Ford Window Trim Mod by William

 

Plastic, it is just a weak thing after so many years. It was probably a good idea initially when they designed these door panels for the ford trucks between 87 and 96 (and 97 f350). They are all generally the same, except the XL doesn’t have the bottom pocket on the door, or if it has Manual windows. Anyways, that isn’t what we are here to talk about.

I got some new Rattle, or wipers, or window trim, or whatever you want to call it. They are the rubber pieces for your side windows that keep water out and usually screw up your window if you roll it down after a car wash. These things are just rubber and eventually will crack. Your probably saying though, “Well, you just clip in the new ones, why do we have to suffer though this article!” Well, your correct, They DO just clip on. We all know plastic gets weak after a while, and we get problems like the following.

The bottom 2 are the same trim piece. I’ve already popped the felted rubber onto the door panels as you can see, but there is some plastic missing. The bottom left picture has a clip in it that is working properly. This is wonderful, but when I popped the next clip in to the left, it broke! What a pain! You can also see that the whole clip area is missing in the top picture. Oh my, what do we do? If you do not have these pieces secured to the door properly, they will move around, or be a pain to install on the door when you put the panel back in. I have a fix! I’ll give you a chance to guess what we are going to use before we get to involved. Okay, so Think about it…

I hope that wasn’t hard. I don’t know if I am the first person to come up with this idea or not, but if I am. I’ma do a little dance. *dance* Okay, we need a drill, some drills and some zip ties. (Snap ties for you crazy people).

This is pretty simple fix, I hope you see where I’m going with this.

First we are going to drill some holes in the area that we are missing a clip. Hold the trim in place with your left (or right) hand while you drill with the other. Drill though the trim into the plastic on the door. The trim has metal in it, so it will take a second. Make sure you hold it in place! Otherwise it will not be correct.

 

Now, just throw in a snap tie. This one is actually incorrect though. I had not done it for a while, and forgot which spot to put the zip toggle in. You want it to be flush, and to pull though, like the following example.

I hope you can see what is going on here. I threaded the zip tie though, and left some slack, then back though it came, and I pushed the toggle down on the other hole and pulled strait out. This is to try and keep the lowest profile I could with the tie. You might be thinking though, “Why don’t I just put it in the other way?” Well, because the lip you see pops over the metal on the door, and the big part of the tie will keep it from going into the door properly. So they have to be towards the window, not towards the door. I am making this sound confusing. Lets just go with an example and call it good.

There you have it.  I do 3 on each door. The trim will not “accidently” pop out while rolling the window up. Or powering it up, if you have auto windows. The one in the middle keeps it from moving around to much. If you clip them in, you will notice there is some slack there. This is a really easy fix, especially if you have new trim to put on like I did. My windows are so happy. Now I just have to change the scratched glass from the old dry rotted trim.

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Sheep Fun by William

I decided to have a bit of fun after a comment on an up and coming DVD review to go ahead with these shenanigans. I don’t think the DVD Authors expected a Sheep Shearer to be watching the commentary on the video.

 

There you have it. High and Tight on a sheep.

If your wondering the breed, its a babydoll southdown.
I find them quite worthless IMO, no wool, and poor lamb production, but for pets, they are good sheep due to their smaller size.

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Home Made Stromboli Just Sounded So Good by Brett

I was flipping through some old posts and found the Midnight Mods meetings, complete with traditional Stromboli. I thought to myself, “It’s been far too long!” I had a craving and there was only one way to satisfy it.

Although no physical meeting took place- a delicious Midnight Mods Stromboli was created tonight and it only took two trips to the store. The first dough wasn’t useable and a complaint has been filed to the ‘Doughboy’. I really have to learn how to make my own! I also had to pick up a pan, since I didn’t bring one with me to the new place.

I also realized I didn’t have a can opener about halfway into making dinner- Not to worry! As a member of MM, I had the right a tool to get the job done somewhere.

 

Now to program this blank dough into something tasty. I coded tossed in some mozzarella cheese, pepperoni, some more cheese, honey ham, pepperoni, mushrooms, more cheese, pepperoni, and cheese. I set oven to compile 425f and debugged covered the thing with garlic powder.

The result? Delicious! 4/4 Pepperoni (note to self, start argument with random people about singular / plural form of peperone / pepperoni for on the spot fun.)

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Ceiva 7-Inch Photo Frame by William

Over at families here on vacation I made mention of wanting a photo frame, and they busted out this Promo Edition – Ceiva Photo Frame. This photo frame is for the desks of the people at the dealership and came loaded with some pictures for selling cars and uplifting salesmen while the customers sat at their desk. I quickly deleted the pictures moving to figure out how to load things into memory.

Booting up! Nothing really to fancy. Lets get a look around the device before we get to busy talking about it.

I threw in my SD card I had with me, because of reasons I’ll explain soon. I’m not quite sure why there is an USB out on this device, because when you plug the device into the computer, it doesn’t even recognize it. Unless its for plugging your camera into, which I did not try. The Multiport USB/Phone port is for updating from the Ceiva servers where they send pretty pictures on a schedule set in the menus. Power, SD and compact flash are your other options. This unit, I should add, also comes with Wireless! Which I had no luck finding it on the network as well.

It has a really simple menu system, and not as many options as a guy like I would like, but they work. You can set your sync  options with the Ceiva servers, slideshow rate, and there are 2 different slide show picture slide styles. You can also set it to display only updated pictures, and some other few settings. Deleting photo’s is very tough, took me a good 8 minutes to delete the default pictures. I couldn’t delete all, or view what images were stored on the device. This was a big downer for me. Before we get into more complains, lets move on to the buttons.

The buttons on here are very simple. However you can tell this is a cheaper device. The buttons feel okay, but lack a lot of desire from good pressing on the device. The down button doesn’t have any action, so it is very hard to press.  Now! On to the nitty gritty!

I quickly found out that you cannot connect  to this device at all. There has to be a way, but it sure is not easily available. The computer did not recognize the device when it was plugged in. No software also came with this device. Only a power cord and a telephone cord. Seeing as this is not my photo frame, I did not proceed with hacking it to my pleasures. With no access to the memory, I plugged in my SD card with some pictures from my shearing trips. You can see Gail here, a Border Collie from a sheep farm I sheer at. After I got this working, it really is not a bad photo frame. However, with the next 3 pictures here, you can see the quality of how well this frame works.

  You can see its really bad with dark areas. If you click on the picture, you can see that the screen is not very high quality. The pictures look good from a distance, but the colors are still off. The only color options this has is a brightness setting.

The pictures have to be on the root folder for the chips. It does not recognize folders. There are no picture management menus for the device either. I am really enjoying the device setting on the counter, however, not being able to program the device much has left it lacking for me.  If you can find one of these for under 20 dollars and it’s for somebody who doesn’t know much going on with computers, it would work and be a good gift. For yourself though, I would avoid this product unless it’s for the workshop, or you just need something quick and easy. The device recognizes the cards easily, and starts the slideshow with a press of the select button.

I rate this product a 1.5 out of 5. It is not a bad device, however, I know not the history on how old it is, and have not looked it up. Which allows me to give a good review without any outside influence. For the time this device probably came out, it was fairly decent for the price, but now photo frames are far more high tech compared to this one. The wireless feature is the most amazing part of it, however I could not get it to connect to the network.

Due to some Issues with this review. I have removed the promo company name. I don’t want any Ill to become of those who have this item. I’m sure there would be no issues with it, but that was their concern and I am abiding by that.

Also, due to some issues regarding the frame, and comments from CEIVA, I had to annotate their post, due to the reference of the frame. I reviewed the item AS IS, without any bias opinion. I reviewed it to the best of my knowledge comparing it to products from the time frame it came in. The screen did not seem the quality that it should be to me. Reminded me of a 90’s laptop screen.

The uploading service is not a bad thing. It is a great idea, but as a photographer, I have no use of looking at the pictures they provide me, even with a free 3 month trial membership, which comes with the box, but they also offered me, the person who doesn’t own the device.  I greatly appreciate your quick responses CEIVA and I am sorry you felt offended. If you want a fair review of an UP TO DATE photo frame, contact me and I’ll send you my address so you can mail me something more up to date.

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Old Stereo Equipment by William

Every workbench needs some tunes. But you ask, “my good stereo is inside, but I want some kickin tunes out side as well!” Fear not, and use some imagination! I got sick of listening to the neighbors with their cheep 20 dollar stereo on maximum and their crappy music, so I busted out the Marantz 1060!
Here are some reviews for you to get an idea about this old classic.

Link 1 Link 2

The 1060 is an older style amp with some unique features which even I do not take advantage of. Large style mono phone jacks for microphone amplification, well, my guitar fits in there too! Listen to that neighbors! As the one link mentioned about the volume knob going glitchy, mine has that issue. However, it still breads much power when you get past the hiccup.

Before I send it to the amp, I’m processing though some other old stuff, namely this 5 channel mixer. A Technics SH-8015. With the array of speakers that I have attached to the 1060, this helps tremendously. There are some pass filters on here as well, but in the end, the sound comes out pretty decent with the speaker setup.

I know you are probably asking now, “what about the 5100!?” Well, unfortunately, I do not have an antenna for the 5100, and do not want to make a crappy makeshift one and screw it up. This 5100 head works great still, and I cannot wait to use it again, but for now, it’s holding up the 1060 and the Technics.

The Speakers are just some JBL Satellite speakers for a 5.1 surround sound system. I got the center channel bridged over both the left and the right, and then a left and a right for the other 2. The small speakers are Boston computer speakers. They have a really high side to them, which evens out the middle and lows of the JBL’s. In the back is a LanMan Special (Brett’s handy work) An old, I don’t even remember the brand, 3 or 4 inch sub, which has been sealed and only left to use the port. Baby does that thing hit hard for its size. The sub powers the Boston speakers, so they are hard to volume match the JBL’s but it is not impossible. I wish I could get some more bass from the sub, but then the Boston’s get to loud. It is still plenty loud to rattle the barn steel.

To kick it all off for some fun. I wired an inverter into the Caution light in the back corner there, and hooked up the laser light show and mounted it to the 6x4. Pretty kickin in the evening when your out sittin and sipping a Barley Pop and chattin to some tunes.

Old stereo equipment is always really handy, so Never throw it out.

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