sailing the NorSea

x

WEEK 17 2010

Last Week- Sun- Mon- Tue- Wed- Thur- Fri- Sat- Next Week

Picture of the Week

MAIN PAGE

Oxnard  Weather Underground
Click for Oxnard, California Forecast
Lancaster WeatherUnderground
Click for Lancaster, California Forecast 		Martinez WeatherUnderground
Click for Buchanan, California Forecast

First Post, 17 March 2002
 Eight Years Ago, This Week, 2002 Seven Years Ago, This Week, 2003 Six Years Ago, this week, 2004 Five Years Ago, this week, 2005 Four Years Ago, This Week, 2006
 Three Years Ago, This Week, 2007
 Two Years Ago, This Week, 2008
 One Year Ago, This Week, 2009




Saturday 1 May 2010
Saturday - Well, there wasn't any unsecured wifi, but after a bit of fiddling I managed to get the Android working as an EVDO modem, via the PDAnet application. It has some quirks, but feels basically as fast as the old broadband card. FTP doesn't want to work.

I've been busy. I scraped the old acoustic ceiling off in my father's den. Tedious and dusty work - I wore a breathing mask the whole time. It worked out to about a 5 gallon bucket of what looks like stock sheetrock putty.

I also began demolishing a downstairs wall, to check the foundation. What I see so far is pretty horrible. There is a lot of work there...

Of course it was miserably hot, 90F, hottest day of the year so far...

Friday 30 April 2010
Friday - up at Dad and Mom's, working away on stuff.

Thursday 29 April 2010

Thursday - on the road.

Wednesday 28 April 2010

Wednesday - working away on various things. I need to head north for a couple of days, so I'm getting ready for that.

I gave up the broadband card, so hopefully the neighbor still has unsecured wifi ;-)


A recent annoyance was that I ran out of minutes. This hasn't happened for a while. When getting the Android I did reset the account back to 450 minutes, since many people I know are now on Verizon.

What I didn't realize is that my "Friends & Family Free" also went away, automatically, when I chose the base plan. Verizon strikes again!
 

Tuesday 27 April 2010

Tuesday - still keeping busy.

The mower belt isn't to be found in the Antelope Valley, so I ordered it and a new drive belt (and a manual) from Sears online. In the meantime I finished mowing the back lawn with the regular lawn mower, and edged it a bit as well.

My next lawn will be round. [via The Borderline Sociopathic Blog for Boys]

Put tires on the old barbecue - they are too small actually, 6" diameter rather than 7", but should still work OK.

I ordered the new zoom lens last week, but it still hasn't shown up. The 8GB Compact Flash card has arrived, and seems to work fine. I estimate that it will hold around 2200 high quality JPEG images using the old Canon 350D - that should be enough for a few days holiday.

I ordered some bottle caps last week and they have arrived. I now have enough stuff to start making beer - bottles, cap, capper, reactor, sugar & malt.

Doing quantities of bills and paperwork.

Monday 26 April 2010

Monday - with the deck off and turned upside down, the problem became easy to see.

x
Underside of the 38" mower deck

At some point the mower had hit something hard enough to bend the forward edge of the deck in (towards the rear) about an inch. There would have still been clearance for the blades but for a fairing to guide the mown grass to the outlet. I fiddled with it for a bit, but brute force was the only real option - a 3 lb sledge eventually did the trick. Then I used the wire welder to put a tack on the joint between the forward edge and side edge of the deck - the bead there being broken as well.

As well as bending the deck the two "mandrels", each holding a blade, had broken one lug each. There isn't much I can do about this - I can't weld aluminium and the fittings are $65 each. The two remaining lugs on each seem to be holding things in place, so I'll just hope things work for now.

A third issue were the free-wheeling blade stoppers. These were two little brake pads that should have been forced against the blade pulleys when the blades were disengaged from the belt drive. Neither worked, one was frozen open, the other frozen closed. I removed them both for now - it's difficult to see how they ever could have worked properly, there being no adjustment  screw.

After fixing all this I put the deck back on the tractor and started her up. No problem. It mowed like a champ through the nearly foot high grass, until about 3/4's of the way done, when the motor-to-blades belt broke.

It was pretty chewed up, so it's possible it had jumped the belt guides during installation. Or possibly it was just an age related failure. If it had been forcing the left blade to rotate despite an applied brake pad all last year then it had probably gotten a lot of wear and the tall grass was the last straw (stalk. heh.). I should have looked closely at it when I had the deck off, but I was running late.

By this time it was mid-afternoon, and I had to perform my other errand: putting new brake pads on the Explorer. It's been a while, and I could hear the little warning scrapers all the last week, particularly in front. So I took it over to a place my brother recommended, and they put new pads on, all around.

While they were doing that, I walked over to the nearest auto parts store to get a new belt. No joy - it's a long belt, 84.5", and they didn't carry anything past an 80". The auto parts clerk recommended a specialty shop just a few miles away. After getting done with the brakes I went over there - and discovered that they had gone out of business!

It was 6:00pm by then, and the rest of the shops were probably closing up for the night.

Sears, this weekend when I was over there, claimed not to have a belt in the store. I'll check again, and if not there is another specialty shop down in Palmdale that may carry the belt. Otherwise I'll just have to order it online.

So, the mower issues this weekend were:
  1. worn blades
  2. bend mower deck
  3. broken mandrel lugs
  4. broken safety stops
  5. broken belt

Sunday 25 April_2010

Sunday - still working on the tractor. I am taking the mower deck off, the better to look at what is really happening under there. I think perhaps the deck is bent on the right side, since the left side blade seems likely to fit. Without a manual this all takes a lot longer than one would expect.


The 19th Annual Poppy Festival was going on this weekend, so I spent a few hours there with friends. The weather was very nice - it seems like it's usually broiling or freezing or windy (pick any two), but this was pleasant shirtsleeve weather.


Book #26 was To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis. This is a time travel book that get its title from a reference to Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog...).  It was well done, an excellent read, with bits of JKJ, Wodehouse and Agatha Christie all mixed in. Recommended.

In fact, I liked it enough that I'll look for more of her books at the library.

Picture of the Week


BB-3, the USS Oregon
Photo Notes: Rear turret, USS OREGON.

Last Week- Sun- Mon- Tue- Wed- Thur- Fri- Sat- Next Week