Frustration.... The fog lights I bought for the Escape have glass lenses, I specifically ordered ones with plastic because the OEM glass ones got shattered by rocks. They were also 25 bucks a piece and the OEs lasted close to 20 years, so I guess I'll send it and see.

Fixed! Hopefully! I can put a good bit of pressure on it and it doesn't budge, probably because it has 4 staples melted into it now XD Was a bit more of a pain than I thought, not as easy to get the staples in where they needed to be. Also pictured, other parts :3

New thing time, now I can actually fix the driver side visor in the Escape properly! And many other plastic things!

Bruce Springsteen: “ICE should get the fuck out of Minneapolis.”

Organization! Anything with an LCD or that may freeze gets brought in for the winter, up until now it just sat on the floor in a pile, now it doesn't! Very satisfying :3

"What do we do with 20,000 unemployed ICE agents afterwards?"

One thing I forgot, my push to get back into guitar, having bought my acoustic so I can bring it up for work, and even to work. I can actually mess around a bit now and hope to get to a point in 2026 where I can actually play songs on my acoustic and electric, not just my bass.

I don't post much but as 2025 winds down I wanna do a recap of the year. Overall it was a pretty stressful year with all the stuff happening in the world, while I personally stayed in a pretty comfortable space I do have friends from all over that I was concerned about.

I put my Lego Gameboy @coffeespots.ca got me for Christmas together, been a moment since I've gotten to put together Lego and it was a lot of fun, never done a set like this and it had some really cool features and Easter Eggs hidden inside!

Accidentally realized a nice bonus feature of the built in tuner of the acoustic guitar I bought, it can be used to see any note played and thus is useful for learning what each note on the fret board is, as well as if a chord is being played properly.

Something different, decided to do some maintenance on the snowblower after it refused to start when it snowed. New spark plug, oil changed, checked tire pressures (what pressure?), finally replaced the broken sheer pin properly, and lubed the auger.

Someone finally gets to sleep outside again. Power steering feels better, exhaust leak is as sealed as I'm gonna bother with (that metal is pretty much see through), and I even got around to replacing the stripped diff plug. Still have to center the steering but that's purely aesthetic.

New struts after many years of meaning to do them, ball joints were a no since the new ones just slide in, thankfully the one I pressed out wasn't damaged and still pressed in, so I just put it back, still annoying, steering does feel better though, not gonna worry about them.

I feel like I might as well just give Rock Auto access to my bank account at this point, decided I'll do both ball joints, and I've wanted to do the struts for years, considering I just did the sway bar links and most of the work to remove the struts anyways, I decided to bite the bullet.

On top of my vehicle deciding to become an attention whore, my dad's Ranger that I've been driving in the meantime, that I recently replaced the water pump in and fixed an issue with the doors, now has a vibration I think is a u-joint and now an airbag light, bleh....

Thought I'd have the little shit out of sky jail today but the steering still feels kinda stiff after doing the power steering pump and high pressure line, though it has felt kinda like that for a bit, turns out the right side ball joint is kinda sticky, back to Rock Auto I guess.....

*Replaces the horribly rusted and several times repaired section of exhaust finally* *Next section of exhaust* I fucking hate cars.....

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A polite bigot is a bigot nonetheless. A true warrior knows that courteous words do not dilute the poison, but only serve to conceal it until it has spread. Civility in the service of hate deserves no polite response.

Furries, do NOT buy this game if it is using any of that generative ai BS. Even if it is "just a little". This is how they slowly add it in and make it more accepted, and they WANT that. THAT is their plan.

Forgot to post that I got the valve covers back in and a lot of the wiring reconnected, sadly much of my day yesterday was spent on boring training and driving north for work, so I had to tell my productive mode brain no more.....

Oh hey, I'm in this and I don't like it XD

Timing cover is back on and the motor mount has been installed again, that was the goal because I didn't really wanna leave it supported by a jack for an extended period of time, kind of annoying that unlike the 2.3 inline 4 version, the 3.0 doesn't have anywhere to support from up top.

In contrast to the unbendable and incredibly brittle old seals XD

One of the "rubber" seals came out in pieces, it feels more like hard plastic than rubber, I may have been onto something......

Timing cover finally out and it's telling from how much oil leaked out from the bolts how bad these seals are, they're about as flat as a flat fuck on flat fuck Friday. Also unsure if I may have a leak at the power steering pump, but that's a later issue.

Happy Halloween, aka National Put a Hat on a Ferret Day!

I love having to modify new tools to make them work, that but that has been ground to hell is meant to go into the piece under it, guess what it didn't do :3 The other end for installing the balancer fit just fine, for some reason this side was 0.020" thicker.....

It’s his day.

Put this little shit in sky jail to finally get some work done so I can start driving it again instead of my dad's Ranger. Only broke one fastener pulling the exhaust cross over, too bad it was for the cross member under it :3 Yay for making my life harder! Also ran into some parts to replace.

Was starting to feel stressed out and needed to do something that felt like I was making progress, ended up finally cleaning up in my garage, apparently there was something under all the crap on my various boxes. Didn't manage to find my missing inflator gauge though, which is annoying.

Cause of course I needed more tools to do the work I have planned, you'd think the exuberant amount I already have would be enough, thankfully caught the last day of this being on sale. There were cheaper options, but now I can scare away future work by being ready for it.

Niece's cat repaired, hopefully it stays that way for a bit, and hopefully my luck with parts improves that's the third thing in like a week with some kind of issue. To be fair the shipper messed up the exhaust, but the tensioner for the Cheescape and those brake lines....

Really cool the new lines don't have a groove for the clip, time for sketchy cutting disc surgery!

Bye bye broken brake lines

Little arsehole is back together and oil changed, that's two "quick" maintenance jobs that spiraled into far more than they should have these days off.

Ever hate your past self? That's where the leak was, behind the AC compressor/power steering bracket, wanna guess why the timing cover was leaking? Some dummy (it's me) didn't torque the bolts going through the water pump to the timing cover properly. Fixed that and wow, no leaks!

Rule one of working on things, never assume a quick job will be quick..... Ranger has another coolant leak, looks like the timing cover, which is behind the pump I just changed, it passed a pressure test when I did the pump, but it's a pretty steady leak.

Next up in sky jail. Just an oil change, but I wanna take a look at some stuff before winter, especially since I'm probably driving this thing until November with the repairs to my daily, good winter tires are important when you drive 4 hours of highway every 4 days

Put shinies on niece's car, calipers and brackets were rusted to hell and back, most of the work was cleaning that up so things would move again XD Also did the glow plugs, but that took like 10 minutes so no pics.

Shiny bits installed in the Cheescape™ today, hard to see the water pump behind it's pulley, and I ended up pulling the tensioner out because it made almost as much noise as the faulty one, gonna go with something different, for now the one from my car is back in until then.

One is me!

I got the stupid hanger out of the exhaust I ordered, I really wish other people's lack of ability to think would stop making my life more difficult.

Well that was dumb..... Whoever packaged this pipe pushed the hanger in and now it's jammed into the flex pipe, can't see a hole on the outside but not a guarantee it won't leak.

When you're just not busy enough already!

Got the Cheescape™ back together, still made the noise at the time, and found this..... Yes there were expletives. Bright side, it now runs better, that old chain was stretched, and I found the leaking water pump this way, silver linings and all that.

It's put everything back time, all shiny and new! New chain deflects so much less, barely moves down at all.

Before and after tensioners, the old one is like twice as far out, I think that old chain was stretched to heck and back.

All cleaned up, time to put the gears back in and reassemble it