u/thisposthitstooclose

My mom has had this plant longer than I’ve been alive. Only just decided to look it up. The main stem died probably more than a decade ago now and it’s always been in this half-alive state, it’s never been repotted. This pic is three years old but it’s about like this now except taller. Taller than the original stem ever got! Like seven feet. It has no stalk whatsoever and falls over if it isn’t leaning on something.

I’d like advice on how to propagate this guy or if that’s too risky. I’d rather not risk killing it.

This was as far as I could go without risking too much with the super limited stock clearance haha. Really was hoping I could get a bit further up the mountain but once I saw a creek bed I threw it in reverse haha

2012, 260k miles after this 4,000 mile trip

Get the carbon gunk out of your engine!!

So I had at most 35 MPG consistently for years since I got my 2012 with 220k miles three years ago. It was better than my old car but I knew Priuses are supposed to get 50 MPG, so I’ve been on the search for ways to gain my MPG back for years.

My head gasket blew about a year after I got the car, got it fixed and now years later I saw a thread here where someone claimed their Gen 2 mileage went way up after getting their fuel injectors cleaned, so I decided to take a swing at it with the reasoning that if the head gasket blew due to excessive carbon buildup then the engine is probably filthy.

I opted to buy remanufactured injectors (so professionally cleaned and restored) and followed multiple tutorials to replace mine. Holy shit they were disgusting. Way worse than any video I was watching. I DO NOT recommend doing this if you’re an amateur because I broke two of the injector’s clips and thought I destroyed my engine 🤪, had to get it towed and a mechanic replaced the clips.

What I DO recommend is taking your car to a shop and getting them to run professional cleaner through the injectors. You can always buy Techron and use that in the tank, I’d tried that before and I want to believe I gained like one MPG from that and maybe if I kept using it I’d get more gunk out.

What I am sure of is I now average 42 MPG over my previous 35 MPG which is the biggest gain I’ve seen in the time I’ve owned the car. I’m satisfied and my text step is putting in some Valvoline Restore and Protect at my next oil change.

Basically get the carbon gunk out of your engine, it’ll make a world of difference

Captions for some of the images since mobile won’t let me add them-

1. Injector ports, wish I’d taken a pic before I scooped out all the carbon gravel-like gunk, it was dense and piled up in there
2. Old injectors bleaugh
3. One of the first longer distance trips I did after replacement
4. A 300+ mile round trip on the interstate I did, filled up as I left, pic is before I filled up again. In the winter pre-replacement this trip was 31.8 MPG at the same speed (\~75 MPH)
   5 and 6 are my fuel savings records which aren’t a gigantic difference as of yet because my mileage varies a lot and you can see I make a lot of short trips. If you’re wondering about those, they’re averaging 5-6 MPG better than before.

I’m gonna try Valvoline Restore and Protect next to see if that’ll also make a difference.

Got a desk, Studio Display and Intuos3 for it. Still needs another gig of ram, hoping Manga Studio 4 will be more responsive when it’s maxed out (popup every time I start it yells at me). I’ll get Flash Professional 8 for it too

Pics taken post-dusting