Free Republic

Salvage efforts to remove the MV Dali from Baltimore’s Key Bridge were delayed indefinitely yesterday after a high-pressure subsea natural gas pipeline was discovered under the wreckage. Yesterday, the Maryland Port Authority held a meeting at the unified incident command center located at the Maryland Cruise Terminal in Baltimore. The Army Corps of Engineers and the US Coast Guard outlined their priorities: firstly, to open the shipping channel; secondly, to secure and remove the MV Dali; and thirdly, to initiate salvage operations “from the inside out”.

**SNIP** “It’s getting to the point where [the car] is almost like a consumable, like a TV,” Benoit said. Benoit’s experience heralds a problem that early adopters of EVs, as well as electric micromobility devices like e-bikes and e-scooters, are beginning to face: These vehicles contain big, expensive batteries that will inevitably degrade or stop working over time. Repairing these batteries can have sustainability benefits, saving energy and resources that would otherwise be used to manufacture a new one. That’s particularly important for EVs, which contain very large batteries that must be used for years to offset the carbon emissions...

An electric vehicle owner in Metro Vancouver is questioning the sustainability of EVs, after his basically new car was written off due to the cost of repairs. Kyle Hsu is hoping his story serves as a warning to prospective EV buyers. He says he was left frustrated and saddened by what seemed to be an innocuous incident that scratched the underside of his car’s battery. ........ Due to the damage, Hsu says his eight-year warranty was deemed void, and the entire battery needed to be replaced at a cost of $30,000. Following the advice of the dealership, Hsu says he...

Voters in Maine overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure Tuesday that enshrines the right to repair cars, a major win for consumers and a blow to auto manufacturers who have spent millions lobbying against similar legislation and fighting against it in the courts. “Question 4,” which enshrines consumers’ data access to car diagnostics for the purposes of repair, passed by a margin of 84.3-15.7 in Tuesday’s election with 94 percent of the votes tallied. The yes/no question was simple: “Do you want to require vehicle manufacturers to standardize on-board diagnostic systems and provide remote access to those systems and mechanical data...

A Ukrainian military officer claims he managed to get Russia to provide tech support for a broken down tank that was captured from Putin's forces. A Ukrainian tank operator with the callsign 'Kochevnik' ran into problems with his captured Russian T-72B3, and cheekily decided to call the manufacturer's helpline. To his surprise, a person from Uralvagonzavod, the tank's manufacturer, picked up and began giving him advice and support over the phone, he claims.

We knew Big Apple public housing is in dangerously bad shape — but it turns out it’s twice as bad as we thought. New York City Housing Authority officials just revealed the $40 billion estimated in 2017 for the new roofs, pipes and boilers the aging projects need has ballooned to $78 billion.

Four people died in a fire at an e-bike repair shop in lower Manhattan on Tuesday, with another two people reportedly in critical condition under hospital care. Lithium-ion battery storage has been blamed for the tragedy. The fire broke out overnight in a maintenance shop for electric bicycles and scooters, on the ground floor of a building in Chinatown. “It’s very clear that this was caused by lithium-ion batteries e-bikes,” Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanaugh told a press conference Tuesday, UPI reports.

On Colorado’s northeastern plains, where the pencil-straight horizon divides golden fields and blue sky, a farmer named Danny Wood scrambles to plant and harvest proso millet, dryland corn and winter wheat in short, seasonal windows. That is until his high-tech Steiger 370 tractor conks out. The tractor’s manufacturer doesn’t allow Wood to make certain fixes himself, and last spring his fertilizing operations were stalled for three days before the servicer arrived to add a few lines of missing computer code for $950. “That’s where they have us over the barrel; it’s more like we are renting it than buying it,”...

Tractor maker John Deere has agreed to give its US customers the right to fix their own equipment.Previously, farmers were only allowed to use authorised parts and service facilities rather than cheaper independent repair options.Deere and Co. is one of the world's largest makers farming equipment.

ROCHESTER, N.Y. – The City of Rochester is providing financial assistance for eligible homeowners as part of its Owner-Occupant Roofing Program. There is $2 million available for approximately 80 homes. Eligible homeowners may receive up to $35,000 for a single-family home and $45,000 for a two-family home. The assistance is for roofing repairs or replacement and other related repairs such as gutters and downspouts, chimney repairs, roof flashing, soffits and venting. Detached garage roofs are not eligible. Applicants must be an owner-occupant of a one- or two-family residential property in the city of Rochester, and must live in the home...

Fluorescence microscopy images showing the endoplasmic reticulum network (green) wrapping around damaged lysosomes (red). The cell nucleus is shown in blue. Today in Nature, University of Pittsburgh researchers describe for the first time a pathway by which cells repair damaged lysosomes, structures that contribute to longevity by recycling cellular trash. The findings are an important step towards understanding and treating age-related diseases driven by leaky lysosomes. "Lysosome damage is a hallmark of aging and many diseases, particularly neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's," said lead author Jay Xiaojun Tan, Ph.D., assistant professor of cell biology at Pitt's School of Medicine...

Nowhere is the wait for repairs in city public housing more desperate than at the Castle Hill Houses in The Bronx — the number of open work orders for residents there has ballooned to more than 11,000 in recent months. The repair request backlog at the sprawling four-block NYCHA development has grown by more than 26 percent over the last year as NYCHA failed to keep up with deteriorating conditions in the complex’s 2,000 apartments. It’s the biggest backlog for any single development across the entire system of public housing in the Big Apple, which has more than 280 complexes,...

I just had an appliance repairman show up to diagnose my refrigerator problem and he quoted 350 dollars to replace an evaporator fan. The refrigerator is 17 years old and not worth that amount of money stuck into it. After paying 95 dollars for a service call, I decided to do some research of my own. I always prefer to do my own repairs on most things, but its often the diagnosis issue I struggle with. Repairmen are often highly educated and are worth their pay. But on simpler repairs I would rather choose to repair things myself. I found...

A shootout between an auto repair shop worker and a suspected robber left one of them dead Saturday morning. Birmingham police Saturday afternoon identified the slain man as Josiah Bryant. He was 22 and lived in Birmingham. The shooting happened at 7:45 a.m. at Hatcher’s Auto Transmission Center on Tuscaloosa Avenue. Officer Truman Fitzgerald said a store associate was opening the shop for business when an armed man entered and tried to rob him. “They engaged in a shootout,’' Fitzgerald said. Bryant was shot. Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service pronounced him dead on the scene. Police recovered a handgun from...

The Nebraska Legislature will once again look at a bill on the Right to Repair. Introduced by Senator Tom Brandt of the 32nd District on Jan. 19, LB543, entitled the Agricultural Equipment Right-To-Repair Act, will, if passed, offer farmers a way to repair their equipment without having to wait on a dealer. A similar bill had been introduced in 2017. Lydia Brasch of the 16th District introduced LB67, “Adopt the Fair Repair Act,” but the bill was indefinitely postponed in 2018. Brandt said he spoke with other senators and decided the previous bill had been too broad. “The opposition it...

There’s an expert for pretty much everything here… I am patching a pretty crappy concrete driveway, and I had a 6” at deepest hole to fix. I cleaned it out, washed it repeatedly with my pressure washer, painted it with bonding compound, and filled it with Quikrete Commercial-grade concrete (orange bag)… and discovered I was probably about 2 bags short. It finished ½” to 1” short of the end depth. It has been curing for two days now.

Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security in the Trump administration who endorsed Joe Biden last week, has started a group of current and former administration officials and other Republican leaders who want to see President Donald Trump defeated in November. Taylor and Elizabeth Neumann, another former senior DHS official who served in the administration, have started the Republican Political Alliance for Integrity and Reform (REPAIR), which will include people who work or have worked for Trump but want to elect Biden and reform the Republican Party. So far, two current senior administration officials...

It’s common for communities to use zoning codes to exclude commercial and industrial uses from residential areas, but Sacramento County, California, seems extra-zealous about making sure that residents don’t try to operate auto repair businesses amid homes. While it concedes to residents the right to perform minor auto repairs on their own cars in their driveway or garage, it bans repairs or maintenance in any of the following circumstances...

OROVILLE — The cost of repairing the crippling damage to Oroville Dam’s spillways caused by last winter’s fierce storms has almost doubled, state water officials said Thursday. Kiewit, the Nebraska-based construction firm that has the main contract to rebuild the main spillway and emergency spillway at Oroville, the nation’s tallest dam, estimated in its winning bid in April that the work would cost at least $275 million. But the price tag has now grown to at least $500 million, said Erin Mellon, a spokeswoman for the Department of Water Resources.

I'm about to the point where buying a lift kit for my 65 Willys CJ5 Jeep is possible. The original springs are rusted and weak. In my research, I found the kind of pricey Skyjacker kit but that is a good name from what I remember. Another one I ran across for my 65 CJ5 is from Rough Country for a couple hundred or so less. The 65 will not see any rough trail driving or abuse. It will be a weekend drive around toy. Once I get suspension done, I can finally see about those new Cragar wheels I...