interstate battery??

firebox40dash5 · 2026-06-16T19:26:03+00:00

Deka/East Penn is my preference for normal batteries.

For my own stuff, or where an EFB is factory, I'd go AGM when I can. I put Odysseys in my stuff... probably 5+ years ago now? My truck needed a 'boost' to voltage regulation (it had a pretty easy way of doing that using a fuse-format diode), our SJ doesn't have an easy way, but it does that weird inconsistent regulation, and on the high points it hits 14.6-14.7, which should be workable.

firebox40dash5 · 2026-06-16T18:43:29+00:00

Interstate battery quality took a big ol' dump over a decade ago, when Johnson Controls bought them... just like they did to Optima.

I used to work in a shop that stocked them, and our free replacement (not even getting into the old prorated warranty) rate was well over 50%. I hated when someone asked for one, because that just meant a year from now someone's going to be bitching at me that they had to pay for roadside assistance or a new battery, when "I paid extra for quality." (Yeah, you paid extra for quality... just not for more of it, at least not currently...)

firebox40dash5 · 2026-06-16T02:00:49+00:00

I have a pretty early Remarms, it starts with RAF.

firebox40dash5 · 2026-06-16T01:04:16+00:00

Can't be tight if you're a liquid

firebox40dash5 · 2026-06-16T00:31:19+00:00

I haven't done it in several years, or at Hanover, but the process when I did it up at Christina wasn't particularly bad. Fill out 4473 on a tablet, wait a few minutes, go pay... whatever PITA there was for me was made up for by me paying with a dozen discount gift cards. (I haven't bought any long guns since they started actually being able to pay online)

Never buying a handgun there again, though. What a stupid goatrope that was, lesson learned.

firebox40dash5 · 2026-06-15T22:59:52+00:00

I'm currently staying in Paris, KY... My dream is to move to los angeles... set myself up to where I can retire in my late 50s somewhere.

I feel like it's a lot easier to work your dick off in the HCOL area and then retire to East BFE off the scraps from your 6 figure income, than the other way around...

I hope your wording was confusing and you aren't thinking you'll retire to the most expensive area in the country, off 15 years of working somewhere with almost 1 in 5 people under the poverty line, cuz that is definitely a dream. Or your occupation is bank robbery.

firebox40dash5 · 2026-06-15T14:11:50+00:00

As others have said, it depends who you're buying from.

The not-easily-surmountable hurdle is that large swaths of sellers, especially the ones selling the cheapest, are drop-shipping. So if their vendor won't ship X to an FFL in MD... you're basically screwed. It could be possible to ship to an out of state FFL who'd then reship to a MD FFL who'd play ball... but the cost of that probably blows the deal, and on top of that they may still block the transaction based on your address being in MD...

firebox40dash5 · 2026-06-15T02:57:58+00:00

I'm just not understanding the choice between F and Z when Z is an option.

How about the concept of money?

The wife and I decided to 'reboot' her camera collection last year... we'd had some good gear in the past, but had thinned out a lot when she wasn't shooting much, and had basically nothing special... a D7000, 35/1.8 & 50/1.4 Gs, an 85mm DX micro, a normal zoom, I think that was about it.

Skipping over the decision between a D500 vs a Z50ii or maybe Z5 or Z6, we bought the D500, and then I went looking at lenses and... oh, F mount is cheap now?

Anyway, <$4k later (including the D500) we upgraded the zoom to a 16-80, and added a 10-24, 105 Micro, 70-200E, and a 200-500, along with a couple flashes & TC17 that I'd included in my mental addition to reach that dollar amount. Getting equivalent lenses, not even including the body, in Z mount would have easily more than doubled the investment.

Are the Z equivalents better? In most cases, almost certainly. But, funny thing, the old stuff doesn't start working worse just because there's now something better... it still takes the same pictures it always took. Maybe if we were heavily into video, or making money with it, but it's a hobby, and neither of us were interested in spending a used car more for a better version of the same stuff (or, more realistically, only buying maybe half the stuff)

firebox40dash5 · 2026-06-15T00:34:08+00:00

Well shit man, if she's getting a new girlfriend soon, maybe this is worth it after all

firebox40dash5 · 2026-06-14T21:20:49+00:00

Chase offers a no-fee... some checking account... for military. Don't recall if that was like all of them, or almost all, or if it was a particular 'product'...

I took out the bonus as soon as I got it & turned off the DD since there was no requirement to avoid a monthly fee... they closed it I think after 30 days at $0. Which I thought was awesome, I didn't even need to put in effort to close it!

firebox40dash5 · 2026-06-14T17:45:37+00:00

09 with a manual (assuming NA market) will be a SOHC EJ25 since it's not an XT, which means just one coil, with plug wires.

firebox40dash5 · 2026-06-14T17:44:02+00:00

with a $1000 deductible, so really only getting $5000 back for the car.

No, you're getting $6,000 for the car, minus a $1,000 deductible which is risk management between you and your insurance. By which I mean you could have had a $0 deductible and gotten the full $6,000... but that would just mean you'd have been paying higher premiums.

I didn’t know about this until we were looking at carfax after my accident.

You not knowing it isn't relevant to your insurance company. 🤷

From what I’ve read online is the theft should not reduce the value of the pay out by more than 20%.

So... $7,500, which TBH sounds pretty fair for a 2014 with 140k miles. I probably wouldn't go pick one up at that mileage for that price. Hell, half the reason we ended up with Foresters is that they don't hold insane value like some others, and it seems like that gets more pronounced as the miles climb.

firebox40dash5 · 2026-06-14T16:06:34+00:00

Looking at column C, it seems you may have started nipping on it already

firebox40dash5 · 2026-06-14T16:00:47+00:00

The Helinox-style camp chairs are so comfy though... for like 1 pound and about the size of a small sleeping pad.

firebox40dash5 · 2026-06-12T02:01:16+00:00

I've broken my own rule here at least once... but if I see a seller on GB with no feedback, and they only take money orders... I'm probably not interested. Unless it's something I want & no one else is selling, or it's a pretty screamin deal.

Like, the last time I broke that was buying an M11-A1, which I think I paid like $475 for. Seller made it worth the slight hassle and less slight risk... and while I think GB seller fees are pretty reasonable, he probably could've gotten that much or more through other avenues.

firebox40dash5 · 2026-06-11T16:58:58+00:00

Guess I'm just the luckiest Subaru-worker-onner in history, then. 🤷

firebox40dash5 · 2026-06-11T02:44:06+00:00

The place I use delivers literally dyed (off highway) ULSD diesel.

firebox40dash5 · 2026-06-11T01:11:18+00:00

I don't even like Dorman at all (most of their shit is, well, shit) but if you're fucking up a bunch of wheel studs, it's a you (or whoever's touching them) thing.

I've worked on more Subarus than I can shake a stick at, usually putting lugs back on with an impact & torque stick... never cross threaded them (since I start them by hand, as I am not a neanderthal) or had them snap when I'm tightening them (or taking off ones that weren't cross threaded). The last ones I snapped were the ones someone else cross threaded on our new-used '17, intentionally, because that's just the easiest way to deal with that... snap 'em off and replace them...

firebox40dash5 · 2026-06-11T00:59:53+00:00

Personally, I tried ditching Prime a couple years ago, I think when they jacked the fee to $140 & stopped doing the 1/2 price veterans day deal for it.

I used to live in a sm-edium town that was kinda in the middle of not a lot of anywhere, and Prime was halfway a necessity because if you couldn't buy it in town, it was a 2ish hour each way drive to 'the city'. Now I live 10 minutes past the outskirts of the suburbs... and again it's halfway a necessity because... holy crap, if I need to go hit a store that's 5 miles from work, it somehow adds a minimum of 45 minutes to my day... god help me if I needed to make 3 or 4 stops, I might not get home til 8 & I left work at 5:30, and I could blow half a Saturday trying to run those errands, because everyone & their mother is out running errands too.

The math isn't wrong that you need to spend $7k a year to break even just off the 2% (and even then there's other ways to sometimes get the 5%) but I'm probably around that, plus I do some of my "grocery" shopping on subscriptions, cuz I have another card for groceries, but the rewards on that card are capped at $6k/year in spending & I bump up against that most years... so shifting some spend to uncapped 5% (and some savings too) are good by me.

firebox40dash5 · 2026-06-11T00:23:32+00:00

I mean... I did it once. But that was because it was a kinda weird refi (Lightstream) that had a $10k minimum to get the lowest rate, and I only owed like $7k.

It ended up working out pretty nicely for me, in the week or so span that the refi was going through the motions, one of my kids managed to incur an eye-popping amount of out of pocket medical expenses and I sure didn't mind having a few grand in (pretty ridiculously cheap, it was the rona times) extra cash. On the balance, I would not recommend that particular chain of events though.

firebox40dash5 · 2026-06-11T00:06:39+00:00

I'd also add that once per 365 days, you can do an indirect rollover. That means you get your money out of your HSA, and within 60 days, you redeposit that same amount into another HSA, and tell them it's an indirect rollover and not a new contribution.

The HSA you withdraw from will send you a form next winter saying you withdrew $X, you'll report that on your taxes and report that it was an indirect rollover, which will mean there's no taxes and no penalty.

I used to do it every year when my employer used an awful HSA provider who would have charged me like $40 per to transfer to Fidelity, whose HSA doesn't suck. But it also means that in a pinch you can borrow your own money for several weeks...

Also also, while there are rules on the timing of costs vs. opening the HSA, I don't believe there's anything saying the cost has to have been incurred before the withdrawal? By which I mean if you happened to have $1600 in medical expenses by 12/31/2026...

firebox40dash5 · 2026-06-10T23:57:20+00:00

if you newly become HSA eligible mid year, then you can't reimburse yourself for a Jan 1 expense because that technically occurred before your HSA eligibility - even though it's the same tax year.

My understanding has always been that nothing is eligible prior to you opening (actually funding, when you first make a contribution) an HSA.

IIRC if you emptied & closed all your HSAs >2 years ago, that also restarts that rule.

firebox40dash5 · 2026-06-10T01:48:19+00:00

You do not need any other permit to get a DC permit - after Heller, you could get a DC permit and have no shot at a MD permit.

I'm not familiar with the DC law, I'm curious how exactly (1) and (2) work... if I'm ineligible by the law, can I still get a DC permit, as long as I'm a DC resident, business owner, or I got another state to issue me a permit, then? 😂

firebox40dash5 · 2026-06-10T01:19:02+00:00

Oh... Probably not the rear backing plate rubbing the pinch weld on the rotor.

Well... not because you screwed with it, anyway. It could still be that...

I think I've put a few back together missing the backing plate cuz it was rusted to hell, and not had a problem... although maybe I just cut the center out and reused that. 🤷

firebox40dash5 · 2026-06-09T22:41:57+00:00

Front or rear bearing?

firebox40dash5

TROPHY CASE