My son, Chris, and I installed my tower back in 1993. In 1998, I had to move the northeast guy cables to provide clearance for a shop addition, so I installed an elevated guy point. When I put the backup anchor in, there was no tree here. 32 years later, you can barely see the turn buckle exposed from the tree that swallowed it! Additionally, after the big rains recently, a spare guy plate arose from the ground, where it had disappeared in 1998. :-)
343,120 miles, 1st radiator... 2002 Ford Escape V6.
***Addition*** All those miles on the original engine, no internal work. Original oil pump and water pump. I've replaced the injectors once as maintenance, intake gaskets on that plastic intake twice. It's been rough on idle air control valves (common issue on the 2001-2004 models, tgey overheat). All cheap repairs I've done at home, myself. 1 transmission due to my abuse pulling that heavy high-top rc airplane trailer. I run this down through the woods, pull boats, beat the puddin out of it. The V6 still rocking and rolling. Computer chip change, CAT mods, 23-24 mpg around town, 28-30 highway (never did more than 20 mpg before mods). Burn the cheapest E-15 I can find. Sometimes ignor oil changes until 10k miles!
Debbie and I almost rolled it over at a local pond when the left wheels fell in a ditch, rh wheels started lifting, steered hard left and it sat back down!
We buried it at a cow pasture. Deb got out to push while I rocked it. Finally got traction, I put it on the floor, looked in the mirror and it was totally painting Debbie in cow poo... hahaha.
Brandon and I drove this thing through pure hell, fishing crazy places...we were driving through a bunch of growth behind the Zebulon sewage treatment plant higher that the hood. It was crazy, we decided to stop. Got out to walk to a pond and there was a HUGE ditch we couldn't see just in front of us at least 10' deep, hahaha.
Another place we went, we were waasyyyy down a ravine, had to get a running start to get back out. Never had to be towed out, anywhere.
Boy, the memories we have with this thing... Babied, this truck has not been. :-)
This is an OSD Audio MI6 amp that I got from a friend. Beautiful piece of gear. 150w/channel ++. Almost 500w bridged. It had a failed output reg. I went ahead and recapped it due to age, and it rips like a new beast. My 200w Infinity speakers can't handle it at full power. Beast!
This is another Cobra 2000 I repaired for a friend. He bought this in a deal, and it was cosmetically very clean. This is a 1979 vintage rig, and was among the best available at that time. This rig had lots of problems... the transmitter driver and final were incorrect (and were some of the poor quality Chinese knockoffs in circulation). There were parts missing in the transmitter strip, literally everything in the radio had been turned, the AM power control / modulator was bad, etc.
I installed the correct, original mfg transistors from RF Parts, replugged the board of the missing components, gave it a full alignment, corrected the remote power mod on the rear apron, serviced the noisy pots and switches, and she was good as new.
This is a Swan 117XC power supply I got from the estate of Ken Stroud AB4RQ. It had been parked for many years, a paper tag on it indicated a problem in 1998. This is required to run the old Swan tube rigs from the 60's like the Swan 250, 350, 500s, etc.
I disassembled it and started by removing and treating rust, repairing a damaged speaker, compounding the front panel, and striping / reapplying the black wrinkle finish. I replaced all electrolytic caps, the 4.7 ohm resistor in the relay keying supply was at 15 ohms, and installed a new ne-2 neon power lamp. After reassembly, she runs like a new supply. It currently awaits restoration of some of the Swan radios I got from Ken's estate.
