In the thread about sealing up used caulking tubes, SteveH pointed out that there are times when it is foolish to try to spend time saving half a 2.50 tube of caulking, if it costs time that could be put to more productive things, like keeping a roof dry.
Here’s another – how often do you see someone driving a sawzall blade that has already met it’s match in nails and knots untill it smokes and snaps. He works the poor saw to death and wastes time when he could make the cut three times as fast – all in the intrest of avoiding paying for too many blades. Sometimes he makes a crooked cut because the blade is only half sharp on one side and completely dull on the other side.
How about using epoxy with a disposable brush worth 1.29
and then spending a dollar’s worth of acetonme to clean the thing.
Where have you seen this. Like the man said, “I’m going to save money on this – no matter how much it costs me!”
Excellence is its own reward!
Replies
Piffin.......okay, one of my family members must have clued you into my other problem(besides the flame thing) I hoard 5 gallon buckets...there, I admit it. I'll spend a half hour cleaning one out, be it paint, joint compound, food stuff, whatever. I have a few hundred in the barn(up in the loft) I can't explain it, you can buy a brand new one for $2.50 but I'll spend $20.00 of time cleaning one.............just can't throw one away, or pass one up.
Keith C, where you pick up 5gal bckets for 2.50@, around here they are all knocking about 4 bucks for a new bucket, for that I'll clean, or just let the gunk dry in it. For 2.50, I'd buy a bunch new.
Speaking of buckets, if you know someone who works in an electric motor rewind shop (there are lots out there), they usually buy wire in buckets. The buckets are like 5 gal, with a reel of wire inside. If the shop is fairly busy, they use a lot of wire, and generally throw out the buckets. I got a bunch, and the reels were handy to coil up extension cords and such, too.
I haven't paid for a bucket in years, and being a mason, I go thru quite a few. I go to an ice cream store, a real Italian specialty ice cream store. All the flavorings come in 5 gallon buckets. They usually give me 20 -30 at a time, although once I went down in my 1 ton, and the guy said "buckets, you want some buckets!", and put a whole pallet of clean buckets in the back of my truck with plastic wrapped around the whole thing. I counted 147 buckets. I was giving them away to all my buds. Too many for me to keep. Share the wealth and all.
And they smell good too!
P.S. Anybody need any buckets? Rod
Oh man that's funny. Don't know what it isa with the buckets. Been there.
Have a greater problem with wood. The big question of what do I save and what do I toss.
'Why I might need that 1ftx2ft piece of plywood sometime'. Ya right. Luckily I'm country enough and can fire up a burning pile when the mental clarity returns.
My wood stove is hungry. Can I have some of that wood?
Trade you fastners for your wood. All kinds of shapes, sizes, flavors and quanities on hand. Metric or SAE.
Also have the buckets (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 7 gal) to carry the fastners away in.
Bet you got the little yellow 3 compartment stackables that fit down inside the buckets too.
How did you know?
Buckets, FRee buckets!
Got a bunch of them for free long ago. Hundreds. Stored them outside. That plastic is not UV resistant. Buckets that looked ok were crystalized.
Joe H
Roar! I'd been using the solid handled ones I had bought a bunch of at a big box back when they first came out. I don't remember the price but they weren't really cheap.
Then last year I was in a Lowes store down south during a vigorous work campaign and found a shelf with seconds and outdated merchandise they were wanting to clear out.
Found the same style three compartment yellows with slots for where the black plastic handles were suppose to lace up thru but no real handles. They had the same thing for sale with the handles in a different part of the store for 3 or 4 bucks.
These no-handles tubs were stacked in bunches of 12 for the mere mortal price of $1 for the stack of 12. Oh gawd, I bought both and are now sitting in the shed at home.
I mean you never know when you might need some. :O)
There, don't you feel better now that you got out of the bucket closet?
Me? I put old scraps of copper in those buckets because "Some day the price of copper will go up to where I can........" Well, maybe to where I can sell enough copper to pay for the gas used to haul it to the scrap yard?
And to think that I used to think that what I did made sense.Average Joe says:
I'll wait here while YOU go wrestle the wild alligator.
Replaced about 20 windows for a client. He wanted to save the old sash weights and take them down to the scrap yard. So he loaded them up in an old cast iron tub(junked) and said he'd buy me lunch with the proceeds. $3.30.
Not even enough for a Happy Meal for each of us.
Larry I said don't piss us off( we love ya man) want a bud
Daniel
I never waste my time with inferior tools or trying to stretch the life of a drill bit, saw blade or attempt to rebuild build battery pacs. It is all a waste of time and money. The key here is ensuring you add the cost of your tools to each job. I never hesitate one second to throw out a blade, a battery or whatever and purchase new. Make enough money on each individual job and and work with sharp blades and fresh batteries.
Oh, and that "Save the caulk" tube thread, If all I need is two squirts and no more, then the tube goes and next time I start fresh again. Call it waste, call it whatever you want. The customer needs one squirt of caulk, the customer pays for a full tube. "One measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions"
What you don't seem to grasp is that the money for the stuff you throw away prematurely does not come from the customer's wallet, it comes from your pocket. It doesn't matter if the customer pays you enough to be able to throw stuff away and still make a profit; the waste comes out of your gross margin..
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
Earth to pussycat give it up man. If I read one more of your redundant posts I'am hanging up my bags and becoming a postman. I'am serious your about to take me over the edge. For the sake of all humanity stop now................wait I'am hearing voices got to go!
Save yourself D11!!! Hit Options - Ignor Author. It is a powerful tool. Not completly fail safe but it has "blocked at least five of bobcat's (lower case "b" on purpose) posts tonight fom my view. Yeah!!
Bill
Can I help? Check the postage perhaps....
Its a common syndrome, Pif. A lot of us old fogies grew up at a time when waste was a sin, and if you didn't have a use for something right now, you would the day after you threw it out. If the store-bought pickle bottle could be washed enough to get the pickle smell out, it went on the shelf under the cellar stairs to await berry season. As someone said lately, "Use it up, use it over, or do without"
We called it being thrifty and prudent, but we considered our next-door neighbour to be the all-time ever world champeen hoarder - - No matter what it was, she had a spot on a pantry shelf for it, saying,"My mother always told me if you had something you didn't know what to do with, you still keep it for seven years. If you still don't have a use for it then, you can throw it out. But not before"
We kids always figured there was a box in that pantry labeled "Pieces of string too short to save."
Old habits die hard
Doc - The Old Cynic
I wasn't really taking on frugality, that's good stuff!
I was talking about waste. Like, do you take the sawsall blade out and have a man that is making twelve bucks an hour go sharpen it with a file? That is waste.
if your labour burden costs bring your labour charges to the customer up to $60 and they spend three minutes frigging with a $2.50 half full tube of roof cement, that's wasteful - better to throw it away. Or even more extreme - if I can lay four squares an hour at $60/sq, how wasteful is it for me to slow that rate and break momentum to mess with a lousy 1.25 worth of the stuff?
How about changing the oil in my car. I hate mechanical work - but that aside, I can get it done for only about ten bucks more than spending half an hour doing it myself. My time is worth more than twenty bucks an hour. I can do something that I enjoy more.
.
Excellence is its own reward!
I totally agree with you Piffin. Time is money.
I know all about the bottom line and making a profit. I ran a past business in the ground and I saved every little thing. Now that's not why I went out of business, but I don't waste my time anymore trying to save a few bucks here and there by reusing material from a former job. Toss it and buy fresh and be done with it. If you have to save half tubes of caulk, a few shingles, resharpen bits, then you need to raise your prices in one quick hurry. I make more money if I don't waste my time saving material, then if I save it. Less aggravation too!
"One measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions"
How about when someone is using a circular saw until the blade is smoking and burning the wood. I can tell by the sound of the saw from the other side of the house that the blade is bad.
How about the guy who saves a tarp with wholes in it and puts duct tape on the wholes and plans to use it on an add-a-level or small room above an existing room. It sounds crazy but I know a few guys who do that so when I bid a job to Frame for them labor only I by new tarps for every addition. For 50-60 dollars for a new tarp it's not worth the price to pay when that used taped up tarp leaks on a nice rainy night and floods the existing house.
Joe Carola
You forgot to mention the time and mess spent getting rid of the old oil. You can have a lube, windows washed, floor vac'd, trash hauled and the rest of the fluids topped offed at the same time.
about that used oil ,can you say mesquito control( just kidding ) but for real does any one else remember when people used to just dump it down the street drains ? oh god what where we thinking back then
That still goes on around here. I feel like kicking some ### when I see someone pouring it down the storm sewer. Yuck
we used to use it to oil up the chains and gears on the old two head corn chopper we used onthe farm I lived on never seem to hurt the corn or the cows ( then my landlord sold the farm to a developer for houses , as a carpenter talk about mixed emotions) well .. gotta go just about to pull 6pounds of home made marinated beef jerky and a7 lb pork loin off the smoker seeya
Penny wise and pound foolish...
That makes me think of why I like Schreuder (Hascolac) paint so much.
My rational being the same as Zano's Mobile 1 analogy.
View Image
"Experience is a hard teacher, because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards." ~
Vernon Saunders' Law
I'll bet almost anything there are state/civic/provincial regs against dumping oil.
Report the SOB (am I going to get banned?)!!
I do.At my age, my fingers & knees arrive at work an hour after I do.
Aaron the HandymanVancouver, Canada
This is a bit long (ok, really long) but funny and appropriate to this thread...
Oil change instructions for women:
1) Pull up to Jiffy Lube when the mileage reaches 3000 miles since last oil change.
2) Drink a cup of coffee.
3) 15 minutes later write a check and leave with a properly maintained vehicle.
Money spent:
Oil change: $31.00
Coffee: $ 1.00
--------------------------------
Total = $32.00
Oil change instructions for men:
1) Wait until Saturday, drive to auto parts store and buy a case of oil, filter, kitty litter, hand cleaner and a scented tree, write a check for $50.00.
2) Stop by 7-11 and buy a case of beer, write a check for $20.00, drive home.
3) Open a beer and drink it.
4) Jack car up. Spend 30 minutes swearing while looking for lost jack stands.
5) Find jack stands under kid’s pedal car.
6) In frustration, open another beer and drink it.
7) Place drain pan under engine.
8) Look for 9/16ths box end wrench.
9) Give up and use crescent wrench.
10) Unscrew drain plug.
11) Drop drain plug in pan of hot oil; splash hot oil on face and arms in process. Swear some more.
12) Crawl out from under car and wipe hot oil off of face and arms. Throw kitty litter on spilled oil.
13) Have another beer while watching oil drain.
14) Spend 30 minutes looking for oil filter wrench.
15) Give up; crawl under car and hammer a screwdriver through oil filter and twist off.
16) Crawl out from under car with dripping oil filter splashing oil everywhere from holes. Cleverly hide old oil filter among trash in trash to avoid environmental penalties. Drink beer.
17) Buddy shows up; finish case of beer with him. Decide to finish oil change tomorrow so you can see his new garage door opener work.
18) Sunday: skip church because " I gotta finish the oil change." Drag pan full of old oil out from underneath car. Cleverly dump oil in hole in backyard instead of taking it to recycle.
19) Throw kitty litter on oil spilled during step 18.
20) Check for Beer. NO luck, drank it all yesterday.
21) Walk to 7-11 to buy more beer.
22) Install new oil filter making sure to apply a thin coat of oil to gasket surface.
23) Dump first quart of fresh oil into engine.
24) Now remember drain plug from step 11.
25) Hurry to find drain plug in drain pan.
26) Remember that the used oil is buried in a hole in the back yard along with drain plug.
27) Drink a beer.
28) Shovel out hole and sift oily mud for drain plug. Re-shovel oily patch of ground and avoid environmental penalties. Wash drain plug in lawnmower gas.
29) Discover that first quart of fresh oil is now on the ground.
Throw kitty litter on oil spill.
30) Drink a beer.
31) Crawl under car getting kitty litter into eyes. Wipe eyes with oily rag used to clean drain plug. Slip with stupid crescent wrench tightening drain plug and bang knuckles on frame.
32) Bang head on floorboards in reaction to step 31.
33) Begin cussing fit.
34) Throw stupid crescent wrench.
35) Cuss for additional 10 minutes b/c wrench hit Miss December’s pinup poster in left boob permanently disfuguring her
36) Beer.
37) Clean up hands and forehead and bandage as required
38) Beer.
39) Beer
40) Dump in five fresh quarts of oil.
41) Beer.
42) Lower car from jack stands.
43) Accidentally crush what’s left of the case of new motor oil.
44) Move car back to apply more kitty litter to fresh oil spilled during steps 23-43.
45) Beer.
46) Test drive car.
47) Get pulled over; arrested for driving under the influence.
48) Car gets impounded.
49) Call loving wife, make bail.
50) 12 hours later, get car from impound yard.
Money spent:
Parts- $50.00
DUI - $2,500.00
Impound fee- $75.00
Bail- $1,500.00
Beer- $40.00
-------------------------------
Total= $4,165.00
BUT you know the job was done right!!
Funny, but here's the real sequence when I change my oil.
1) Pick up extra oil and filters when on sale. Oil $.96/qt. Filter $2.50. Time spent, 2-3 minutes, you were at the store anyway.
2) Put old tarp on floor spread old newspapers on top.
3) Get car ramps off shelf
4) Drive car on to ramps
5) Put safety jack stands under car
6) Put oil pan under car and remove drain plug
7) While oil is draining check other fluids and grease joints if needed.
8) Remove old filter and work on other things while all old oil drains out for 1/2 hour or so. Not needed, but you get rid of an extra cup or so of dirty oil if you don't rush it.
9) Replace filter and add new oil
10) Pour old oil out of pan and into just used oil bottles. Put in box.
11) Put tools back on shelf where they go, throw away any newspapers that got oil on them.
12) When convienent drop box of old oil at tire store that uses it for heat. Drive by there 4 times a day anyway.
Total time 45 minutes. Time actually doing oil change 15-20 minutes. Time saved going to Jiffy Lube? Zero.
Total cost to change your own oil: About $7 Money saved $25.00. Labor rate $75-100/hr. Money you have to make to spend $25 after taxes about $35. Actual labor rate you pay yourself to do something that takes no more time then if you paid someone else to do it? $105-$140/hour.
Yep. Gotta be pretty dumb to change your own oil.
You left out buying a new self sealing oilpan plug for the one you stripped by turning it too tight cause you drank too much beer.
Actually, a guy at work here has a pretty good story about doing an oil change, and knowing him, I'm sure it's true.
Normal oil change. Dropped the oil plug, it rolls off to the side, so he ignores it. Gets up to get something, accidentally kicks it. It rolls down the driveway and into a storm drain.
Gets a flashlight, it's sitting on a ledge a couple feet down. So he gets a fishing pole and puts something real sticky on the end, part of a spider trap I think. Says he's got the drain plug and is pulling it up, when his wife, who's walked up behind him without him knowing asks; "what are you doing?" He jumps, bumps the pole the plug falls all the way in out of site.
Does he go to the store and buy another one?
Wouldn't be much of a story if he did.
No, he tries to get the storm grate off, but "some idiot cemented it down."
Does that stop him?
No, his contractor neighbor has a jack hammer he can borrow to chip out that little bit of concrete holding one corner of the grate. Why his neighbor didn't break out his video camera, a tripod, lawnchair, and beer at this point I don't know.
Chips out the concrete, removes the grate, and climbs in. Gets filty, DUH. Finds the oil plug and starts to climb out. On the way out he gets a bit stuck. Finally gets out, but loses his shorts in the process. Comes out in his underwear, and the 60 yr. old lady acrost the street is standing there wondering what's going on.
Cleans up, puts clothes back, on and finishes oil change. About this time FIL comes by. "What you doing?" So, he tells him the whole story. "Why didn't you just go down to the part store?" "A new plug only costs a couple of bucks."
The amazing thing, is he tells people this story. I'd at least have sense enough to keep it to myself.
LOL :) You must have been watching over my shoulder in the earlier years when I did it the old way.
The new other way;
1. Have bulk oil on hand. Got it at Sam's because I was there any ways. $1 quart. Do not buy 11$ oil filter.
2. Pull into Grease Monkey. Do not make a special trip, drive by the place almost every day. Pick up free wash / wax coupon for truck. Give the attendant 12 quarts of oil to top off engine. 17 quart system.
3. Eat donuts, read paper and drink coffee. Drink coffee. Drink coffee.
4. Pay 32$ for lube, oil change, vac, trash haul and fluid top off included is the 2$ extra for the over sized filter - german made.
5. Move truck to the next stall and get truck washed and waxed.
6. Start to finish is usually less than 1/2 hour.
7. Repeat process every 4 to 5 weeks. Some times in as little as 3 weeks. Service area is huge.
8. Write off as overhead expense.
9. Add a copy of the receipt to the maintenance log for resale time.
Edited 3/12/2003 3:57:53 PM ET by IMERC
Oh no, not a hole thread dedicated to this! I was just getting happy that the silicon thread seemed to be dieing down!
Do you equate everything you do a day as an earning? even the stuff you do off hours like changing the oil in your car? How much did it cost you to kiss the wife this morning or pet the dog or play with the kids? does everything have an opportunity cost equating to money? I change my own oil even if it does save me $10 because it will only probably interfere with my TV watching or something else that is unproductive plus bringing the car to the garage and waiting for the guy to change it usually takes more time out of my day then just doing it myself for 30min.
How many of those dumb half full tubes of caulking do you have rolling around in back of your truck! You should only have to wrestle with only one and the rest are nice fresh ones for the rest of the day.....till tomorrow. All this and I do not remember the last time we used roofing cement in a tube, come to think of it there was too much waste going on throwing them out because they were blocked. Now we use the five gallon pails of it, that takes a long time before it is not useful!
Like what was mentioned earlier, job waste does not came out of the clients pocket but always out of yours.
The worse thing I catch myself saving is a half sheet of gyproc! I have no idea what I think I am going to do with it but for some bonehead reason every so often I have a god dam piece of it in our shop that ultimately goes into the dumpster, every time!
you know the saying ... ruin a5 dollar jack knife to chip a quarter out of the ice.
That's like walking over a dollar to get to a nickle."There is no secret kid,You see his face you hit it!!!!"- Reid Simpson
"stuff you throw away "?
What's that?
What does 'throw away' mean.
As in old sawzall blades, change'em often but the hundreds in the barn often have good uses, like to sharpen and dig the nickel out of the ice!
Ya gotta have all those buckets inthe barn filled with something huh, like old blades?
Hey Piffen,
Welcome over to the dark side!
My big pet peeve----carpenters who sheet the top 2 feet of a roof deck with 2'x2" osb cut-offs they saved from the rest of the house!
some of my other "wastefull" practices: using a "throw -away'"chip brush to apply glue,tossing glue covered roller frames or covers,throwing out that 4 ft long piece of drip edge that I know will be un-useably bent before I can use it on next weeks job. I even periodically remove all the tools from my toolbelt---and then dump the jumbled up mess of nails etc. that remain straight into the trash-----because it's simply not worth it to untangle the mess of buttoncap nails ,roofing nails of various sizes,masonry nails ,8d's and 16d's---that all started the job in their nice neat individual pouches---but seem to all end up in one tangled orgy.( what goes on in my toolbox overnight? they weren't tangled up like that when I put them in there!)
Regaurding oil changes----like many of you, I started out in beater vehicles. once I reached the point when I could begin buying new vehicles---I promised myself I would never change oil myself again---or do any other automotive maintenance tasks. I have 2 vehicles in the garage right now that I have owned a couple years( one of them actually 5 years) that I have never opened the hood on-----not worth my time----largely because I was a WRETCHED shade tree mechanic.
I was raised by children of the depression. I still use words like icebox and davenport ( I was reminded of this recently). My parents set a very frugal example----but times change. Behavior that was once thrifty---in a different time and perspective can actually be WASTEFULL. Our parents remembered a time when money was scarce---but they had plenty of time on their hands to "make do"----for many of us---and our CUSTOMERS--time is now the scarce valuable commodity.
BTW---I won't really go into detail here---but my brothers and I are currently trying to save my parents from the consequences of some "depression era" thinking that led my parents to decisions(or in-decisions really) that are gonna otherwise cost them tens of thousands of dollars. Truly penny wise and pound foolish behavior.
Oil changes for a Powerstroke are toooo expensive to have done. 14 qts. of oil,and a $10 filter cost me $25...they want $50 for the honor of touching my truck.....blah!
Considering I can go under the truck on a creeper without jacking it, and a 5 gallon bucket fits inder the oil pan with enough room to open the fumoto drain valve also without lifting the truck...to easy.
I dump my bags the same way at least once a week.
Now I know why you need to hoarde all those buckets....
Excellence is its own reward!
I have a constant battle in our shop with the same mentality you are describing. It is not just saw blades, but wire, old motors, short pieces of conduite, or you name it. These same guys will go out and buy three bundle of 1/2" conduite for a fifty foot job. Six months or six years later I still find two foot pieces of the stuff taking up shelf space. About once a year it cost the company nearly a week of my wages to scrap out the accumulated stuff that could not "heal itself" while laying around the shop.
Dave
I'm try'n to "LEARN TO THROW AWAY" but it's hard... i happen to be blessed/cursed with over 30,000 sq ft of dry secure storage... even with taxes & insurance I still think i come out ahead... i have as much as most big box stores and i can usually load my truck with everything i need for a job... (all the jobs are mine for me) so it's not like i can pass the expense on to the customer... I buy pallets of high quality paint in 5gal cans... light colors for usually less than $2 a gal... i use thousands of gallons a year... I don't save everything, and my rule is if i can't use it before i move it 2x it's not worth have'n... i have a good friend who does demo who calls me way too often to his jobs... i saved 25000 sqft of 2x2 ceiling tile out of a 1yr old bld... took 2 days & 3 guys to stack & move... but later that year i rehabed a shopping center and used over 20k of it... the material matched an office building i own and i have used hundreds of tiles there... and none of it ended up in the dump... all my equipment is older... my dumptruck is 19years old... my bobcat is 20... (new one this week)... the f350 i drive everyday is 10... but everything is paid for... i take care of it and i'm the only one who uses most of it... i have no "notes"
Any money you don't spend is money you don't have to make... I understand that you make $60 an hour and it's not "worth your time to fix the sink or change your own oil" but the deal is... you don't make $60 an hour... after taxes and everything else you might get $40 of it... and say you get paid for 2000 hrs a yr... (out of 8760 hrs in most years) so you really make $9.13 an hour....
maybe i'm old school but i know any money i don't spend i don't have to make... if it was easy everyone would be do'n it... my grand dad told me "so you'll never see a poor junk/scrapman" so far he's been right
Ha! Big teethy grin, slap and pounding on back, shake hands and to the bar for a beer there ponytail!
And stick a ROAR! on there too.
Ponytl
You must be my ex father in law, he did the same and I think that I learned to much from him because I cant stand to through anything away that I forsee useing in the near or for that matter distant future.
I cant reduce everything down to how much I'm saving and how much I could be making if I was doing something else, just cant stand to waste things.
Doug
" i happen to be blessed/cursed "
Well, blessed I say!
S@#$@ I bvin drinkin tonight, an me , kids, and grandkids gots lotsa cash and it sure ain't from spendinging it on somethin' frivoloulours like soime lazy bums does not chnaging even their own oil!. Crap, it'd take me more time to drive to crazy lube thant IDY!!! Hey, iz i really inna cups or did I do (00ps a cap) or izz dis made up?
Your more intelligible drunk than Bobcat has ever been!
PS Need some Advil?
And we didn't even get a chance to get to the part about milk crates.
I still have a bunch of the old wire ones.
take the old wire milk crates to a coolectable shop, antique shop or to e-bay and I bet you get good money for it , as amatter of fact any thing over 20 years old is usually worth money ( except carpenters , when we get old they just ship us to the lower floors)
WOW! I'm gonna retire.. Ebay here I come!
Just about every I own is old..
Does worn out count?
only if it is Levis
DAM!!!
Roar! My dad runs an old cider mill press for himself and the locals every fall. Mixed in with the plastic crates are a slew of old wirer ones that get as much use.
Except some of those things are on the heavy side.
"i happen to be blessed/cursed" - - I'd say blessed!
AMEN brother! If somebody's got to throw it away means no imagination (e.g stupidity, no insult meant?) for the future.
Ya guys been talking about oil changes, I get a kick out when I try to explain to people why using Mobile 1 is cheaper and better than regular oil, 99% don't get this:
quart of Mobil 1 cost about $6.00 and a quart of regular about $2.50
Mobil 1 is guaranteed for 25,000 miles before ya need an oil change (my former neighbor was instrumental in developinmg it about 20 years ago and explained it all to me), while regular oil ya gotta change every 3,000 miles.
Thus for 20,000 miles aqnd using 5 quaerts for a change, Mobil 1 costs $30.00 while the regular costs $82.50 and 99% people tell me that the regular is cheaper! Not to mention the specs of Miobil 1 - far far superior to regular oil.
Ok... i wanted to stay away from the oil change deal ie:(better to be thought a fool than prove it) all my trucks, equipment ect... is used when i get it... first thing i do is pressure wash everything... i like clean engines... (picked it up from my dad) once it's clean.. i can look at it... i change the oil not as much to save the money but so that i get the chance to look at other things... i tug... pull... prod ... yeah i love my grease gun also... Pretty sure i have one of the few 610 bobcats still work'n everyday because of that grease gun that and one operator... but look'n for problems has saved me from alot of future problems... plus i like "know'n my stuff" then when some jerk leg tells me after a paid for oild change "man that idiler arm sure is loose and i'd worry about drive'n very far but we can slap a new one on for $85 as long as we have it on the lift" i can know he's full of crap... back to the clean engine thing... i happen to check my oil just about everytime i fill up... a clean engine lets me spot leaks and problems before they become big problems... I do still have this one truck a 1988 GMC 350 auto swb...(pd $3k for it in 95) i got it with 90k on it and the guy said he just changed the oil... first fill-up it's half a quart low... second fill-up it's a quart... ok... one qt every 2 tank fulls... i figure this one ain't going to last and i never fall in love with it i just buy oil by the case and keep roll'n (it's a nice blk truck looks good and power everything) i just figure why change the oil if i'm put'n a qt in every other tank full of fuel... well at 160k i've yet the "change" the oil and she still burns 1 qt every other tank full... at this point i'm scared I'll upset the balance of the world if i really changed the oil....
pony....
started out with nothing... and still have most of it left
I think the whole oil change issue is one where it matters if you like doing it as much as the money. I have mechanical work. I love reading and gardening.
Do I save any money gardening?
Not on your life! Those beans and beets probably cost me ten dollars a pound, not counting my time. I do it 'cause I like to. Same with Kieth - he likes to crawl around those flames in his honkin'g big garage under his honkin' big truck, and save himself a honkin' piece of cchange doing it.
But if I've got a certain amt of time in my life, some of it for physical stuff, and some of it for mental stuff, and some of it for sleeping, I ain't gonna waste a bit more of it than I have to crawling under an engine.
Every bit of time I have in this world has a value to it. I know how I value mine. I set that price when I trade some of that time for cash. The rest, I keep for myself - or give away where I feel like it. If I trade an hour a week of my time wasing out cat food cans for re-cycling, I want an idea whether that investment of time has a payback that is good for anything or anybody..
Excellence is its own reward!
I've been wanting to switch to Mobil 1. Let me ask you this. If I have a truck with a little over a hundred thousand on it,would it still be wise to change over? I ask this because, I've heard you don't want to. Something about the engine being used to it or something.You miss 100% of the shots you never take." Wayne Greztky
Mobile One is not 100% synthetic - or it used to not be anyway. I still use it becasue it is the easiest to buy. Used to use Amzoil.
The synthetics have a higher detergent action than regulat multiviscosity oils because they are expected to be in the engine longer so they have to suspend dust in the oil encapsulated (that's what oil detergents do) fopr a longer time and carry more of it.
That higher amt of detergent action CAN, occasionally open a leaky seal in the engine. It won't casue a seal to leak, but what can happen with a really old engine, is that there is a bad seal in it but it doesn't really leak to be noticeable because it is gunked up on the inside with sludge. Put in a super high detergent oil and it can clean the engine right up (you still should change the filter every 5-6000 miles with synthetic oil to get the dist and sludge out) and the leak gets exposed and active so you suddenly see it and think that the synthetic caused it.
Overall, my thinking is that there are other benefits to cleaning the engine that outweigh the potential of a leak. And if I have a leak, I want to know about it anyway.
I had a Suburban with a 350 that got up to about 250K miles on it before I rebuilt the engine(had it re-built, that is) I had bought the rig with about 150,000 on it and started using synthetic. When I rebuilt, it was because a couple valves and guides were beginning to do what GM350s do. I told the guy to just tear the whole thing down.
He was absolutely ecstatic about the insides of that thing! A hundered thousand miles of Amzoil on a used engine and that engine was as clean and polished inside as he had ever seen in nearly new engines. He was a stock car builder. He magnafluxed and xrayed the heads and figured out that the bad valves were probably from a small hairline crack in the head. Other than that, he thought I was wasting time and money to completely rebuild.
I've been sold on synthetic oil ever since.
Just don't do it myself.
Excellence is its own reward!
Gunner,
I asked him the same question and he said "No". You want to start using Mobil 1 when the engine is new. It viscious down to minus 40 and up to something like 800 degrees. You engine wears the most in cold climates, when you warm it up, the old engine is like molasses and does not flow until it's heated up, by that time you were pretty much running the engine on low or no oil at all. Also no carbon build up since it does not have any carbon in it. Piffin mentioned that's it's no longer 100% synthetic, he may be right and I'll check into it cause I use it all the time. For you Nam Vets, do you remember the CLP, the little white tube used to Clean, Preserve and Lubricate your jamming M-16. Well, the first CLP was foul smelling and did not work well, he refined it for another company. I still have a case of it in my attic, use it for the power guns, OK, the Hilti's.
What I was saying is that originally it was not 100%, but a mix. Now they might have gone to making it 100% synthetic..
Excellence is its own reward!
Piffin,
Mobil was always and is "fully synthetic", I checked the label today, although the word "fully" could mean 99% in advertising lingo.
Did you think that maybe no one has seen this post? Or did you forget that you.... Oh, never mind.
Average Joe says:
I'll wait here while YOU go wrestle the wild alligator.
More dollars than sense.
Average Joe says:
I'll wait here while YOU go wrestle the wild alligator.
I think it was Lee Ia Koka (way speeled wroong) that said 'people love economy, they'll pay anything for it.' In reference to people being willing to pay thousands more, plus interest, for a car that gets 4-5 MPG more.
I realized last night I was about to be penny wise pound foolish. Expanding our normal closet into a nice walkin closet for our master bedroom. This has involved filling in where the closet doors were on one closet. Removing the wall seperating the two closets, and removing the wall where our old closet door was to frame in a new wall 18" further out. I'm about to the point of putting in new sheetrock, and it hits me.
Ripping out all the small sections of existing sheetrock and putting in new will save me tons of time. I won't have to patch where all the old shelf supports were. Wiring will be easier. I'll have one or two seams per wall instead of 4-5. But, it'll cost 3 maybe 4 more sheets of sheetrock. So, to save $15-20 in materials, I was gonna spend hours messing with extra drywall seams, and figuring out how to get wires where they need to go.
That would have been pretty foolish.
Billy,
I got a call a few days ago, some builder had his guys rock an old house which will be for resale. They only used 8 footers, gaps of 1/4" to 3/4" on the butt joints, they pieced the drywall around the windows, some windows have a butt a joint 6" from the indow sides - what a mess! It will cost about $60.00 more for the spackle and nevermind the time involved for finisher ( I figured 2 exra days) and still it will look ugly. I see this too many times, even some large drywall companies have their rockers use up the scrap in closets and around windows - damm shame!
3/4" gaps. Two extra days to finish. These guys are costing you some serious bucks because of their shoddy work aren't they? Seems like you could demand better. You are the GC aren't you?
I can see the hangers doing it, they don't have to tape it, but you're right it still won't look as good as if they did it right the first time. Plus, it takes them longer to cut up and hang the little stuff. Aren't they losing more money in time then they gain by not having to buy a couple more sheets of rock?
I'm still gonna have two 4.5" wide strips on the ceiling where the walls used to be. Too much effort to move the insullation and redo the drywall in two pieces w/ one seam instead of 5 pieces with 4 seams, but a textured ceiling makes these seams easier to hide. Just, decided on the walls I'd be nuts to try to make them look good with the old stuff. It'd take me forever, would never look real good, and would annoy the heck out of me while I tried to make it look good. Probably every time I used the closet too.<G>
I'm not the GC, just a drywall contractor. The guy called me to finish it while he had his bozos rock it.
Do you bill in a way that you make more money for the extra time spent?
I don't really know how drywall contractors bill. By the hour, by the square footage?
Have you ever told anyone, well I can finish that, but it's gonna take me 3 times as long as normal due to all the extra seams from using little pieces. It'd be cheaper if we tore those out and you paid us to rerock the room with larger stuff then finish it. Or, do you just avoid hanging drywall?
I gave him a price of $350.00 more and told him it will take me 2 more days to finish it and told him next time it would be cheaper to hire me to do the rocking - still have not heard from him, it's about 5 days now. Good, he gave it to someone else, probably his guys who hung it.
Well, he probably found someone with a lower bid. Doubt he'll be happy with the results though.
Well you don't make money off it. But you were smart enough to not risk losing money on it. That shows good sense.