Death Of My Death Trap
February 20, 2006 | 4 Comments
For months now Sara has been referring to my 1991 Mazda B2200 as a “death trap”. I protested this assessment saying it has a bit of rust, but overall it’s still plenty solid. Oh how wrong I was…
I needed to do some work on my truck so it could pass inspection. It has a small exhaust leak, a few minor rust holes in the body, and a bad power steering pump. The power steering pump is a special order, non-refundable, part and was going to run me around $200. I decided to hold off on that part until the other stuff was cleared up. We took off for my parents where my dad has a lift in his garage which would make this easier.
As we began to lift the truck, the cab went up, as the bed continued to angle towards the floor. Clearly something was wrong. We took a look underneath at the frame, both sides were rusted all the way through. There was no way this truck was going anywhere, ever again.
I was glad I didn’t buy the power steering pump, but I had just put $20 of gas in it.
176,000 miles. 15 years. 2,000 miles for me. 18 months of my life. Less than $600 invested. It lived a good life and served it’s purpose.
Tags: "mazda b2200", junk, parts, rust, truck
eMachineShop
October 29, 2005 | 4 Comments
Cliff pointed me at eMachineShop months ago. I’ve been patiently waiting for him to blog it so I wouldn’t steal his thunder.
Anyway, they have downloadable CAD software that you can use to mock up any part you want. Then you can instantly get a price on what it would cost to get any number of those parts manufactured. Prices drop substantially if you large quantities.
Having worked next to the engineers at Ruger Pine Tree Castings for a couple years doing computer support, I have a reasonabe understanding of how complex their jobs were. I am amazed this company can run a real machine shop, do engineering, casting, etc for parts on a potentially one off basis. I would be curious what the quality of their merchandise is.
To me this appears to be a great example of a company using long tail as their business plan in an area that was previously reserved for large companies with big clients ordering lots of parts.
Tags: casting, emachineshop, engineer, engineering, investment casting, long tail, machine shop, part, parts, pine tree castings, ruger