Lawnmowing videos

One from that site just came up on my Facebook reels. Sweet.

 

Hope you've had good luck with it because customers tell me it's a bigger beating than they expected. You have to keep it elevated because the center spool will continually hit the ground otherwise. Also had customers have trouble changing out the string because the locking mechanism that you release to pull out the old string will freeze up.

 

The string gave me a fit until I learned how to thread it properly. It would come loose, fly out. I use a heavy weight diamond profile instead of round cutting cord. Once you know how it really isn't a problem to thread it and keep it in place. Keeping it up isn't that big a deal. It's true that you lose power if you drag the round bottom of the spool on the ground, but again, it's more about learning how to use it. The plastic cover of the bottom will wear out if you drag it.

There are also upgrade parts you can add, like a spool that makes it much easier to attach and change the cutting cord. Not cheap, mine is still fully stock.

I think that in great part it's about learning how to use the thing. Early on it frustrated me, but at this point I prefer it to a shoulder strap weedeater. It's more powerful than most of those as well, so if you have tough cutting, say the edge of a field bordered by blackberry vines, it's far better.

 

On somewhat related YouTube fronts, I love watching folks make things without any talking.

Here is a fancy mountain bike being assembled:

Here are some very nice dress shoes being made:

 

For $30 a week, they'd do my devil strip and maybe edge the driveway. Is your lawn 10x10 or something? My next-door neighbor lady pays $120 a week (corner lot, probably 1/3-acre). I'm thinking about buying a riding mower and offering to do it for her. That thing would pay for itself in one summer. I imaging my yard would fetch at least $80.

 

My thing is car-repair videos. South Main Auto, Watch Wes Work are a couple of good ones.

 

Try Sarah. She's goofy, funny, cute, a perfectionist, and a helluva good wrench. Former Air Force missile technician, which I suspect is where the perfectionism was honed. The videos run kinda long, because she includes a lot of stuff most channels would skip over or leave out. This means that body work metal/filler/sanding/paint or wiring the engine and interior can run kinda long. Her followers are hugely loyal but she's not for everyone. She'll take on a project car and work her way from start to finish over lots of videos. No "Eighteen months in thirty minutes" here. She also does some new car reviews for the cash which will pop up if you follow her. I find her hugely entertaining. She has a fetish for genuine OEM parts and hates cheap Ebay knockoffs and lots of other little twitches you'll come to know. She's a stone perfectionist. She'll clean under parts that will never see the light of day, that sort of thing. She's a cleaning fool, but her work surfaces won't mess anything up.

She's a solid six, and she shows a bit of skin, but it's not gratuitous. She does not flash the camera for likes. Mostly she's in an un-airconditioned shop in Tucson, so she dresses accordingly. I've never seen a mechanic with fingernails like hers, though.

For instance, this is the latest on her current project. She bought a really well preserved '74 Celica, and put in the V8 from her dad's wrecked Toyota pickup and resto-modded it, emphasis on the resto and JDM . She's getting close to the finish line.

Most recent:

First in the series is below, and my advice is to watch this first, because you'll get a good feel for both her and the project quickly. Hope you enjoy as much as I do.

 

One more just because it's a kinda ideal introduction. This is her personal '91 MR2, which she has hundreds of hours or work invested in. This video is four years old, and she's continued to refine and upgrade since. She's always looking for cool JDM parts for several cars, including this one. Anyhow, take a look at the interior and engine bay of this car. It's gorgeous, and she's done virtually all of it herself.

 

They don’t tell you as a child that 10 percent of adulthood is just looking at weather forecasts trying to figure out when you can get the lawn mowed.

 

Those are pretty good. I'd seen some Sarah videos concerning her grandmother's 1994 Ranger, which was of interest because I owned a 2005 FX4. She lost some credibility with me when she condemned the frame, which admittedly had some rust. But as a New Yorker observed in the comments, up north we'd consider it to be in great shape. Plus, she played it kinda cutesy, an act that was less overt in the vids you posted.

Maybe it's a regional thing. I see mechanics struggling with rusty fasteners and corroded wiring, and I can identify with that. You don't need a two-pound hammer to knock a brake rotor free? Life must be sweet.

 

She's also cherry picking what she buys and works with, and lives in Arizona. She's not taking everything that rolls through the door to earn a living, and she does not live in the rust belt. She's living on Youtube money, doing car reviews, and raffling off one of her builds once in a while. She's in a too small shop and has no help because she can't afford more. She spends more on her project cars and non-sponsored parts because she builds to her standards, and they're pretty high. Not concourse restorations, but functional improvements and restomodding.

That Celica series? If you watch the whole thing some stretches of it get really painful. Doing the needed body work, the fender flares, the paint prep and paint took like six weeks of her typical 60 hour weeks, maybe more. The vids got kinda painful after while, because there were seven or eight of them, and you can't make body work all that interesting. Same with the electrical. She had to mesh electricals that were decades apart and hand built the entire electrical system. the relay and fuse boxes.. No using a factory wire bundle, fabricating it custom. Again, kinda painful videos, mitigated by her knowing they were and throwing in some other stuff as she could to break it up.

The other side of it is if you watch her do the fender flares, the level of detail and the quality of the work she does is really high. It's either right or it's unacceptable and has to be redone.

I like the kid. She's like a big gawky puppy dog, silly and eager, but she's very good at what she does.

I've got a Ranger just like her Grandma's except it's the Edge trim pattern in Chrome Yellow. It's not in nearly as good shape as hers, though.

 

I get her appeal. She does have that guy with the beard at her command, it seems.

I had to give up on my '05 Ranger when holes started showing up in the frame. And the bed got soft in spots. When Sarah lifted the bed off her truck, I thought to myself, what does the bed look like underneath? That's where beds rust, from the inside out. Granted, she was crawling around in it, so it had to be solid or she would have spotted it.

I still have a Ranger, though, s 2021. I wish it was a little smaller. I liked Sarah's review of a 2020 model.

On the subject of restoration videos, I'm a fan of coldwarmotors. The YouTuber is a guy from Alberta who lives amid a fleet of derelict mid century cars. He grafted the body of a 1960 Fury with a rotted floor onto the pan of a '60 Dodge sedan. He restores oddball cars -- Citroen, Rover, Model T. And he has a cast of interesting supporting characters.