Acquaintance of mine is financially destitute, no regular job, only income is from odd jobs and selling firewood. He hauled off all the wood from that big maple I had taken down. He gets some income, I get rid of the wood, we're both happy.

His splitter was puking oil out the shaft seal on the cylinder and was costing him more in hydraulic oil that the wood was worth, so I told him I'd pull it apart and re-seal the cylinder.

Seal kit was pretty cheap @ ~$13 (Chinese, no point in spending big bucks on a worn-out machine).

When I took it apart, it was pretty obvious that the oil was full of water and there wasn't much anyway, so I drained it all out and shitcanned the filter.

5 gallon bucket of cheap oil and a hydraulic filter: $97.47 and that's with my military discount!

I'll bill him for the materials and let him figure out what my time is worth (basically, I'll donate it and let him pay me a few bucks for his pride)

That cylinder was a brass-bound son-of-a-bitch to get apart, if I charged him by the hour for my time he'd be SOL.

Karma. You done good.

Good on you. I hope he appreciates how well you took care of him

PHPaul you did good... Once had a friend in a simular situation of being out of work who came to me wanting to sell me some of his electronic test instruments but i refused to buy ---but i made a monatary donation...And a couple of days later he found a job and was able to use the test instruments on the new job. ........ .................... drill sgt.

Karma is real . You did something good and it will return to you some day .

Sounds like the guy is at least trying to take care of himself, and you helped him out.
That’s a good thing.

Well done, Paul. Pretty typical story of rural Mainers helping Mainers.