Lanolin, Why???? – Rustbuster | www.rust.co.uk
Lanolin comes from the skin glands of sheep to condition their wool. When sheep are sheared the wool is washed in hot water and detergent, a solvent is then used in the process to extract the Lanolin. Typically used in the cosmetics industry this makes up the largest share of Lanolin use, however in recent years more and more manufactures are understanding that Lanolin has a fantastic rustproofing capabilities.
How does it work?
The high penetration potential of lanolin-based anti-corrosive products makes them perfect for rust treatment and prevention on automobiles, especially for cherished classics vehicles . Due to high capillary activity, the low-viscous substances can penetrate into the splices and even micro-fissures that are especially vulnerable to corrosion due to electrochemical processes.
Containing long chain Esters which are able to resist water penetration in all conditions on land or sea. It is an ideal barrier against corrosion and rust.
Hermetically sealing the surface preventing air and moisture reaching the underlying steel.
10 years of driving a lifted truck comes to a close 🛻
Should you put a suspension lift your truck ask all the bros?
The answer, like everything, is it’s complicated. There are costs and benefits and it’s a kind of fun to ride up high and have that great view of the road. Lift kits are expensive, although not that expensive when you capitalize it over a decade. Maybe $500-$700 a year, for something that can give you a lot of enjoyment but also potentially a lot of heartache too.
Lift kits do several things:
- Give you a much better view of the road and the scenery around you, especially on rural roads through farm country and mountains.
- Give you more ground clearance which makes it easier to get over rocks and debris without bottoming out.
- They allow you to put bigger and nicer looking wheels.
- They ruin the quality of the ride, making bumps more pronounced and ride more wallowly especially as suspension wears.
- They decrease the effectiveness of the brakes, make them run hot and wear quicker especially on long-down hills. Downshift early to avoid riding the brakes if you lift your truck.
- They make your truck accelerate worse, as heavy wheels take a lot more power to move them.
- The cause wheel bearings, ball joints and control arms to wear quicker, though most of them were going to fail eventually even if you didn’t lift your truck.
Do it while you’re young if you have the money and it want to have to fun.
But also consider why are you are lifting the truck in the first place?
If you want a bigger truck and be higher off the road, it’s better to buy a 3/4 ton rather then lift a 1/2 ton truck. The heavier axles and wheel bearings of 3/4 ton are far better suited for running 35s or 37s. Doing it all over again, if I do decide on 35s on my 3/4 ton pickup when the factory tires wear out, I won’t need a full lift kit, but merely a leveling kit – if even that – and it will be closer to factory ride.
Also, I found that I never really needed the ground clearance that much, as most dirt and gravel forest roads are fairly low clearance. Moreover, I worried about the additional stress on suspension components from the big tires and wheels, so I rarely did much real off-roading, and a big jacked up truck is really a pig on the trails, unless the trails are super wide. Who wants to break an expensive big jacked up truck, or smash it up on the trail?
Just a reminder …
You will trash your wheel bearings on a 1/2 ton truck with a lift kit at the worse time possible, but then again they probably were about to go regardless. And wear out your brakes prematurely, which will stop like shit until you get high quality brake pads installed.
35s are expensive but those big tires are fun. Replacing the tires when they wear out will be $2,000-$3,000 for all four tires these days, but at least they last longer then most passenger tires – but do keep an eye out for suspension alignment issues and get them repaired promptly.
And everything you read on the Internet about lift kits is pretty much true.
Arlo Guthrie – Coming into Los Angeles (Remastered)
Everybody lets sing along with Arlo...
The Eve of Christmas Eve ☃️
It’s totally going to snow today, but I think I can handle the evening commute in the snow and dark, as I only have to ride downtown and catch the bus home. Probably be dusting of snow on the ride in but I’ll go easy on the “gas” on my bike today.
After today, I have off from Christmas Eve through next Sunday, 🏕️ and the plan is to head out camp on Christmas Day and come back either Saturday or Sunday. Don’t want to camp too far from the plowed roads, as they are expecting around a half foot of snow on Christmas Day through Boxing Day. 🎁 I guess it’s good and safe for all the country boys to burn up their boxes and swapping paper on Boxing Day. I won’t tell the liberals if you toss the Styrofoam that all the toys come in the fire too. You can’t see the smoke after dark and the flames are fun to watch against snow while passing around the pipe and drinking the ice cold beer. 🍻
One last trip with Big Red. 🛻 Then I won’t have a vehicle until spring time when I park him at my parents house on New Years Eve. Probably three nights in wilderness 🌃 but it depends on how truly cold it is and it might be better to head up home Saturday rather then Sunday which might be icy. ❄️ I don’t want to loose all my camping gear in a wreck, and I have a feeling that at this point if I slid the truck off the road, the bed, fuel tank and rear wheels would likely snap off the frame. To say nothing about the original Taka passenger airbag full of rust and fragments exploding in my face. 💥 That sounds kind of fiery and bad.
Singing along with Arlo Guthrie’s Coming Into Los Angeles, 🎸 as I chomp down on the cornmeal pancakes with all those onion and carrots. Waiting for the sun to come a bit higher, showering and then for slog through the snow to work. 🌨️ I mean I could bus and shuttle it in, 🚀 but I like the ride. I mean if I wasn’t so damn mentally ill, I could buy one of those plastic Woke Houses in suburbs and Honda SUVs and drive to work, but I like my cold mold encrusted apartment and riding my bike to work. 🚲 And yeah, I am so going to buy that big-assed, Red F-250 Superduty long bed reg cab 4×4 come the spring but not before then with all those corrosive deicers on the road. It’s just so much fucking money, 💰 forever gone, but it will mean many nights in coming decade in the wilderness by the fire 🔥 smoking grass and seeing little hick towns that smell like cow shit! 🐮
And that new truck will definately be smelling like Fluid Film, lamoline and sheep farm after I spray the hell out of it come next autumn to fight the war on rust. 🐑 I always knew that dealer-added rust coat is scam, so I didn’t get that, and I had heard good things about Fluid Film and/or using motor oil to coat your undercarriage, but I never took the time or got the equipment. But I understand the importance now and will be getting the equipment come autumn.
Phone wasn’t charging well yesterday, 📱 and I was bummed out about that, but it turns out it wasn’t plugged in well either at home or into the office. It was fine once I got it home and charging. 🔌 So I don’t know. I watched some videos about pickup trucks, and kept dreaming about that day in February when I order and take delivery in April. Won’t be long, nor will my trip out to Michigan. I read a little bit more from the book I had from the library I’ve been poking through on homesteading, 🐐 and I need to figure out what books 📚 to get out on Hoopla before heading out on Christmas Day 🎅 to camp. That said, I probably will camp where I have cell service but I want to download my reading material in advance should the signal 📶 be weak as it often is in wilderness.
Are you planning on blowing out your brains this holiday season? 🤯
One of my real assholely friends on Facebook, the smoldering garbage dump of the Internet had to ask me other day when I was posting about how much I’m grieving about the loss of Big Red in not too many days. Red was really special, we had a lot of good times together in wilderness. And I mean, I could have Red’s badly rusted frame fixed. It’s not a money issue in the debate to fix or toss and buy new – but I know it’s time for him to be some other country boy with a welder problem or actually his dream jacked up truck. It has only 119,000 miles and minimal lifter knock and beyond the frame and body rot, with some welding and bondo could be a beautiful truck for the right kind of auto person in the future.
Truth is not many people actually kill themselves around the holiday or even the New Year, despite the myth portrayed in the media. Suicides peak in spring time, which by then I’ll probably be in a new Ford F-250 Superduty regular cab truck, and probably have a shiny new cap order to go over that 8 foot 2 inch bed. I really look forward to seeing more of America, especially the Upper Peninsula and the Midwest, away from wokeness and densely populated East Coast. I’d love to get to Missouri, Arkansas and eventually to places like Rocky Mountains and Idaho but one step at a time.
While I live in the dumpiest of dumpy apartments, and I refuse to turn up the heat, I like it here. Actually, it’s not that bad compared to truly sad living conditions of working poor in trailer parks and rundown housing when I was knocking doors in Plattsburgh this past autumn. People are like, why don’t you just buy a small house somewhere rather then making your landlord rich? I actually doubt he’s getting rich with the amount of rent I’m paying him after property taxes and all the other random landlord shit they have to do.
Well, I want enough land that I can have fires and burn shit and have pigs and other livestock for their manure and meat – and grow other shit in the hog shit like carrots and onions to eat. I’m also aware of my parents homestead, and how their fading away. That said, I need to figure out my conversation. And you know my thoughts on New York beyond retirement. At least with my Superduty and it’s 250 amp alternator and Godzilla engine, and big bed I can load it up with a ton of gear and head out for the woods. Next year, I plan to do a lot of remote work out of the truck, and if I add a second solar panel and additional batteries to the new truck, and if I head up to Green Mountains I could remote in to work for extended periods just like I did during the pandemic.
I keep seeing ads for financing cars and trucks, and how they advertise low monthly payments, but as I’ve worked hard to get where I am, I’m once again paying cash for my next truck. While money is never unlimited, I can pay whatever I want for my next vehicle, but I also realize it’s money that will be gone as soon as I’ve cut the bank check and that the truck will only last for 10-15 years – basically until I retire. Then I’ll need yet another truck. Yet, I want a vehicle that provides a lot of enjoyment, that I can travel and see America and maybe figure out where I want to settle down roots. But even a fairly basic 3/4 ton truck is going to be a hell of a lot more expensive then even a nice Toyota Tacoma. And that gives me pause, because I know the money will be gone.
While inevitable capital gains and future savings will replace the lost money, it’s only a matter of time when the pleasure the truck gave me will be just memories and photos, like Big Red is soon to be in my mind. But I also want to get the right truck for me, something reliable, basic, that provides enjoyment and a way to see America in a reliable vehicle that I enjoy to drive.
I’m taking the winter off from driving, so I have a chance to really think this all through. Going vehicle-free is going to pose it’s challenges, but I also know it’s idiotic to get a new truck during salt season, especially with the sting of he rotted frame on my old truck – and that I drive so few miles during the winter month. And I want to like Taco trucks, but they seem like mini-sofas on wheels after my big jacked up truck. How will I carry a week’s plus worth of camping gear? Still even if I do put 35s and a leveling kit on a F-250 in some ways it won’t be like Red. That said, I did see on Metro Ford’s website a Big Red F-250 Regular Cab 4×4 Long Bed, and it had my name written all over it. Though not in local stock! But it’s so hard to find many trucks in that configuration, except in fleet white. Probably because 90% of people who order such big trucks in such a configuration just want a plow truck.
Maybe it will be worth my money to do a custom order, but I want to keep the final bank check under $60k or 4k a year if it lasts for 15, 6k a year if it lasts for 10. What will taco truck, reduce my yearly cost to 3k or 4k? And maybe save $500 in gas a year? For what, less enjoyment as I travel in a cramped, pissy little truck. That said, I don’t spend too much on a basic, but big truck with manual hubs that I’m going to have to throw away in 10-15 years, which will occur much too soon. I always knew Red would come to his end much too soon, but so will his replacement. Time goes by so quickly when your an adult.
With the Capital Gains I’ve been getting over the past few years in markets, my six-figure income, my experience, and love for traveling and big ol pickup trucks, I’m not going to cheap out just to save money on something that gives me a lot of joy. I might live in a mold-infested apartment that I keep at 48 degrees and lacks television or internet, but my love is open road, spending nights in wilderness under my truck cap next to a fire. Money is a means, and you should spend it on things that really give you pleasure.
If a F-250 burns more gas and costs more to buy, but that’s what I want, I should get it. It’s not like I spend money on hotels and I’m loathed to spend money at campgrounds where I get yelled at for tossing a plastic wrapper in the fire. If I have to special order a regular cab long-bed 4×4 just so I don’t have to get fleet white, then so be it. Even if I do retire at age 56 along with my Super duty truck, I will probably at that point be building that off-grid homestead, have livestock to feed and won’t have the time or ability to travel like I still can while I rent and are still young. A farm or homestead dream means you live and spend most of your farm. Having great views, mountains, a small town and freedom to have all the firearms and bonfires you want is great, still it’s not like the freedom to travel when you are still young. If I can’t shoot my guns and burn shit on my own land right now, then at least I can spend my weekends, vacations and remote work days up in wilderness doing such things.
Truth is I’m looking forward to heading out camping on Christmas one last day with Big Red. Just some solitude to think and relax as snow falls on the land, we might get a half foot while I’m up at camp. One last time with Red before he’s done, even if I know bigger and better life is ahead with whatever my next truck will be. While the next few months will be different without a vehicle, I drive so little in winter, and the road salt, it just doesn’t make sense to get even that Red F-250 I love at Metro Ford now. But I promised myself not to bite until February and not take delivery before April when the road salt is mostly over. And I will be smelling like sheep farm as I spray the fluid film lanolin all over undercarriage. I’d much rather my new big truck smell like a barnyard then have it’s life cut short by that corrisive road salt.
You can kind of see why I love this truck already. I work hard for shit like this, put up with a lot of crap in urban life, taking slow city buses, pulling all nighters and climbing over the homeless downtown. And I’m saving and investing every penny I can towards that off-grid homestead, but I also want a good truck to see America, camp, travel, and be my home along the dirt road, where I have my freedom unlike any developed campground or hotel.
