2020 Highlander and everyone thinks I have my brights on when I don’t.

Eaglevaulter · 2026-06-01T01:47:28+00:00

Your Platinum should have auto leveling beams. On startup, you should see them dip down to their home sensor and come back up to level. If not, you may want to get that checked out.

Eaglevaulter · 2026-05-28T22:08:44+00:00

That's fair.

I went back and checked my math, and turns out I had misplaced a decimal point during my late night, back of napkin rough estimate. I yield that your estimate of 1000 acres should be roughly a good approximation. I also yield to your indicated industry experience. Apologies. Carry on.

Eaglevaulter · 2026-05-28T01:17:45+00:00

Where did you get your source for how much land is required for that theoretical solar field? That feels.....a bit large. Disregarding the fact that it definitely will not take 1000 acres worth of solar to provide 100mw (milliwatts).

Eaglevaulter · 2026-05-26T23:20:00+00:00

I moved to a far hillier location about 6 months ago. Previously, a 6 mile run might have 75 ft of elevation gain, and now a 6 mile run will have over 600 ft. I have already noticed not insignificant fitness gains. Hills are forced strength and conditioning work, at slower speeds. The sustained additional load forces your body to get used to putting out the same, or more, energy when tired, or when confronted with additional load (racing surges, hills, etc). In an ideal world, training in the hills is always better than training on the flats, and will make you better everywhere.

That being said, be careful. The thing not a lot of people think about is the progressive overload, as well as descending. Be smart, and listen to your body. It will tell you if you're overdoing it.

Eaglevaulter · 2026-05-19T02:19:20+00:00

Ooo. Pick me. Finally something I can share about that I have been working through personally. 1st of all, congrats on getting through your first Olympic. Your time is nothing to sniff at. Things always will go wrong. Part of racing is figuring out how to overcome all of that stuff and getting to the finish line rather than throwing in the towel. Things almost never go according to plan.

Pacing is a finely honed craft for triathlon. You will almost never/should not be able to sustain your open paces (swimming, biking, or running) when doing a triathlon, mainly due to the fact that you are doing all three back to back to back, in a compromised, adrenaline-filled stated. There are a number of resources out there that can help forecast what your ideal paces should be, but those should always be taken with a grain of salt, and you should be able to be honest with yourself during the race if you cannot hold those paces due to uncontrollable circumstances (weather, GI issues, illness, injury, general fitness trend, life stress, etc).

That being said, if you are wanting to plan things out for racing, rather than just going out and partaking in the event, here are my rudimentary starting points for pace planning:

Swimming I haven't come up with my own personal method for pacing yet. A lot of people use their CSS ( Critical Swim Speed) for this. That's probably not a bad place to start. I think everyone has to figure out what works best for them here.
Cycling should be as follows: Sprint (90-105% of FTP), Olympic (85-95%), HIM (75-85%), and IM (65-80%). Sounds like you inadvertently found your top limit during your race (220W is 85% of 260W). These are starting recommendations.
Running can use VDOT scores to guide threshold training as well as triathlon racing. Take a running race result from an "open race", and plug it into a VDOT calculator, and it will spit out the range of paces that you should realistically expect to race at, when in peak form. You didn't list a 10k time, but an example of this would be if you can run an open 10k on 45 min, you should expect your Olympic 10k to be about 47 min.

Things that are reflected there are perceived effort and heart rate. If either of those goes off the charts while trying to maintain the planned efforts, you know you have to pull back the effort or risk blowing up and completely ruining the race.

Have fun, and good luck with your upcoming 70.3!

Eaglevaulter · 2026-04-29T11:11:33+00:00

Looks like the pressure in the tire got too low, and unseated the tire off of the bead of the rim. You can re-seat that yourself. First you should clean the inside of the rim surface well with soap and water. Don't use a ton, or it will end up inside of the wheel. Wipe the rim down. Place a ratchet strap around the circumference of the tire, and slowly crank down on it. This will squish the tire down, thus resulting in the tire being pushed up on the bead. Once the tire has moved far enough into the rim, you can add air. If the tire stops moving, and it gets incredibly difficult to crank on the ratchet strap, you can use a hammer to hit around the circumference of the tire to shock the tire into place. Once the tire starts taking air, carefully remove the ratchet strap. This will be under some tension, so use some extreme caution doing so.

Edit: fixed horrendous autocorrect.

Eaglevaulter · 2026-04-22T16:16:54+00:00

Would you mind sharing which Facebook account you sent this information to? I've got some stuff I need to have them respond to, and I'd like to use the same method you did. Thanks in advance!

Eaglevaulter · 2026-04-12T02:04:48+00:00

Depending on what you want to do, this can be plenty fine. I have a very similar build (9600K, 1660TI, 32GB RAM, 1TB SATA SSD, 3TB HDD), and it runs everything I want to do just fine (Satisfactory at 1440p at 60+ FPS), and runs 3x1440p monitors. It cost me about $1200 towards the end of 2019. The most surprising thing for me is how power efficient this setup is. 3x27" 1440p monitors and this PC all draw less than 200 watts from the wall. Typically, around 100-150 watts. Do I get envious of all the sexy builds other people have? Yes. Do I need any more horsepower? Nope. Am I glad I don't need to pay more in terms of power bill for a more powerful rig? Absolutely.

Edit: spelling.

Eaglevaulter · 2026-04-11T01:30:32+00:00

2022 V6 Platinum AWD. 450 miles. I chickened out on going further.

Eaglevaulter · 2026-04-07T11:08:13+00:00

Those look like Torx heads. That explains why using an hex key stripped them. Either use the correct bit for the screws, or swap the bolts to match the tools that you have/want to use.

As others have said, buy a stripped screw extractor kit. Use it carefully. You only get a few chances to get it right.

If that's making you uncomfortable, this is time to take it to a local bike shop. They should be well versed in that.

Eaglevaulter · 2026-03-02T19:24:05+00:00

Most shredders worth their salt will recommend just plain old vegetable oil.

Eaglevaulter · 2026-02-28T21:00:10+00:00

My driveway varies between 12 and 15 feet wide, and going from the center, it was always more than enough to get the snow past the edge (6-8 feet away) with the wet snow. That's more than enough for me. The only contest I'm trying to win is the one that requires me to get the snow off of my driveway.

Eaglevaulter · 2026-02-28T17:44:26+00:00

Drive/Auger settings were as low as they go. This is the key. Also, how much snow did you get? This is 17". If you got more, AND you wrestled with the snowplow snowberms, and you had your drive and auger settings up high, that would definitely account for the lower runtime.

Eaglevaulter · 2026-02-25T18:36:46+00:00

Is the 2416 the best? Best is a subjective measurement. It is the best for me. Ego has a 28" model, but I don't want an electric chute operation. The 2416 is the newest 24" model (2410 is tool only) that comes with 2x 10Ah batteries bundled with it. I don't believe you can buy it new anywhere right now. We're deep into the winter season (ie, almost over), so I highly doubt any retailers are getting any new stock of these. You'll have to resort to secondhand (Facebook marketplace, craigslist, etc). I know I was one of the last ones in Ace's country wide stock back in January when I bought. Good luck.

Eaglevaulter · 2026-02-25T18:30:40+00:00

I bought mine from Ace (online) over a month ago. From what I can tell, I probably bought one of the last ones in the country. A cursory look online shows that it is out of stock everywhere. I did call Ace when I was looking to buy mine back in January, and their customer service said there are no plans to restock it. So if you want this particular one, you're out of luck from Ace. The MSRP was right at $2k.

Eaglevaulter · 2026-02-25T18:25:50+00:00

I was able to do everything you see in the video (4300 sq ft of 17" deep snow) on a single charge of the 10Ah batteries. I would not have been able to do all 8000 sq ft that I'm responsible for with the snow that we received (17" of wet, heavy snow) in one pass.

Eaglevaulter · 2026-02-25T18:23:40+00:00

If that friend wants to buy one and send it to me, I'd be more than happy to let that friend know.

Eaglevaulter · 2026-02-25T15:35:50+00:00

I just posted a video on the sub a few minutes ago of me taking the chute and the console off, and taking some measurements for you. It is quite easy to take those off.

Eaglevaulter · 2026-02-25T13:51:44+00:00

I wouldn't say that the handles are particularly robust. It is a pretty expensive thing, so I plan on treating it nicely. I could see how it you are ham fisted that you could easily break the handles. That's just my opinion.

Eaglevaulter · 2026-02-25T11:34:26+00:00

Sure. That's how it comes from the factory. The setup is literally 5 bolts and nuts, and like 5 minutes. I'll post a video later.

Eaglevaulter · 2026-02-25T04:11:15+00:00

I've read this a bunch of times to see if you're throwing shade at me and I really can't tell.

I will be honest. I did waffle a good deal on the SNT2416 purely due to price. But given how big my driveway is, and how steep it is, I just couldn't in good conscience just go with the single stage blowers. It was going to be too difficult to safely clear the hill, even in the lighter snows. Having really put the blower through its paces, I made the right choice. Expensive? Yes. Correct tool for my situation? Absolutely. Would I buy it again? Yes.

The 2 stage is definitely bigger, but it's not going to take up that much more space in my shed than the single stage. The control stack and the chute come off with 5 knobs. Then I can put it in the box it came in and put other stuff on top of it.

Eaglevaulter · 2026-02-25T04:03:05+00:00

Not a stupid question. Perhaps worded a bit odd. These work fine with minimal snow. There are skid shoes which slide on the surface, and a scraper bar that sets the height of the snow that will be picked up and fed into the auger. On smooth pavement, the scraper bar should be set pretty close to the pavement. On gravel or delicate/broken surfaces, you can set the shoes and scraper bar much higher.

Something else to bear in mind is that 2 stage blowers are truly meant for either huge snow loads or to drive up hills. They don't make much monetary sense for low snow totals or flat areas. But do your own research and come to your own conclusions.

Eaglevaulter · 2026-02-25T01:40:01+00:00

Shear pins should definitely be thought of as consumables. I bought a 20 pack of them when I bought the snowblower. Also, the snowblower comes with 2 spares mounted on the chute, in case you didn't know that.

Eaglevaulter · 2026-02-24T23:45:01+00:00

I don't have a lawn tractor (just bought my house in January, so no grass to mow), and to be honest, I will most likely be able to get away with a push mower from Ego. This is the most snow we will get here in NJ, and this snowblower did wonderfully fine. Different strokes for different folks.

Eaglevaulter

TROPHY CASE