VictorBravo
Well-known member
I stumbled across this forum while I was looking at Audi forums. I just finished up redoing the heads on my wife's Audi allroad after a timing belt disaster--without pulling the engine. I saw, after the fact, that the preferred method is to lift the car off the engine and transmission, which caused me to research lifts, which led me here....
A little background: I grew up on a ranch in Montana, enjoyed my Dad's 35X75 steel shop, learned all sorts of engine, welding, and machining skills in high school (this was in the 70s), and went on to be a rancher for another 14 years. Eventually, climate, prices, drought, and a tractor injury caused me to reconsider what I was doing, so I went to law school. I've been a lawyer for 22 years, 18 of those in the metro-Seattle area.
So, my wife and I decided to simply up and leave the city and the meth labs and the traffic, we bought a small plot with an older home in Asotin County Washington, right across the Snake River from Idaho. The deal was I'd get a pole barn shop if I'd totally remodel the house. I remodeled the house top to bottom, literally every square foot from roof to crawl space--new windows, new cabinets, hand-made tile counters, the works, all in about five months.
And I got my shop: a modest but much appreciated 24 X 24 pole barn with a 14 X 24 lean-to car port. For the first time in 22 years, I could work on cars on a smooth floor instead of in a gravel or asphalt driveway. I'm pretty happy about it all.
Then I hung out my shingle and started practicing law in my small adopted community. After a year, the judge appointed me senior public defender. It's a long ways from skyscraper law-firm life, and I feel like I'm on my second childhood at age 56. I'm happy back at my roots in a scrappy ranching/farming/timber/natural resource community.
So, here I am. My shop is styled in the "haphazard-ranch-shop-middle-of-too-many-projects" theme. I'm still recovering from the Audi job, and, of course, now you all have me looking for ways to spend money on tools I had not heard of before coming here.
A little background: I grew up on a ranch in Montana, enjoyed my Dad's 35X75 steel shop, learned all sorts of engine, welding, and machining skills in high school (this was in the 70s), and went on to be a rancher for another 14 years. Eventually, climate, prices, drought, and a tractor injury caused me to reconsider what I was doing, so I went to law school. I've been a lawyer for 22 years, 18 of those in the metro-Seattle area.
So, my wife and I decided to simply up and leave the city and the meth labs and the traffic, we bought a small plot with an older home in Asotin County Washington, right across the Snake River from Idaho. The deal was I'd get a pole barn shop if I'd totally remodel the house. I remodeled the house top to bottom, literally every square foot from roof to crawl space--new windows, new cabinets, hand-made tile counters, the works, all in about five months.
And I got my shop: a modest but much appreciated 24 X 24 pole barn with a 14 X 24 lean-to car port. For the first time in 22 years, I could work on cars on a smooth floor instead of in a gravel or asphalt driveway. I'm pretty happy about it all.
Then I hung out my shingle and started practicing law in my small adopted community. After a year, the judge appointed me senior public defender. It's a long ways from skyscraper law-firm life, and I feel like I'm on my second childhood at age 56. I'm happy back at my roots in a scrappy ranching/farming/timber/natural resource community.
So, here I am. My shop is styled in the "haphazard-ranch-shop-middle-of-too-many-projects" theme. I'm still recovering from the Audi job, and, of course, now you all have me looking for ways to spend money on tools I had not heard of before coming here.
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