Now what in God’s name do 3/16 compression unions have to do with the political scene in Massachusetts?
Well one of the final winters is coming. I have a 1992 Ford plow truck to clear snow from the driveway. It is all I can afford right now and a piece of the brakeline rusted out.
The auto parts store clerk told me 3/16 compression unions were “illegal”. Ya, but this truck will never see “the road”. And “illegal”, torture should be but ain’t, absolute and repeated abuse of power should be, but ain’t. Spying on Americans should be “illegal” but ain’t.
Well six years of a global war on terra does that to a society.
http://news.scotsman.com/inter…
http://www.truthnews.us/?p=957
And speaking of the projectcensored.org corporate controll of the US press.
http://www.boston.com/bostongl…
Anybody know of a black market for 3/16 compression unions so a 52 year old doesn’t have to shovel a 200 foot driveway?
I’m supposed to respect government?
I doubt anyone is going to point you to a black market on a public blog.
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p>Good luck with the truck.
…3/16 or otherwise?
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p>The pictures from the google search I did suggests that it is some kind of adapter. Who cares?
He needs one.
I cleaned out a local hardware store’s complete inventory!
I am an engineer so I know something about this stuff. What I do know is that there is this increasing difficulty in fixing otherwise useful items. The throw away society mentality is neither wise nor green.
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p>In my lifetime I had to replace an oil fired hot water heater in my home. American craftsmanship back in 1966 apparently was really good as this water heater lasted 30 years. Since this 30 year “magical” water heater I have bought three of them since. The “new” ones last about five to seven years. Are these seven year lifespan water heaters a result of incomplete transition of appropriate quality technology as government sponsored programs encouraged American industries to relocate their manufacturing to third world cheaper labor cost countries?
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p>So $3.29 fixes a $500 dollar snow plow truck and will save me from standing behind a snowblower cost engineered to specifically not be capable of removing globally warmed slush(not really traditional New England snow). For this winter at least I’m still golden!
You get to complain about such things here to a large audience of anonymous souls. In 1961, that would have required your own radio program.
I agree with your main point that stuff ain’t built to last anymore. And that’s bad.
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p>I’m not sure it’s a government caused problem as much as a corporate one, though.
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p>Corporations exist to make money. That’s it. The bottom line is the bottom line.
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p>To make more money, they need to sell more and at a higher margin, if possible. Giving quality materials to decently treated workers to build a lasting product? How does any of that help them meet analyst projections?
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p>You need something new. Something better. Something easier. Don’t you watch the ads?
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p>No help to be had from a small local machine shop or independent mechanic in the area?
built to last isn’t profitable
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p>About a year ago, we were complaining to the local hardware store manager that the 15 watt light bulbs that we were buying didn’t last more than 3 months(!). He said exactly the same thing.
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p>The odd thing is, about a decade ago, we had much of our incandescent lighting replaced with halogen. They worked–for about 3 months. (I’m sure you know how inconvenient it is to replace halogen bulbs–get one fingerprint on them, and they’re a goner.)
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p>We did some investigation, and learned that the bulbs had been manufactured in (ta, da!) China.
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p>On our next trip to Munich, we purchased what seems to have turned out to have been a lifetimes’ supply of halogen bulbs that had been manufactured in Europe. They’ve been burning for a decade now. How Osram stays in business is something of a mystery. (BTW, Osram owns Sylvania, the importer of the bulbs from China into the US.)
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p>I could go on about Miele and their washing machines, but I’ll refrain.
I’m not rapping you specifically here, Raj. Your post just raised the issue. Maybe it should be a diary entry, but I don’t have the time to spell check. đŸ™‚
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p>I think it’s a lazy shortcut to say if something is made in country A it’s better and if it’s made in country B it’s worse.
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p>The company controls the quality of the products they produce. A chinese factory worker is just as capable of learning to run a machine as an American worker. But they can’t do any better with crummy plans and materials than Captain America.
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p>There might be a correlation because a company that wants to wring every penny out of it’s products will combine poor design and materials with factories that also allow the lowest wages and have no oversight on such issues as, say, lead paint getting on kids toys.
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p>But if you (royal you) think the labor and manufacturing standards in this country do not allow for bad stuff to be made or that enforcement of laws keeps people on their toes, I think you’re kidding yourself.
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p>There are people who do not get paid for their work in this country. They don’t work for low wages, they end up working for NO wages. They live and work in hazardous conditions provided by their employers. Here. In the United States. In Massachusetts. In Boston. And it has nothing to do with the quality of workmanship possessed by these workers or the lack of laws to protect them. It is because those things are controlled by employers who are in business only to make money, as much as possible.
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p>the company controls, not the country
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p>Just how do you know? When there is a virtual slave economy, such as in China, what’s the difference between the company and the country?
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p>Let’s get down to brass tacks, as they say. I was not blaming the workers in China for the shoddy designs of the halogen light bulbs that causes them to burn out far earlier than they should. I would also not blame the workers for the fact that paint on childrens’ toys have excess amounts of lead that may poison America’s children.
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p>But it is, indeed, a manifestation of the companies’ disregard for quality and the country’s (China’s) disinterest in anything other than delivering product, AND the US government’s disinterest in protecting its consumers. It is nothing more than that.
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p>I could go on and on about the backgrounds of the Pure Food and Drug Act (Sinclare Lewis) and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. If you can observe the slaughtering of your most recent Rind (sorry, German; Cattle), so as to ensure to your approval that the slaughtered Rind is not going to poison you, feel free. We have actually done that in northern Italy. You aren’t going to be able to do it in the US, though, not with the factory manufacturing of ground beef for the likes of McDonalds. Nor are you going to be able to examine the bubble-packed painted toys from China to test for lead. You are going to have to rely on something like the CPSC to do it for you. Unfortunately, the federal government has de-fanged if not de-toothed the CPSC. I wonder why.
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p>Just to let you know, the US government is not exactly benign in this enterprise of not protecting the American public. Remember Fiesta Ware? The Fiesta Ware from the 1930s, in the red paint, was loaded with an oxide of uranium(!). It was pulled from the market a number of years ago.
your posts are not so much clear sometimes.
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p>perhaps you maybe can be concise more?
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p>or lucid? (sorry, English: enjoyable)
I have no idea what a 3/16 compression union is.
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p>But, a ten second google yielded this gizmo:
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p>
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p>They’re for sale all over the place. I have no idea why such an item would be illegal.
I know what a compression fitting is (the compression part–the two little pieces to the left and right of the center) form a gasket when the nuts are tightened); I’ve used them quite often in home plumbing. I found 3/16 over the Internet on a Canadian web site.
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p>I suppose that it is time for the poster to consider taking a road trip to the north country if he can’t find them in the US.
Don’t you, like, get paid to know such stuff?
…the fact seems to be that more than a few engineers aren’t paid to adapt, and they don’t know how to.
I don’t get paid to know anything. I get paid to find out such things, and to know what to do with such knowledge. When I don’t get paid, and can’t find out within 30 seconds of clicking “search” on google, I ask all the smart people here.
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p>Thanks to the commenter that posted the answer below.
You know how when you buy brake fluid, it says DOT 3? That’s because there are federal standards for brake fluid, and it is illegal to use (or sell?) sub-standard fluid. There are also apparently standards for brake lines, and one of them is that they should be entirely replaced rather than patched with a stretch of line attached with compression fittings, because they have a tendency to spring a leak during emergency braking. Driving around with unsafe brakes puts other people at risk, hence it’s illegal to.
…that semi pulls it together. I was unable to figure out what the 3/16 referred to.
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p>What does the “16” refer to?
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p>I know what a compression fitting is, so there’s no need to go into that in detail. I’ve used them many times in the past.
…compression fittings are sufficiently unreliable at high pressure that the regulatory agencies do not want them used for brake connections.
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p>When I was in undergrad school, I designed and built a vacuum pump for the cryogenics lab that I was working in. No compression fittings, not even lead solder: they insisted on silver solder for the joints. The machine lab did that for me (I didn’t have the expertise; they did), and the device worked perfectly.
federal standards can be really smart things, assuming they didn’t sell us out to the mechanics and autoparts stores lobby. if it makes brake jobs prohibitively expensive, it might be better just to design better compression fittings. I know: Epoxy!
If I were rating, I’d actually give you a 12. But I have made it clear for some time that I won’t rate. Ratings here are the equivalent of a “heckler’s veto” (the “zeros”; you should see my list of “hidden comments”) and I will never, ever, condone such.
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p>Compression fittings can only withstand so much pressure, and that’s one reason why we did not use them in my vacuum pump. (The temperatures we were working with–4Kelvin, was another reason.) Your idea about epoxy is interesting, but it takes a while for the epoxy to cure, and it can crack at low temperatures.
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p>Replacing the entire hydraulic breaking system is the only way to go. Doing a Rube Goldberg replacement using compression fittings is far too dangerous.
however Home Depot does not sell them nor does Lowes. They can be bought only at local type hardware stores. It was Sunday, one of the very last days ideal for working on a truck in the yard.
The auto parts stores won’t sell them and the clerk told me they were “illegal”. Travel east and you will see what I mean.
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p>That was the other point of this rant, the galactically exponential curve of things which are “illegal” of have become “illegal” over the past seven years. Changes in laws people have not even come to grips with yet. For some reason every day I see another instance of a dystopian future centered around the movie “They Live”.
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p>A government that tortures, renders, tazes, and forces itself daily into our daily lives really has little concern for the law. Life is illegal.
Driving around in a truck that is a menace to others on the roads. Just mail order one from Canada, and plow your driveway to your heart’s content, and let the knowledge that you have successfully evaded the ever-reaching grasp of oppressive government warm you while you install the thing.
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p>And then don’t drive it in central Mass, please.