What did you last repair?

At least when alkaline batteries leak, you can usually clean off the gunk with alcohol pretty easily.
Sounds like that may not be so with silver oxide types.

The old mercury containing batteries seemed to last a lot longer than the "modern" ones.
 
There's more to this leakage problem than I thought! Modern Mercury-free Silver Oxide is bad news for corrosive alkaline leakage apparently.

https://www.great-british-watch.co.uk/how-to-spot-and-deal-with-watch-battery-leaks/

Maybe we are better off with alkalines! I dunno.
Better off with Alkalines?...perhaps not, I present to you an expensive Maglite chocked full of "D" cells, I think it's a four cell unit. What do you think, these have "Lifetime warranties, do you think they'll cover it? Yes, it's mine, I just now shot the PIX
 

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Must have been stored without removing the batteries. I've never seen anything like that.

Why people don't use rechargeable batteries, I have no idea. I've been using my Panasonic eneloop
batteries over and over for years. They work great and are strong, and hold their charge on the shelf well,
even for years at a time.
 
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Your picture reminded me of the front cover of a report I wrote.......
love the picture and caption😉
I learned that it is a waste of time to spend 5 to 10 days to create a report detailing a lot of work only to find that it sits in somebody's in basket for ever until it gets thrown out. You must put something eye catching on the front cover, then put some bait on the first page to get them to dig further. The bait that works best involves saving the company a lot of money, some fancy new tech that has never been seen before, something that has been worked on several times previously without success, or the solution to a current hot problem. I did not know it at the time, but the work done on this project had been tried twice before. Both times were unsuccessful, and both times the people involved were laid off.

Here is the front cover of another paper I wrote in 2004 that discussed ways to mitigate interference caused by cell towers to police radios. The title was lifted directly from a recent movie that was currently in high circulation on cable TV. The "bait" included links and references to actual situations where missed or garbled police calls resulted in property damage, injury or loss of life.

This site had towers for 5 different cellular companies and was the most western site in Broward County Florida. Since these towers served the swampers in the Everglades they were running well beyond the usual power levels, and some of the transmitters were not exactly clean. The front end of my white Mustang can be seen in the lower right of the picture. I made several trips here, and it took a while for the cops to realize that I was legit since I had lots of police radios that were better than theirs and all live (receive only) on all local PD systems.

Later on I would get to do testing at the stadium where the NFL Miami Dolphins played since the upper deck was right next to all of the Miami TV towers where there were 14 transmitters each putting out 1 MEGAWATT of power in the 470 to 696 MHz band. I didn't write the report on that one.

Most of the other engineers shied away from field work, but anytime I could get Motorola to send me outside to play, and sometimes pay my way into something like a Miami Marlins game, I was all over it. I even got a trip to the secret shop in Miami where the FBI and other agencies got their undercover vehicles outfitted for covert communications. Got a wild ride in a Miami cop car on the streets of Miami. Got a trip to the Broward fire academy to see how our radios were used.......
 

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My 1990 Troy Built Pony tiller failed to start on my third tilling of the garden this year. Plenty of gas (I could smell it in the exhaust). I let it set a day and tried again with the choke off, no-go. So I pulled the plug and with the ignition wire attached, and the shell grounded pulled over. No Spark.

I feared the worst and figured the coil had failed or the woodruff key had sheared. On a lark, I replaced the spark plug (which looked great) and it fired up on the second pull.

The failed plug in it was the original plug, so meh.
 
My 1990 Troy Built Pony tiller failed to start on my third tilling of the garden this year. Plenty of gas (I could smell it in the exhaust). I let it set a day and tried again with the choke off, no-go. So I pulled the plug and with the ignition wire attached, and the shell grounded pulled over. No Spark.

I feared the worst and figured the coil had failed or the woodruff key had sheared. On a lark, I replaced the spark plug (which looked great) and it fired up on the second pull.

The failed plug in it was the original plug, so meh.
The small engine kit that I installed on my mountain bike back in 2015 always gave be grief, missing firing, sluggish throttle revs, stuttering, hard or impossible to re-start.
Typical china stuff with design stolen from Honda.
After years of letting it sit in the garage unused due to its unreliability, 2 years ago I decided to change the original (barely used) plug. (Torch brand - china)
I barely made it around the neighborhood so it sat.

DAMN... the new NGK plug made the world of difference!
Smooth idle, reliable throttle performance, no problems restarting.
 
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I changed from Bosch to Japanese plugs on my car when they became available from the local plants here.
Bosch has had a plant here since the 60s, ND and NGK started late, 2008 or so.
Big difference.
Better performance, quick start, engine less strained sounding.
The local Champion plugs are as bad as Chinese, dead short or open without warning, and in less than 2500 miles.

Worth trying even in a non Japanese car.
 
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I changed from Bosch to Japanese plugs on my car when they became available from the local plants here.
Bosch has had a plant here since the 60s, ND and NGK started late, 2008 or so.
Big difference.
Better performance, quick start, engine less strained sounding.
The local Champion plugs are as bad as Chinese, dead short or open without warning, and in less than 2500 miles.

Worth trying even in a non Japanese car.
Yes, I noticed at once the difference in sound and operation with the NGK plug.
Before, the engine had misses, not firing every revolution.
NGK it purred like a kitten.
 
Try them in a non Japanese car, or multi cylinder engine.

The famed Bosch plugs are terrible in comparison, and those are original in many European cars.

You are lucky the plug came out in one piece, some Chinese ones have separation from the shell, the ceramic flies off...
 
The Bosch and NGK work about the same in my BMW. BMW actually changed from Bosch to NGK during the E90 production.

Personally, I've always liked Beru. I will only use Champion in the form of a CJ8 for a lawnmower 🙂

I see now that NGK has a Ruthenium plug now 🙂
 
"Personally, I've always liked Beru. I will only use Champion in the form of a CJ8 for a lawnmower "

CJ8 was a Jeep model, in this context, please be a little more clear, I could not understand the reference.
It was not successful, and Jeep itself has been called less than reliable.

Beru does not sell much here, if at all.
Bosch used to import multiple ground plugs, those were good, made in Germany.
But after using Japanese plugs, I can safely call them second grade.

There were long replacement interval plugs with Platinum electrodes, maybe Ruthenium is a new addition.

Regular plugs, 20k km....longer change up to 100k km, price proportionately higher. Advantage is dubious.

As an aside, Niigata used laser spark ignition instead of plugs in engines burning sewage gas, fouling problem solved.
That gas contains hydrogen sulfide, and is of erratic methane content, so not easy to burn in an engine.
 
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Did you even Google "Champion CJ8"? All the results are about spark plugs for lawn mowers which I thought was obvious from the context...

Never heard of the CJ8 Jeep, but a buddy used to have a CJ7.

Advantage is dubious untill you're paying for the labour to change them... I will welcome the 160,000 mile change interval, too. Not because I pay for labour, but because changing the spark plugs on a modern BMW takes hours.
 
Here push or small corded electric lawn mowers are normal.
Large lawn is maybe 2000 sq. feet.
Gas powered lawn mowers are not sold here.
Champion plugs nobody stocks now.
So I could not understand.
Thanks for telling me.

As an aside, SKF bearings are not seen much here, all FAG now...any idea what happened?
And also, what is the bearing brand that sells more in your area, Timken, NTN, SKF, FAG, others?
 
Lawns are getting rare, hot summers, water shortages, no gardeners and so on.
So most are paved over, in my city at least.
Garden supplies are restricted to those for potted plants.
Only two shops sell push type lawn mowers.
Electric ones with long wires are ordered from the factory.