tel jetson

Jackson Bradley wrote:
We got 45+ city and 55+ hwy mpg. When they made the emissions changes, we lost 5-7 mpg on both of those figures. Somehow that just does not make sense to me on how that was better but I don't remember all of the details.

the cheating was about nitrogen oxide emissions. improving the efficiency of diesel motors often makes them hotter, which increases the production of nitrogen oxides.

a local parts supplier programmed a new aftermarket key for my 2005 golf a few months ago. I think $80 for the blank and cutting it (which felt pretty steep) and $40 to program it and change some other miscellaneous settings (I can now roll the windows down remotely, which I guess is nice?).

those mk4 TDIs regularly make it past 500,000 miles. a million miles isn’t out of the question if they aren’t abused. and at better than 50 mpg, the fuel economy beats some hybrids. make some small modifications to the body and driving habits and that number will go even higher. they also do well with homebrew biodiesel (or veggie oil with some relatively simple modifications).

your story certainly sounds frustrating. but even after getting fleeced by a dealership, that initial price tag means the total cost of owning the thing is still real low.

ultimately, any automobile is a tool. maybe a particular one is the right tool for the job. maybe it isn’t. I would personally rather be biking.

assuming you like your test results (though you could get started before they come back), the next step might be to see what the well will yield compared to what you’ll use. take a guess at the highest rate of flow you’re likely to want and for how long and see what happens when you pull water out at that rate.

good news is that, all else equal, larger diameter means higher yield. and you’ve got a pretty large diameter.

measuring your current rear hub would work, assuming it’s the right size for your frame (is there a chance somebody swapped out the rear wheel at some point in the bike’s life? it’s pretty easy to force the wrong size in.) I haven’t ever found measuring a hub to be very easy, though. could be I just don’t know the right trick or have the right tools.

it is easy to measure the spacing between the rear dropouts with the wheel removed, though. the distance you want is between the inside flats of the dropouts. also called the O.L.D., short for over locknut distance. the locknuts in question are the part on the wheel hub that seats against the dropouts on your frame.

sometimes the distance you measure will be halfway between two common hub spacings, e.g. 132 mm. in that case it’s safe to use the size on either side; 130mm or 135mm in this example. you could also re-space your frame or find some axle shims to adjust a hub to fit exactly if you wanted a little project, but neither is necessary.

what definitely isn’t a good idea is to force a hub into a frame when the spacing differs by more than 3 mm in either direction. so if you have your heart set on that 120 mm hub but your frame measures 125 mm or more, you’ll need to make an adjustment to one or the other. how difficult that is will depend on what your frame’s made of and how the hub is fixed to its axle. I haven’t tried to make that adjustment on an internal hub, but I’m guessing it’s more complicated than it would be on an external hub.

some other things to think about:
-gearing: will the cog that comes with the hub give you a gear range that works well for you with the chainring(s) you currently have? if not, would you rather get a different cog or a different chainring?

-front drivetrain: do you plan to use a front derailer? not common with internal hubs, but certainly doable with some additional considerations.

-chainline: you want the chain to be as straight as possible. you might get lucky and not need to make any adjustments. I’ve never found it easy to know in advance. if you’ve got a cog that adjusts by flipping it over and/or shims for the cog, those are simple and easy. failing that, the easiest way I know of to adjust the chainline if you need to is to move the drive-side crank in or out by either replacing (or flipping if it’s asymmetrical) the bottom bracket spindle (larger adjustment) or using bottom bracket cup shims (smaller adjustment). I’m not familiar with that hub you’re looking at, so I can’t comment on what will be necessary (if anything).

getting the chain perfectly straight isn’t really necessary if you’re happy using a normal derailer chain because those are made to bend a fair amount. but if you do get it real straight, you can use single-speed/internal/fixed-gear chains that last a lot longer. you’ll also reduce wear on the whole drive train and gain some very small amount of efficiency. could also use 1/8” cogs and chainrings with an appropriate chain, which will also make everything last longer.

-chain tension: do you have horizontal dropouts? how long are they? you’ll need to have some way of adjusting how far from the cranks the hub is so that your chain will have the right amount of tension. the right spot for the hub will change as your chain wears, so the longer your dropouts the better.

alternately, a chain tensioner will solve that problem (as will converting to belt drive, but that’s not commonly an option for frames that aren’t designed for it).

-shifter location: where do you want it? will what comes with the hub work there? sometimes there’s a mismatch between the shifter clamp diameter and your handlebars if that’s where the shifter’s going. if you want the shifter on the downtube, do you have a boss for that on your frame? do you have the mounting hardware you’ll need?



I like internal hubs. apologies if anything above isn’t clear.

Schatzi Hall wrote:Has anyone canned cider. I don’t want to use plastic. Any ideas to freeze cider NOT in plastic. I have around 20 gallons.

silicone rubber bags?

for glass jars: smaller is better in my experience. 20 gallons would involve a whole lotta glass.

I had a good harvest of sudachi about a month ago. obviously not the same as yuzu, but yuzu would work just as well or better. I don’t think I made the best use of them because I was too busy, but I  was happy with the results anyway.

marmalade. not the most inspiring idea in the world, but it’s easy and it did turn out very tasty.

quince paste. I sometimes add citrus juice and peels, so I tried a batch with sudachi. it’s great.

cocktails. not much more to say about that.


haven’t tried but plan to: zest and salt, ponzu.

haven’t tried and probably won’t in the near future: daifuku.

Megan Palmer wrote:
How do you mostly use your quinces?

a large majority ends up as quince paste. after giving away easily 3/4 of what I made last year, I still had a couple small blocks of it left at the end of August this year. I’m hoping and expecting to make it all the way through with a little to spare this time around.

the next highest volume is jelly and jam that my mom and sister make. they’re good at it and don’t seem to have had the same problems with setting that I had with paste. a few years ago they did make one batch of jelly that set up much too solid. didn’t quite have to saw it out of the jars, but care was required to not bend any spoons involved.

one of the several reasons I prefer quince paste over jam and jelly is that I don’t need to keep track of or have space for jars. I cut the paste into blocks, wrap them in wax paper, and pack them in boxes that take up much less room than jars and aren’t prone to breaking. I also don’t think twice about replacing wax paper when I give it away. I’m not such a miser that I won’t give a jar away, but I’m on track to make in the vicinity of 150 pounds of quince paste this year. that would be a lot of jars.

other than that, I bake or poach a few every couple days while they last. nice as is with a spoon, or with a little cultured cream. I’m more partial to spicing with cardamom and star anise, but cinnamon is good, too.

my girlfriend uses some for soup, most recently with butternut squash.

then a variety of other miscellaneous foods. pizza, cakes/pies/puddings, Persian-ish stew, curry, oat porridge, whatever random idea I come across or think of come supper time (or any mealtime, really). they obviously sub for apples and pears pretty well in desserts and salads, but also for potatoes in savory dishes.

this likely applies to other fruit preserves, too, but quince paste (or your preferred regional name/variant) is what I make big batches of.

long story short: big batches require big, wide pots.

I’ve been making quince paste for years. close to twenty at this point. the volume has slowly been increasing as my quince trees have become more numerous and matured. no problem. turned out great for years. until I had enough quince that I started trying larger batches to use them up in a timely fashion. not huge batches, mind you. initially in the vicinity of six to eight pounds of fruit. this year it’s been ten to twelve pounds.

I started having trouble getting the paste to set up. authors of internet recipes generally advise their readers whose paste doesn’t set to return it to a pot and reduce it some more. or to put it in an oven or dehydrator for long hours at low temperatures. I tried those options, which sort of worked. I often ended up with something closer to fruit leather: nearly black, varying degrees of chewy. pretty tasty, but not what I actually wanted.

so I spent some time trying to learn more about pectin. I asked friends and family, but nobody had any ideas I hadn’t already tried. looked around the internet and read, in at least 18 barely different ways, what anybody who ever made any kind of jam or jelly already knows: that three things were important to get right—sugar, pH, water content. I briefly explored getting a kitchen pH meter (which I may still do at some point), but only got as far as adding a lot of citrus juice to see if lower pH would do the trick. tasted nice, but didn’t help anything set.

I found some suggestions that unripe quinces might have more pectin, so I tried using unripe quinces. no go.

I reverted to the sickly sweet 1:1 fruit:sugar ratio. no help.

I tried using a pressure cooker to get the fruit soft enough without adding much water to keep water content low. when that didn’t work, I tried baking. ended up having to add water to get it to puree. and still no set.

I read a couple jam set failure troubleshooting guides that included warnings not to scale up recipes, but there wasn’t much information about why. that got me thinking, though. I had been filling my pots nearly full of quince puree. I was minimizing the ratio of free surface area to volume, which substantially increased the amount of time it took to evaporate an adequate fraction of water. not quite an answer yet, but getting closer.

it occurred to me that heat might also be a factor, so I looked into that. I didn’t have a whole lot of luck on that count, which I suspect is at least partly due to the wild proliferation of AI generated garbage websites. I did finally find one mention that heat does degrade pectin starting around 212°F and accelerating at higher temperatures. so my hours of simmering to evaporate water from deep pots of puree may have been enough to destroy a lot of the copious pectin I started with.

at this point, a friend suggested that I revert to a small batch to test my theory. instead, I bought a shallow 15-quart brazing pan from the local restaurant supply place, which gives a whole lot more free surface area to evaporate more quickly. very much an impulse purchase, and it cost more than I care to reflect on.

but it worked! only took an hour and a half or so to reduce instead of six. set up as soon as it cooled off, maybe two hours. got a nice translucent orange color instead of something that resembled congealed blood. great texture. cut the sugar down a fair amount, so it tastes the way I like and tempers fears of dental caries and insulin disorders.

I can think of at least one alternative way to solve my problem without the brazing pan. simmering un-puréed quince in a little water with the sugar already added instead of simmering after it’s already puréed would likely work in one of the smaller and deeper pots I already had.

I’ve been making marmalade whenever I use any citrus for something else. either just the rind if I ate the fruit (mostly grapefruit recently) or the whole fruit minus the juice if I only needed the juice for some other recipe or project (lemons, limes, various oranges).

can’t say I follow a recipe. slice up the rinds/fruit as finely as I’m motivated to at the time, soak in water overnight, then add some sugar and simmer until it seems about right. then into a jar or two. it’s been a pretty forgiving process so far.

I’ve added fennel and/or caraway seeds to a few batches and liked the results. leaving the seeds whole turned out better to my taste than grinding them. tried some coriander seeds, too, but that flavor seemed to be lost. it’s either too similar to the citrus itself or I didn’t use enough.

I’ve also been making large batches of the original marmalade, quince paste/quince cheese/cotognata /dulce de membrillo/birsalmasajt/codonyat/&c/and cetera. some quince trees I’ve shamefully neglected are coming into heavy production in spite of me, and I haven’t found another way to use them up in a hurry.

paul wheaton wrote:I had huge hopes that we would embrace the scenario I laid out, and then explore permaculture solutions.  

With a humble home and a huge garden ...

  - maybe it doesn't matter if you lose your job

  - maybe you have a MASSIVE advantage

  - maybe all this stuff becomes interesting rather than scary

  - is better than living in the city with a lot of money ...  which will drain away

  - maybe you can share your bounty with friends

ah. clearly I misunderstood the assignment.

I might add

- more connections with more people, weighted towards those nearby by not excluding those far away. include people you have large and even irreconcilable differences with.

- a humble home and big garden are great options in cities, too.

- many states and counties have ag and forest designations that can greatly reduce property taxes. investigate what’s involved.

- be more concerned with whether you’ve been generous enough than whether you’ve been taken advantage of.

- learn and share skills. don’t need to reinvent the wheel here: if there are community centers, art centers, clubs, religious groups, granges close by, you may as well make good use of them.

- share stuff.