Loft Beds and Trailer Hitches | #066
Last Updated on July 6, 2020 by Tim Harman
Another mashup for this week’s show. We talk space-saving, DIY loft bed builds as well as adding a trailer hitch (receiver) to your minivan!
Josh rounded out the show with a continuation of the “get to know your hosts” segment.
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FULL SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Auto generated by Otter.ai and then edited some. Mistakes are likely. 🙂
Josh Matthews 0:00
Welcome to the You can, man.™ podcast episode 66. I’m Josh, I’m Tim, and I’m Dave. And on this week’s episode – loft beds and trailer hitches.
Tim Harman 0:20
alright guys welcome back to the You can, man.™ podcast where we believe what one man can do you can do as well with a little help from your friends and the proper know how got a little bit of another mashup this week of to kind of completely unrelated things loft beds and trailer hitches, but it’s stuff we’ve been doing recently, so we thought you know what, we should talk about that. I’ve been doing loft beds, and Josh has been doing trailer hitches and I haven’t been doing anything. Yeah, well, that’s you bring nothing to the table here.
Dave Greenwood 0:53
But how was your week Dave? I was good, except for today. I’m going to use This massive platform that I have to call out Marietta power, the worst power company on the planet. Oh dang, the worst ever. I’m talking to you Marietta power. You’re horrible. Now listen, I talked to people, everybody that live around them, like how do you marry a power? And they’re like, Yeah, I love them. I’m like, Oh, I think it’s just me. I think it’s just my neighborhood. But I’m gonna say, I’m gonna say once a month, our power goes out, sometimes more often than once a mile, sometimes less often. But in this case, it’s going out twice in one week. Okay. And it’s, I can’t figure it out for how long? Just so that’s a good question. It’s generally not that long. It’s like an hour or two. Okay, well, what in my mind when the power goes out? It’s out for a day. But the reason it doesn’t go out for a long time is because I go and I check because I’m going to report the power outage right? So I go on, I check it and you can, you know, is 2029 And you can do all this online, right? You know, you don’t have to like call the power company like my, you know, lights are out. So you go online and it shows you an outage map on the internet. And it shows you how many outages there are. Every time I go on there. If there’s one outage and it’s my neighborhood, like there are no other out. So there was a storm that blew through today. And it wasn’t really bad. There were no severe thunderstorm warnings or anything like that. It’s just kind of kind of pretty windy. And I wasn’t I wasn’t at home, but you know, check the radar because I’m a pseudo weatherman and my wife. The reason I did the reason I checked is because she said, Hey, the power’s out. I was like, of course it’s out. You know, it’s Monday. It’s Monday and the power goes out on Monday. Anyway, Marietta power you need to get your stuff together. It’s pathetic, like every month what is the deal with that listener? Now I understand that this is a first world problem. I get that. But look, everybody depends on electricity these days. All right.
Tim Harman 2:56
Okay, so for those of you that don’t know we that’s our local city, Marietta. However, we all live outside the technical city limits.
Dave Greenwood 3:04
Correct, I do not live in the city limits of Marietta. But for whatever reason, I’m under the reign of terror and I have no option. I have nowhere to go. I can’t go anywhere else. Look, I got a lot. There’s a lot of old folks in my neighborhood. And these people, they got like medical equipment. So if you can’t be having the power go out once a month, it’s pathetic is ridiculous. And you need to get your stuff together Marietta power, I’m gonna be calling you out every week from now on, until my power stops going. I mean, they’re obviously listening. So they better be listening. This is a massive podcast, and they need to be listening and getting their act together. I’m going to start knocking on their door and yelling at them.
Tim Harman 3:37
Alright Dave, this is where I say remember all the people around the world that their power goes out on the regular…every day.
Dave Greenwood 3:44
Tim, I don’t want to hear about that. That’s You know what, it’s something that like in the state of Georgia, we don’t really have to deal with that. In California and New York. Like they have rolling power outages, if I’m not mistaken.
Josh Matthews 3:56
Yes. (that ain’t that ain’t cool) (I don’t know about that. But it sounds right.)
Dave Greenwood 4:00
It’s true. I’ve read about it. (Okay.) In the newspaper. Anyway, so that’s what’s you know, that’s what’s been yanking my chain today.
Tim Harman 4:08
All right, Josh. What about you?
Josh Matthews 4:10
Not much. (Okay, thank you very much.)
Tim Harman 4:13
All right, moving on.
Dave Greenwood 4:15
Very interesting. hosts we have here on You can, man.™
Tim Harman 4:18
What are you running? How many miles per week? Are you running now? Josh?
Josh Matthews 4:21
I just hit my first ever 40 mile week last week. (Daaang.) Well, yeah, I almost didn’t run this weekend. So we’ve been, I don’t know if you’ve ever had an eight month old, but ours is like not wanting to sleep right now. (That’s fun.) And I’m not complaining because my wife gets even less sleep than I do. But it is. It’s not a lot of sleep happening. So usually Saturday mornings, my long run. I woke up Saturday morning and my body’s like you you’re not doing them
Dave Greenwood 4:49
and how many times a night Are you getting up?
Josh Matthews 4:52
Oh, he’s like three to four. (Ugh, man.) Separate. We’ll do a separate show on sleep sleep training, because here we go. So, Saturday, wasn’t feelin’ it. I was like, I’ll just do a Sunday morning Sunday morning..bodies like… No, not today. (You did a night run.) Yeah, my body feels good. But my brain staminal…like I could just tell like I was so foggy with mental weaknesses. What right so Sunday evening, you know we’re about to roll into a new week. I have not checked my box on the long run. And that’s like my thing on the weekend a marathon training. Yeah,
Dave Greenwood 5:27
yes. Right. You are training for people who don’t know you’re training for an actual marathon? Yeah.
Josh Matthews 5:31
So I’m thinking my wife and I said, I want to put the boys to bed and I’m gonna go for a run. And I started at a 28 o’clock anyway, the sun went down on my run, but I knew that prep for it. Put my head lamp in the bag. So about 9:20PM it got unsafely dark. Dawn the headlamp and ran I don’t know how many it was over two hours. 15 miles Dang. So you’re doing like not
Dave Greenwood 5:55
nine to 10 miles in the dark.
Josh Matthews 5:58
No. 15 miles. Bout halfway through my run bout mile seven and a half or eight, it went dark. So anyway, it was nice. The storm had just rolled in huge storm rolled in and dropped the temperature like 10 or 20 degrees. lowered the humidity and it was good. It was Nobody. Nobody had is quiet. Really nice run.
Tim Harman 6:19
That’s crazy. Thanks, Tim for reminding me. Yeah, no problem. Not a whole lot going on with me. Well, the topic that we’re talking about is loft beds. And I’ve been doing a lot of loft about in here in that saw across the street. Yes. Been working out about that. One thing I was thinking about related to all this carpentry work, I guess you could say that I’ve been doing is I started cleaning up the massive amounts of sawdust that are now having the garage. And what I’ll do with the sawdust is I throw it in what I call the Bronco’s bedpan. Hmm. Because I say that the bedpan I say the bronco has so I had this classic Bronco 1975 Classic Ford Bronco. And I say that it has bed sores, because it just it sits a lot (that’s sad), and a lot of the seals started going basically anywhere can leak, it just kind of leak. Like an old man, it’s got a really bad leak between like the seal between the transmission and the transfer case. And so it just leaks in the transfer case in the out of there and around transmission pan. Anyways, there’s always this transmission fluid, I’ve got a pan that I use to catch it, but the sawdust works really well to soak up the transmission fluid. So I just took a bunch of that and threw it up underneath there. It’s kind of like it’s a good we’re
Dave Greenwood 7:38
gonna say yeah, cat litter.
Tim Harman 7:40
I’m recycling it in some way form or shape. I don’t know. Yeah. So anyways, just little thing I was thinking about
Josh Matthews 7:47
it was kind of a life hack. Yeah, I guess you saw this to catch your bleakie
Dave Greenwood 7:53
Don’t do it. Don’t say life hack. Just say it’s the thing I do. It’s a life hack a stupid
Josh Matthews 7:57
phrase.
Tim Harman 7:58
Yeah. Like okay. Let’s get into our mash up for this week loft beds and trailer hitches. So I think both Josh and I were working on both of these projects independently this weekend, correct because Josh had to borrow some tools for me to do his trailer hitch as always. Okay, so when you borrow tools from Tim via me,
Josh Matthews 8:21
yeah, I fetched a Oh yeah, I gotta.
Tim Harman 8:24
I gotta. I got a text from Josh saying, Hey, I commandeered your floor jack from Dave. Yeah, I hope that’s okay. Hope that
Josh Matthews 8:30
Yeah, I was gonna I was just being a good Samaritan. I was over at Dave’s house. What was that doing? Hanging out picking up the floor? Is that all I came over to do? Yeah, no, no, I came over to get my jack stands. Yeah, you had accurate and then I was like, hey, that’s Tim’s jack. And he’s like, Can you take that back to him was like sure thing after I use it.
Dave Greenwood 8:47
Yeah. So real quick I meant to mention this last time Harbor Freight is basically that’s the bottom of the barrel in my opinion, okay, whatever and I’m never buying anything from are afraid. I’m just not going to do it because I don’t want to die. You’ll use it but that jack that’s a harbor freight jack you can’t
Tim Harman 9:03
look you can’t mess up a jack
Dave Greenwood 9:04
you can’t I mean most objects Well, that’s that it makes me nervous but that jack is that’s that’s a nice jack Yeah, that’s legit and I kind of want one well then get i mean i got a pretty good I got a good floor jack but I lost a lad and lost the handle and I don’t know what to do so that’s why I borrowed your jack that jack is legit. Everybody needs a good solid floor. Yeah, you don’t
want to be using the jack from your car when you’re changing your brakes or oil or whatever you don’t want to be pulling that thing out of the you know the floorboard of the car. Don’t be usin’ that (Emergencies only). Yes. And even in that case, I don’t know that I’d use it. (It can take up some room in the garage, but it’s so worth it. You gotta have it. I mean, if you do any kind of work on your car you’ve gotta have a floor jack)
Josh Matthews 9:46
you should also get your own so that you don’t have to lift your friends into your trunk right? That thing is heavy. It’s
Dave Greenwood 9:53
it’s heavy like I can you can pick it up by yourself, but you can’t pick it up for long like that thing. First of all, sometimes wieldy there’s no handles on it, but it definitely gets the job done.
Tim Harman 10:04
Gotcha. loving it. Okay, so transitioning to loft beds. So, yeah, a couple years ago, I guess it was 2018 I built a loft bed for my son. And it was kind of like this floating design (Steam Punk). It was well use like a pipe (industrial) it’s appropriate for boys room. It’s actually the most visited blog post on www.youcanman.com so if you just go there and type in the search loft bed, you should come across it. And anyways, so I got some ideas from a couple different sources. All it really is, is it’s just a platform, and it’s connected by ledger boards on two walls directly into the studs, and then it’s pretty much built like a deck. So I’ve got joists… 2×4 joists. The rim is two by sixes and I use joist hangers to hang the 2x4s I put a piece of plywood on it. And then the support for the
Josh Matthews 11:05
free floating corner
Tim Harman 11:06
free floating corner is a good way to put it. It’s steel pipe. So I used it’s not to screw in like plumbing type piping that you you’re probably more accustomed to this is actually like a slip joint thing where it’s got a What is that called? A set screw. Okay, yeah, so it’s way easier because you can slide these fittings over the pipe instead of having individual pieces that you screw the pipe into. Yeah, that makes sense. And so it’s made by a company called SteelTek. It’s S T E E L T E K, and they sell it at Lowe’s. So that’s where you can find it. Don’t think that they have it at Home Depot. Maybe they do now, I’m not sure. But I got all my stuff at Lowe’s
Dave Greenwood 11:52
and that’s but that’s not the loft bed that we’re talking about
Tim Harman 11:55
does not the offer that we’re talking about. So now I’m currently in a massive project building dual loft beds for both my girls they’re a joined with a wall. I’m gonna have to just post pictures
Dave Greenwood 12:10
Is it is it is he like it looks really good. Your son’s is industrial This one looks like an Escalade like I saw pictures of it and it is…it’s big
Tim Harman 12:21
so I got some Joanna Gaines going on it looks really got a little bit of shiplap You know, we’re we’re going to do a lot more shiplap and I’m really glad that we didn’t because that would have been way overkill. So now we just kind of use a shiplap as an accent. tasteful shiplap Yeah, so by doing this involved electrical work as well so framing and electrical work because it essentially built a wall that actually became load bearing because it’s running perpendicular to my ceiling joist. So it’s actually carrying some load, I guess. course I guess I didn’t support from underneath. So technically Dave is that a load bearing wall or
Dave Greenwood 12:57
not a load bearing wall that’s unsupported at the base. Which is not good. Doesn’t matter
Josh Matthews 13:02
because it’s within Yeah, you’ll probably be right. Yeah,
Tim Harman 13:06
yeah. But I added a couple outlets and even, I have a, an outlet switch combo that’s inside custom cubbies that I built that are out there basically the headboard of the bed. And it has a switch and an outlet. And then I did add an extra outlet somewhere else and then two other outlets specifically just for string lights for up underneath where their desk is going to be nice because we got into we’re thinking, well, where are you going to plug that in? We didn’t want the wire exposed, like coming down to an art existing outlet. That’s a metro. Yeah, you know, it’s like, I’m just I’m just gonna go ahead and do it. Yeah,
Dave Greenwood 13:48
you know, and you got like reading lights up there too, right? Yeah, that’s my dream. Like when you go to a hotel and you got like a little light right up. It’s exactly opposite. Nice.
Tim Harman 13:56
It’s exactly what this is except I have more of a traditional I’ll switch Yep, to turn it off and on the switches and on the lamp is what I mean to say. random thing. Do you guys ever This is totally random. Do you guys ever write anything on framing or something like that when you’re building something that you’re going to cover up?
Dave Greenwood 14:15
Yes, my measurements are like, No, no, no math and stuff. Like all
Tim Harman 14:20
I do like we’re writing like a note. I wrote a little sweet note to the girls, you know, built with love 2019 Yeah, 2020 I guess now, gosh, huh? Do you guys do that when you’re building projects, and you think I’ve ever done that I
Dave Greenwood 14:35
do. I do math on on this on the studs or on the wood, but they’re not obviously, they’re never gonna see that. The people that buy your house, you know, when you kick the bucket, (right) and hate your decorating, they’re gonna they’re gonna see that when they, you know,
Tim Harman 14:49
maybe or maybe not, or maybe no one will ever see it in the house will just get bulldozed or you know, like, I don’t know. And then when I did our built ins for the library, I remember Had the kids write a note. And I just shoved it up underneath. That’s cool. I swear even better. Yeah. Because I was like, I’ve never like I could maybe get to it, but I’m not going to like I’d have to take stuff off to get to it. So it would have to be somebody that’s just renovating and ripping that out. Yeah, I saw I
Josh Matthews 15:21
recently saw an article on social media somewhere. Someone who read remodel the bathroom. And so I guess they pulled the cabinets down. And there was a picture of husband and wife couple. And it had a note that it was like 1995 and it said, you know, what was what was wrong with this bathroom? Like we spent a lot of time here. They like knew exactly what was gonna happen. Right? So yeah, within 20 years someone’s gonna read. This came down as a picture of the couple I like.
Tim Harman 15:55
Yeah, okay, so loft beds. The reason why the big reason why I really love loft beds, especially for obviously for kids rooms. But hey, loft beds can be for adults as well. But the main, I look, I think so especially like if you’re in some apartment or something like that, but it’s all about space saving.
Dave Greenwood 16:14
Yeah, no, you free up a ton of floors,
Tim Harman 16:16
way tons and tons. If you go in your kids rooms right now, and you look at the floor space, the majority of it is probably going to be taken up by their bed unless you’re rich. I mean, if you got multiple kids in the same room that is, but a lot of houses bedrooms are really small. And so if you’ve got a small bedroom house and you really want to maximize that square footage, strongly consider doing a loft bed. Now, I want to say that you may think of loft beds and you’re like, I gotta buy some kit. I gotta, you know, I got to buy some store bought something and put this thing together. No, no. What you need to do is you need to do it yourself, and you could totally do it and it’s been simple designs that you can attach to the wall. So if you’ve got enough wall space, you can essentially build it like you would a deck that you’re attaching to the side of a house.
Josh Matthews 17:10
Do you know how to find studs, you can build a super strong loft. But yes,
Tim Harman 17:14
that’s it. Exactly. So all that’s to say, I encourage you not to go out and buy a kit to do this yourself. There’s tons of resources online, including my article on the launch pad that I built my son on UK unmanned comm so definitely check that out. And I think maybe I’ll try to share the SketchUp that I did have the structure of the long beds that I just built. They could get to do some extra additional work to it, but that helped tremendously. I know if you’re a longtime listener, you’ve heard me talk about SketchUp I don’t know how many times how many times I’ve talked about SketchUp 1000. Yes, I love SketchUp I just used it while I’m in to do the loft beds but specifically I had never built a ladder before you guys ever built a ladder?
Unknown Speaker 18:04
(I have not) (can’t say that I have). Okay.
Tim Harman 18:06
So initially I was thinking about I was like, Oh, yeah, totally. Yeah, I can totally do that. But then I got to thinking about it. I was like, crap. Actually, I don’t know how to do that math. Like, I don’t know how to figure out the angles and all this kind of stuff. And I didn’t want it to just be straight up and down, right, because it’s not as easy for them to climb. So I wanted it to be at an angle. So when on SketchUp and it allowed me to figure out what the angle needed to be because I already had to scale the the loft beds built there. And so I was able to figure it out. So I put the ladders at a 23 degree angle, so well yeah. And I also was gonna butt joint all the wrongs, but I thought you know what, I’m doing all this. I’m going to do some dado cuts. So that’s why I came over to your house Josh to get my router back. The other day, and I had to build a jig to cut the database for the wrongs.
Josh Matthews 19:06
Man. That’s (goodness), a lot of effort. That’s worth it.
Tim Harman 19:10
Yeah, because it’s gonna make it all that more stronger for those of you that don’t know what a dado is it’s just a groove cut into wood that another piece of wood goes into making the joint extra strong.
Josh Matthews 19:21
Yeah, they’re gonna be up and down that 1000 times a day for however many years are coming up, and they’re only going to get bigger and so they’re gonna put somewhere on this on those ladders.
Tim Harman 19:33
Exactly. (So good choice) All right, I think that’s all I got for now about loft beds and I will continue to give you guys updates as well as posting pictures of…
Josh Matthews 19:43
the grand finale has gotta be coming up.
Tim Harman 19:45
Yeah, I will say okay, so another thing about painting so I paint I hate painting. Have I mentioned that before? Guys? Yes. Okay. Do not like painting at all (painting is the worst). I borrowed. Josh, is it your wife
Josh Matthews 19:57
sprayer? Yeah, she bought that she’s the only one in our house to use it. Really?
Dave Greenwood 20:00
She’s got a sprayer? Oh
Josh Matthews 20:01
yeah. So I borrow right our doors when we moved in.
Tim Harman 20:05
Okay, so did she do it outside?
Josh Matthews 20:07
She’s in the basement when it was unfinished. Okay.
Tim Harman 20:10
So I don’t know that I will ever use another sprayer inside. (Okay) It was not fun at all.
Dave Greenwood 20:18
There’s a lot of prep work right? Oh my
Tim Harman 20:20
gosh, tons of prep work and it’s still in everywhere. But I think if I was outside it’d be way better but that sprayer is legit yet it’s sprayed out way too much paint. It is not adjustable. I think it maybe it could be adjustable if I if I had a different tip and the gun
Josh Matthews 20:38
Yeah, tips are important, but
Tim Harman 20:41
I don’t know. It’s spread out a lot of paint. I just went through an entire gallon of paint. Oh, wow. Yeah.
Josh Matthews 20:48
I mean, it’s a lot of wood.
Tim Harman 20:50
Yeah, I had a few runs on it. And I was actually able to kind of wipe those off. I actually had to like move fast with it because it was right outside right. And then I had to clean it out in between coats because I couldn’t just leave the gun in there. Right? So I had to clean the gun twice. And that’s a whole process in and of itself
Josh Matthews 21:09
everyone that’s not a professional painter, Keystone Carpenter, who has been you know, he’s been tweaking for years like trying to find the perfect brand of sprayer with the right tip with the right paint like so that he can get his perfect finish. And yeah, it’s a it’s a science. I was an art.
Dave Greenwood 21:28
So I watched I think it was the Idaho painter on YouTube. believe is the name of his channel or whatever. He sprays trim. So he sprays all the trim. And it goes I mean, he’s a pro and his his crews are Pro, they’re pros. But when they do it, it goes like lightning. But the whole I mean the prep work, you can just tell everything is covered. Everything is taped, ton of prep work, but then once you’re painting it goes pretty quick.
Josh Matthews 21:55
Yeah, it’s
one or the other. You’re gonna prep, or you’re gonna paint fast Yeah, like,
Tim Harman 22:01
right? Well, you’d spend probably just as much time if you did it by hand and didn’t use a sprayer.
Josh Matthews 22:08
Right? You want the brushstrokes? Right, right.
Tim Harman 22:11
I turned out nice. I mean, it’s awesome. It’s really nice. So
Josh Matthews 22:14
I’m glad I’m glad that I did it for our office built ins but sounds like a lot of prep work on carpet too. So
Tim Harman 22:22
Oh, you know, you have to cover all those surfaces because especially inside that thing puts out so much paint. Yeah, just you’ll just get this like fine dust paint everywhere. Sweet looking
Josh Matthews 22:35
forward to that.
Tim Harman 22:36
Yeah, so moving on to trailer hitches, and specifically trailer hitches on minivans that don’t really normally call for a trailer hitch. So I went over to Josh because he asked if I needed what was an extension to a half inch drive. And I was like, Yeah, I know. Yeah, right. Sure. three options. And I go over there and Josh is installing a trailer hitch on his minivan. And I’d actually thought about doing that simply to put a bike rack up or just like one of those flat cargo shelf things. You know, on the outside of the vehicle, you need a trailer hitch for that. Well, Josh did it because he’s going to actually haul a massive trailer.
Dave Greenwood 23:26
Yeah, so you’re not gonna be hauling the trailer with the Lexus. Right? Josh has this he makes fun of rich people. But then he rolls around and
Josh Matthews 23:33
says, oh, man, my three Lexus Rouge. So in defense of my minivan, and Dave you can Shetty right now.
It’s a 2012 Toyota Sienna XLE (cherry) all wheel drive. Now the all wheel drive. I don’t know if this is true for the non all wheel drives. But the all wheel drives have a 3500 pound towing capacity. (But does that mean you should do that though?) That’s what it’s rated for. Like that’s what it’s rated for (This minivan’s got power!) there are
when when you do tow and look, I’m on the Sienna forums so don’t get me greedy (Watch out) but if you’re going to be towing like because you can 3500 pounds that’s like a decent little travel boat pool or a boat and they recommend having like a transmission cooler and things like that,
Tim Harman 24:26
like see that’s what a precaution that’s what I always think of if I ever see a car or minivan or something that doesn’t wouldn’t traditionally call for a trailer hitch. I see them hauling some sort of larger trailer I just think well that’s transmissions life just got cut
Dave Greenwood 24:43
in half. So my understanding is if if it’s a professional installing the trailer hitch, they typically will not put a two inch which is the that’s the typical like if I’m hauling something it’s a two inch receiver hitch. They typically won’t Put a two inch hitch or receiver hitch on like a minivan or a Honda Civic or something like that. Choose a smaller one the inch and a quarter. Because those people, they’re they’re huge. They’re usually saying, Hey, I’m just I’m just putting a bike rack on it. So I’m gonna do just an inch and a quarter so that they can’t get into trouble or hauling a 5000 bucks. You know, somebody’s gonna somebody’s gonna like Josh, but
Josh Matthews 25:21
$3500 dollars 3500… 3500 pounds is I mean, that’s a legitimate towing capacity. I’m not gonna be pulling a travel trailer or a big boat. For any distance behind this thing.
Tim Harman 25:32
How many pounds is your trailer empty? Do you know? (I have no idea.)
It’s a pretty big trailer. How does
Josh Matthews 25:39
(1200 pounds?) Oh, I was guessing like 800
Dave Greenwood 25:42
Okay. Can we weigh it?
Josh Matthews 25:45
I don’t know.
Tim Harman 25:46
Next time you go to the dump? Yeah, you got a full load or whatever, just
Dave Greenwood 25:51
tares out it just they take out the van. And now we’re gonna go we’re gonna take the van. We’re gonna weight it. We’re gonna get back. Yeah, no, we’re gonna get Back in line we’re going to get the trailer get back in line with the trailer do a little bit of math then we got it.
Tim Harman 26:05
or you could just look up the weight of the van online. Duh.
Josh Matthews 26:09
the trailer back get back on the van but no we want to know because we’re gonna be in it it’s gonna be half full of gas got all this to say it’s a capable towing machine people always again in defensive mode all wheel drive Sienna people out in like the Pacific Northwest and Colorado they overland which you can look it up it’s you can overland now they know there are multiple companies build lift kits for Toyota Sienna Oh,
Tim Harman 26:39
I want to see that they look
Josh Matthews 26:41
awesome. I think they look I should have stopped my wife cares zero about cars and vehicles. I showed her this like macked out van and it’s like a three and a half inch lift. Like it’s not massive, but you put like little bigger tires on it. She was like, Oh, that looks actually pretty cool. That looks like fun. I was like yeah, cuz you’re dead and it’s never going to
Dave Greenwood 27:00
But now alright so but this looks
Josh Matthews 27:03
1000 times better than a lot of other cars that try to be offered anyway and it’s super practical that you can camp inside of it people pull the seats out, they put shelving cabinetry in the back and make it like a camper. (Yeah, we totally get it. minivans are practical. Okay), All wheel drive. (Now but your minivan it was already set up to receive this receiver hitch, right like yes, it’s so the frame is pre drilled. I thought in my mind, I thought back in the day, I was like, Oh, you have to weld every trailer hitch on to the vehicle) so thank you for getting us back on topic Dave (you’re welcome). So all this to say I have a trailer it’s just a flat two flat trailer, not flat bed, but it’s a normal landscape type trailer, but it’s got like two foot signs like a little taller than normal landscape trailers. It’s perfect for taking things to the dump, which is the only reason I bought it. And it’s upset before on the podcast. The best thing I’ve ever purchased the most practical thing I’ve ever heard Just outside of this minivan, Tim and I agree because
Unknown Speaker 28:02
yeah, we use it all.
Josh Matthews 28:04
Again, it’s the it’s one of those things. If someone’s like, Hey, can you help me move? I’m like, I can’t, but you can borrow my trailer. Yeah, they’re like better than a pickup truck, and it’s super helpful. So a bunch of people actually this week have borrowed my trailer. When I sold my foreigner to get the minivan, I lost the ability to tow my own trailer he did. So now I must install the trailer hitch on the CNS. So I’m not speaking for every car, but most cars, especially SUVs, minivans, probably most other cars, trucks, obviously, have welded nuts in the frame that are ready to receive a trailer hitch. Like this is a normal thing from the factory. So when you buy a trailer, and I say hitch, it’s really a receiver, the receiver correct. So it’s the rack thing that goes up under the car, right? it spits out the square the receiver receiver that receives the trailer hitch The thing with the ball on it. Okay, so you have to mount the receiver to the car. For my van, it was six bolts. So I pulled down the little plastic cover that goes up onto the back end of the car, popped down the plastic cover and lifted this hitch straight in. It’s a two man job I did it with one person, so a little sketch, but these Bolton straight into the frame to the welded nuts that received the bolts or come to 75 pounds apiece, and that was it. That was it was 45 minutes. Could have been 20 minutes of ad to people but then you had to do the wiring. Yes. So that’s fine. So I was talking to Tim and Tim was like yeah, I want to receiver too. And I was like cool. And he said but it would only be for like a bike rack or something which is also a reason I put mine on because eventually, boys myself we’re gonna get bikes and put them on there. You don’t need the wiring. Like you don’t, if you just use a biker, just using a bike rack, you don’t need any extra wiring. But since I’m going to be pulling my trailer occasionally, I wanted the wiring. Now that part was the tough part because on the van at least and it could be different for all other cars, you want constant power to the lights, you want to be able to when the car is turned off. For instance, if you had to pull off on the shoulder for a flat tire, you’d want the emergency flashers to work if the car was turned off, and in order to do that, you have to
Tim Harman 30:35
use the right lead all the way to
Josh Matthews 30:38
I had to run a lead to the battery some cars may have a power supply somewhere near that
Tim Harman 30:42
I needed a constant hot that didn’t have anything to do with the ignition right. Some
Josh Matthews 30:45
vehicles may had that near the back like mine has a power port in the back but it’s not it’s only hot weed when the ignition is on. So to do it right. I had to run a wire all the way up to the front of the car and I did it from underneath the car, you could go inside under the carpet and all the trim and stuff and get through the firewall. I just went under the car, because that’s what they showed on YouTube. And it was good. I like the gas, our gas tank is super long and flat. And so there’s tons of wires already running on top of that thing. So, found a little path. It was a little hard because the van set so low, so I had a jacket and a couple different places. But I eventually got it and it’s all good. And I tested it and it works sweet. We need to get a picture of the minivan with a fully loaded trailer. Yeah, the fully loaded trailer. Before I do that, I want to get airbags. And this is another thing that’s a Sienna thing but the shocks in the back or the suspension of the back is a little soft and just for ride purposes. And but if you load it if you load a trailer up or even if you have a lot of luggage and people in the back, apparently shows a little bit of sag and that’s not ideal. So you can get airbags not expensive when I first heard airbags I was like, that sounds crazy. But it’s a system, they sell it on Amazon. You just pop it inside the rear springs, inflate it, you can hook it up straight to your air compressor. It’s just these bladders tubing.
Dave Greenwood 32:16
It’s a bag you stick into the
Josh Matthews 32:18
spring like a heavy duty rubber you know bag. Okay, basically anyway you inflate those up you can control the pressure in them and boom, yeah, so before I would load up a full trailer,
Dave Greenwood 32:30
I need airbag so you’re not like reverse Bulldog in it, you know, drag
Josh Matthews 32:34
tailpipe down the road already Alo minivan until I get my lift. It sits pretty low.
Tim Harman 32:40
Yeah, nice. So I enjoyed hearing about that. If you guys have a vehicle that you haul something ridiculous with a trailer hitch, like if you’ve got some sort of like Toyota Camry with a trailer hitch and you’re hauling some crazy thing. I want to see pictures of it posted on our Facebook group. We’ll be back after the break.
Josh Matthews 33:04
This episode is sponsored by 1776 United 1776 United is a patriotic and historically inspired lifestyle brand they make the best patriotic shirts and apparel on the market today. I personally own many of their products and if you want to don patriotic gear without looking gaudy, check them out on Instagram Facebook, and at 1776united.com
Tim Harman 33:32
Aight guys, welcome back. Josh, it’s your week for the segment. I don’t think you have a people dying story this week do you?
Josh Matthews 33:40
Right, sorry. Next time, but I have come completely unprepared so with that said, I’m gonna do some corporate type icebreaker questions. (Whoa, so a get to know your host kinda thing?). Yeah, this will be a little get to know us. You know, the more you know about us, so yeah, I’m just gonna throw out a couple questions. We’ll just do two. We’ll do two each, and that’ll be it. Okay.
And someone asked you, you answer RV wish and we do not know what questions he’s gonna ask. I don’t think you do since I’m
totally winging it right now. So here’s the first one. If you could write a book that was going to be a best seller, what would the topic be? It can be it can be like, well, it can be fiction exams going to be how to build a loft bed. Good fiction. I don’t think that’d be a best seller. Fiction nonfiction. If you could write a book what would you want the topic to be? Dan What have you always I know you both are like super rd right brain guys. I’m always just Oh,
Tim Harman 34:51
I got it. I got it. All right. So 100 reasons why Germany should not be a country.
Dave Greenwood 34:58
simples very strong. way
Tim Harman 35:00
about this if you don’t know it’s funny. Now it’s just kind of like it’s an ongoing joke. If you’ve been a longtime listener, you’ve heard me talk about it would it? Would it first come up on my list? Your top 10 list of things that you hate that most people like or something? Yeah,
Josh Matthews 35:17
things you love that most people would hate or opposite one of mine
Tim Harman 35:21
was that the the thought or idea that Germany is allowed to be a country? Anyways, I’m just throwing that out there. I still
Josh Matthews 35:30
hung up on the Holocaust. We get it right.
Tim Harman 35:32
I would probably change my answer. But that’s just something that just popped in my head. I mean, look, there’s legitimate reasons. We don’t need to get into there’s probably lots of reasons why they should they make cars. Great. There’s lots of great things about I mean, hey, we went to the moon because of the Nazis. Yeah, let’s just face it.
Josh Matthews 35:53
I know a lot of Germans that I like
Tim Harman 35:57
I’m married to a woman. And there’s that it was funny because I had to ask her like, now when did your family come? Wow. Yeah, well,
Unknown Speaker 36:07
make sure it’s all good. Yeah, right.
Dave Greenwood 36:09
It’s like one of the early questions that you asked just.
Unknown Speaker 36:12
Oh no isn’t a screener? Yeah, it was just being funny man I
Dave Greenwood 36:15
got nothing for you. I don’t want that like the what would the topic be? Is that the question at the top I’ve got a I’ve had
Josh Matthews 36:20
a book in my back pocket for like 15 years, you’re always
Dave Greenwood 36:23
say you’re always saying that I need to write a book. I just spout off
Josh Matthews 36:28
just write memoirs. Not it’s not like a true memoir, but just like a life thing. No. Like, you remember super vivid thing? Yeah, very very old child.
Dave Greenwood 36:39
pointless thing?
Tim Harman 36:40
Yeah, like not to use
Josh Matthews 36:42
I don’t know. I think to me, they’re entertaining day to day though. It’s not helping me out. So yeah, maybe it would just be like deep thought right. Believe cream, your random collection of like, just life experience. Yeah, there
Tim Harman 36:53
you go. You could just title it. I like the doughnuts in engineering.
Dave Greenwood 36:57
There you go. I do like donut. Engineering is
Josh Matthews 37:02
like engineering. There’s engineers like it. Yeah, I mean, I guess I like it as my career. Sorry, I would write since no one’s answering the question. I want to write a book that’s geared for like 19 to 2324 year old Don’t be an idiot yeah called how not to be an idiot Hey, go and it’s just I mean half of its gonna be things that I did like just looking back at that age for myself and delivering that information of like, Hey, don’t do this because of this. And I’m sure there’s folks out there you know, that went to jail all kinds of like bad decisions like that. That could write plenty more but that to me would be like one of the most useful books but the problem is is You’re so dumb as a male at that age that you when you when
Dave Greenwood 37:54
you remember being that age and you’re like, Okay, old man, right. Got it. Yeah, yeah,
Josh Matthews 37:58
like that deer book would be given us a gift to tell these like young men Yeah, it would be like the thing that it has to have, like a way catch your title. So that they might like crack it every once in a while. But that’s hard.
Dave Greenwood 38:11
Yeah, you could do it. You could do it in a format, you know, that’s more palatable to the, to the jerk, you know, 19 2021 year old Josh Matthews that he’d be like, oh,
Josh Matthews 38:21
read this. The real Yeah, the real. I mean, the real way to make that change is to try to raise your kids better. So that when they get to that age, they’re not as dumb as you were. I think that’s important.
Dave Greenwood 38:34
Like, a 19 year old male is the dumbest creature on the face of the planet. I mean, I’ve been there. So
Tim Harman 38:41
yeah, I want to revise my answer and say, obviously, I need to write a book on you can man I mean, come on, guys. What
Dave Greenwood 38:47
about first? He could do that. Yeah, well, the top down restoration. Yeah.
Josh Matthews 38:51
All right. We’re gonna we’re gonna close this out because next this is riveting here. Last question. Would you rather travel into the future, to meet your descendants or into the past to meet your ancestors
Tim Harman 39:09
in the past because I don’t want to see how I screwed things up
Dave Greenwood 39:13
I’m gonna go to the future because you can read about the past you can read about your boring ancestors Moses Greenwood, but
Tim Harman 39:19
yeah, really though I always look I
Josh Matthews 39:22
can draw me meet meet them like conversate with I would
Tim Harman 39:25
want to go in the past because the past is dictating your own future I feel like it the more you know about the past, right? So it may help you inform mistakes made and that sort of thing I’m trying
Dave Greenwood 39:38
to think of which one’s more believable. If somebody came to me and said, I’m from the future. I’d be like, there’s no way you’re convincing me that this is true.
Josh Matthews 39:51
You saw how I went and Back to the Future.
Dave Greenwood 39:54
took three movies for him to convince everybody
Josh Matthews 39:56
No, I mean in part three, document tells Claire that he’s from the future. She did not
Dave Greenwood 40:04
make it well, who she was mad because she was like you. You are really? Yeah. My emotion. Yes.
Josh Matthews 40:09
And my love for Jules Verne. Right. Yeah. I mean, we all see how that goes.
Tim Harman 40:14
Yeah, I would want to go back because I’m always sad that I don’t have much information about my ancestors. Yeah, I’ve got names. I’ve got dates. I’ve got marriage records. I mean, I could take it back to like, 1740s. Right. But beyond that, I don’t really have anything they were they they wrote. I’ve got some wills and stuff like that, but I don’t Yeah, you know, there’s really nothing of value there to really see what they were really like. And so I would enjoy talking to some of them.
Josh Matthews 40:46
Yeah, I’m all I mean, I’m intrigued by the future to see like how amazing or terrible of a job I did, but going back and I mean, even like two generations ago to see like, bye Hard living like type stuff of them having to move you just do it yourself.
Dave Greenwood 41:07
floors like these people are way harder
Josh Matthews 41:10
than know what I’m saying. Yeah, I would want a healthy dose of it though. They
Tim Harman 41:14
were just saying you would give you a it would give you perspective. Yeah,
Josh Matthews 41:18
they Yeah, for sure. They didn’t take naps back then. No they did not. Yeah, the sacrifices that were made so that I can live on Easy Street in 2020.
Tim Harman 41:28
Okay, okay, that’s a good question there Josh and a good little short segment, get to know your hosts a little bit more. So we’ll continue to do that off and on in the near future when one of us just doesn’t come prepared like Josh did, today. Anyways, Alright guys, thanks for joining us once again on the You can, man.™ podcast. Hey, take some time to share the podcast with a friend. And leave us a review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. We’ll catch you guys next time.
Transcribed by Otter.ai
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