hesitate in posting this but:)

understand Im not whining but this day was so incredible I just have to tell the story. this has been a typical day for me lately it seems. maybe some one can learn something from it.

I have a big copper deal working as many know, 2000 lbs wife also knew today was the day, early this morning in fact.
my van threw a serpintene belt a couple of weeks ago, so last night about 4:00 pm she decides it needs to be fixed. we live 30 miles from the nearest auto parts store. after 3 trips to town returning the wrong belt. it is "fixed" at about 11:00 pm. ok great.
early this morning turns out to be 9:00.

only have half the money so I need to convince customer to sell me half and come back for the other half and $500 of that is in the form of a check in my name and the name of my company but no problem the bank cashes them no problem, oops problem this morning the bank decides it dosent want to cash this one. ok no prob just one more little hurdle to get over. just need to convince the customer to take the cash and hold the check for a couple of hours.

after hands an knees begging customer agrees to half/half but it has to be all cash, and he cant wait because he is on a float for madi gras. so we need to do the deal monday. whew great.
10:00 had a call of CL from about 25 mi away from a guy with 20 comps and some copper. head out but need two tires on the van. cant find any. so creap to the site. there before me is the twenty "computers" they were of course CRTs not towers.
now I will not disrespect the customer but AI had to explain to him what a computer tower was. sooo he says come back here see if this is what you want. go to the back of the house to the burn pile. in the middle of a pile of ashes are 6 towers all that is left is the burnt shells complete with chared green boards. stick cpus. finger cards etc. I nearly came to tears. I managed to salvage 2 mother boards and one slot processor. I did manage to buy 50 lbs of bare #1 copper for $80. and score 5 nice sorting tubs from him.

Ok no problem, on to plan B, 30 miles back to panama city and do my computer rout got about 20 to pick up at various locations. and tomarrow (sat) have an apointment to look at a storage shed full and a storage shed full of med machines, defibs , ultra sounds etc.

about 2 miles down the road we smell rubber burning, van gets hard to stear and the brakes become like a rock, make it to walmart parking lot. bearing in the power stearing pump is out and burned up the new belt. call M in law to come get us. we will have to go back tomarrow and fix it, oh did I mention it has been in the high 70s here for the last few weeks. tomarrow at 6:am it is supposed to be 26 degrees.



Day in the life of a scrapper

Sometimes when it rains, it pours. My mini van (dodge) started throwing the belt and after looking it over found the idler pulley that keeps the belt tight, the bearing was out in it. Put a new pulley on and new belt and problem solved.

Yep, grab ahold of it with the belt off and if it wiggles at all sideways then the bearing is wore, course there is no place to grease that bearing. My belt flew off on a state highway at 60 mph, and the first time just wadded the belt up. Second time chewed the belt to pieces. It'll be the smaller pulley with some sort of spring attachment.