How'd it go today?

ive dealt with a micro-landslide a while back, 5 pines and 2 small oaks on a mobile home, no damage somehow but man it was a NASTY mess to work in, nowhere to put your feet, the remaining trees werent really sound to rig much weight on, and lots of long side reaching polesaw work while hanging between 2 trees upside down on the pine pile cutting pieces so the guy on the roof could throw them off

man that was a fun job lol
 
I can't speak for Alaska, but where I live its probably close to one in a million really, i've only seen the one
 
WoodCutr said:
brakes are annoying! hydraulic work great till they rust out, same with air, I prefer air for easy of working on them and having onboard air for bags or air tools
electric trailer brakes suck, every aftermarket controller ive used sometimes worked, other times the self leveling BS quits working right and locks up your trailer, then the next minute theres no trailer brakes at all


ive bled my fair share of brakes, worst was on a BWM X5, where there isn't enough room to squeeze your head under to see what you're doing, never really a fun job, my last truck had a crushed brake line when I got it, picked it up in the dark and didn't notice till we got home and the rear right drum was almost glowing red, made new lines the next morning and replaced the shoes and drums, took half a day to get that drum off because the lip was so bad on it!

lets not forget about that parking brake that hasnt worked since 2004...
atleast with air you can slide the seat forward and wedge a 2x4 in there to hold the pedal down, if the truck is running it cant leak down like hydraulic will (can also use this technique to bleed hydraulic brakes, Diesel Creek has a video on this)
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I've been using the same brake controller for 10-15 years, bought at least a half dozen for different vehicles. From a F150 to a 32,000 lb bucket truck, they all had this exact same brake controller and they all have been flawless. Best part is you mount it, plug it in and it works. No complicated setup.

 
cory said:
How common is a landslide like that?
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From this particular storm event we had 35 recorded landslides so far of various sizes. We had another large one just a couple of miles away that pretty much wiped out one of our forest roads that accessed a recreation cabin. It's a steep road with multiple switchbacks...the slide crossed the road 3 times and stopped just a couple hundred feet from the mainline road in the valley bottom. It's over 3400 feet long according to our drone footage we flew yesterday.
 
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SkwerI said:
I've been using the same brake controller for 10-15 years, bought at least a half dozen for different vehicles. From a F150 to a 32,000 lb bucket truck, they all had this exact same brake controller and they all have been flawless. Best part is you mount it, plug it in and it works. No complicated setup.

Click to expand...

I cannot see the picture, can you send it to me on messenger?

right now ive got this one, same one I had in my F350, the truck came with the cheap tekonsha one that my bucket truck has, both of the cheaper ones have sucked too, go to stop quick because someone just cut you off? nah not happening because you got no trailer brakes, wanna slow down just a little? they lock right up on you, I think this one self adjusts to compensate for going up or down hill which I don't like, give me enough brakes to keep the trailer behind me and keep my stopping distance similar to when unloaded, I can add more manually downhill if I need, either in the pedal or the manual lever on the controller


from now on for all my bigger stuff, the plan is to keep air brakes on truck and trailer and avoid electric brakes if at all possible, I keep mine turned off in the bucket truck actually, cant even feel the chipper back there anyways
1701395997643.png
 
Nutball said:
Exhaust braking is a really nice feature to have.
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yes! my old IDI would engine brake pretty nice on its own, this "new" 5.9 cummins has zero engine braking, I need to put an exhaust brake kit on, also need to upgrade the clutch, its at 160K and slips if you really get on it, even with an empty truck and no trailer

this dodge can stop good without trailer brakes, but you cant really safely stop if the trailer tires lock up as soon as the lights came on, same for when they do little to nothing
ive asked around, it seems the new pickups almost all have a factory TBC and they supposedly work great, too bad this dodge doesnt have one
 
I use the manual shift buttons with the exhaust brake full on. Full auto really sucks unless lightly loaded. I can stop the 2500 with a heavy trailer pretty quick the way I do it, while the other guys just use auto. Some defect in the firmware often randomly cancels the exhaust brake, which is dangerous if you expect it to work, but I figured out the conditions to almost certainly activate it each time. Then downshift much sooner that the computer would, and I go a step further and drop it into 1st (it normally waits until a stopped to do that), which doesn't allow the exhaust brake to work, but gives a lot of braking power for the last 15-20mph.
 
WoodCutr said:
yes! my old IDI would engine brake pretty nice on its own, this "new" 5.9 cummins has zero engine braking, I need to put an exhaust brake kit on, also need to upgrade the clutch, its at 160K and slips if you really get on it, even with an empty truck and no trailer

this dodge can stop good without trailer brakes, but you cant really safely stop if the trailer tires lock up as soon as the lights came on, same for when they do little to nothing
ive asked around, it seems the new pickups almost all have a factory TBC and they supposedly work great, too bad this dodge doesnt have one
Click to expand...
I leave the trailer brakes off when unloaded to avoid locking the wheels, but I have experienced crappy brakes. Adjust them a smidge one way, and they lock or rub, but a smidge looser and they barely grab. That's with on jack testing. I wonder if they grab harder with a load? Either way, they help a little, and something is better than nothing.
 
Nutball said:
I leave the trailer brakes off when unloaded to avoid locking the wheels, but I have experienced crappy brakes. Adjust them a smidge one way, and they lock or rub, but a smidge looser and they barely grab. That's with on jack testing. I wonder if they grab harder with a load? Either way, they help a little, and something is better than nothing.
Click to expand...
my trailer is 3600 pounds empty, the trucks a 2500, i try to avoid towing it any distance with no brakes, but do tow my chipper sometimes with it, brakes still dont work and the truck can stop the 8000 pounds decent enough, but rather have brakes

I have had my trailer take my F350 reverse entry into an intersection tho because the brakes locked up down a hill,
 
Well, I normally start slowing down to a stop from like 300-500ft away like an old lady, but then we have pretty flat ground around here.

I had 1 bad hill once. The old non locking torque converter chip truck with chipper could only go 8mph up that hill after a head start. Going down loaded with no chipper brakes was another challenge.
 
Nutball said:
Well, I normally start slowing down to a stop from like 300-500ft away like an old lady, but then we have pretty flat ground around here.

I had 1 bad hill once. The old non locking torque converter chip truck with chipper could only go 8mph up that hill after a head start. Going down loaded with no chipper brakes was another challenge.
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we gross somewhere around 23-24000 in the dodge and 30K in the bucket truck, very long stopping distance for sure, with or without trailer brakes, generally we can stop the unloaded truck about the same as loaded
 
Routine day. Staked some road, asbuilt some stormwater management. Got my snus shipment today. That'll keep me in tobacco for the next year plus, though I have a few years stocked in the freezer, and if you count nasal snuff, I have tobacco for the rest of my life. I overbuy in case something stupid happens, and it becomes unavailable.

@stig Do you know what Columbia-Öl is? I've puzzled over this for years, and the term is absolutely unsearchable. I feel like it has something to do with trees, but could it simply be the paraffin base they use in modern schmaltzer? What brought it immediately to mind, is I always ask my boss if he wants some of whatever tobacco I'm using(he doesn't partake). It's usually phrased like "Do you want some vegetables? This smells like glaciers"(in this case). Others are vegetables that smell like Bavaria, taste like christmas, taste like tar, so on...


IMG_20231201_153415319_HDR.jpg
 
I put in a 75 gal electric water heater. Because the residential 75 gallon electric water heaters couldn’t meet the newer stringent energy requirements, they went away. Now you purchase a 75 gal commercial heater and move a wire to make it residential. The work around costs the homeowner and additional $400 or so. When you have 9 people in a large home, copious hot water is mandatory. 50gal in unison don’t always fit and cost more as well as require an electrician.

Near the end of Obama- no 75 gal heaters
Trump- they came back
Biden- no 75gal heaters
I don’t know for a fact if the administrations played a part but I wouldn’t doubt it.
 

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Are commercial units made any better than the old consumer units? If you're just moving a wire, it sounds like "No".
 
lxskllr said:
Routine day. Staked some road, asbuilt some stormwater management. Got my snus shipment today. That'll keep me in tobacco for the next year plus, though I have a few years stocked in the freezer, and if you count nasal snuff, I have tobacco for the rest of my life. I overbuy in case something stupid happens, and it becomes unavailable.

@stig Do you know what Columbia-Öl is? I've puzzled over this for years, and the term is absolutely unsearchable. I feel like it has something to do with trees, but could it simply be the paraffin base they use in modern schmaltzer? What brought it immediately to mind, is I always ask my boss if he wants some of whatever tobacco I'm using(he doesn't partake). It's usually phrased like "Do you want some vegetables? This smells like glaciers"(in this case). Others are vegetables that smell like Bavaria, taste like christmas, taste like tar, so on...


View attachment 134127
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Its the German work for Oil, "Menthol with Columbia Oil" Whatever Columbia Oil is I have no idea.
 
Yea. that's the part I'm having trouble with. I don't know what Columbia is. I was thinking stig might know something since he's geographically close, and I believe can speak German. Thought it might be a term known locally in Germany which doesn't mean much elsewhere.
 
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