Jon Los

Author: Jon Los

  • Playing with Real Trucks

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    Jon Los

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    I was 20 and it was after I’d worked for my dad’s marine diesel repair business, in the Arctic Ocean rebuilding the generator engine on an ocean dredge, and I found myself with a lot of money for the first time in my life. I was driving a 3 ton truck, delivering soap, when one…

  • Playing With Trucks

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    Jon Los

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    What can I say, ever since I was a boy, big trucks fascinated me. Other kids were into bikes, cars and stuff but there was something about the big rigs that captured my imagination. When I was in my early teens I discovered truck models. The fact that I could build my dream rigs in…

  • Breaking things

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    Jon Los

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    Let’s face it, the Law of Entropy is very real. Things don’t always go according to plan. And if you’re just sort of flailing away at things without taking the time to do it right, it will devolve into chaos. My little Stream Engine was chugging away relatively trouble free for 11 years but I…

  • The Eddy Brake

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    Jon Los

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    Like I said in previous posts, I knew the potential for making electricity was flowing past my back door, but I just didn’t know how to make it happen. After cobbling a bunch of junk together, it was time to test it out. A fire hose stuck into the crick in a milk crate, running…

  • Once upon a dead battery

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    Jon Los

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    One of the advantages of micro-hydro is that the power just keeps on keeping on. Batteries are kept up to snuff all the time, but in the event that something, like frazil ice, stops it from spinning, suddenly the batteries mattered. In the beginning all I had were a couple old car batteries and as…

  • The little engine that could

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    Jon Los

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    After a couple of years of enjoying/hating my cobbled together hydro, the decision was made, I needed something reliable! Fixing the thing every other day was starting to get to me and, since all I could use for a lubricant was canola oil (not good for much else!), it was time to spend a few…

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