence and homework might just pay off.

I believe only one farm truck had convex mirrors.

"Jim, like many of our threads, reading through this one has been like working towards a Liberal Arts degree. You spend a lot of time learning a little about a wide variety of unrelated things but, while entertaining, in the end you have nothing useful to show for it." - @Sacto Mitch

Mitch, great description of thread drift on here, or any Internet forum!

Maybe @Theron could streamline the procedure for initiating a new thread by eliminating all the category choices except for "Anything Goes". No need for "Categories" because as a new thread progresses, we'll randomly cover every topic under the sun. While It may take a while to arrive at an answer to a particular "Question" one may have, it probably would take the same time as it currently does to do so.

Either way, it's all still very entertaining and worth whatever money one contributes to maintain this site!

@Michael McKelvey posted:

I recently read about a guy who got pulled into a wood chipper because his jacket got caught in it.  That would be a terrible way to go.  Be careful out there.

this is the guy I use..says its hard to keep help

@majorkahuna posted:

I sprang for German convex mirrors sold by SM a few years ago. At the moment they are "out." I bought 3 of them and in all cases the surround seal failed and the glass fell out. They replaced one of them because it was within in a month or so. The others they refused to replace. I try to avoid doing business with them any longer. Greg says he is working on a supplier.

My story is the same as yours. I used the bathroom silicone caulk along with the broken pieces of of the surround plastic to lock the CONVEX mirror into place (see, sometimes I can stay on topic). SM was very responsive the first time. It was just a bad product. I sure hope Greg can find a better one.

@MusbJim posted:

"Jim, like many of our threads, reading through this one has been like working towards a Liberal Arts degree. You spend a lot of time learning a little about a wide variety of unrelated things but, while entertaining, in the end you have nothing useful to show for it." - @Sacto Mitch

Mitch, great description of thread drift on here, or any Internet forum!

Maybe @Theron could streamline the procedure for initiating a new thread by eliminating all the category choices except for "Anything Goes". No need for "Categories" because as a new thread progresses, we'll randomly cover every topic under the sun. While It may take a while to arrive at an answer to a particular "Question" one may have, it probably would take the same time as it currently does to do so.

Either way, it's all still very entertaining and worth whatever money one contributes to maintain this site!

Jim, as I read your thoughts on Mitch's shared wisdom, the image of a million monkeys typing on a million keyboards sprang to mind. We truly can randomly cover every topic under the sun, and I love it.

@Michael Pickett posted:

Concave, convex, who cares. Check out these guys starting a Rumely:

https://youtu.be/cxoHScg9J9o

That looks like a really good way to lose an arm or a leg.

@Panhandle Bob posted:

My wife was raised on a farm in NW Illinois. The most fertile soil you'll ever find. Her dad had a feed lot that held about two hundred head of cattle and also raised about 900 head of hog at any given time.

Their 1000 acres provided all the feed for both, plus they grew and sold corn and soy beans.

They had perhaps a dozen vehicles of all vintages, back to the turn of the 20th. century and all but one or two were operable all the time. I was fascinated by them as a city boy. They rigged one old tractor to run backwards. It towed the water tank out to wherever the hog pens were every year. They moved them because the hogs produced all the fertilizer they needed for a given area so each year a different piece of acreage was fertilized for free.

Her brother eventually decided to start a side business and bought the most Rube Goldberg machine you ever saw. Bigger than a 6 by, it was a seed cleaner. Supposedly,  soy beans for replanting did much better if hulls etc. were removed before planting. He started running around that part of the country selling the service to other farmers.

Well this thing had more belts, mostly exposed without safety guards, chains, chutes and plumbing than I've ever seen on a vehicle. You threw the on switch and stepped back. It would work noisely for an hour and a belt would get thrown or a chain would break, or a clog would develop somewhere in the system and then it would take from a half hour to a day to get it back up and running again. It even bagged the beans, if it ran long enough.

Didn't take more than a season or so to decide that the behemoth wasn't going to produce much profit so he sold it off.

That brother was always coming up with dubious, half baked ventures, including a wind farm where there turned out to not be much wind. Proof positive that doing your due diligence and homework might just pay off.

I believe only one farm truck had convex mirrors.

The last time I saw my Uncle Charley.

He's about to show me the oil in that motor. As you can see from the tank in the front, it’s been converted to run on LPG. He told he the last tine he changed the oil was in the 90’s. It was clean as if he’d just changed it.

That’s in his shed, which is likewise full of mostly running vehicles dating back to the 50’s. I spent a lot of time playing in that shed as a kid. If was a wonderland for a city kid.

@Michael Pickett posted:

@edsnova, wow, I'd forgotten the RISDIC debacle. Your ex-roomie knocked it out of the park on that one.

So, with all of the mob ties, arm twisting, subtle persuasion and good natured thuggery, do you ever wonder why both you and your ex-housemate both wound up in other cities than Providence? Maybe someone had plans that needed for you to be somewhere else?

Yeah, John and two collaborators won a George Polk Award for that in 1991. For investigative journalists that's probably like #2 to a Pulitzer. I was in Hartford by then, writing about our crooked city manager, who was thereby deposed, before moving on to the county sheriff, who ended up a federal convict. It was an enjoyable time to be a young reporter.

Connecticut, then as now, pretends to be mafia-free. I found that contention dubious, and the myth more dangerous than in neighboring states where the mob's influence was a little more honestly acknowledged.

Same thing in Baltimore City. It was famously deemed to be mob-free about 35 years ago by a literally-blind state investigator (great guy, btw; I got to know him during my time here). But then "organized crime" comes in many forms and flavors, and I'm here to testify, eyes wide open: there's still plenty of it in Mobtown.

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@edsnova posted:

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...Connecticut, then as now, pretends to be mafia-free...

...But then "organized crime" comes in many forms and flavors...

For some of my tenure in New Jersey, I was chief photo dude for a now defunct wire service. Our bureau was right in the State House and I was tasked with following the daily machinations of state government in all of its nuanced complexity.

The people's duly elected representatives and their agents often challenged our more famous card-carrying mafiosi for the boldness and creativity of their criminal exploits.

I remember chasing after the Secretary of State one Friday afternoon as he left his office early for the day. He was reluctant to be photographed, having just been indicted for an elaborate scheme involving kickbacks from construction contractors hired to do work for the state.

At that point though, not many eyebrows shot up, as he was the third consecutive holder of that office to be similarly honored.

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My reporting drove both the public works scandal and the case of Hartford County High Sheriff Al Rioux, the latter of which took four long years to ripen (as I said, when you report the crimes before the feds even start investigating, that's when you're in the groove). I had the great honor of prompting the city's chief of police to sprint away on foot, rather than submit to questions about his officers' side business installing stolen water heaters and such in the homes of certain state senators. And then there was the time the Chief State's Attorney, one John M. Bailey (the namesake son of the late Democratic National Committee Chairman) called me at home on a Sunday morning to yell at me at length to stop writing every week about how he had not yet charged the sheriff.

Told him I certainly intended to as soon as the indictment dropped.

I mean it was good times!

Reporters are cool! I once had a senior Unix systems administrator roll his eyes at me...