Monkeys with wrenches, Chickens with electricity, and other things that don’t make sense-A day in the life of an off-grid solar installer

[The Chicken]

Is it bad that my first thought was a K baffle?

Reminds me-years back, I had a customer bring me a couple AR lowers along with a few bags of parts and some instructions for drilling some extra holes in the lower that he’d purchased somewhere on the internet.
I didn’t know what it all was at first.
But after looking everything over, and realizing that the extra roll pin would be immediately obvious to anyone who knew anything about ARs at a glance, and then looking up what the ATF likes to hand out to people who “manufacture” fully automatic weapons, I politely gave the customer back his stuff and suggested he throw it all away and avoid an extended stay at Club Fed.

 

[The Chicken]

Anyone who has been following along here has likely noticed at least a couple of our dogs.
You’ve seen them in a couple of @monkeyswrench posts too when he visits our place.
Our dogs play a pretty important role around here. In addition to just being great dogs and our fur babies that we love, they keep the the property and any livestock we have safe. There’s 5 of them, and they all weigh around 100 pounds each. No predator, and no trespasser in their right mind wants any part of of that much dog. They also keep the deer, elk, range cows, wild pigs, and pretty much any other animal that would destroy our fruit trees and gardens away.
These dogs are great with people or other dogs that we introduce to them.
Anything that crosses our fence line uninvited-let’s just say it goes poorly for uninvited guests.
The dogs have another important job-they protect the cats.
And let me tell you-the cats are a vital part of this remote property. Without them we are literally overrun by rodents that destroy seemingly everything. Seriously.
Keeping the four legged property caretakers healthy is a very important part of our program, and as such, even ranch critters need to see the vet occasionally for shots and a check up.
Now, because we can’t get a vet to come out here, we have to take the critters to the vet-and that can be a really entertaining endeavor.
And so it was a few weeks ago we made an appointment for all 5 of the mutts to go see the vet at the same time. We don’t own a school bus or large van, so this takes two vehicles. Denise would take three of the dogs in her Outback-Stella( AKA the crazy polar bear bitch-she’s the mama dog and boss of the outfit), Bernie ( so named because he resembled a Saint Bernard as a pup), and Minnie (short for mini-me, because she looks a lot like her dad, Bosco). I would take two in her F-350-Bosco( papa dog), and Hulk( Hulk’s a girl dog, BTW, and is so named because she was born green). In case I didn’t explain it before, our dog family really is a dog family-Bosco and Stella are the parents and the other three are their kids. For any of you that have followed some of @wash11 adventures, Gus and Maggie are also Bosco and Stella’s kids.
Anyway, in order to get dogs loaded up in the truck, I first had to clean out the back seat to make room for them. I got some unsolicited help with that.

This is Slick, so named because she has short hair unlike her twin brother that has really long hair. She’s one of our chief rodent killers and a door ninja. Any time a door gets opened around this place, it’s likely she will appear as if by magic out of nowhere and dart inside. Doesn’t matter what the door is-car, truck, house, RV, storage container-she’s in. In typical cat fashion, she’d like you to look at her butthole here.
After shooing her out, it was time to load up dogs and hit the road for town.

Here’s Bosco and Hulk in the foreground loaded up in the dually.

Here’s Bernie trying to tell Denise how to drive. His version includes a lot of ear and head scratching. If the picture makes his head look a lot bigger than hers-it’s because it is. Bernie has a huge head!

Here’s Bernie and Minnie trying to share the same back window. This gets a lot of looks and laughs going through town.

Well, no trip of ours would be complete without some sort of misadventure, and this simple trip to the vet would unfortunately not disappoint.
About the time we hit town, the dually broke a heater hose fitting and puked all its coolant out.
I got it pulled over in a gas station parking lot to assess the issue and see if I could fix it.
But in the meantime, we had the additional problem of how the hell to get all these mutts to the vet minus one vehicle and one person.
Luckily, Amy just happened to be in town and was able to come to our rescue and take Bosco and Hulk to the vet with Denise while I patched the truck back together.

Lucky for me there’s a Harbor Freight about a block away, so I jogged there and got some hose pincher-offers and 4 gallons of coolant. I put the clamps on the heater hoses, poured in the coolant, and made my way to the nearest auto parts store to buy a bunch of parts.

Just another fun filled day!
After procuring a new heater core, a gaggle of hoses, and any other part I could think of that we might need ( spoiler alert-I didn’t get enough parts!),
I headed to the vet’s office to catch up with Denise and Amy and help them wrangle mutts.
After an hour or so in an exam room whose air conditioning system was in no way able to deal with the heat, humidity and smell that 500 plus pounds of dog puts off, we were done and on our way back home.
Once we got home, I turned the truck and pile of parts over to @monkeyswrench -who just happened to be at our place working on our skid steer-for him to work his magic on.

It had been quite the long day, and by the time it was over, both Hulk and I needed some relaxing couch time!!

 

[monkeyswrench]

I have to admit, some days seeing the pups can be the highlight of a week. I think Dan put it best when he told me they don't need humans, but they like them.
Seeing the pics, it's hard to really judge their actual size. The other day I looked down, and saw my boot was next to a paw print. I wear a size 12 steel toe...not quite "clown" size, but not "dainty" by any means. The print was the size of the toe portion of my boot
They know me now. Usually come over and say hello, then go about their day guarding chickens and livelihood. They are amazing creatures, and I'm glad they're very "tame"...they'd scare the hell out of you in a charge or barking at you

 

[RichL]

I have to admit, some days seeing the pups can be the highlight of a week. I think Dan put it best when he told me they don't need humans, but they like them.
Seeing the pics, it's hard to really judge their actual size. The other day I looked down, and saw my boot was next to a paw print. I wear a size 12 steel toe...not quite "clown" size, but not "dainty" by any means. The print was the size of the toe portion of my boot
They know me now. Usually come over and say hello, then go about their day guarding chickens and livelihood. They are amazing creatures, and I'm glad they're very "tame"...they'd scare the hell out of you in a charge or barking at you

Do you bring the Milkbone treats when you go to visit?

 

[monkeyswrench]

Do you bring the Milkbone treats when you go to visit?

I think they may be the types that would look at a stranger with Milkbones like a guy in a van offering candy. I think they size up the human in heartbeat, and know what you're up to

 

[The Chicken]

A good friend of mine used to wrench on all our stuff for years before he went to work for a shop.
One day, he had to crawl under the dually to adjust a shift cable or something. Even though the dually is a 4x4, it sits pretty low to the ground and there is just barely room to sorta wiggle around under there. For sure, you aren’t getting under it or out from under it or moving around under it very fast at all.
I told you all that to tell you this:unbeknownst to my friend, right as he was getting ready to roll under the truck, I dumped a couple dog treats in his back pocket. Once he was securely trapped under the truck, I sent Bosco under there, who had no issues immediately smelling the dog treats and going after them-still stuck in my friends back pocket.
The noises that came out from under that truck as Bosco kept biting his ass trying to get the treats!!
And of course my friend couldn’t get out in a hurry, so it went on for awhile.
We still laugh about it to this day.
My buddy still doesn’t trust me around dog treats though.

So Kevin, if you bring treats, remember to not leave them in your pockets, or you’re likely to get a lot of attention at an inopportune time.

 

[t&y]

@The Chicken Awesome thread. Given your posting style, I'm going to have to ignore it for a bit and then Binge read it again like I do with of Taylor Sheridan's lates TV series.

The Bronco you are building is pretty insane. Are you basing it off an Ultra 4 class spec or just overdoing it for fun. Pretty crazy build. I'm finally driving my 74 Bronco after a way too long time sitting idle in the garage. Far more of the resto mod type build than anything you are doing. They are fun to deal with for sure.

Are you planning on extending the hood by sectioning and old one, or do you have different plans for the front end?

 

[The Chicken]

@The Chicken Awesome thread. Given your posting style, I'm going to have to ignore it for a bit and then Binge read it again like I do with of Taylor Sheridan's lates TV series.

The Bronco you are building is pretty insane. Are you basing it off an Ultra 4 class spec or just overdoing it for fun. Pretty crazy build. I'm finally driving my 74 Bronco after a way too long time sitting idle in the garage. Far more of the resto mod type build than anything you are doing. They are fun to deal with for sure.

Are you planning on extending the hood by sectioning and old one, or do you have different plans for the front end?

Glad you have enjoyed it!

So the inspiration for the Bronco actually predates the existence of Ultra 4. Unfortunately, it indicates just how long this project has been going on. And I often wish I could have finished it in a timely manner because there are a lot of things on that vehicle that were kinda groundbreaking at the time, and later on, other fabricators or manufacturers ended up building similar components that have done well, and had I been able to finish this project on time, I myself might have been able to capitalize on it. But life takes us on strange paths sometimes...

My inspiration for the Bronco came from the long-travel prerunners and class one and trophy trucks I was working on or owned at the time. I knew we had the shock and suspension technology to make a solid axle rear suspension not only perform, but also ride comfortably even at higher speeds. And I thought-why is nobody applying this to a solid axle front end with a differential? If you think about it, a solid axle front end isn't a whole lot different from a Ford Twin Traction beam-and despite those front ends having some pretty serious geometry drawbacks, we had been able to consistently and reliably make those front ends really perform. So why was nobody building a rugged 4x4 with all the soft ride, long travel suspension technology we had? What an amazing vehicle that would be? All the back country advantages a four wheel drive has, with the smooth comfortable ride of a prerunner-that would be the ultimate offroad expedition or family fun vehicle! And so I set out to build such a vehicle. A year or so later, a friend of ours would be among the first to compete in Ultra 4 (I seem to recall it was maybe called something else back then?) and seeing those in action totally validated my concept that a straight axle 4x4 could do it all.

Of course, nowadays, the concept of a solid axle, long travel 4x4 family or expedition vehicle is old news, along with a lot of the other ideas I had back then, as is evidenced by every Jeep 4 door owner with spare change to blow on a lifted long travel mall crawler, LOL. But back then, none of this stuff was really even heard of.

As for the hood and front fenders of this Bronco-I plan on grafting some sheet metal to the existing modified hood and fenders.

 

[The Chicken]

So, anyone who ends up talking to me for any length of time is likely to end up having to hear about our dogs. I can’t seem to help myself. They are just great dogs, with amazing personalities, and amazing character traits.
Yesterday I was planning on sharing with you all some stories of our mutts, but something pretty cool happened here locally that has made the news all over Arizona, and so I’m going to share it with you instead.
And it actually involves our dogs.
Buford is one of our pups and from the same litter as Gus and Maggie and our “kids”.
The Duntons are great people who have done a lot of great things around here. You may recall me writing about Scotty and how he has helped us with our elk hunts awhile back.
Anyway-this is a pretty neat story-enjoy.
( The link is to a news story on facebook)

Log into Facebook

Log into Facebook to start sharing and connecting with your friends, family, and people you know.

www.facebook.com

Some other news links:

MSN

MSN

Missing toddler found safe in northern Arizona

A sheriff’s office spokesperson said the child was found on a ranch about seven miles from where he went missing in Seligman.

www.azfamily.com

MSN

 

[Sandlord]

So, anyone who ends up talking to me for any length of time is likely to end up having to hear about our dogs. I can’t seem to help myself. They are just great dogs, with amazing personalities, and amazing character traits.
Yesterday I was planning on sharing with you all some stories of our mutts, but something pretty cool happened here locally that has made the news all over Arizona, and so I’m going to share it with you instead.
And it actually involves our dogs.
Buford is one of our pups and from the same litter as Gus and Maggie and our “kids”.
The Duntons are great people who have done a lot of great things around here. You may recall me writing about Scotty and how he has helped us with our elk hunts awhile back.
Anyway-this is a pretty neat story-enjoy.
( The link is to a news story on facebook)

Log into Facebook

Log into Facebook to start sharing and connecting with your friends, family, and people you know.

www.facebook.com

Some other news links:

MSN

MSN

Missing toddler found safe in northern Arizona

A sheriff’s office spokesperson said the child was found on a ranch about seven miles from where he went missing in Seligman.

www.azfamily.com

MSN

I saw that on the news and said, I know that guy, and I’m not surprised.
Scotty is a great man who will go out of his way to help.
I saw Buford got a ribeye for his heroic achievement. Congrats.

 

[Sandlord]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/missing-2-year-old-travels-7-miles-through-mountain-lion-territory-before-dog-guides-him-to-help/ar-AA1D273V