/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>1272185
>>1272179
I worked for a dude for the summer a few years clearing out a bunch of junk vehicles and other garbage on a ranch he bought. The previous owners would just haul any large items or vehicles they didn't want to pay to dispose of to a lot behind their old barn and leave them there. There were about 5 acres packed tight with this crap going back to the 1930s. He picked up the property when the old matron died and the kids wanted a quick cash out on the land. He said I could keep anything I wanted except the tractors.

I ended up with a welder on a trailer that was 100% working but had a broken axle (flipped on CL for a few grand), a ton of items off of vintage cars (chrome, badges, tail lights, etc, made a ton of money on eBay), and a 2005 Toyota Tacoma, which was the newest truck abandoned there. I replaced the battery and it turned right over but the breaks were not working. I didn't know enough about that to do it myself so I had a buddy look it over. The pads and rotors were shot. Simple fix that they simply didn't do for some reason. He replaced them for the cost of parts and a future favor. I registered it and it has been my daily driver ever since (3 years).

I spent a lot of time wandering on the ranch, finding cool stuff, and seeing some of the horrors of DIY gone wrong. The worst was a shed full of old power tools. The PO had wired everything directly into the electrical system using twin and earth cable. You know, the stuff that is only used inside your walls. No outlets or power cords, everything straight into walls and then the breaker. Splices and boxes everywhere. I never understood why people that were so rich and yet so poor would do dumb shit like that. What made it worse was I found a huge cache of old electrical shit in another barn, so clearly whoever lived there knew what needed to be done and just wouldn't do it. Very weird mentality.