What happened to PB?
There are some things that can be (or look) fun about living off-grid, but there are many things that are less attractive, but still have to be done. One of those for us is truck maintenance. I rely on my truck for work and getting to town and back. We live some 20+ miles from the nearest town, what I tend to go through the most is tires and oil. Driving on the rough, unpaved, rocky, mountainous roads is very hard on tires as well as suspension. I drive slow to keep the damage at a minimum, but it still wears my tires out, I have to be prepared at any time to change a flat tire, and on occasion I have had to buy tires earlier than I wanted to because of having my spare on (in use) and getting another flat. I will need to look at buying tires once work starts building up again. Being in merchandising, our work slows down during the holidays, it’s about to pick up again and I can’t wait.
The other part of maintenance is oil changes, I have 2 choices, I can go in and pay to have it done in a garage, around here that is expensive, we’re talking about $60 or more, that’s just for a standard oil change and new filter, regular grade oil, nothing special. Or we can do it ourselves, like how I snuck in the “we”? Actually PB did it.
I ordered the oil and filter from Amazon, and I purchase an extra 2 quarts at a local store because my truck takes 7 quarts. It’s handy to be able to order most of what I need from Amazon, with the Prime service
Yesterday, PB crawled under my truck and proceeded to change the oil, being able to do that ourselves saved us at least half what it would have cost to do it in town. I put a lot of miles on my truck so I need to get more regular oil changes, that will help keep my truck going for many years. One thing PB wants to do is incorporate a remote oil filter, that would allow me to use a larger filter, which would ultimately be safer for my truck, it’s something we will be looking into soon.
The other thing I did while the hood was up, I anointed the engine compartment with peppermint oil, it’s for the mice, out here in the country there is a terrible problem with rodents, they have a tendency to chew on things, and those things become expensive to repair, not to mention potentially being stranded somewhere because of an electrical problem. The mint is a rodent repellent, they don’t like it. Now my truck smells minty …