Is it really worth bothering with though ?



I kinda feel like i made that mistake years back. I was out hitting the yard sales and came upon a barn that hadn't been opened in the last 50 years. The owner was a summer person who was a well to do mechanical engineer that died back in the 70's. He left the property to his daughter who in turned passed the place to her daughter. Nobody had any interest at looking inside the barn till they decided to clean the place out before listing the property for sale.

Opening that door was like walking into a time capsule. There were all these different machines in pristine condition. I picked up a 3kw Onan gen head from the 1960's that was intended to run off the belt driven PTO of a tractor.

Gawd ... that thing was built to run constant duty for a very long time. They don't build them like that anymore.

I guess i was just being sentimental about the past. It sat in the shop for years but i never really did anything with it. It just wasn't practical to meet my needs in this day & age. Three kw @ 110 volts wouldn't even start the submersible well pump.

In the end ... i just gave it to a fulla who still had a working Onan with his promise not to scrap it out for the copper inside.

Fast forward seven years and i helped him offload his Onan to the junk pile in 2023. Man ... that thing was as heavy as all get out. I asked him why he decided to take it out of service and he said it was two things. He had forgotten how to work on it and repair parts gradually stopped being available after Onan was bought out by Cummins diesel back in the 90's.

I dunno ... maybe some things are best left in the past. You can't go back so you gotta move forward.