Picture of Last Items You Bought (NO WEAPONS)

[ShopVac]

Originally Posted by vreihen16

I don't have a picture of Chez Vreihen handy, but my DW and I went to the bank this afternoon with three shiny pennies to pay off the remaining balance on our mortgage to officially buy our house. The bank's app would not let me pay the entire balance online (hence still owing $0.03), because they needed us to come in and pay in person to sign papers and pay some title/transaction fees to remove them as a lien holder.....

The last payment for us was a pain in the ass. And the bank still F'd it up in the end. I think ours was with Chase.

They should refund your escrow - and don't forget you're in charge of paying the taxes yourself now. Not saying I may have missed...but it may have happened.

[Vinnrox250]

Originally Posted by Pauly Wauly

I bought 3 more Porsche's so I can get a GT3 Touring allocation

Haha same- but ornaments! And 2 more 911’s on the way!

[vreihen16]

Originally Posted by ShopVac

They should refund your escrow - and don't forget you're in charge of paying the taxes yourself now. Not saying I may have missed...but it may have happened.

Our credit union just changed their online web and app banking software in early November, and for some reason the payoff amount shown in November and actual loan balance differed by $0.03. When we checked on 12/1 after making the November payment, it said that our December payoff was next month's escrow plus three cents of remaining balance. So, we walked into the branch office today with three shiny pennies for the satisfaction of making the final payment in cash.

The loan specialist that we met with said that the app will not accept final payment to close a mortgage account early, because we needed to sign paperwork and pay a few hundred dollars of unexpected fees to file for the lien release with the county and a few other clerical things. Those clerical fees also included them notifying our home insurance and town/school tax collectors to send their bills to us from now on, and remove them as a lien holder or loss payee everywhere. If we were paying on their payment schedule and not my crazy pace, those forms and an explanation letter would have all been mailed with the last payment statement instead of us having to visit their branch office and be surprised.

They will be issuing a check for the escrow balance in a few days, and I plan to deposit it into an unused savings account and keep adding the former escrow's tax/insurance payment amounts to it monthly so there are no painful surprises when those bills come in.

Payments into our retirement Garage Mahal construction fund start at the end of this month.....

[ShopVac]

Originally Posted by vreihen16

The loan specialist that we met with said that the app will not accept final payment to close a mortgage account early, because we needed to sign paperwork and pay a few hundred dollars of unexpected fees to file for the lien release with the county and a few other clerical things. Those clerical fees also included them notifying our home insurance and town/school tax collectors to send their bills to us from now on, and remove them as a lien holder or loss payee everywhere. If we were paying on their payment schedule and not my crazy pace, those forms and an explanation letter would have all been mailed with the last payment statement instead of us having to visit their branch office and be surprised.

I think it took us about 2 months to fully close out the loan, and we also had some undisclosed fees at the end (oddly, I think someone bought out the mortgage in the final year...which once the loan interest was out, don't quite get the purpose other than these closing fees). I know we were attempting to close 6 months early on the 10 yr loan, thought that was why they were giving us issues.

Needless, was a pain - but nice when it finally happened. Congrats!

[Pauly Wauly]

Originally Posted by Vinnrox250

Haha same- but ornaments! And 2 more 911’s on the way!

Are you giving your wife hints for a Christmas gift?

[Vinnrox250]

Originally Posted by Pauly Wauly

Are you giving your wife hints for a Christmas gift?

Hahahaha. I wish. I just picked up this- so I don’t think I’ll be getting a Porsche anytime soon. lol. And this passes the test. G80 has a big brother now haha.

[M_Six]

No pics. But got new sneakers for the GLC300. Sooooo quiet now. New brake pads all around and new cabin filters. Hopefully it's good to go for another year or so before I need to sink money into it again.

[Pauly Wauly]

Originally Posted by M_Six

No pics. But got new sneakers for the GLC300. Sooooo quiet now. New brake pads all around and new cabin filters. Hopefully it's good to go for another year or so before I need to sink money into it again.

Sneakers? Do you mean tires?

I hope you installed the brake pads and cabin filters yourself. A brake job on a car (rotors and pads) is an hour job including 2 beer breaks

[iX nOOky]

The most expensive frying pan I have ever bought. I browned taco meat in it tonight, it worked.

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by Pauly Wauly

Sneakers? Do you mean tires?

I hope you installed the brake pads and cabin filters yourself. A brake job on a car (rotors and pads) is an hour job including 2 beer breaks

Yes, tires. And I don't do any DYI on my cars. If there's a way to screw up auto maintenance, I'll find it.

[Pauly Wauly]

Originally Posted by M_Six

Yes, tires. And I don't do any DYI on my cars. If there's a way to screw up auto maintenance, I'll find it.

Okay... I enjoy working on my cars. Basic maintenance jobs like oil changes, brakes, brake flush, hoses, belts, alternator, battery, starter, etc., etc., are very easy to do with same basic tools, and you get to know the car, and also you know it`s done right.
Lots of you-tube DYI videos on how to do almost anything on any car. I don`t think you can screw it up if you followed the you-tube video instructions

[kscarrol]

You need some tech fixed, Mark is your guy. Cars….

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by Pauly Wauly

Okay... I enjoy working on my cars. Basic maintenance jobs like oil changes, brakes, brake flush, hoses, belts, alternator, battery, starter, etc., etc., are very easy to do with same basic tools, and you get to know the car, and also you know it`s done right.
Lots of you-tube DYI videos on how to do almost anything on any car. I don`t think you can screw it up if you followed the you-tube video instructions

Originally Posted by kscarrol

You need some tech fixed, Mark is your guy. Cars….

Let me relate one story from long ago. I was a newbie assigned as a Jeep driver in Korea. Shortly after I arrived, I was told by the Motor Pool NCOIC that my Jeep needed an oil change. I thought, how hard can that be? Just find the drain plug, let the oil run out, then refill it. Easy, right? So I crawled under the Jeep with a drain pan and removed the drain plug I found, letting it all drain out. Then I added back in the right amount of oil. Except, the engine seemed to be awfully full of oil. All the way up the dipstick. The Motor Pool guys had a good laugh at my expense when they discovered I had drained the transmission and not the engine.

I once broke a spark plug trying to remove it and then managed to strip the nut on the plug. A friend of mine, who was an ace mechanic, managed to rescue me, but it cost me a case of beer. I don't do auto maintenance.

[Pauly Wauly]

Originally Posted by kscarrol

You need some tech fixed, Mark is your guy. Cars….

He crawls through the addict like a mad man to run wires for some tech stuff ( and then his back is out of commission for 2 weeks ) and he can`t change a cabin filter on a car

[kscarrol]

Yes!! Just imagine what crawling under a car at his age would to him!

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by Pauly Wauly

He crawls through the addict like a mad man to run wires for some tech stuff ( and then his back is out of commission for 2 weeks ) and he can`t change a cabin filter on a car

The cabin filter under the hood seemed easy enough, but the one in the passenger foot well looked like a major hassle to change when I watched a YouTube video on it. And since it was going in for tires, brakes, oil change, etc, I figured I'd rather pay someone else to do it. That was a minor expense in any case.

[M_Six]

Speaking of crawling around in the attic (not addict ), I was finally able to get a camera mounted to the soffit out back so I can see the back yard. It's the 180 degree camera I think I posted about here a few days ago. Right now it is pitch dark out back, but the camera sees all thanks to the wonders of IR.

[Pauly Wauly]

Originally Posted by M_Six

Speaking of crawling around in the attic (not addict ), I was finally able to get a camera mounted to the soffit out back so I can see the back yard. It's the 180 degree camera I think I posted about here a few days ago. Right now it is pitch dark out back, but the camera sees all thanks to the wonders of IR.

Attachment 3616603

The solar cameras that I bought suck (charging wise). The batteries keep going dead after a week or so. I bought cables to hook them up to power, but lately it`s been so cold here that I haven`t had a change to do it yet.

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by Pauly Wauly

The solar cameras that I bought suck (charging wise). The batteries keep going dead after a week or so. I bought cables to hook them up to power, but lately it`s been so cold here that I haven`t had a change to do it yet.

I started out with a bunch of Eufy cams. Battery powered (no solar). I got sick of them missing events, so I went with PoE (Power over Ethernet) cams. But out back, where the soffit is up above the second floor, I still use the Eufy cams because I can mount them lower. I was able to mount this new cam to the soffit by leaning out the bathroom window. I may try that with a couple more when it warms up a bit. I'm just limited on which parts of the soffit I can reach from windows.

[flybigjet]

Originally Posted by Pauly Wauly

Okay... I enjoy working on my cars. Basic maintenance jobs like oil changes, brakes, brake flush, hoses, belts, alternator, battery, starter, etc., etc., are very easy to do with same basic tools, and you get to know the car, and also you know it`s done right.
Lots of you-tube DYI videos on how to do almost anything on any car. I don`t think you can screw it up if you followed the you-tube video instructions

Here's a story from Long Ago and Far Away:

My buddy is a mechanical idiot. Very possibly the greatest guy on the planet, but still a mechanical idiot.

His Explorer needed the front brake pads replaced as they were very, very close to the squealers and I didn't want him to go through the time or effort to replace the rotors as they were still in great shape. I usually did the mechanical work on his truck, but I'd just had pretty major shoulder surgery a week or so earlier and my arm was literally velcro'd to my chest in a support/restraint.

Obviously, doing the job was right out, but I told him that if he chauffeured me to his house, I could supervise and instruct.

So far, so good.

I talked him through jacking up the front end, setting triangle jacks and pulling the wheels. Then I talked him through the brake job on the left side with extremely Dick-and-Jane step-by-step instructions.

Again, so far, so good.

Right about the time we got the left side done, another mutual friend came over to chat with me to see how the surgery had gone. I got a little distracted and told my mechanically clueless friend to do the other side the *exact* same way and if he had any questions to just ask me.

In retrospect, leaving him unsupervised on the other half of the brake job was a big mistake.

Huge.

He gets the brakes done, we get everything buttoned up, the truck lowered, and he's just *so* proud that he did the second brake with no help from me.

Then? I give him explicit instructions and send him off to test and bed the brakes and I go in to use the facilities (and probably a pain pill by this time) as he's backing out of the garage.

He comes back a few minutes later with the right brake basically glowing-- and with horrific, HORRIFIC squealing and howling sounds coming from the truck whenever he applies the brakes. We're talking kittens being fed into a wood chipper and puppies run through a sausage-making machine levels of mechanical badness.

WTF, over? What could he *possibly* have done to screw things up to make that level of carnage? I knew for a fact that the left side was perfect as I'd talked him through it and watched him do everything. My instructions had been very simple-- do the exact thing on the right that we did on the left, and if you have any questions, ask.

So-- the truck goes back into his garage, he jacks up the car, sets the triangle jack, pulls the wheel and we then get to the caliper.....

..... and after looking closely (it was dark by now and he didn't have great lighting in his garage) I realize that he had put the metal backing plates on the pads directly up against the rotor on both sides-- NOT the pad material.

Huminawha?

Honestly? I never even really thought about the possibility that you *could* install the pads backwards. I mean, who would *ever* do that?

And seriously-- a pre-teen could have figured out that the pad material goes AGAINST the rotor since that's sort of the entire point of how a brake works.

After counting to about a hundred so I didn't murder him with a sledge, I asked him exactly WHY he'd done that-- especially as he'd taken the old pads off and basically had a template on how they fit together in the caliper.

His response? "I didn't know the pads had to go in a certain way. Since they fit, I didn't think it was important."

Murder was almost committed that night.

After counting to (several) hundred again (because honestly? Getting mad at him is sort of like clubbing a baby seal), we then got to learn how to pull the rotor since he'd more or less destroyed this one with his brake pad bedding adventure.

That was 20-something years ago and I *still* haven't let him forget about The Great Brake Job Disaster.

On the plus side? He *definitely* learned his lesson. If one of his vehicles has ANYTHING wrong with it, he either brings it to the shop or he bribes me to work on it in my garage.

And now that he's got a Tesla 3 and a Cybertruck?

He's on his own-- no way am I touching *those* mechanical marvels.

R.

[Onizukachan]

2 years ago this week I sold my f31 diesel to someone from SoCal.
This week 2 years to the day… it came up for sale here and on FB marketplace with only 12k more miles on it.
I somehow stumbled across the ad whilst looking for something else.
Sign from the Gods, so I bought it back.
Picking it up this Sunday in LA and driving it home.
I’m also keeping OneOf1.

[vreihen16]

Originally Posted by Pauly Wauly

A brake job on a car (rotors and pads) is an hour job including 2 beer breaks

Says the person with a fully-functioning ticker! These days, it takes me an hour just to take the jack out and break the lug bolts...including two nap breaks.....