Mostly Old Pix

I haven't gotten a thing done to the cabin lately, but plan to head for Alpine next week to get the rest of the insulation I need to finish insulating it and a few other things. Will also get some parts for the Jeep to try and get it squared away. Hopefully before the real cold weather hits I can be sleeping in the cabin where I can stay warm without using so much propane doing it. The VA has me setup for an appointment to go to Odessa on the 15th which is my birthday and that ain't happening. Since they aren't paying my travel expenses the cost for going up there would prevent me from getting the cabin insulated and jeep fixed. Besides all that I refuse to set in the damn waiting room all day on my birthday!

I was going through an old picture folder on my site a couple of days ago and found some old pictures I'd forgotten about so for lack of anything else to post here goes.

This is  a picture of the trike I built before I went nuts and turned it in to a trike. Wish I'd have left it this way, but it would be hard to put it back like that.

I later modified this again with a peanut tank, added lights, and a different seat and painted the tank red.

Above another mini chopper I built.

Right side of the chopper showing the pipes as they were then.

No doubt most women would be extremely pissed to see this in the house, but the eX was gone when I was doing this. HAY! The weather was bad outside and the garage wasn't heated!

One of the two trophies I won with the bike/trike. Won one as the bike and another one as a trike. First place in both shows.

Some of the granddaughters back in Plano when I was there also. I setup the board where marbles could be rolled down it and the girls took turns letting marbles go at the same time to see which one would win. Sort of a drag race with marbles. Only 2 marbles were used at a time and there was a rotating competition. Don't remember which one won here, but they did this many times. Lots of fun when the weather is bad.

Four of the granddaughters posing with my old Honda Shadow.

Same bike after I sold it and the new owner chopped it. Wish I'd have done the same when I had it.

The top left cart was the first project I built in Plano and it was a high speed build. Only took about 3 hours for me to build it. It had about 4 times the horsepower it needed so it was scary fast. Probably pretty dangerous to, but I never ran it hard with the grandkids on it. From that cart there were many many more projects. (Both carts and choppers)

The upper right picture was taken at the Carl's Corner swap automotive swap meet. I'd built that cart for that reason. To hook up  the trailer and pull some of the family around the swap meets. The trinket vendors loved it because they knew when they saw us coming there was going to be some money spent.

S.O.T.P. Or Song of the Post.

Starting Young!

I get the Tiny House news letter and noticed where one of the links was to a blog where a 12 year old young lady is building her own tiny house on wheels. I checked out her blog http://tinymaison.blogspot.com/ (La Petite Maison) and found some interesting ideas and reading. You might want to check it out. I've subscribed to it and plan to follow her progress. The bird house she is building is really something else. I suspect her tiny house on wheels will be to when finished. I'll be adding her blog to the blogs I follow list to make it easy to keep up with.


AROUND HERE

As for around here I've finished up all of the insulating in the cabin that I had insulation for this month and will buy two more bags next trip to Alpine and it looks like I can finish the insulating with two more bags instead of three like I had thought I'd need. I'm in the process of wiring it now, but still need to find a small breaker box for  the power coming in from the inverter. Once I get the rest of the insulation in I should be able to at least sleep in there to save on propane cost because this trailer with the leaky windows and lack of good insulation sucks propane at a high rate.

Cool! Was 61 degrees in here this morning after having the oven set at 150 with the oven door closed. I figured that would keep the temp up, but didn't. I slid out from under the covers real early, opened the oven door and then crawled back under the cover until it warmed back up. Have I ever said I HATE Winter and cold weather? Guess I need something to gripe about all the time because I don't like the high heat around here in the summer either. Hopefully by next summer the cabin will be rigged to handle the heat of the summer and cold of the winter.

Progress or lack of there of

Not sure how I'll pull off explaining this without pictures, but I'll try. On the front and both sides of the cabin I had to splice the OSB siding because I used the tall studs to build it with. For some reason after I broke my arm I didn't do that to the back. Instead I just added the Fascia board (I guess thinking that would seal off the inch and 3/4 gap at the top.)  Once I started putting up the insulation I discovered the error of my thinking. Turns out that there is a gap between the Fascia board and the 1 3/4 inch gap at the top of the studs below the top plate. This would allow for cold and heat to flood the wall on the back.

BTW the reason I used the tall studs to start with was because I'd read online that its best to have a high sealing in a small space because it gives the illusion of having more space and cuts gown on a claustrophobic feeling.

Since its all painted up and I didn't want to take a chance on falling off a ladder again I decided not to take the Fascia board off and do it right. That meant me having to take care of the gaps inside which is really slowing down the progress. I'm doing that by cutting small strips of blue board to fill in the gap, screwing them in place and then caulking the edges. Now I need to either shift stuff around inside the cabin or put it out front so I can get to the rest of the back. Don't know how this happens, but now I need a 12x16 storage building to get all the junk out of the cabin.

I did get the extension ladder out last week and drilled a couple of small holes on the back of the corrugated roofing at the back. The reason I did that was so I could setup the extension ladder up and wire it to the roof to keep the wind from blowing it down while I was on it or on the roof. I took the bucket of roof sealer, a paint brush, the drill and some screws up there and I THINK? I got the two roof leaks patched by using the sealer and more screws to pull the metal down where there were gaps. Only way I'll know if that took care of the leaks is to get another decent rain. I thought I might get that last night when I heard the pitter patter of rain drops hitting the roof last night and having left the windows down in the jeep that put me to sprinting out there about 3:00 AM wearing nothing but my skivvies and shoes to roll up the windows. Turns out that it stopped about the time I headed out the door and that was it so I still don't know if the leaks are sealed or not.

On another note the Jeep is leaking oil so bad now that I'm going to have to deal with that problem real soon! I had a chance to buy a good used engine for it for $125 and thought about that, but when I asked Gill (The local mechanic)  how much he'd charge to swap engines he said $700 because he had done that to the same type Jeep and didn't want to have to do it again because it was a real pain in the posterior. I asked him about putting in a rear seal in the existing engine and he quoted $250 so at that I decided I'd have to do it myself.

The Dude of the Dead that I posted the flier to some posts back turned out to be a total flop from what I hear. They advertised that it would be a three day event held at the race track and hoards of people showed up to camp out. Turns out that it was going to be held in the community center instead which really screwed things up. I'm not sure it even went on because of that.

And just so there's something here besides my babbling here you go. A song by Foreigner that I like real well.

 
And lastly there seems to be more and more spam coming in through email for anyone that has chosen to be notified of new posts to the blog. I really don't want to bring back the damn word verification so when I get a spam email that was posted on the blog I just go to that thread and unsubscribe. I'd recommend that any of you with the same problem do the same. Blogged is good about keeping them from being posted on the blogs, but they don't stop the ones going out as email. If everyone unsubscribes when they get a spam mail then the spammers are loosing because no one will ever see them.

Cutting it (insulation that is)

The two bundles of insulation I got at McCoy's turned out to be too short to go from the bottom plate to the top one between the studs. I didn't want to wait until the supply run next month to return it and get the right length so that meant cutting a bunch of short pieces to fill in.

I wasn't real sure how I was going to pull that off until I remembered my early HVAC career as an installer before switching to service. I learned from an old hand how to cut the insulation we used to wrap the duct work and that was to use a sharp butcher knife to cut it. It worked the same with the R19 pink insulation.

I used the level as a straight edge, stepped on it to mash down the insulation and made several passes through the insulation up next to the level. The first swipe cut the insulation and several more cut the paper backing. Don't know how other people cut insulation, but if you use a different method then you might try this one. Works great. I have to hand it to the insulation makers! They have come a long way since back then. Back then the stuff would eat you alive just being around it, but this stuff wasn't bad at all.

I also drilled a couple of small holes in the corrugated metal on the roof today. I put them on the back side where the drain off is and then wired the extension ladder to the metal to make sure it didn't blow down stranding me on top. I patched the two areas that were leaking and hopefully the building is totally dried in now. Will need another rain to find out for sure though.

The above picture was taken some time back just before a storm. Not sure if its a funnel cloud or not, but sure looks like one. It went back up in the cloud before going any further down.

BTW I borrowed Dave Secor's old camera to take the pictures of the insulation and the others were on the memory card before my camera potted out.

More Rain

Not a lot to report around here besides .3 inches of rain last night and no telling what its done tonight. Its too windy to go check the gage! Matter of fact its so windy that I can hear and feel the under skirting on this trailer vibrating. At first I thought it was the metal on top of the cabin and I was real worried about that, but then remembered the under skirting doing this once before during the day where I could see what was happening. Actually its really annoying and unsettling though! There's been a lot of lightning both last night and tonight. It seemed to dance all around here last night and I'm not sure the tank didn't get hit again. At one point it sounded like a cannon going off outside the window.

I did buy two rolls of insulation for the cabin on the last Alpine trip and have one roll up. I need to get the wiring in it before adding the other roll and then I'll need three more roles to finish insulating. I'll probably buy the other three next trip. I also got enough roof coating to stop the two leaks in the roof, but want someone to be around here when I get up there to do it. I'd hate to be stranded up there because a gust of wind blew the ladder over or worse yet fall off the ladder.

Had another very cold shower today. I hate it when that happens. Also just picked up the phone and its dead. I suppose storm related, but the Internet still works through the same line. Go figure...

Of course the camera is still broke so no pictures. For that reason I probably won't be doing much blogging until I get another one and right now getting the cabin habitable wins out over a new camera.

Shelby Racing Goup meet.

Me  sitting in a Shelby Cobra Super Snake.

Dave Secor in the same car. He took all the pictures since my camera is broken.

Unfortunately a fuzzy picture of me standing by a Ford GT. Only in Terlingua would you see an $800 dollar Jeep sitting next to a $150,000 Ford GT.

This AC Cobra was said to have a 427 CU IN Big Block Engine. Very unusual!

Some of the Cobra Mustangs. I forgot to count them, but would figure 30 or so?

The Terlingua EMS was on hand in case there was an accident on the high speed run.

Guess who?

The above Camero SS belongs to Ring and surprising enough it didn't get keyed or burned by the Cobra owners. ;)

Last year Howard showed up in his old pickup loaded with chickens. This year he was on his horse.

That's all Folks...