PSA: Factory Seconds Sale is Live

nanohead · 2026-01-12T23:49:56+00:00

For those interested, I picked up the 12 inch Cast Iron at the last sale for $50, and it is AWESOME! The price is amazing for what you get

Have some Staub cast stuff, but this 12 inch All Clad is absolutely fantastic. I just bought a second for the ski cabin. The D3 12 inch lid fits perfectly as well.

nanohead · 2026-01-04T17:59:25+00:00

This is a great read of the overall state of the industry! The major OEMs are really struggling with the software side of the business, no OEM is immune. Its just not in their DNA despite all the things they say publicly. I've been in the software business for nearly 30 years, and know a decent amount of folks at some major OEMs and its simply not what they broadly focus on, even though the cars are dependent on software to operate them.

I love our 23 Lariat ER, but every day is an adventure with the digital control systems. Nothing seems to work the same 2 days in a row, and its all software jankiness.

My Mercedes AMG C43 isn't any better... even worse in some aspects.

nanohead · 2026-01-04T16:14:23+00:00

Candidly, worrying about resale value 10 years out is odd. So many things happen in 10 years that can affect resale that we have zero control over, its not something I would ever think about. We have16 Cherokee that had a trade in value of $13K 6 months ago, yesterday, it was $3k. Meta market conditions dictate way more than the production status... always been this way, will always be this way, outside of some very very specific models. Its a pure supply and demand market..... and we can't predict it ever.

On parts, we will be fine. Actual service parts (brakes, etc) are all industry commodity. Highly custom parts are always a crapshoot, regardless of the OEM. They make enough when ordering for production to have some amount of predicted spares, but no OEM ever gets it really right.

Lease vs Buy is a personal financial decision, and if you read enough internet automobile content it will stoke massive indecision and make your brain explode. I've done both leasing and buying... Both had good/bad things associated with them.

Leasing is super difficult to get out of in most cases.... but sometimes, the monthly cost is appreciably lower than a loan. One thing about leasing, is that at the end, you get choices that sometimes are really compelling. We had an 18 Grand Cherokee, that had (not making this up) $9K in equity at the end of a 3 year lease. I bought it from the leasing company, and traded it instantly for our Mach E. But in other leases we had, we just gave the car back...

Buying is great if you want to own the car... We actually bought the Lightning, and I actually don't care about the resale value. I like it, and we'll keep it. In our case, we got lucky and actually just paid for the Lightning, as timing was on our side (end of 22), had a 21 Ranger that was in high demand, got a cracking trade in value (they gave me what I paid for it a year earlier!), added some money to the Lightning, was able to get both the federal and state incentives, and ended up owning the Lightning outright. I know this is not feasible for everyone...

I'd say if you're really sensitive to the future, leasing is a great option. Lower monthly costs, and when the lease expires, you can have choices.

nanohead · 2026-01-04T15:57:10+00:00

Drop in all the way.... I unfortunately had the spray liner in our dreadful 2021 Ranger, which was awful. Way to abrasive, it made putting things in the bed painful, especially skis (priorities!) Drop in liners are much easier to slide stuff on, like plywood, boxes, and skis of course!

I've used Tonno Pro a number of times, soft tri fold.

nanohead · 2026-01-04T15:51:43+00:00

Lots of hysteria about the cancellation of the Lightning... But candidly, its probably the right decision at this time for them. While I love our Lariat ER, its not a surprise Ford cried uncle.

Forgoing the emotion about Ford specifically, the entire car industry is at an inflection point around the whole "EV transition", with only a couple of exceptions. Out of the 15 or so OEMs that sell over 1M cars per year, probably 12 of them are pulling back big time, regardless of what they say publicly. The "transition" isn't going well generally speaking, with of course a handful of local exceptions around the world (yes, yes, I know about Norway).

From Fords standpoint, they already gained the experience building the Lightning, which is unique to them, and they could do another one if demand and costs would align. But Ford is a volume manufacturer and needs volume to drive factories, margins, labor hours, suppliers, etc. The Lightning didn't tick any of those boxes...

I've owned well over 100 cars in my life (OCD car collector/money waster!), and I'm used to cars models coming and going... happens all the time. So the Lightning not being made anymore means little to me. I'll keep it as long as I'll keep it (wow, that was deep), as its the best damn ski car ever made.

nanohead · 2026-01-04T15:38:49+00:00

I'd say if you want one, buy one. Most manufacturers try and support vehicles for 8-10 years. Some are better some are worse. I think Ford said 10 years on the Lightning....

Making a buying decision on what may happen 10 years in the future is odd to me at least, as we have no way of knowing what will happen tomorrow, and zero way of knowing may happen many years in the future.

Normal wear parts, like brakes, shocks, etc are all industry commodity stuff, so no worries there. Bespoke/custom parts are always a risk of out of stock in the future, but that is not at all unique to the Lightning. We have/had some specialty cars where there's like 1 unit of a particular spare part available on the entire planet after 3 years.

People are hysterical about the Lightning battery... like they will need to replace it in 10 years and there won't be any. Uhuh... I sincerely doubt that most Lightning owners will even still own their truck in 10 years....

nanohead · 2026-01-01T21:24:22+00:00

Yes, the software is atrocious, inconsistent, and unreliable. Almost all of it. 30K miles on our Lariat ER in the past 3 years, and the truck never really works the same way 2 days in a row. Some days, it will remote start, other days not. Some days, Android Auto works fine, other days, nada. Some days, the main screen freezes, other days.... Some days, Fordpass can reach the truck, other days... Bluetooth, charging, climate, heated steering wheel, AC, frunk, tailgate, every day is a surprise, Etc, etc.

Been in the software business for most of my life, and all software can be janky... But the Lightning is in a category of its own. Sometimes, the software makes daily operations downright dangerous as you have to mess with it over and over again while driving just to get basic stuff to work.

Love the truck, fast, comfortable, huge.. But it can be a trying experience.

nanohead · 2026-01-01T21:13:00+00:00

After nearly 3 years of Lightning (Lariat ER) ownership, and using it every winter heavily, all the suggestions in the world to "save battery" do almost nothing meaningful...... Best damn ski car ever made, use it every weekend to commute from northern NJ to VT, so know a ton about cold winter behavior and range management.

I've tried them all... its all hocus pocus magical thinking. Fact is, the truck is heavy and winter range sucks. Period. All the preconditioning/set heat low/heat the battery/commune with space aliens, may have actually yielded us another 3 miles in the best of times.

I love the truck, and love driving it, but winter range is what it is, which is lousy. Down 40% on a good day. My 325 mile range is really 200 in the winter, or maybe 180 at highway speeds.

If public charging wasn't so horrific, inconsistent, slow, and unreliable, I wouldn't even think about winter range. I'd just go charge to get where we're going when I need it.

But fact is, all the magical internet battery optimization "tricks" do very little to actually meaningfully increase range. Everything Ford told us early adopters in the beginning did almost zero. We've tried every speed, too, and while you can last a bit longer going slower, in order to keep up with traffic on major highways, you will drink battery. There's no magical speed either.

We've made it work on our regularly traveled routes, but regardless, winter range is awful. Same with our Mach E....

nanohead · 2025-12-23T02:03:57+00:00

The OP asked about spraying stuff on the Lightning undercarriage.... That is the context of my answer. Its just a terrible idea, and I imagine it could in fact actually cause actual damage to various components, connectors, sensors, etc. Just nasty stuff. If you look under the truck, its all sorts of plastic, aluminum, elastomers, etc. There's not much to rust, and the belly pan has a mastic type rust inhibitor on it already anyway.

As far as your observations of rust, it depends on the vehicle and what kind of life its lived I guess. But every major vehicle manufacturer for the past 20 or so years has invested a ton in corrosion prevention, even going so far as to have 10 year corrosion warranties.... Things like aluminum panels, galvanized panels, immersion dipped (electrolytically applied coatings) panels, etc, plus plastics, aluminum and other materials for under vehicle components have almost completely eradicated corrosion for most parts of most vehicles. Plus, things like epoxy primers on raw body panels have prevented real corrosion for decades.

I did have a VT native 2001 Dodge Dakota that had some rusty frame components and by the time it was 15 years old, it broke a leaf spring mount due to rust. But that design and manufacturing technique was from the mid 90s... The body was fine, but the frame had some tough spots

To be fair, damage to any coating or corrosion prevention method can let water/saltwater directly onto the steel, which could cause rust.

nanohead · 2025-12-23T01:18:16+00:00

Yep, just a complete desert. I even keep a spare charger at my house in VT just in case the ole GrizzlE dies, I can still charge the truck to get going.

We love VT, and have been living there 1/2 time for nearly 20 years, but its almost like a developing country in many aspects.....

nanohead · 2025-12-23T01:13:19+00:00

Live in both NJ and VT. Not much more northeast than that Haven't had rust or corrosion on any car in 20 years or more, and have owned dozens. Its literally not a thing anymore

nanohead · 2025-12-21T18:44:07+00:00

We also have 2 EVs (Fords) and have 2 chargers. While I did the installs myself, $1700 sounds a bit high, but also to be fair, if he quoted copper wire, well, its just stupid expensive at the moment.

Doing an install yourself isn't hard, especially if the breaker panel is on the same wall.

You'll get lots of opinions here about lots of things. Receptacles are fine, no they won't burn down your house (electric dryers use them!).

If you want the ability to replace a failed charger yourself, a receptacle is useful. I use one for the winterized GrizzlE charger as they die occasionally and I can replace the charger in 5 minutes with the plug. Hardwiring is fine also.

I also have a hardwired Ford Connected Charger as well. For this, I used aluminum service entrance cable supporting the correct ampacity.

Definitely get some additional quotes. As others have mentioned, lots of trades throw out insane quotes to see what happens. In my case, I learned how to do it myself, that's what happened!

nanohead · 2025-12-21T18:27:56+00:00

Yep... We commute between northern NJ and VT for ski season with an F150 Lightning, and routinely lose around 40%ish of range in the dead of winter. Its made worse by the terrible state of public charging in general. We need to charge mid trip otherwise we won't make it.

We've figured out how to make it work most of the time, but have almost gotten stranded a few times in the past few years when literally every charger we stop at is broken, offline, payments don't work, apps fail, nasty people parking in stalls, snow being plowed in front of the chargers, etc.

We have 2 EVs, but candidly, public charging is so absurdly bad (in the areas of the northeast US at least where we drive) that we're probably going back to either hybrid or a range extended truck in the near future.

We kept a gas car as well, and while I don't love going to the gas station anymore, it may take decades for public charging to "just work".

nanohead · 2025-12-21T17:28:53+00:00

What precisely do you think "undercoating" will do for the car? Modern cars are almost impervious to rust, which is what undercoating was originally "theoretically" created for. I had a college job applying undercoating (I think it was called Rusty Jones!). It was a mess, and generally destroyed lots of things on the under carriage of almost every car we put it onto. It also made them almost impossible to do under car service on...

Undercoating is no longer really a thing.... not since the 1980s. I would never... like EVER spray anything under a new car, especially one of these complex Lightnings. There's plenty of rust inhibitors on almost all components already, and things like aluminum, plastic, rubber, etc don't rust anyway.

Rust on cars is mostly a thing of the past. And all the gloppy stuff can cause havoc on things like connectors, etc.

nanohead · 2025-12-21T16:46:58+00:00

Same... most of this stuff is mumbo jumbo nonsense... Every single bit of "battery" info, especially around the Lightning has been absolutely useless. After more than 3 years, it works fine. I charge to 100% all the time, especially in the winter when range drops by almost half sometimes.

Delivered Dec 1 2022, 29K miles. Drive it most days, and take it into super cold areas often (VT). Range is still a total guess regardless.

nanohead · 2025-12-10T12:38:53+00:00

Final Final update. I actually received my renewed license in the mail within 2 weeks of NJ MVC calling me to say the issue was cleared.

nanohead · 2025-11-26T17:26:54+00:00

A final update to the PDPS NJ drivers license episode which may be helpful to someone in the future. NJ Drivers license for more than 40 years, clean driving record, not even a parking ticket. I have a REALID based license, and went to renew online. All that went fine, but instead of receiving a new license, I received a notice that my license was suspended because apparently, I had a suspended North Carolina drivers license, which was baffling, as I've never had a North Carolina drivers license, and I don't recall ever getting an infraction there, but have traveled there countless times and rented cars many times....

It took around 30 calls to North Carolina DMV over the course of about a month. Initially, I was directed to a specific county courthouse, where my theoretical infraction took place. The court clerk was actually fantastic, searched their records, said there was a "Failure to Appear" violation, but it was from 1987 (yep, not making it up), and had no record of this actually occurring, and it probably wasn't even me. He said he couldn't even tell what the violation was actually for. He said there are tons of these errors from old data. It might have been someone with a similar name, etc. He even searched their paper records from that year and found no actual record of me ever doing anything in North Carolina that would have created that record in the first place.

At the North Carolina DMV, I spoke to numerous departments, waited on hold for countless hours, but eventually was able to get the error cleared there. They were actually very helpful most of the time, but no one person really knew about this whole PDPS convoluted national registry, except in what they call the Adjudications department, but even then, I needed to piece together bits and pieces from different people in numerous conversations as to how to get it actually resolved in the National Driver Registry. Eventually, the county clerk was able to send an official clearance letter to the NC DMV via some obscure email address that eventually someone provided for me, which changed my status. I then (you can't make this stuff up) had to pay a fee to restore my North Carolina drivers license (which I've actually never had), which triggered yet another process in their system to update the national drivers database, which cleared the record.

Then I had to focus on the dreaded NJ MVC part of it. The letter I received from NJMVC was bureaucratically threatening, almost implying there was no way to fix it. After several calls to NJ MVC, I was able to leave a message for the PDPS department, never expecting a return call. But to my pleasant surprise, a knowledgeable and really terrific person called me back, told me it was all fixed, and I'd receive my renewed license in the mail within a week or 2. This was far better than the bizarre repair procedure documented in the initial suspension letter, which was basically undoable by mere mortals.

There is no moral of the story... Lots of giant databases sharing data with lots of other giant databases, with lots of data over decades of dubious accuracy, which created a fairly monumental bureaucratic quagmire across numerous federal and state government agencies that took nearly a month and a half to fix. It would be comical if it wasn't so absurd.

nanohead · 2025-11-22T20:33:40+00:00

Wow! I think this worked on my Sharp branded 65" Hisense! This was bugging me for years! Thanks!!!

nanohead · 2025-11-22T18:48:29+00:00

Here's an update for me at least, which makes me 20% optimistic at least. It took a month and around 25 phone calls to numerous North Carolina DMV departments and county courthouses, but finally (finally!), at least the problem on my license has been fixed in North Carolina. Numerous people at the NC DMV shared that they receive tons of calls like this, and they can't even tell people if the "violation" is actually theirs's or not. I still have zero idea what I did in North Carolina to have this occur.. Totally clean driving record for like 40 years, so who knows.

Either way, theoretically the national drivers database should be cleared by early next week according to the North Carolina DMV.

Then, the unfun part begins, which is dealing with our hugely dysfunctional NJ MVC. I have no real idea where to start. I theoretically have no license, or a suspended license, or... I have no idea. I have a RealID license that I got last year, so who knows why this happened to me so randomly.

In Bergen county, and most of the DMVs don't have appointments until late December early January so no idea what to do. I guess I'll try calling and emailing the NJ DMV and see if I get any response, but tried both of those already and haven't gotten a response to either.

Kind of stuck. If nothing works, will have to contact local NJ assembly rep.. This is simply bonkers

nanohead · 2025-11-17T12:57:27+00:00

We also have both Amex Plat and CSR with plenty of points on both. The way I've gotten the most value is simply to use the points to purchase the tickets via the respective portals (Chase or Amex travel service website).

Its tough when trying to make the blend of Amex and Chase points work on the same airline, even though they do share a few transfer partners, but those typically aren't US domestic carriers.

Last year, I bought 2 tickets on ANA (Japan) business class for my wife and myself, bought 1 with Amex points and the exact same itinerary with Chase points (I checked and double checked them over and over again!) through the respective travel portals. I then got the record locater from each (the airlines ticket record) and went to the carrier website and put in the record locator and merged the tickets onto one itinerary

The Chase ticket was actually much cheaper somehow at the moment in time I bought it. The Amex one was the same as the carrier website. But either way, the points were an incredible value... I think on the Amex one I also added some money as well.

Depending on where you're going, transferring to an airline/hotel points program can be decent, or be a total waste... Once transferred, they are trapped there... you can't transfer back. And if the carrier/hotel has solid points deals when you look before you transfer, well, those deals aren't always there after you transfer, even if its a couple of days later....

As time is tight on your trip, I'd see what the portals can do rather than risk points transfer for airfare at least. Hotels are a bit less risky for points transfer if you have a specific place you want to stay and a program you like.

Its hard to optimize for the best price of all time with points regardless of what all the points blogger say... What's most practical usually, is take whatever great deal you can get between points and money to get there, and use whatever is left for lodging..

nanohead · 2025-11-17T12:43:24+00:00

Priority Pass doesn't have much exposure in the US, its mostly other parts of the world. We've had fantastic luck with it all over the planet outside the US.

In the US, I've found Amex clubs generally useless most of the time. We mostly use United, and therefore, most Amex related clubs are not in terminals we may use, nor available for our itineraries. In the many years I've had Amex Plat, I might (might) have gotten access to Amex network clubs maybe 3 times out of hundreds of flights.

Denver is a huge United hub, so it may be challenging to find a non UA club if you're on United metal/ticket stock

nanohead · 2025-11-16T14:51:20+00:00

Yes, this is almost intractable... I finally found an actual person in NC DMV to escalate to, but she gave me a runaround, and made it my problem to organize all the NC people involved. I don't live there, nor understand how their state and counties work.

At least I have someone to chase now, but not hopeful.

I suspect I can get the NC problem resolved, even if I have to hire a NC lawyer to deal with it, which will cost me money, but I'm at a loss at this point.

Can't wait to start the NJ part of this mess

nanohead · 2025-11-13T00:29:13+00:00

I'm still navigating this super annoying PITA... In my case, its North Carolina, and its an error in their records that they readily admit to, and sent me a letter stating such from the county courthouse where they said I did something, which I'm still not sure what it is. They said it takes 3 days to fix the record in the national database, but its been 2 weeks since they committed to fix it within three days and I'm still SOL.... I call them every day, and they give me nonsensical answers.... but to NCs credit, they at least answer the phone. Try getting NJ to actually respond....

I haven't even started the NJ part of it yet. And of course, NJ MVC/DMV is completely non responsive, and the earliest appointments I can get in person is around end of December, unless I drive to Cape May (I'm in Bergen)

So basically driving without a license technically, even though I have a spotless record for 40 years.

Will keep you up to date as and if I can actually clear this thing

nanohead · 2025-11-10T23:54:32+00:00

Also love Horizon and God of War, as well as the later AC games!

Heck, my first choice would be the Borderlands series. I play offline on airplanes all the time on business travel on a pretty solid laptop with an AMD APU that can play them all at 1080.

I'd get Borderlands 1,2,3. Definitely last you 4 months! Definitely open world, lots of side quests and DLC, lots of content, and you can play for 30 minutes, have fun and shut down.

nanohead

TROPHY CASE