Decommissioned nuclear reactor from the Rancho Seco power plant outside of Sacramento. Rancho Seco is about 20 miles from me and this passed right by my house on its way out of town.

Jason, welcome to multiple watch lists. Let’s be honest, you were already on several - you just moved up in the ranks on those and added a couple new ones to the mix.

These look a lot like the ones in 2000's F-series and Expeditions. I actually made a couple hundred dollars selling ones I had grabbed on my regular junkyard trips .

Dump truck went down to Georgia cause he was lookin for a bridge to kill...

YESSSS!  Always cool to see my namesake.

TRD PRO QUO, Clarice. *pffftbbtpfftbbtpfft*

I worked for Kragen (bought out by O’Reillys) in the 90s and we had these things which I offered as an alternative to a reman unit depending on the failure. If it was noisy bearings or a bad regulator - this $25 kit would solve most of those. Of course not everyone wants to or has the aptitude to tear one apart and…

Anyone else remember these starter and alternator rebuild kits? They worked great.  I totally didnt mind pulling them apart.  Expecting the parts store to do it?  Hah.

I’m convinced this is because they designed the cars, started building the things, got the first to the end of the assembly line and discovered it wouldn’t do anything because they had forgotten to include the battery.

If you have hard clay soil like some of us do, those things just skip across the top trying to kill the person piloting it.

I rented one (slightly larger and diesel, but only 32" wide with the tracks sucked in) to do some trenching for electrical and digging holes for a couple large nursery trees and once we got used to the controls it made extremely short work of the whole thing. For your use case, I would bet you could probably get it…

Indeed. We have crappy clay here too and a mini excavator (1 ton diesel one rented for $350 for the day from Home Depot) was SOOOOOO worth it. We had the real work done in a couple hours and spent the rest of the day letting the grandkids take turns with their parents digging a hole and filling it back up.

After renting a slightly larger, but still small enough to fit through a standard 36" doorway diesel powered one - I joked to my wife that if I ever truly lost my shit, I was gonna:

Having recently rented one of these (a slightly larger but small Kubota) to dig some trenches and excavate holes for a couple new trees, I have to say its mad fun to play around with.  Had my sons and grandkids over and after the real work was done they all took turns trying it out - everyone had a blast.  

26K? Hahahah - I’d bet that’s pretty close to MSRP at the time.

I have to disagree with you a little bit. The OHC Pinto motor has some redeeming children that respond well to modifications.

Monza, Malibu that I can recall.  I’m sure their Pontiac/Buick variants as well.

I’m with you there, but only for the 2.0L SOHC Focus. Those things were notorious for dropping the valve seats into the engine, destroying it. The 2.0L Zetec DOHC versions were MUCH better and tough to kill.

Absolutely not the same.  Tempo/Topaz was a pushrod OHV motor, most closely related to the old 200 straight 6 from the 60s.  The Ranger motor was a decendant of the OHC 2.0/2.3 Pinto motor.