Now, I've heard all of the sayings, a boat is a hole in the water you throw money into, bust out another thousand, best days are the first and last, the most expensive boat is a free boat, yada yada, and while I wasn't actively shopping, and had zero plans to acquire a boat, this was a deal I couldn't turn down. See, there's a story here, this boat and I have history. This is the very same boat that I grew up fishing in, and has been away for 17 years.

The boat itself is a 1979 Starcraft Supersport 16' which started life exactly like the picture above, in all of it's puke yellow glory. It originally had a 75 horse Evinrude, but currently is powered by a 90hp Merc, unknown year, for reasons I'll explain later. It's in good shape, runs well (though I haven't had it out to confirm) and came with a trolling motor and two depth finders, it's been in regular use so everything works.

I don't remember how old I was when we first got the boat. Old enough to remember dad selling the previous boat, but not old enough to remember fishing out of said boat. So, 5? 6? Pretty young by any measure. Like I mentioned above it was originally a puke yellow runabout until Dad and a good family friend/my godfather, who co-owned the boat, redid the entire thing, converting it into a more capable fishing boat, replacing the entire interior, and repainting it gray, christening it the "Gray Ghost".

Fast forward 8-10 odd years of memories and great fishing Dad decides to sell the boat after an eventful day on the Missouri river when the wind picked up suddenly which worked in conjunction with the current to produce some some impressive rollers. The trip back to dock ended up busting 3 out 4 motor mounts nearly killed the motor, and nearly sunk the boat. He did a JB Weld repair job on the engine mounts, quickly bought a much larger 20' Crestliner, and sold the old Ghost to my godfather (he got a couple years out of it before he had to repower it).

Being the sentimental sap that I am I was sad to see it go, but knowing who actually owned it, I always joked that whenever he was done with it I would buy it back. Being a teenager without actually money no one took that seriously and eventually he sold it to his nephew, who eventually sold it to his cousin. As the years went on I lost a little interest and hope and didn't really expect to ever see the boat again but I'd continue to joke and rib my godfather occasionally about wanting it back.

Then a couple weeks back, I got a text, "Do you want the Gray Ghost back?", I asked if it was for sale, and for how much, and his reply was, "Don't worry about that, I'll I want to know is if you want it." There was only one condition, I use it for a while and once I figure out a rough value I deposit that amount into college savings accounts for my boys. And well with an offer like that, I couldn't say no, so here it is.

(Dad and my oldest son "driving" his new boat)

I'm going to have to offload a few toys and projects and prioritize some time to justify even a free boat, but I am beyond excited to have it back and can't wait to take it out with my boys when they're a little older and do general boating things with friends. There's already a few things I'd like to change/upgrade, but goal #1 is to just use it for a bit as is and keep expenses to a minimum.

In other free stuff news, I also picked up a shed from someone who was upgrading to a larger stick built lean-to. Hooray for free things!

I finally offloaded my winter beater Cobalt last night as I've been meaning to for a while now and I was not prepared for the response I got.

I was upfront and honest in the add about it's various little problems (rusty rocker panels, cracked windshield, on mismatch tire, engine light for an evap code) and set my price at what I thought was a good and fair I don't want to haggle I just want it sold price of $1500. Sure it's a pretty cheap car in a still slightly crazy market but really how many people could be that interested in a rusty old Cobalt? A lot apparently.

I posted the add right around 6:00 as I was headed out the door to my parents for supper and before I could even get my coat on I had someone asking if they could come look at it in the next hour. On the 10 minute drive to my parents place, two or three more people, cash, can come tonight/tomorrow. Then several more. Nine people within half an hour of the add being posted, shockingly all of them legit. Introverted personality anxiety level - HIGH. I switched the add to pending to stop the onslaught of messages.

A good rug doctor-ing would clean that right up, but you know, it's cold as balls here.

The car had been emptied out and somewhat cleaned already last week, but as I was out taking pictures I noticed that the battery was dead from sitting and didn't stand a chance of starting the car in the 0°F weather, in fact it barely had enough juice to run the power locks. Not being prepared in the slightest for someone to show up that night I put the little maintainer on it figuring I'd let it charge overnight. So of course when the buyer shows up all the little eels in the black aquarium are still sleepy and it won't start. I explain, apologize and put the actual battery charger on it. Two minutes later and the charger beep boops "Battery FUL" Shit, that's not good and sure enough I've got interior lights and that's it. No start.

Feeling bad I apologize again, this guy and his wife drove an hour to see the car and I'm the idiot who didn't check that the battery was good (to be fair I did start it and drive it a little last weekend, not enough apparently), thankfully he was pretty chill (Ha, pun, cause it's cold) and understanding. Neither of us had jumper cables and not wanting to just send him home I resorted to stealing my boat battery which barely fit and had just enough juice to fire the car up. A short test drive later and he was satisfied with the car. I let him know I was fairly firm on the price since I had so much interest and we ultimately settled at knocking $100 off so he could buy a new battery. Perfectly reasonable and he even offered to bring my boat battery and plates back! That would be very much appreciated, we'll see if he actually does.

Overall lifetime this was actually my sisters first car until she ran it low on oil, dad and I fixed it up, I bought it for $1500, put maybe another..... Shit ($500 for wheel bearings/02 sensor at the mechanic, $200 in tires, $150 for misc. fuel lines, oil pressure sensor, 1 used tire etc.), and drove it for 4? ish years and 35,000? ish miles. The idea was a cheap commuter to save some money vs driving the truck and beep-boop-bop-calculating (factoring in mileage, fuel prices, motorcycle days, insurance, repairs, rego) Yeah, I'm probably lucky if I even broken even here. So the lesson here I guess is even with a $1500 car that gets literally double the mileage of the truck is to just... don't? Drive the truck? That seems like a poor lesson but here we are.

Anyway, slightly bittersweet to see it go, I never loved the car but it feels a little wrong to get rid of a good mileage commuter and go back to driving the truck full time. Plus there really wasn't anything else I was planning to use the cash for, I was hoping someone would trade me a snowmobile or crappy old motorcycle but alas. and I'm not going to go looking for one because I don't really need more things. My 4 year old was a little sad to see it go though and my wife reminded me that we were thinking of buying them a playset this summer so I guess that's what we'll do, seems as good of a use of the money as anything.

Like a few other Oppos I recently built a house and moved but haven't shown off the new garage yet, so here. Behold! My stuff.

We moved in about 5-6 weeks ago now but I've been slowly working on finishing the garage. I paid up to have it insulated and drywalled and even though the builders did that the tape/mudding was your typical garage job, ie kinda crap. So, over the past month I've been mudding, sanding, painting, mudding again, painting again, and once more (still one wall I'm not %100 satisfied with, but it's a garage and I'm tired of working on it).

I also decided to bite the bullet and epoxy the floors while they were clean and oil free, and I'm happy I did so because they look so nice. The first half went on Monday, and the goal is to paint the second half tonight or tomorrow so long as the rain stays away. After that I think I'll throw some baseboard on quick to hide the ragged bottom edge of sheetrock and then I can finally start putting up my shelving and tool organizers. Last things it'll need before winter are a heater and door insulation.

Then, finally, it's project truck time.

Oh, and not to overshadow the other big news, son #2 was born three weeks after we moved in. Needless to say, it's been a busy couple of months, but baby and mom are doing great, my 2-1/2 YO has been adjusting very well to all of the changes (new house, new room at daycare, new baby, all within a month) and we're moved in enough to have a fully functional house.

Still lots of projects and improvements I want to make to the house overall (landscaping, expanding the deck, covered storage under the deck, build fourth bedroom in the basement level etc. etc. but I'm happy to at least be where we are.

It took close to ten years to get to this point but I've finally got the space to put this truck inside and work on it. I don't know the trucks entire history, but considering it's nature as a 1950's 1 ton farm pickup from Nebraska (as far as I know) I wouldn't be surprised if this is the first time it has ever been parked inside.
Space isn't quite as available as it appears here, I stuffed the two three wheel death machines under the deck, which still needs to be enclosed, and I've still got 3 motorcycles, an engine hoist, a couple kids bikes and a power wheels to stuff into the same stall, currently that's all chilling in the stall I park my truck. I've got a set of dollies to move the truck around though so it'll be a little tight but I'll make it work.
I'm not giving myself a timeline because I know I'll never meet it but the goal is to work on it a couple hours a week and having it move under it's own power in a couple years? It needs a lot for that to happen, even crudely, and while each individual job seems trivial finding time for everything will be a challenge.

First order of business is getting the doors back on once I free up one more latch and window regulator, then my most intimidating job, fabbing up engine/trans mounts and getting those settled into the frame. Bonus, I've already haphazardly tossed the seat in because is it really a project vehicle if you don't sit in it and make vroom vroom noises?

We've got a Lightning Pro in the shop test fitting for some accessories, we've got it for the next 3ish hours then I'll get to drive it back to the dealership. Anything you want to know?

The dealership is 17.6 miles way, about 1/3 80mph interstate, the rest 65mph interstate, then just a couple blocks in town. The truck currently has... 24% charge and 28 miles of range. I've got it plugged in to just the 120v wall outlet and it estimates %100 at 3pm.... Monday.

Like I said, it's a Pro model, so base base. Vinyl floor, vinyl seats which are surprisingly comfortable, but still has power windows, locks, the stupid folding shifter thing (but no fold flat table center console), and the big center screen.

It's a surprisingly comfortable and nice place to be, I could certainly live with it although I still prefer the extravagances of cloth seats and carpet.

Frunk.

I have yet to drive any sort of electric vehicle so I'm pretty excited to get to drive this, will report back with my impressions.

With it's leaky riveted hull I honestly expected this boat to be under actual water at some point in it's life (not the first time either), not buried in snow. This is the third time this year I've had to dig it out from under the snow, this time being the worst.

This is where we park the boats every winter. Admittedly it's not a great spot as it's open to the west and as the wind blows it drifts up against the garage wall. Clearly.
(there's a utility trailer next to the boat and fully under snow as well)
To be fair though, it has been an unusual winter with two major blizzards and a lot of wind. It's been 15+ years since I've seen snow like this.

There was probably 2-3 feet on top of it, the motor was a good foot under snow, all hard wind packed snow with a few inches of ice near the bottom. Thankfully and miraculously the tarp appears to be tear free, the same can't be said for Dad's boat (you can see it poking around the corner of the garage).

Warmer temps look like they're finally on the way but it'll be a while before I can drag it out. Hopefully not too much snow made it's way under the tarp and everything has stayed mostly dry. I've got some fun plans and upgrades for it this summer, can't wait to get it out.

It has been a wildly busy summer; new house, new baby, regular toddler things, plus you know, pandemic, but I finally made it out to the Black Hills for a little trail riding. We found quite a few cool new trails, and saw some pretty cool things, I took pictures of almost none of it.

We've been taking these trips for probably close to ten years and I've ridden basically every style of machine out there. SXS's are just lazy but good for taking passengers who don't want to drive, quads are a good mix of fun/technical while still relaxing, nothing will beat the fun factor of a 3 wheeler, but bikes are easily my favorite machine due to the technical challenge, fun factor and versatility, despite the crashing (only once this year!).

This is my third year on a bike, and the second year I've taken the XL600R (first year was the full-on dirtbike version, XR600R), which I got from fellow Oppo 454SSRacetruck. While a bit heavy, tired, old and antiquated the bike has been absolutely flawless. I was able to keep pace with the four wheelers on all but the rockiest of trails, and left them in the dust when things opened up. The bike has been perfectly adequate, but that XR has been sitting in the garage, unused for the last two years so I think it's time for some of the better parts to migrate over to the XL.

Getting to the top of this trail was particularly steep and very rocky, I managed to keep it upright, but killed it a handful of times. Kickstarting a 600 thumper on a rocky incline is not what I'd call a good time, but it never took more than a couple of kicks, and I eventually made it. Well worth the effort.

Over two and half days we put on roughly 140 trail miles and had a great time. We found some swimming holes, cliffs, overlooks, abandoned cabins, and lots of beautiful trails. We've only touched a fraction of the trails out there so I can't wait to get out there again next year, or maybe even later this fall.

@Arch-Duke-Maxyenko They're ugly but I appreciate them for being different and unique?

A few weeks back I posted about my big master plan to sell off some of my projects and toys to finance a vintage truck that I can drive now instead of building the project truck. I posted both trucks up for sale, my 1950 F3, and my 1949 F2, which have been up for 3-4 weeks, not super long, but a decent while. In that time I've had several thousand add views, a couple dozen "is this available?" a small handful of actual questions, like "do you have the title?" who immediately ghost upon response, one half ass negotiation that ghosted as soon as I let them know what days met to meet up, and one person actually show up, take pictures for his brother, then pass almost immediately.

Prices for these vintage trucks are hard to nail down because condition and location varies wildly but I priced them at what I thought was a reasonable starting point, just a little high, and have since lowered them to what should be perfectly reasonable and was nearing the point of downright bargain, still with no takers. This has told me a couple of things, one, not a lot of people are shopping for projects right now (can't blame them there), and two, my prices are too high. I've been looking at trucks almost constantly for the last couple of weeks and I'm at the point that if I can't get what I'm asking out of these, the only things I'll be able to afford are trucks that are just as rusty, or worse, need substantial mechanical work, or likely both, not the project driver that I'm looking for.

So, I've decided to keep it. I've been researching a lot of parts, repairs, rebuilds, and DIY upgrades and while it isn't cheap, it's more reasonable than I thought and I should be able to finance most of it by selling a few other machines and a small monthly budget. The hardest part will be finding the time, but I'm motivated so if that means I put in a couple late nights and it takes a few years, so be it. This is the dream, this is the truck, always has been. I've already got most of the big components, it's just putting them all together and getting all the little bits figured out.

This is getting long, thanks for reading my mind soup. Anyway, work has started! I pulled the adds down and this weekend my oldest and I went and picked up some lumber and hardware and started rebuilding the bed floor.

These old trucks used wood for most of the bed floor structure so a half dozen treated 2x3's and a sheet of treated 3/4 plywood and the truck can be used as a truck again for the first time in probably 40+ ish years!

I've still got to tighten everything down and trim the 1x4s to fill in the side gaps but the truck has a bed again. This is important because I'm going to need to fill it with a few things in order to make enough room in the garage to get the truck in, which I'm hoping to do next weekend. At a minimum I'll bring the doors home and start by rebuilding the window and latch mechanisms. The full build itself is going to be very Roadkill/Vice Grip Garage/Junkyard Digs style and may even utilize the license plate floor patches, at least until I can get it running and driving at which point I'll slowly start making it nice.

Bonus pic, kiddo had a pretty fun time using the plywood as a ramp for his little lawnmower and toy trucks. He was sad when I had to put in in the other truck and bolt it down.

(Bonus points to whoever identifies the car hiding in the first pic)

My garage door is haunted, or so I thought until I finally figured out the strangest failure chain I've ever encountered.

It started a couple of weeks ago, I fired up the heat and went out to the garage to get some work done on the '50, a little while into my wrenching session the door suddenly opened by itself, went half way, closed, opened again, and stopped. Odd. I messed with a few things but couldn't recreate the problem, so I unplugged that night just in case. The next morning, plugged it back in and it worked great when my wife left for the day, but when I left it open 3/4 of the way and stopped, which I discovered when it hit the roof of the truck, luckily no damage done. Any further button presses only made it creep up, 1-2" at a time. I spent the next two weeks ordering parts, diagnosing every system, replacing control boards and motor encoders, and reprograming everything I could to no avail, it would only creep 1/2" at a time before it would stop and flash the "component failure detected" LED sequence.

Thoroughly defeated I finally called the professionals who came out and replaced the entire head unit. When I asked what the problem was he mentioned something about the motor RPM encoder and the new version not working with the old version of something? IDK, they got it replaced (under a warranty? It's only slightly over a year old and I haven't seen a bill??) and it's working again.

Fast forward a week and I'm out in the garage again this weekend, heat on, and the opener starts going crazy, opening and closing by it self, sometimes fully, sometimes partially, every couple of minutes. I am losing my mind, I start methodically removing parts of the system, one by one, trying to isolate what is sending this thing signals. Batteries out of the key pad, then the hardwired switch on the wall, then my remote, then my wife's remote, then the safety sensors, nothing works, it's still opening by itself. I unplug it again for a while, finish what I'm doing, plug it back it, shut the heat off, and leave the door open while my son plays out in the snow (I pulled the emergency cord just in case it decided to loose it's mind while he walked under it), but surprise, it never acts up again. I am wracking my brain because how in the world can a garage heater, which I've used for the last year+, cause two different garage door openers to exhibit the same problems, within weeks of each other?

I'm at a complete loss, trying to think of every possible scenario when something pops into my head, a note I remembered from reading the opener manual front to back half a dozen times warning me not to use an LED light in the opener because it cause cause interference issues. Now, there isn't an LED in the opener, but I do have one of those big $45 LED lights in the ceiling not far away, and it happened to die near about the same time I started having issues with the opener. "That can't be though" I thought, "These lights run all the time, and this one has been dead for a week and hasn't caused problems, plus the only issue Google returns is LEDs blocking signals causing the door not to open, not make it loose its mind. And it only happens with the heat on, could it really be that complicated yet simple? I unscrewed the bulb and went to bed.

Sunday I fired up the heater again and went back to work, and..... I had found my smoking gun, the opener didn't act up once. Apparently that big dead LED driver was hanging on to life just enough that it was sending intermittent signals out into the void, but only as it got warm. Mystery solved. Now off to pick up another expensive big ass quality LED so I can't have all the light in the garage again.

@Miss-Mercedes
This is a bucket list bike, for you and a lot of other people, you're not going to find a deal like this again any time soon. So what if it doesn't run, it's a Honda, it wont take much to get it going again.

@DasWauto I went out and looked for them last night because a few people in the area said they could see them. I either was too late or they just weren't right where I was because I didn't see anything.

I have seen them a few times before though, the most notable time on our annual fishing trip in MB, coolest thing I think I've ever seen, that far north the colors and movement is just unreal.

@jminer
I still feel like a bit of an outsider from time to time but this place is filled with amazing people. I'd love to make it to an Oppo meet at some point and meet a bunch of you. Personally that would really help break the barrier between friends and people I know from the internet.

Favorite memory is easily when @454ssracetruck just offered me a motorcycle, the road trip I took with my dad to pick it up, and subsequently sharing all of the upgrades and trips I've taken it on with the rest of you.

@bbg2d https://opposite-lock.com/topic/70472/ewwww?_=1679606002012

That was likely this. Same concept but a Ford, funnily enough with the same era of trucks. The Ford is still bad, but I think it works slightly better than the squared off Chevy, I can at least understand why they thought it would work.

@HFV_Junkyardin The bed works better than it should, the front end is a big pile of nope.

@454ssracetruck It wasn't intended as one but I would sure like to. That looks like an awesome trip. I tried to plan a trip on the big bikes up to Duluth last year but it fell apart last minute, and my riding buddy is having a baby soon so likely won't be able to go on any big trips this year. He did just pick up a WR250R though so I'm trying to talk him into getting something on the books. That would be a pretty good option. I also really wanted to get out to Revzillas ADV fest in the Black Hills last year too but that didn't work out either. Hopefully I can make something happen this summer.

@CB That's a hard one, there are a lot of places I want to go, and the route is part of the adventure, but not a lot of routes I want to take specifically for driving.

Two on my mind though are; any of the Backcountry Discovery Routes. Honestly my XL600 would be fine for this but if picking a new bike I'd go with a Yamaha T7.

I want to drive my 1950 F3 to some event once it's finished road worthy, be it Power Tour, TROG, or Holley's Ford Fest.

Edit: I've also really been wanting to explore the great lakes areas lately, preferably on a bike.

@nickhasanexocet said in Late night Oppo: Every top song from every month 1970-2019:

I also think it's harder than ever to discover new and interesting music

I'll argue against this. Streaming services have opened my music world immensely. They're not without faults, like repeating the same 20 songs over and over, but if you let the algorithm do it's thing it'll occasionally spit out something new and awesome. At that point I take that new amazing thing as a seed and let a new algorithm grow it. Pandora, Amazon Music, and YouTube have all introduced me to music I would never have heard otherwise.

I think part of it is geographic as well, higher population areas are going to have more radio stations, more concerts, more local bands, more niche options to follow and stumble across. Out here in the general midwest? Selection is much more limited. I live near the largest city in my state, the largest city within 250 miles, and there are basically six radio stations. One modern pop station, one rock, one classic rock, two country, both playing pretty much all modern stuff, and one "mix" station. If you get out of FM range of the big city, your only choice is likely a small town country music station. A good %80 of the music I listen to these days would never be played on any of those stations, despite most of it being better than the watered down pop and bro country they play on loops all day long.

Cost and access is huge too. For example, take The Beatles, sure the classic rock station would play one of their biggest hits occasionally, and I'd maybe listen to a song or two off of the "Greatest Hits" album Dad had. I enjoyed them but I wasn't about to go out and pick up every album I could find at the used CD shop. But one day I hear a song I wasn't aware of before and it just connects. I'm still not going to drop a bunch of money buying up all their albums, but with YouTube/Amazon Music I can now listen through them as I wish, for free, and it turns out that there's a handful of songs that I absolutely love. The only way I would have discovered any of that is with streaming services.

@Shop-Teacher I would have loved to ride it the last time I was up that way but it wasn't running.

There's enough of us commenting below we should make it an Oppo meet at this point. I could make a long weekend bike trip out of that.

@derp Yes, but, I know.....
You should be happy to know I've got 5100's pulled up in a different tab. Really the difficult part here is explaining to my wife getting over my pride, admitting I made a poor decision, and getting her permission to buy the good parts. Today's her birthday though so that's gonna wait a bit.