The Offical 2020 Dang It Award (DIA)

[RapidRabbit]

Just my luck. I injury myself and it's after the new year.

I was cutting out and cleaning up front floor pan on the jeep project and managed to skin my self with an angle grinder. Nothing major luckily.

Sent from my moto x4 using Tapatalk

 

[Kelly_H]

If these awards have to be 2020-specific... best I've got is two from right before Christmas.

I was driving home to NC from TX to visit my parents, a 1400 mile trip. I began noticing that oil was disappearing rapidly from the car... not coming out the tailpipes though so that was good at least. Decided that it was all coming out of the top of the valve cover as blowby as they were quite wet. Got all the way home, at which point I had maybe 2 qts of oil left, and realized I had blown out the front seal on the intake. So duh, that's where all the oil was going. Then I had to replace the intake gasket and then drive 1400 miles back home the next week lol. Not that big of a dang it...

The real big one was just actually my own stupidity. For ten years, I have lamented the unfortunate state of my heating system. See, the problem is this: if the heat is off (no blower on, all switches at top position) then obviously it ends up freezing in the car in winter. But the second I turn the blower and heat on - even with the blower on the lowest setting - it is like a thousand degrees inside the car. So for ten years, I have just alternated between freezing and baking as I turn the heater on and off while driving in winter.

Well, on this trip it was 40 degrees and raining and I was doing my normal freeze-bake-freeze routine, when it suddenly occurred to me... what if I could just open the heater doors (by pushing down the heat / temp switches on the dash) WITHOUT turning on the blower, and heat the car that way? So I tried that. And lo and behold, the car was suddenly a perfect magical 72 degrees on the inside.

TEN YEARS I have been suffering through the winters with my weird cobbled-together on-off heating technique. TEN YEARS!! And it turns out I'm just an idiot.

 

[scedd]

If these awards have to be 2020-specific... best I've got is two from right before Christmas.

I was driving home to NC from TX to visit my parents, a 1400 mile trip. I began noticing that oil was disappearing rapidly from the car... not coming out the tailpipes though so that was good at least. Decided that it was all coming out of the top of the valve cover as blowby as they were quite wet. Got all the way home, at which point I had maybe 2 qts of oil left, and realized I had blown out the front seal on the intake. So duh, that's where all the oil was going. Then I had to replace the intake gasket and then drive 1400 miles back home the next week lol. Not that big of a dang it...

The real big one was just actually my own stupidity. For ten years, I have lamented the unfortunate state of my heating system. See, the problem is this: if the heat is off (no blower on, all switches at top position) then obviously it ends up freezing in the car in winter. But the second I turn the blower and heat on - even with the blower on the lowest setting - it is like a thousand degrees inside the car. So for ten years, I have just alternated between freezing and baking as I turn the heater on and off while driving in winter.

Well, on this trip it was 40 degrees and raining and I was doing my normal freeze-bake-freeze routine, when it suddenly occurred to me... what if I could just open the heater doors (by pushing down the heat / temp switches on the dash) WITHOUT turning on the blower, and heat the car that way? So I tried that. And lo and behold, the car was suddenly a perfect magical 72 degrees on the inside.

TEN YEARS I have been suffering through the winters with my weird cobbled-together on-off heating technique. TEN YEARS!! And it turns out I'm just an idiot.

dont wanna be rude as we Aussies invented the long drive (I can go 1400 miles (2330kms) without even leaving the state), but why didnt you fly. The airfare would be about $140AUD here for that.

 

[Horseplay]

It's a fair point. You can fly pretty much anywhere domestically for about $100 round trip for about a year now. I bought a ticket for a business trip to Miami (Ft. Lauderdale as that's where Southwest goes) last week the day before I left for less than $100 all in! Crazy stupid cheap.

 

[Mach1 Driver]

Lets see here- what would stop me from flying.... sitting in a confined space with recirculating air, close to other people for a prolonged time, breathing the same air...

 

[Horseplay]

Lets see here- what would stop me from flying.... sitting in a confined space with recirculating air, close to other people for a prolonged time, breathing the same air...

Aside from anyone breathing directly on you, the air on a plane is very well filtered and relatively safe. The protocols enforced by the airlines and airports are really good to. While my company's corporate travel volume is way down we still have a lot of flying going on these days and we have not had a single COVID issue since day one.

So in this case for me, a few hours on a plane vs 20+ hours driving along with a $100 ticket vs more than triple that in gas alone seems like a no brainer.

 

[kb3]

dont wanna be rude as we Aussies invented the long drive (I can go 1400 miles (2330kms) without even leaving the state), but why didnt you fly. The airfare would be about $140AUD here for that.

umm....have you met Kelly? That girl drives the wheels off her Mustang, for fun!

 

[KBMWRS]

Aside from anyone breathing directly on you, the air on a plane is very well filtered and relatively safe. The protocols enforced by the airlines and airports are really good to. While my company's corporate travel volume is way down we still have a lot of flying going on these days and we have not had a single COVID issue since day one.

So in this case for me, a few hours on a plane vs 20+ hours driving along with a $100 ticket vs more than triple that in gas alone seems like a no brainer.

Agree on all your points but...

Its the getting to the plane that is the problem. Lines....people...lines...people.

Its a choice everyone is making...this or that.

 

[Mach1 Driver]

Aside from anyone breathing directly on you, the air on a plane is very well filtered and relatively safe. The protocols enforced by the airlines and airports are really good to. While my company's corporate travel volume is way down we still have a lot of flying going on these days and we have not had a single COVID issue since day one.

So in this case for me, a few hours on a plane vs 20+ hours driving along with a $100 ticket vs more than triple that in gas alone seems like a no brainer.

You wouldn't get me on a plane unless the air was filtered down to the range of a N95 mask, or about 300nm- and they don't. I understand the need to fly for some young healthy individuals.

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[Horseplay]

If you're wearing a N95 mask...

Just saying.

 

[Kelly_H]

It is hilarious that what you guys are getting out of this is "this chick drove her car 1400 miles one-way for some reason", not "this chick doesn't know how to use her car's heat system"

To answer the question: this was a combination of COVID precaution, and just wanting to take my car home. To address the first: supposedly planes are safe, and yes I could wear a N95 mask, but Texas is full of buffoons and as Gullery mentioned - airports are the real concern. Given that Texas is dripping with COVID right now, I preferred to avoid all that. It is much easier to keep sanitized at gas stations! But, to address the second: it's been 5 years since Jane last went "home" to NC. I don't get to go home very often because, obviously, driving there takes a while and usually I don't have that long off of work at Christmas. But this year we're all WFH so it doesn't really matter where I am! Figured I would take the opportunity and run home to say hello, also giving me a chance to stretch Jane's legs. Think before Christmas I had only put 3000 miles or so on the car for the entire year, which was just a crying shame! So off I went.

The added bonus was that I was able to get my intake milled down while I was home - which is something I've wanted to do for years, but I didn't really have access to a free shadetree-type machine shop in Austin. I do in NC!