Neutral: After doing a partial rebuild of the engine (250k miles on her) and a new torque converter in my ‘99 F250 5.4L (Heavy-Half, not a SuperDuty) in the driveway last summer, she’s running a lot better. I had put inserts in the spark plug threads in the back 4 cylinders, but had to replace the front four recently,…

It’s a “TerraGator” dry fertilizer spreading machine. You’ll find them all over in farming communities. The big tires, with the front inset in the middle of the two rear tires, are for flotation and to prevent compaction of the soil before planting.

Technically not a car, but we had an old 60's era fuel truck (It was either a Ford F600 or a GMC 6000) that we used to haul diesel fuel to the field for our tractors and combines. Nobody bothered to clean or adjust the carb, so it ran really rough. We constantly had to cross a busy highway between farms, and getting…

But Raph is really only known for one thing: giving absolutely obnoxious and horrible takes about transportation, especially ones not about bicycles (the worst and least useful kind of transportation). Expecting anything more from this blog site is asking for a lot, and Raph can’t break from his usual rhetoric without…

Neutral: Growing up in the Dakotas, we got “snowed in” a number of times. By that, I mean that the old man got out the 9' snowblower on the back of the tractor and cleared the gravel road to the highway. Mom drove an Excursion for 10 years, because it could haul all of us kids and go through snow drifts like a boss if…

That’s my complaint too, but that’s the standard for the media now, regardless of industry.

Industry: “We’ve improved the livelihood of everyone in this country by leaps and bounds over the past, and continue to make things better for everyone by making the requirements stricter every year.”

This is Raph you’re talking about.  Bad takes are kindof his thing.  I still don’t understand why they haven’t transferred him to A.V. Club or somewhere he can have bad takes and people like it.  

That’s just the problem, I’m not driving my machine 5+ miles back and forth to my farm every day. We set up in the field and stay there, since 40'+ headers have to be towed down the road. Quick detach headers still take an hour to set up, and I’m not wasting that kind of time every day. Plus, some of our fields are…

I really appreciate your math and logic you used to go through the absolute best case scenario, and how it isn’t going to work as well as people want to believe.

I grew up on a farm in South Dakota. When I was about 10, I learned the basics of clutches and stick shifting on old tractors. The oldest ones had 5 or 6 gears, the small newer ones had dual-range 4-speeds. The bigger ones had triple-range 4-speeds for a total of 12 gear ratios. Mind you, even these newer tractors…

Wow...This is crazy...the first comment replies alone are hilarious.  

HVAC controllers will shut down the A/C compressor below 4 degC, due to the possibility of frosting the condenser and stopping airflow. His Fusion would definitely have that kind of feature, and it was cold enough that it would have done so. Also, most vehicles automatically turn on the A/C Compressor when on heating…

I think you mean an Expedition, not an Excursion. They quit making those 15 years ago, and I can faithfully say that they never had auto high beams.  

Some people are complaining about bad voice acting in the main game, but there has been no good voice acting in the modern era parts of these games since...ACIII? Black Flag? But that was when they started making the modern-day parts not really matter. Unity’s modern day was almost non-existant, and absolutely…

Well, sure, when you put it that way, it sounds simple. But, to just make one universal motor will make so many concessions that it’s always going to be “meh”. My previous job was to take a “base design” for a electric motor for hybrids, then make certain modifications to make it work for as many customers as…

It’s really just a way to fake-out the computer, as you do NOT want the friction brakes to work.

I had a conversation with my father-in-law (a medical device salesmen) in July, where he told me that I needed to get with his other son-in-law on some air-quality devices, since demand is up due to the pandemic (we both happen to have experience in engineering air-handling equipment in non-medical industries). I…

“Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good”

I know an old guy who owns one of these. He lives way out in the country in Iowa, and he’ll start this badboy up when he gets drunk late at night. The best part is that you can hear it’s echo off the elevator a mile away.

The hybrid F150 is a HEV, not a PHEV. With a 1.5kWh battery, it’s barely bigger than a Prius HEV battery. Most PHEV’s have >8kWh capacity. Also, Ford even commented when they announced it that “we never said it would be a plug-in”.