Bought a mid-engined two-seater today

We recently moved to 3+ acres. Taking the garbage to the street by foot was for suckers.

$1400 and 36-volts later, problem solved:

Yes, the yellow light works. I almost can't wait for it to get dark tonight.

JG Pasterjak wrote: Yes, the yellow light works. I almost can't wait for it to get dark tonight.

I like flasheys. That's why all my cars have them.

Impressive building!

JG Pasterjak wrote: $1400 and 36-volts later ....

.... til you have to buy 10 deep cycle batteries.

I hate hauling the trash out to the road too, but I don't know if I could bring myself to spend $1400 in the name of laziness.

bgkast wrote: I hate hauling the trash out to the road too, but I don't know if I could bring myself to spend $1400 in the name of laziness.

Then this is where you and I, sir, differ.

Actually it's a nice little hauler. Dump bed so it'll be good at hauling crap around the yard.

I debated electric vs gas forever, and the prospect of replacing a bunch of batteries at once is daunting. This one had all the batteries replaced in 2013 or after. And it's Florida. There's practically a golf cart place on every corner. As such the competition keeps battery prices pretty reasonable. Under $400 will re-power the whole mess when the time comes.

Is the model name "GX" something? We had a bunch of these at the golf course I worked at and they were always referred to as GXs. I think ours were gas, but some were definitely faster than others... We also had Cushmans with dump backs. Those were fun because they were stick. Congrats on the new place!

Looks like the John Deere mini-dump that I rebuilt the engine in. (We work on anything and everything) Siezed a main bearing when maintenance failed to involve keeping oil in the engine. Kawasaki V-twin built exclusively for John Deere, so there was a lot of F-U-give me money involved, but we found parts solutions that weren't quite so bad. Still, the parts ended up being a lot more expensive than a set of batteries.

The lady at the Cart place called it a "Workhorse" and I see it referred to even in EZ-Go documentation, although I don't think that's the official model identifier.

Sun's starting to do down now. Really excited about that orange light.

Its pretty well gettin on dark here in central Illinois. I'll be expectin some pics of DAT blink else it might be time for you to get on up out of this forum.

nocones wrote: Its pretty well gettin on dark here in central Illinois. I'll be expectin some pics of DAT blink else it might be time for you to get on up out of this forum.

At some point it's just going to feel like I'm rubbing it in.

I had a Yamaha I used as a pit vehicle. Wished I got the gas when I had to pay $800 for four new batteries (48 volt). But mine sat a lot, which is hell on batteries. Keep them maintained and charged and hopefully they'll last a long time.

JohnRW1621 wrote: Impressive building!

I was going to say the same thing. However, I assume the pond is full of gators, since it's Florida, right?

Replace that with an LED and you can extend your night-time range!

Tom_Spangler wrote:

JohnRW1621 wrote: Impressive building!

I was going to say the same thing. However, I assume the pond is full of gators, since it's Florida, right?

Still sorting things out a bit from the move, but, yeah, it's a great space.

It's the shop my father-in-law built when my wife's folks retired to Florida about 10 years ago. Sadly he never really got to enjoy it much. Maybe it was his time in Vietnam, maybe it was his lifestyle, but when he finally got everything he wanted, he seemed darker and less satisfied than ever. He passed away about a year after finishing the shop, and he almost never really fully "moved in" if you know what I mean. Dude was a larger than life character, but only because it hid a pretty tortured soul. He did a couple of his own projects there_mostly huddled away in a corner while most of the shop sat unused. He'd say "This would be a great place to build some magazine project cars, eh?" so we did some of my stuff down there. Joe and I did a crash-o-rama car there, and we also used it for rehearsals for a comedy show a few times.

Butch really seemed happiest when he was watching other people use what he built. Seeing there joy actually created some of the only real joy in him at that point. When he was finally officially diagnosed, he got the alcoholic's multi pass. Stage 4 esophagus, kidney, pancreatic, lymph node and liver cancer. Until that diagnosis he was driving himself to the hospital. After that not so much. He went home one more time, mostly to say his goodbyes. He went back to the hospital knowing he wasn't coming home, He passed the night before he was supposed to start all that cancer treatment which probably wouldn't have gone very wells. Last conversation he ever had with me was what I was going to build in the shop. He ran me down a few logistical items, sticky valves and air plumbing and whatnot. After that, he had a brief conversation with dana where he told her he hoped that one day we'd be happy at that place the way they never were.

Only a year later did we learn that Dana's mom was in the very early throws of Alzheimers. And at the time we were just working with a "memory loss and cognition difficulty" diagnosis. She was still all alone at the property. Three acres, lake (no gators, but plenty of fish and two BIG soft-shell turtles) and her three daschunds, who were getting less and less proper care as her condition progressed.

So Dana and I made some hard decisions to put their eventual plan into motion to move mom into assisted living and move Dana and I into the property. Long story short, Dana and I are caretakers of her property (now propertIES because in Florida property is a protected asset) while she lives elsewhere and gets care. Should she need medicaid assistance, like if she has to enter advanced care, she sill be eligible, as all her holdings are in protected assets. It was a massive legal and logistical project, but she's covered, and the property that they wanted to go to us anyway got to stay in the family. There will be some settling up to do once it comes time to execute the will eventually, but everyone is pretty much on the same page with that.

Bottom line: If you parents or Grandparents have ANYTHING of value. Like a house, stock, cars. ANYTHING. GO TO AN ELDER CARE LAWYER SOONER RATHER THAN LATER. Trust me on this one. It'll be the best move you ever make.

For us, it's more than a little tempting to feel like we're the beneficiaries of tragedy, but I really think it's more a matter of things working out the way everyone wanted to, just that it took some tragic events to serve as signposts along the way. At any rate, although I'm the primary tenant, it will always be Butch's Garage.

Also, while I'd never say that I was glad he was dead, he'd never let me drive that damn golf cart if he was still around.

I spy with my little eye a MK1 MR2...

In reply to JG Pasterjak:

Thanks for sharing that story.

Sounds like a good article in the making.

Is the mechanism you created called a "revokable family trust"?

Good to hear, JG. The reality is that we are all going to die some day and we can't take anything with us, so you guys taking over the property is the best possible outcome. Hopefully Butch is watching somewhere and he's glad the shop is being put to use.

Ahh, golf carts, all the hassle, none of the capability of UTV's.

Cool story and glad to hear it stay in the family.

Butch would only be cool with the golf cart if you take the body off and replace it with one of those fiberglass dune buggy bodies from a carnival ride.

In reply to Per Schroeder:

Sounds like you need to get busy.

Per Schroeder wrote: Butch would only be cool with the golf cart if you take the body off and replace it with one of those fiberglass dune buggy bodies from a carnival ride.

Damn. Like I didn't have enough reasons to follow carnivals around already.

Sweet shop, does the property come with an equally sweet house? Maybe you could have put a cart behind the JD lawnmower.