• 0 Posts
  • 29 Comments
Joined 5 months ago
cake
Cake day: June 8th, 2024

help-circle
  • So… the work i do requires a truck. I bought a lightning last year. The electric part i loved. Charging at home was awesome. FL sucks on charging stations outside of major cities though and are expensive. In the end i went back to Ram mostly due to how horrible ford’s onboard software is. Everything else about the truck was great. I’ll give manufacturers another 3-5 years to get things figured out and hopefully by then prices will be reasonable and things will work properly.














  • Since the 1950’s, particularly in rural america, it’s been common for a family to have 1 truck and 1 car. Cars have become less desirable in these areas over time. Everyone wants a truck. There’s more to it in rural areas like where i live. Our roads suck. It rains a lot. The closest town is an hr away. I use my truck every day to haul, tow, and get to where i need to be. Couple that with i’m a big guy. And i’m not young. Getting in and out of an average car is a challenge. Riding in an average car for more than a short time is torture. I never asked for trucks to get huge. I never asked for 400+ hp. I would gladly trade these big, tall trucks for trucks the size they were in the 80’s with enough power to pull my trailer and get decent economy. But for some reason that’s not an option. I just bought a new Ram with the base 3.0 turbo. It’s very impressive. We took a 1k mile trip and averaged 22mpg. That’s impressive as well. But i remember an Isuzu Pup diesel in the 80’s getting 38mpg. It was slow. It smelled like diesel. But it ran for 300k miles needing nothing but a clutch. There were some futile attempts recently at putting diesels back in 1/2 ton trucks, but come on. Toe nail clippings for engines that had zero reliability across the board. I guess for me, the summary is I have to have a truck. I can’t afford 2 vehicles. There are many people in this country in the same situation. I do think there’s a market for economical trucks over these modern monsters but until manufacturers start listening, we’re stuck with what we have. On the other hand, all vehicles are doing better with their safety systems. From a pedestrian perspective, that is going to be a bigger help than anything. It doesn’t matter what a person is driving if they are not paying attention.




  • “Easy” being relative… 3d printing. Especially with modern printers. Leather working is easier than i thought although i won’t say I’m awesome at it. Probably the easiest thing i’ve learned is homebrewing. 90% is cleaning. Outside of that if you can boil water you can brew. Extract kits make it super easy. From there you can go all grain or stick ti extracts. Or if you want super easy, go mead. Honey, water, yeast. That’s it.