Food Shortages

I have a two pronged solution to food shortages here in America.

First, we stop burning food to run our cars.  The best the greenies can show for adding ethanol to our gas is that it might have a small positive effect... maybe... on emissions from the tail pipe of the car running that fuel.

BUT not total emissions because the mileage craters.  It's even worse when you consider all the diesel used to grow and harvest the corn then the energy expended to make it into ethanol.

Prolly not a net win for carbon emissions, and the greenies studiously avoid and inhibit a real study being made on this topic.

Renewable = GOOD, shut up they explain.  I've noticed a distinct lack of engineering degrees in the people who advocate loudest for green shit.

The second prong, which helps two-fold, just start shooting greenies.  First it lets us start eating the food instead of burning it.  Second, one fewer mouth to feed, letting the same amount of food go longer.

Bonus benefit of shooting greenies is how much cheaper so many things get, especially electricity.

Without greenies we get lots of hydroelectric capacity back and nuclear power becomes viable again.

Without greenies, we might even get to explore subdivision sized plants.

Bonus fact: Did you know you can make a nuclear reactor that doesn't make much, if any, of the high-order nuclear waste the greenies have you worried about?  Look it up!

10%

You generous folks have funded 10% of the total donations given to the walk-a-thon!

You, doth, verily, ROCK!

Pat yourselves on the back!

Walk-A-Thon For Special Olympics And The Boy

 The Lovely Harvey and The Boy are doing a walk for Special Olympics and you can help!

Just click on this finely crafted link and make a donation!

She set the goal at a modest $50, but I'm willing to bet that my generous readers will top that easily.

Because you rock!

A Bit Of Bling And An Experiement

It is a matter of Faith that the door handles for the 2011-2013 Caprice PPV are different from the 2014-2017.

It does not appear that anyone has informed Dorman.

So I have an order in, from a seller on ebay, for a set of silver and chrome door handles.  I think they will pop on my white car.

This part number has been successfully used on a 2014 PPV... that's how I knew to search for it.

It's possible that they won't work, but I will be able to definitively say so.

If they DO work, then I will open up a wide swath of options for the owners of the earlier cars.

Dorman is convinced that they're interchangable, and even if they are different, the fact that Dorman makes one handle for all 7 model years informs me that they're going be adaptable.

Eyes crossed!

They're Very Crafty

The Lovely Harvey is often a visionary.

Her vision is often thwarted in that she is neither an engineer nor carpenter.

Every so often, though, she can communicate that vision to someone else and see it realized.

Today is such a day!

Because I was laid up with stabbing rib pain, it was all her and Marv who assembled it from stuff we had laying around from other projects.

My only contribution was to suggest the diagonals to make it less wobbly.  Then watching as they put them on.

This is also an official project!  Harvey slipped and put a screw through the meat of her thumb!  This provided the requisite blood require of any successful project.

Ow!

Thinking that, because things didn't hurt anymore, I was healed...

I appear to have overdone it.

A lot.

My ribs are back to hurting as bad as they did the day after the accident.

Looks like I'll be sleeping in the recliner again for a few nights.

Change That To Partial Success

With the E2 hammer strut, mainspring and retainer...  The trigger pull is reduced and the slim plastic stocks fit the P220.

BUT...

The hammer fails to reset every once and a while and the double action break is... very odd.  Like impossible for me to keep from jerking the muzzle to the right odd as it breaks.

This behavior is not exhibited with the stock configuration of either P220 I have here.

Now that I know to look for the problem, I find that will also need a new hammer, hammer block and hammer return spring.  And the hammer is out of stock everywhere.

I'm rapidly approaching what it would cost to just buy the Houge wooden grips to replace the SIG grips that had a (kinda repaired) break.

Plastic Success

Got the new hammer strut, spring and retainer installed in my OG SIG P220!

That allows the slim plastic stocks to be installed.

I ended up having to use a Wolff 19 lb. spring because everyone is out of the 22 lb. SIG MAINSPRING-1.

Double action is down from 11 lb. to 8 lb. and single action is unchanged.

Fingers crossed and a range trip to come!

Simple

Willard's Model 27 had developed a bound cylinder.

Armed only with sewing machine oil, he was unable to free it.

PB Blaster, on the other hand, with a gentle tap from a nylon hammer got it rolling again.

I am not sure it rusted or not.  The mung is the right color, but there's no pitting or roughness of the bearing surfaces.

I Regret That Link

The link to Vice I put in the DARWIN post...

Matthew Gault didn't even do a quick Google, Bing, Duck-Duck-Go or Brave search for the term Fudd.

He got it so wrong.

That's what happens when you try to use a community's terms for its own members when you're decidedly not a member yourself.

For fuck's sake, a Fudd is far closer to being a "normie" (a term I've never seen US use about ourselves) in the gun culture than someone who holds their cock at gunpoint.

But, should Mr Gault search his name and land here:

The Fudds are the stick-in-mud hunters and sportsmen of the gun world.  The kind that don't see a need for a non-hunting gun or something that holds more than five rounds.  They used to the the mainstream of gun ownership.

As concealed carry and modern sporting rifles gained in popularity they stopped being the mainstream and have been moved to the fringe.

Heck, I think they'd be even more likely to call the aim at your nuts challenge people idiots than the mainstream.

This Is A Thing?

Apparently there's a Facebook group of people who are pointing loaded guns at their junk with their fingers on the trigger.

Link to Vice about the phenomenon.  Note: Author hates all gun owners, not just the idiots breaking the first three of four rules.  He does call gun owners like me "responsible" so there's that.

Why is this a thing?

I've only one real response to these people threatening their family jewels:

DARWIN!  DARWIN!  DARWIN!  DARWIN!  DARWIN!  DARWIN! 

Coal Moves The Nation

 

Thanks to Marv for his photoshop skills.

Go Completely Insane

Imagine my new Caprice PPV...

 

...done up in Mad Max Main Force Patrol colours!

Try not to gag, but it'd be really amusing...

Except that the yellow MFP cars and the "last of the V-8 interceptors" are Ford Falcons...

The Beast is a Holden.  The only MFP Holden was an HQ Monaro...

Stolen by The Night Rider at the beginning of the movie.

That's a WAY easier paint job!

Projects Delayed

So many things delayed by waiting for the sellers to ship.

At least a couple of blog posts in them as well, like the E2 upgrade to the P220.

Sounds Intriguing

An easy, unimpeachable and secure way to vote?

OK.

Let's see how many politicians oppose or endorse.

No Thin Blue Line In South Carolina

There might be a fat blue line though.

The officer in question has been arrested for voluntary manslaughter after her performance in the linked video. (You'll probably have to actually go to YouTube to see it).

The family is suing, and the officer has two previous terminations for using poor judgement.

The best two word summary of having this person as a police officer is "Fatty McQuotahire".

I am old enough to remember when there were physical requirements for being a cop, especially one on patrol duty.

I sometimes think that the fall of law enforcement is tied to changing the rules to make it possible for someone like the officer above to do the job at all.

The only thing a person of that physical preparedness can do to stop an assault is to shoot.  You might have noticed the disappearance of night-sticks from the law enforcement arsenal.

Rodney King aside, you've got to have some muscles and skill to use one.  She lacks the former for certain.

The Beeper Our Climber

 

She's a climber!  We put wire mesh in these little openings on the porch to keep her from getting out under the eaves.

I Have An Ex Police Car...

I guess chicken-wire was inevitable.

Little Miss Beeper is a climber.  We're preparing to redo the screens, but realized that she will just rip them down when we do.

The chicken-wire will should protect the screens when she runs up the wall after an anole.

What's Wrong With The Seats That Are In The Car Now?

When I started telling The Lovely Harvey about the seat trim failure, and that my initial response was to assume there were no parts in the system...

Lemme back up.

Often when an interior part on an 11 year old car breaks, you are on your own for replacing it.  Ebay, forums and salvage yards are your only recourse.

Seats from a Pontiac GTO and G8 plug right into a 2011-2013 PPV.  Seats from a 2014-2017 Chevy SS might work.

I mentioned all that to Harvey before she asked, "What's wrong with the seats in the car?"

"The broken trim piece." was my reply.

Happily I can still get a new one and it's on its way.

But I also mentioned that The Beast's cloth cop seats are gonna be way more comfy than a GTO, G8 or SS seat.

Those are more sporty than the PPV and have beefier side bolsters that don't account for the average girth of the typical owner...

Because the seats in the car now were designed with the idea that a cop wearing a gun belt would be using them, they're wider and have more space for me than kidney squeezing sports seats would.

Broken Bits

Cops are hard on their cars.

The plastic trim along the outside of the seat is falling apart.

Turns out, you can still order it from GM!

They don't list the car, but a couple let you sort by the VIN number and that opens the parts lists for you.

I am curious as to how many people know that, judging by the number of requests for parts still in inventory.

It's spendy, but the entire radio/HVAC control panel is still there.  I have one knob that's wonky; the volume up will send volume down commands randomly as you try to turn up the tunes.  The steering wheel volume control works fine... for now.

Worst Of Both Worlds?

I have a genuine Holden stereo coming for The Beast.

One feature listed is a "15 CD hard drive".

I didn't know what that was, and forgot to ask before it was already shipped.

A drive that holds 15 CD's worth of mp3's is a decent feature.

A drive that rips 15 CD-A formatted discs...   It's OK, I guess.

That's many fewer songs than other formats.

With the iPod and aux inputs, though, I can see never using it.

E2 Upgrade

The strut, spring and retainer on Willard's P220 are called the "New Style".

The strut, spring, retainer and retainer pin on my P220 are called, obviously enough, the "Old Style".

Both sets of parts are getting to be unobtanium, but fear naught!

Reader Danny pointed out that the old frame sure looks like it will accept the newer parts.

He was correct!

What is available now and backwards compatible to older guns is known as the E2 upgrade.

It's very similar to the new style but with a longer strut and shorter retainer using the same spring.

Because I can't find the damn spring in the same place as the other two parts, I'm paying $9 more in shipping than I would otherwise for this upgrade experiment.

But $35 overall isn't bad and new springs are often a good idea anyways.

Reputedly, the E2 kit improves the trigger pull too.

That Time Of Year Again

 

Craving A Menu Item

Up in Iowa there's a pizza chain called Godfather's.

They were not my preferred pizza.  Pizza Pit was my preferred brand.

Ames is awash in excellent pizza, by the way.

Many places were much better than Pit, but Pit was solid, reliable and open late.

Your pizza might be best, but if you have banker's hours...

Anyways, I digress.

Godfather's makes a bacon cheeseburger pizza that I sometimes have a craving for.  I don't want to make the 1,600 trip just for a pizza and they don't deliver down here.

C'est la vie.

It Might Not Be Winning

But when the number of tanks in your Army is getting bigger from capturing the enemy's, you're doing something right.

So far Ukraine has captured more Russian tanks than the Russians have destroyed Ukrainian tanks.

Total tank losses for Russia appear to be around 250 with 106 being captured by Ukraine.  Ukraine has lost 67 tanks, but is actually up 39 from when the war began.

Considering that Russia has thousands of tanks, this is not a significant blow to their total number, but it's embarrassing.

So You've Cracked Your Stocks On Your P220

The Gorilla Glue is holding nicely, but I want a fall-back.

So I ordered a set of stocks for my P220 from Midway.  They did not warn that there were differences under the back strap, but...

Fucking Germans!

My older gun has a metal tab holding the mainspring.

The wood is relieved to clear this tab.

The plastic "slim" grips are not.

The bottom screw hole is misaligned by half a hole because of the interference between the tab and the backstrap.

What the slim grips are expecting to see is this:

The hammer strut, spring and retainer are completely different in the newer guns than mine.

Cheaper But Ephemeral

Mark Novak recommended a book in this video:

You can get it on paper from ebay for about $55 shipped.

You can get it from Amazon for less than $15 if you have some form of Kindle.

I have selected the cheaper option and accepted the risk that Amazon kills it later.

Accidental Upgrade

My mother in law's Kindle Fire just died.

Because she doesn't have anything that uses a USB-C cable, we decided to give her mine; which uses a micro-USB like she already has.

Now both my phone and Fire use the same connector!

Huzzah!

Let There Be Light

Got my Unity spotlight installed!

It even works!

That's one less hole to let Florida into the car.

I am reminded of how badly I wanted a spotlight when I was delivering pizzas in Ames.  People get stupid about their address matching the house to the point that you can only infer their address by their neighbor's numbers.  In the old part of town, a wave of Victorian restorations made it near impossible to read anyone's street address because they didn't number them back then.  The postman just knew who lived there by name.

Only An Expert By Degree

I find myself explaining a lot things to some folks because I simply know more about the topic than they do.

It's not that I'm an expert, it's just that they know so damned little.

They can't comprehend a situation where Ukraine could be begging for assistance when it's winning.

It's winning NOW.  (That makes a lot of assumptions but we'll accept Ukraine "winning" as a given).

What can be foreseen is the stuff making that winning possible running out in short order.

Munitions are being expended.  If not replenished, the balance will shift.

If a steady supply of Javelins and Stingers is what's keeping the Ukraine in the war, and they're not getting them faster than they're being expended then YES they are winning and need to beg for more help.

Russia looks to be able to win this if they just keep grinding away.  They're way more willing to expend lives to get a win than we are.

Pyrrhus might just get his name forgotten when the cost of the "win" is finally tallied up.  China might even annex some land to their North and West because the Russian army will have been expended.

Keys Please

The keyless entry key-fob for the The Beast comes in two parts.

The rear part with the buttons is the remote transmitter.  The front part with the key-blade is the key.

Surprisingly, for a GM keyless fob, both parts are very affordable.

The bottom one is an ebay cludge to get a flip-key instead of the fixed blade.

Tonight I discovered that the part numbers for the 2011-2013 Caprice PPV are the same as the 2008-2009 Pontiac G8.

While the Caprice never came with a flip-key, the G8 did!

I think I will wander over to the local Chevy dealer and see if they have the flip-end and have it cut for my key from the fixed example.  Might have to put up with it having a Pontiac logo, but... hey!

What's also interesting is they're programmed separately from each other.  The key section by starting the car with a known-good key then shutting it off and using the new key to start the car within 10 seconds of shutting it down.  The transmitter section is done from a programming mode reached from the driver information center.

Pinnacle

I am sitting here thinking heresy.

That the ultimate development of the 1911 pattern occurred in 1926 when they chambered it in .38 caliber.

The penultimate development were the changes from the M1911 to M1911A1.

Going back to flat mainspring housings and long triggers is retrograde.

Changing the dimensions isn't all bad, but it's not necessarily good.

But I dearly love my Gov't Model in .38 Super.

Even if I don't pack it in favor of lighter guns.

But I notice that The Beast is not near so carry unfriendly as The Precious was.  Being intended for use by a uniformed officer wearing a gun-belt tends to leave more room for IWB carry.  I have several excellent holsters for a 1911, so I might just start packing it again and get some yellowing on my pig-tooth ivory.

Done!

Once you get that intake manifold out the way, the starter is trivial to swap.

Marv got here just in time to help with that manifold.

Nine captive bolts in it and four were finger tight when I started.  This might explain Bubba's intermittent, random misfire on cylinder 1.  I swapped coil 1 and 2 while I had everything off the engine, so if it moves to cylinder 2 we'll know it's the coil.

All of the engine bay's lines and wires run on the driver's side and interfere with the removal every single part you need to take off to get at the starter.

This was not a hard job, it was a pain in the ass job.

While we had it apart, we took it upon ourselves to change the serpentine belt that was showing wear.

What a cluster fuck!

We fought that thing tooth and nail only to discover that you can't bring it over the alternator last.  We got it to go on by going over the power steering pulley last.  The service manual says water pump last.

Marv tried that and it kept losing the AC pulley.

Test drive shows everything works!  Huzzah!

I think it's actually smoother, which lends credence to there being a small leak from the intake for quite a while.

PS: I totally understand why the online estimates were $1,200 for labor.  I started at about 1130 with Marv joining me about 1400.  We finished up about 1900 with three parts store trips.

Dear LGBTQ Community

You are a vanishingly small minority.

While I am big on minorities getting all the same rights as everyone else, there's an aspect of reality that's a hard number.

The very word, "minority".

What it means is you need help from the majority to have your demands stick.

It means if you boycott a business, if the majority keeps shopping there, your demands can be safely ignored.

Gun owners know about this when we boycott a business too.  We're actually a majority of customers, but we're difficult to bring that whole mass to bear; but when we do...  Ask McDonald's in 1993.  Burger King, who stayed out of politics, thanked Mac Shack for the boost.

But Disney advocate(d?) against gun ownership and bans firearms from its parks.  So many of us don't go there.  Let Disney burn, says I.

But now the LGBTQ community is threatening Disney because Disney has noticed that being political is affecting the bottom line negatively and Disney wants to exit politics that have nothing to do with making movies, videos and running theme parks.

Write that down.  The furor is that Disney is exiting political advocacy, not that it's decided to advocate against the LGBTQ community.

Talk about an "all or nothing" and "if you're not explicitly with us, you're against us" position for the LGBTQ community to make.

Why would Disney do this?  I mentioned it.  Because it's affecting the bottom line.

Gun owners alone weren't enough to change the conceal carry policies at the parks, but we're staying home or going to the competition.

Gun owners aren't the only group doing this and it's adding up.

It probably wouldn't have added up, but the LGTBQ community decided that it needed MORE rights than everyone else and alienated a lot of the people in the majority who would otherwise have remained supporters.  In some instances pushed it far enough that those former supporters have become opponents.

A minority doesn't get anywhere by themselves, they need the majority to sympathize and support their cause or they are marginalized and become second class citizens.

Well, a minority that doesn't own the military and all the guns...  But that's not the USA.

The ball is in your court, LGBTQ community.  What you should have done is taken the win and returned to being your normal selves.  What you did was to do what the people I thought were intolerant religious zealots and nut cases said you would.  Began advocating for children to be exposed and indoctrinated as LGBTQ.  Advocating that exposure and indoctrination happen younger and younger.  Adopting teaching strategies that made NAMBLA seem stodgy and conservative.

You moved to normalize grooming and child molestation.

The majority doesn't agree.  So where you go, they no longer follow.

First Remove...

Going to be doing the starter on my father in law's Colorado.

Because the put it where they did, you have to take the entire intake assembly off the engine to gain access.

You can almost see it through the wheel well, but you wouldn't be able to get to it without cutting.

The shop estimate for this job is $1,200.  This looks like it might be a two-day job.

Ugh!

You Know That's More Right

Because it's a cop car, there's a hole in The Beast where the spotlight used to live.

The Lovely Harvey and I are in agreement that that hole should be filled with a spotlight.

The correct one is hard to find used and when you do, they're asking $250 for just the light and are nearly always missing the mounting kit.

I've seen sellers asking for $350 for one.

If this was a rare, out of production, collectible, perhaps the prices would make sense.

But Unity still makes them and are happy to sell anyone a brand new light and mounting kit for $262.28 shipped and taxed from their Amazon store.

Also, Unity responds to questions in a timely manner.

I put out a "want to buy" on a Facebook group and someone offered me their light for $60.  I said I'd take it if it was complete.  They have not replied for three days.  It's the internet age, you have hours to reply, not days.

Odd

The Lovely Harvey has dubbed the PPV "The Beast".  Good name.

It's an odd driving experience.

Totally modern car.  Excellent brakes, good mileage, plenty of get-up-and-go.

But if you take off lightly it sounds exactly like a 1970's land yacht!  That quiet rumble and hearing the trans spooling.

Yet, you're surrounded by a modern car!

I'm digging it.

Darn It

Those fancy, and expensive, wood stocks on my P220 decided to shed a Scrabble tile sized bit off the right panel.  Right along the grain.

Dang it!

I am testing the ability of Gorilla Glue to hold it on.

The plastic stocks are still available and cheap, so might just have to get a pair... just in case.

The Obvious Comparison

When you make any semi-auto in .45 ACP your work is going to get compared to the Urfortyfive, The M1911 (or M1911A1 which is more common).

In its original form, the .45 ACP SIG-Sauer P220 doesn't even have a higher capacity.

What it is, though, is lighter.  Half a pound lighter, which is a spare magazine's worth of mass.  So for the same weight, you get seven more shots than the M1911A1.

You also get a DA/SA trigger and a firing pin block.  The magazine release can be reversed, but that's the only control which can.

The sights are, theoretically, better; but I shoot the M1911A1 shown here much better than the P220 shown.

The grip has more girth, but feel is a personal thing and subjective.

Reflected Moon In Lattice