My rifle is back with the Timney trigger installed and an extra 1" of spacers added to the stock butt. All this plus safety check for a $100. A good deal I think. It fits a lot better now. A new rifle scope is in the works for my birthday, too! Can't wait to visit the rifle range and see how it all works.

I dropped off my hunting rifle at the Colorado School of Trades, a gunsmith school, to have a Timney Sportsman trigger installed and the stock lengthened a little. It should be ready in a couple weeks.

The military trigger on there now is pretty heavy and seems to have a lot of gritty creep even after taking up the initial slack.

It was after shooting a really nice Savage tactical rifle with a truly brilliant trigger and putting a group inside an inch, especially two holes touching, that convinced me to upgrade my rifle.

The Savage had zero creep that I could feel, a light pull, and such a crisp, instantaneous break with zero overtravel, that it was just a matter of thinking about firing and it suddenly happened without even feeling like I'd moved a muscle. Very cool.

I'm hoping my sad 3-6" groups at 100 yards will tighten up considerably once I get the firearm back.

The biggest upgrade will be to my confidence if I can put a string of bullets in an inch circle on the bench. I've always worried that if I shoot minute of pie plate at the range, I'll be shooting minute of barn door when I'm vibrating from buck fever in the field.

Oh joy. Check out this article on theft of catalytic converters from NPR.

"Thieves are attracted to the platinum, palladium and rhodium found in the converters, which reduce auto emissions."

"There are recent episodes in Baltimore, Maryland, in Texas, in Colorado, and some in Illinois. So thats all the confirmed recent reports. However it's sporadic, but they continue over the last several years, for sure."

"The easiest thing for them to do is to find one that doesn't require jacking the vehicle up at all. So we find most of our victims are owners of SUVs or pickup trucks, vehicles that tend to have more of a ground clearance. ..."

Sounds like it's a fairly uncommon crime, but with a 4" lift, TC is in the higher risk group for being targeted. Maybe I'm jumpy because someone stole my stereo not that long ago.

The truck finally passed emissions!!! Apparently the rebuild, new power valve, emissions canister, and stock air intake and cool air hose helped. Not sure what helped the most. Whatever, I passed. I am SO relieved, you have no idea.

HC 3.4251 limit 4.000
CO 24.2467 limit 40.000
NOx 5.8338 limit 6.000

I'll be getting my tags tomorrow.