This a Blog for Type 1 diabetics, Campers, outdoor enthusiasts with diabetes and all sorts of stuff for anyone that likes to be outdoors. I have lots of Product reviews for outdoor diabetics, Suggestions for Diabetics, and fun diabetic items.
Well my son wanted an old truck for his first vehicle. I was willing to settle on getting him an 87 Dodge D-150. This truck is OK, it has power steering, power brakes, automatic transmission, and it also is old school with a carburetor.
We have been doing alot of father and son work on this truck since it has a 225 cubic inch slant 6 engine that has had little work done to it. The previous owner was going to rip it out and install a huge engine with a giant blower on it and all sorts. The good things the previous owner did was the exhaust, brakes, interior, tires, and rims. What is left for us is to get the engine running as a daily driver and not just a Saturday evening driver and pray it gets us back home style of truck.
This experience has been lots of fun because he gets to see how an engine works and how to fix it. Then he understands more mechanical projects and how to plan and proceed with working on them. The last thing he has learned is to appreciate his first vehicle. I was asking him the other day how he was going to feel if he wrecked his truck and he responded by saying "I will beat up anyone that touches or hits my truck." I asked him why and he said "Because I have spent so many hours working on this thing and it is my baby." That made me proud of him that he was first proud of his work and that he appreciated the truck and wanted to take care of it.
Now if anyone can tell me how to fix a Holley model 1945 single barrel carb from leaking gas out the side that would be great. I am thinking it is the bowl floats are set too high and the fuel is overflowing the bowl. Then if you have any suggestions on how to get the grease off of my hands that would be great. I currently use GOJO hand cleaner but it still leaves grease under my finger nails and I hope it is not affecting my BG readings when testing. There has to be some diabetic mechanic out there that has a way to get my fingers clean. My neighbor told me to use Palmolive soap first but that has not helped.
When I first heard and saw people using YouTube I was thinking who in the world is going to watch 30 second clips of people acting dumb. Now several years later I must admit that YouTube has saved my life and taught me a thing or two. I have found clips on how to repair my trucks window regulator, hunt wild hogs, and how to use electrolysis.
I have been telling all of you lately of my current obsession with buying cast iron on the cheap and trying to clean and rehab it to new like conditions. Now this has been lots of elbow grease and my wife wondering when I will go to bed and stop scraping skillets.
With my new method of cleaning, I can stop the scrubbing, and oiling and just put the iron in the 5 gallon bucket with some sodium carbonate and hook up the battery charger and presto! In lots of time depending on the carbon and rust factor you have bare metal clean cast iron.
Watching all of these videos I learned an important part of electrolysis and that is to buy a "Manual" battery charger. Very important because all the new chargers that have the jump battery built into them are automatic charges. I picked the charger above from "Big Lots" for 50 bucks and it was 20% off sunday so that made it 40 dollars. That is a deal on a 2-10-50 amp manual charger.
I forgot to get a before picture of the pan above. This is after 2 hours in the electro-cooker. Once you remove the metal from the science experiment you have to take a scrub brush and get the loose carbon and rust off of the pan.
Before I put the pan in the solution I didn't even know it had this no. 5 and 81/2 IN. stamp on the bottom.
Here is a shot of the inside part. This skillet is probably 50 to 75 years old at least. You can tell a little on the age if they have a ring on the bottom. The ring was on skillets during the days when people cooked on wood stoves. The skillet has a nice flat and smooth as butter feel to the metal. I would put this in the crepe making department in my pantry.
It is hard to tell the difference in collor. The skillet on the right is the one I just used electrolysis on and has a silvery metalic look to the pan. The skillet on the left is one I picked up about two months ago and heat cleaned the rust off. Once I dried the electrolysis pan it instantly started to surface rust. I pulled out the bottle of veggie oil and sealed it real quick to stop this from going any further.
All of this started when my wife wanted me to pick up an extra set of cast iron to use at our house. We have one set at our cabin and now miss it at our house. Me being the cheap person wanted to buy used and found lots of rusty gold. I had heard of alternative methods of cleaning cast iron and came across the video earlier in this post. Now I have volunteered to teach a cast iron cooking class and have learned mountains of information about cast iron and how to care and restore it. The internet is our friend!
