Trouble Maker

Bummer on the timing, we just left Friday night/Saturday morning, would have been fun to overlap and get a few turns in.

Just curious, Is your CTS-V modified? How 'fast' cars feel kind of fascinates me, since on paper these cars stock form acceleration look close enough to be negligible.

You're in Breckenridge now? We were just there last week, barely missed each other!

I know this thered is about Whisky, but why is r/OhioLiquor only about whisky/burbon, etc? :dumb:

Bumpers, had been meaning to replace the backup/jump battery and rechargeables. Old ones were, well, old and not working as well as they should. Cheap jump box never worked that well for jumping cars. I also don't have the line for the backup generator hooked back up yet. Snow and ice brought needing good battery-backup to the forefront of my mind. Thanks for the earlier vid Mitch! I got the Imazing, seemed like a little more capability than the GooLoo2000 and was on some cheaper deal on Amazon a few days ago. Will let everyone know how it seems, though I doubt/hope we won't need for any cars soon. Batteries in the cars seems solid for now, main 2 cars get started often enough too and the S2k stays on a trickle charger when parked. I got the Panasonic Enelope charger and Amazon Basic AA and AAA rechargeables after some light research if anyone is also thinking about this area too.

At least she didn't get epoxy in her hair trying to Redgreen back together some particle board drawers in her RV.

In equivalent news today I bought new shoes and there is speculation going to help run that small chain of shoe stores. That's about what $76 Million is to Bezos.

Ego stuff is the shit, no way I will ever do gas or corded lawn equipment ever again. I actually had a perfectly functional corded leaf blower and replaced it with an Ego one. I've got their string trimmer and leaf blower. I'll probably get the hedge trimmer in the spring even though we have a corded one. I'm up in the air about edger or chainsaw since it's one of those things that I only use a few times a year. I'll probably keep the gas mower, it's only about a 3 year old Honda so it will last forever. It's also one of the higher end ones so it has a ton of really nice features like 'hydrostatic' transmission, blade stop, blend door for mulch VS bag which works really well for all of the leaves we get. BIL lives in Albany NY and just got a house this last summer. Ego snow blower has done fine even up there and he's already been through at least 1 'big' (15"+) storm up there.

From my experience more often it packs from driving over it/walking, melts a little, freezes again. Then you have a big packed snow/ice rink on your driveway. If you're luck it get's warm enough to melt soonish. But other times like Clayter posted in the forecast it will get cold enough for long enough that it stays around for weeks. We've only been in this house for about 8 years. I remember a few times I was out of town so the driveway didn't get cleared and that shit was there for weeks -a month. So, I usually look at the forecast to decide whether to shovel it or not. We also have a concrete driveway and sidewalks. They don't melt as much as quickly a nice black pavement driveway will.

Maybe market manipulation by the funds? I need to read into this more to understand, but probably even then still difficult to tell which invisible hand is moving this situation. https://seekingalpha.com/instablog/11442671-gerald-klein/3096735-anatomy-of-a-short-attack

I think that guy was in a My Chemical Romance cover-band I saw a few years ago.

Anyone start a pool on the divorce date yet?

Regular people who work at Robinhood: I don't like this. This isn't right. What are we doing here? Do I really want to work for a place like this? Robinhood: I'll gib ya Three.Fiddy Regular people who work at Robinhood:

Credit goes to the meme team either Jonez, Otis or Buckenroth. I'm sure one or all 3 of them on the facespace is where I saw that.

The nocino is... interesting. I find it ok in small doses. I think it could be fantastic in some cocktails but I haven't figured out what I want to try to to do with it yet. I think everyone I know who likes old fashions and has had theirs has really liked it. We were able to take 3 bottles over to Japan with us, at least duty free, and we took one of those.

Any thoughts on this? https://uproxx.com/life/best-bourbons-from-independent-distilleries-2021/ I really like the idea of smaller distilleries, especially for gifts. It's what I was looking for in bringing gifts back from Japan.

I need to have you talk to my wife, she won't let me do any gas line work.

Info online and in manuals is mixed and IMHO lacking about max trailer weight w/o WDH. I don't know the specific spec. for yours Derek, but from what I've seen Ford seems really good about having and giving access to full specs based on every necessary spec; wheel base, engine, drive-train, tow package, etc. So you can better know the actual situation with your specific vehicle setup. It's probably more important because people are more often buying full size trucks for heavy and frequent towing, fleet vehicles with a specific defined use case so the customer can chose the correct setup for their sitaution. For the Jeep GC US manual says 3.5k#s AU manual says ~5k#s Of course expectation and use case is different based on destination and specs may be accordingly different. While I don't know much about AU towing situation I can't imagine them having better roads or lower speeds than US. About 3.5k#s, it's one line in the manual that as far as I know was added later with an update. There is no indication about any differences for trim/options, so this could be for V6 2WD w/steel sus vs this car which is Diesel (much heavier e.g. overall weight and front) 4WD w/air sus. Regardless my parents seem to want the RV dealership to put one on. They will install it and set it up on the car for $700. Seems a little expensive, but it's their money and definitely the path of least resistance to get it done. Even if it weren't 100% necessary which seems highly debatable, it should reduce driver workload and make towing more comfortable, I'm all about that. Thanks for all of the advice and guidance, I definitely learned some things about towing. Will post some pictures when it comes in probably late February!

Thanks, I didn't even think about that and already found a few in the ~$200 range. It's great to know since I assume the RV place will probably come back and say they can install one for $1k.

Yeah, I imagine it's easy once you add water, propane, things to live (cooking, food), clothing to get 700-1200lbs extra in the camper really quickly. I'm guesstimating 6k#s tow weight, anyway it 'can't' be more than 6.5k#s but that's getting awfully close to max towing rating of this vehicle. Originally I was steering them to a 21' that was 4.5k#s empty w/5.5k GVWR. But this 24' one has a way better layout and much more live-able space. They wanted something w/bunks for our nieces/nephews, their grand-kids, so they selection is more limited. We will go longer distances with this, my parents plan to go out west maybe this summer, we might go to the Dakotas this spring with it. I'm all about features that reduce driver work load to make it more comfortable. Nothing worse than going on a vacation and the first thing that happens is a drive that's more stressful or difficult than needed. We'll see what the RV stealership says about cost and how much they do for setup and go from there. This looks pretty sweet, a little more expensive than usual like the brake controller due to features, but it looks really nice. https://www.curtmfg.com/part/17499

So, it sounds like it could be good... I'm still on the fence with the Jeep having air sus how needed it is. I'm kind of inclined to see how it tows and go from there. But I really trust both of your opinions so again, it's swaying me and I'm torn on what the best path is. My parents are the ones buying the trailer and my Jeep will be the collective tow vehicle. They are going in today to put a deposit on it and the dealer is trying to up-sell them on WDH, trailer sway bar, brake controller. It sounds like it could be worth to have them do it due to how much of a PITA a WDH is to setup. I originally told me parents to tell them we weren't interested in any add-ons but I will tell them to discuss when they go in today. It won't hurt to see what the cost is and how much setup they actually do with the WDH e.g. just put the hardware on the trailer or actually set it up on the car. I got this brake controller. https://www.curtmfg.com/part/51170 I liked that you can bury most of the unit, I put it behind the left kick panel next to the (foot) parking brake. Way less chance of my cracking my knee on it. If you press in during normal operation it will ramp up to whatever you've set the max braking amount to.

How well do they play together with self adjusting/load leveling air suspension? Seems like at best they would have the same function, making the load leveling hitch unnecessary/redundant. But again, maybe I'm not thinking about it correctly or miss-understanding something.

Sorry, I should have been clear, used different terminology for the two parts. The interwebs is using the same words for different systems, I guess they do the same thing so it could make sense but it's also confusing. I edited my original post Trailer Sway bar = mechanical kind of damper looking system on the trailer. Trailer sway control or damping, not sure what the name is in Jeep/FCA world = reactive in the stability control system. I have (working) experience with this control from our past life, yes, they are usually really good. I just didn't want to blanket statement them all being really good as it's always logic/systems/settings depending. Yes (I'm sure you know this) it exist in this Jeep GC (2014). I was trying to ask about the necessity or real world benefit in my case of the Trailer Saw bar, physical mechanical damper add on systems. Yes, my experience is also that if the trailer is properly loaded (positive, 10-15% tongue weight) you are OK. I know how to weigh/load a trailer. So I don't feel like trailer sway should be a problem in practice. Thanks, that's good to know! First air sus car and I also I wasn't sure how capable this system was. It seems pretty capable with the range of height adjustable, I just wasn't sure how well that would necessarily translate to (tongue) load leveling.

I've got some questions, I want to bounce ideas off of everyone to make sure I'm thinking about this correctly. I've towed quite a bit, but I'm new to setting this stuff up on my own and haven't used some things like weight distribution hitch or trailer sway bars before. The Jeeps towing capacity is 7.2k pounds, empty the trailer is 5k pounds and GVWR is 6.5k pounds though I doubt it will ever be loaded up that much. This engine/trim levels curb weigh is almost 5.4k pounds. https://www.keystonerv.com/product/bullet-crossfire/comfort-travel-trailers/floorplans/2430BH Any tips/tricks on dialing in brake controller settings? How to get the correct rise/drop on the draw bar? Is there some measurement on the trailer about how high from level the hitch ball should be or something along these lines? I'll have to pickup a draw bar before we go get the trailer, I won't have eyes on it before we go get it. Any necessity of extras; weight distributing hitches, trailer sway control, etc.? On weight distributing hitches, this car has air sus. So my thought is it should level itself out, at least within it's range of control. Even if it can't get the car to completely flat, it should help a ton to get it 50% of the way there for example. Worst case I could imagine WDH and air sus fighting each other. So my thought was unnecessary at best and could make things worse, so don't do it with this vehicle. Trailer sway bar. Are these usually pro-active or only reactive? The Jeep also has trailer sway damping/control built into the stability control. I've no idea if this is any good, but the ones I've driven will save your ass. If properly loaded seems like it would be unnecessary, and since the Jeep has trailer sway control built in, worst case that should help the situation. Finally my thought on trailer sway bars and weight distribution hitches is they would have little benefit for the cost and complication for this application, this isn't some extreme towing situation. But I'm wanting to ask you all to make sure I'm thinking about this correctly. Anything else I'm not thinking of?