Wild and Free

I still have boxes full of cassettes that I listen to a lot, so giving up a good cassette slot is a crime in my book. Heck I have a cousin that drives a mid 70's thunderbird with a functional 8 track player and he still uses and buys up 8 track cassettes at rummage sales if he can find them.

I applaud your efforts to help someone in her situation! I know how it is from my parents personal divorce which too lasted for over 2 years and went to the ND supreme court as they were married for a few months short of 25 years and there was a large farm involved and my mom never had any job off the farm that really was much more than a hobby or volunteering. She was awarded 50% of the value of the entire farm. My father was at fault and disappeared with another woman for several months. I helped my mom out with all of her legal issues until she passed, the divorce happened in 1993-94 and I finally got closure to final aspects of it just a few months ago even though she died last feb. there was a large farm trust my grand father set up and my dad was a beneficiary and once my grandmother passed my father had to pay a portion of that to my mothers estate as well. So in essence my folks divorce took 20 years to be finalized. In the end the Nursing home and the attorneys got all of it and then some. My mom had MS and that I think weighed on my dad and he didn't want to deal with the long term consequences of it but he wound up paying for it and then a whole lot more in the end. I now have a half brother that is about 14 that I have never met and do not know either. In the end I lost a relationship with my father and I left the farm as a result and have not talked to my father since. We are both extremely stubborn but he screwed up and I will not break until he mans up and comes forward with an apology to me. But I would do it all over again in a second to help someone innocent and sick like my mother was.

Here in ND natural gas is a by-product of bringing up the crude and is being flared off as the infrastructure for capturing all the natural gas from the oil wells has not kept pace with the oil drilling but it is catching up fast as they are building pipelines like mad and building nat gas processing plants as well but there is a long way to go as there are incentives for both the oil companies and mineral owners as well as the states to capture and sell more nat gas. Both products are coming out of the same hole in the ground here. I know we are a bit different that way as most other areas of the country frack for nat gas only.

Who is Brad..............Forget my name already? Biggest issue we have as a country is the ability or should I say more accurately "capacity" to move the product efficiently and to process it in the quantity we need to keep up with our own needs, I agree we need to keep more of what we produce in resources here at home. Do not mix up the abundance of natural gas versus propane, propane needs to be processed out of other natural resources, see comment above.

Here is a local station news story about it. http://www.kxnet.com/story/24565359/propane-prices-sky-rocket

Supply and demand. The cold winter not in a single area but nation wide has contributed to the shortage and in the Midwest states we had a late wet fall and a lot of crops, corn in particular was being harvested very late and wet so farms and elevators need to dry it down in big propane driers which from coming from a large farm we had a grain drier ourselves they suck up a LOT of propane, with the price of fuel oil the last several years a lot of folks upgraded from fuel oil to propane nation wide. Here in ND it is just as high as anywhere else. But as I posted in another thread I have 2 one thousand gallon tanks to protect against this very thing, The house alone can go a year on a single tank if I do not fire up the shop furnace. I usually run the shop furnace for about 5 months and keep it at around 35*, with the shop running I use about 1200 gallons a year on average. I think I paid under 1.50 last summer.

Yeah, I would steer clear of an EZ on the 3rd gens, it is a fueling pressure box and the Smarty does some fueling enhancements as well as timing. You should not need anything other than a Smarty on a 3rd gen cummins . The 2nd gen EZ was a timing box and could be used with a Smarty if used on the non timing programs. There are better options than an EZ all together no matter what generation of Cummins you are running.

If you have a loose fitting or bad hose on the return side of the steering or brake booster circuit or a seal leaking a bit it is possible to have air in it. Even if the fluid is a wee low it can aerate the oil as it is such a small reservoir to start with. If the screen is partially plugged and starving the pump of oil it will cavitate if the relief is set too low it will bypass and cause aeration and or cavitation when the oil gets hot it will get worse. The moaning is most likely coming from one of two things air or too low of relief setting both will cause noise. The problem with most remans is they only fix the major stuff and they probably don't mess with the relief valve or pressure.

Pumps can be funny that way especially if there is air in the system. Here is an awesome Mod I did to my 02, it made a nice difference in steering effort. http://westtexasoffroad.homestead.com/powersteering.html In the first pic The hose hooks up to #1 and the screen is inside #1 fitting.

Limp mode will keep it in 3rd gear not 1st. Pcm is a possibility or a stuck TV cable will do it too. If it is stroked into full throttle position is will stick in first gear too. I had a BD torc lock on my 02 and the vacuum cylinder would get dry and stick at full pressure some times and it would not shift out of first, I would have to stomp the go pedal all the way down to get it to release and then knew it was time for some lube. It would shift from 1st at about 2500-2800 rpms if you ran it up that high but it was a hard shift and usually resulted in .

There is a screen in them exactly where d4l stated. And the possibility of what Mike stated as well. Have you actually confirmed it is the pump, I have heard many dry ball joints, tie rod ends and worn bushings make a groaning noises as well. Could be a seal leak on the steering gear as well pulling air in and causing a slight cavitation which would make a pump moan. Have you pulled the dipstick to see if the oil looks bubbly?

I have been looking at property north of Tampa and I have seen several of the elevated home built on stilts, we saw this was really common for homes along the beaches of Kauai Hawaii when we went there several years ago. From looking and researching we are thinking a Condo would fit our needs best for now as a rental / vacation property until we actually decided to move down there if that ever happens. With a condo the insurance and exterior maintenance is covered with the monthly fees. We are thinking a 2nd floor of higher location would be best to lessen out potential for ground flooding. I will know more in a few weeks when I talk to our tax advisor to get more details of the potential sale of my moms home and what we need to do as far as reinvesting ect. to keep cleptocrats off our back. My wife and I would sell out everything here in ND and move down there in an instant if not for my wife being so close with her mother who is still alive and well at 80 years old and still living on the farm by herself. As long as she is there on the farm my wife will not leave home. That at this point is the only thing on the planet holding us here for now. My wife being a massage therapist can work anywhere and with my life's experience could find work doing a lot of different things, I would like to get a law enforcement degree and some more biology classes and try to become a Game warden or a career along those lines which I think would be a blast down there. I have been looking into taking more college courses to do this. We are essentially debt free " an awesome feeling at almost 43 and having been lucky enough to have a good job with endless OT to work I stuck everything I could for the last 10 years into paying off and fixing up our home and paying down our other bills" so we can live quite comfortably on salaries smaller than we currently have. If we moved down there we would look to buy a small hobby farm 5-10 acres all depending on the price and location for my wife's horse and possibly a few head of cattle and other self sustaining animals for food and profit. We loved the area around La Belle about 30 miles east of Ft Myers as well and being a farming community looked quite inviting as well and it is still along the Caloosahachee river and away from major flood risks like being close by the coast. My wife and I both have seen and been involved in both sad and tragic life experiences at a lot younger age than most should or a lot never will "We hope" and have made the best of things and worked through them and we both want a more relaxing life from here on out as we have seen how short life can be and want to live in an area we can be out in nature "Enjoyably" more than a few months a year to take in life's finer and simpler things. Phew!!! That was a load off my mind and typing, hope I didn't bore anyone from getting to personal there.

The whistles came and went around here in the late 80's to mid 90's until everyone figured out they were a gimmick, do not see them anywhere but a few "marts" stores anymore. I used to see many vehicle / deer collisions even with them on the vehicles. I saw some news articles and insurance studies come out years ago saying they were useless as well. I prefer my ranch hand bumpers, slow up center the dear and let them bounce off, I have nailed about 8 deer over the years with my ranch hands and the only thing I get is crap splattered on my rig and some hair in the front receiver a few times. The key is to make sure and hit them dead center and never hit one with the corner, they will spin around at that point and take out a fender and door, ask me how I know. That happened about 15 years ago before I started with the ranch hands. If they are coming from the ditch and I know that I won't miss them I will intentionally swerve at them to get them dead center to make sure I don't spin them into my side. Its pretty bad that I have figured out how to hit them with my ranch hand since we have so dang many of them around here. I have had suicidal deer jump out of the ditch and actually run into the side of my rigs 2 times over the years, got lucky and didn't have any damage other than some scratches and one little ding in the lower front panel of my box that popped out from the inside and left no creases, got really lucky there.

I am a dealer for it myself. My inlaws were among the first to sign up as dealers in the early 70's, they are the ones who got me started into researching themk as a company. They are the originators of synthetic and always among the highest in quality and new technology too.

Straw and mud are among the best built structures on the planet if built properly, they have a very green footprint and are fire proof and have about the best insulated "R" rating of any material. All this if done right. Just not as pretty or as easy to work with after the fact.

Sorry for the off topic here. Just need to explain myself about home grown versus commercial chicken. I was raised old school where we raised and butchered all of our own meat, it never left the farm from birth to septic tank and back to grass. When it comes to chicken the old timers would talk of commercial raised chicken you get from stores having "Black" bones from bad feed and being sick and never eating this because it was a "sick" bird. Well having eaten nothing but farm raised meat always had this in the back of my mind until I was actually eating at a KFC and one other chicken place in high school / college and saw just that.........."Black bones" never seen that before until eating at restaurants. I now watch as we go out and see everyone eating hot wings ect and they all have black bones. I have never seen a black bone from a healthy farm raised bird. And then in the last year I read stories like the following and am grateful for the old ones wisdom and my own distrust of some things. http://www.naturalnews.com/032659_arsenic_chicken.html http://www.naturalnews.com/042894_USDA_China_imports_chicken.html http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/11/10/schumer-chicken-slaughtered-raised-in-china-could-pose-major-risk/

Where does the "Chick" come from they serve? I won't eat "Chick" unless it is home grown chemical free. "Free range fed" , Having grown up on the range I can't ever recall roaming flocks of chickens on the "Free range" though. I refuse to order chicken from a restaurant. I do like their business concept and beliefs though! We need more companies like that.

It will work for you. Personally I like the 10w30 diesel oil, I have had good luck with it over the years myself but the pour point is higher than the 15-40 by a few degrees for some reason. I run it in my Kubota tractor which doesn't have a block heater and it has never failed to start down to -10*.

I am an odd one, my MIL and I have a good relationship...............................for the most part. I call her my favorite blue haired person.

Having grown up on a 7k acre farm in the middle of prime hunting ground for many types of critters we saw the good and bad in people over the years and had to do a total lock down for about 10 years as the vandalism and loss of crops and other issues got out of hand. Actually had hunters on our land without permission chase us down pull guns on us and try to chase us off our own land claiming they had exclusive rights to hunt from the land owner and nobody else was to be on the land until we raised our own iron and stated we ARE the land owners, their faces changed color and they lit out like their back sides were on fire but not before getting a description and liscense number and a call and complaint filed with the local LEO, that pretty much sealed the deal for anyone else getting access other than family and friends for many years, my dad does let a limited number of folks on again now days. My MIL "Mother in law" not malfunction indicator light has folks from minnesota that come pheasant hunting every year and they bring fresh caught fish for her every year and and they bring her other neighbors a bottle of libations who do enjoy that and they do spend time and visit.