Cutting Blackberry Vines and Repairing the Van’s Headlight After Discovering a Problem

Sunday October 30, 2016 Guerneville CA.

More van work and those darn blackberry vines

I could hear it raining again this morning as I woke, so no reason to jump out of bed.

When I did get it going, I installed the new dimmer switch on the van. It was an easy job and it worked ok without overheating now.

After that, I got the clippers and cut black berry vines here and there around the yard as they are slowly taking over, especially if I don’t keep on them.

The rain mostly stopped as I walked around here cutting berry vines.

And here under these cherry trees, the berry vines like to grow. Actually, the vines like to grow most everywhere in my yard.

Thunder clouds roll by through out the day

There were big black thunder clouds going by during the day, sometimes dropping a burst of rain.

Here’s some fall colors as the wind blows the leaves out of the tree. The wind would come and go with the thunder clouds.

Eventually cutting berry vines tired me out, so a nap was in order.

Final timing adjustment and setting the idle properly

I wanted to check the van engine timing one more time just to make sure I had it right, so I set things up. I also marked the timing pulley better so zero was easier to see. Started the engine and warmed it up and the timing was right on at eight degrees BTC.

I also set the idle as specified just to make sure.

The rough idle problem is still there

I still have the rough idle problem, so I’ve done all I can until I talk with the guy who programs the computer.

I made a headlight discovery

Later in the afternoon, I decided to take the van’s headlights apart to see if I could improve them as there seemed to be something not quite right with the one on the driver’s side.

In the process I discovered the driver’s side headlight assembly wasn’t really the right one for the driver’s side, but was one for the passenger side. Checking the passenger side, it was the right one for that side, so someone had replaced the driver’s side with the wrong unit.

I need to make this work properly

The metal plate is adjusted to aim the headlight with the two screws, one at the top and one at the left, but the one at the left should be on the right for the driver’s side. You can also see some of the original telephone green paint as this van used to be a telephone repairman’s van.

Here I’ve removed the metal place and you can see the two adjusting screws, at the top and at the left. The left screw was adjusted all the way in to try to get it to aim right, but it just wouldn’t go any further and was facing out more than it should.

Whacks them in the eyes

So what this all means is the driver’s side headlight assemble will adjust more to the outside of the van than it will to the inside, which means it shines in oncoming driver’s eyes a lot.

I checked to see if I could just turn the metal piece around, but no, that’s not possible, so what to do?

Adding a rib to raise it up

I decided if I could increase the stop on the right side of the metal adjust piece, I could then aim the headlight in, so I got out my epoxy putty and built up the rib you can see in the bottom of this picture which is really the side of the metal piece which should force the light inward.

Sunset

The epoxy putty sets pretty fast. The sun went down as I waited for the epoxy to set up enough for me to put it back together. I thought there  might be a nice red sunset, but this was all I got.

Maybe low batteries on the golf cart

About that time, ,my brother Tom comes driving in to my yard with his golf cart, driving in reverse. He says it won’t go forward. I check it out and measure the battery voltages with my voltmeter and see the battery voltages are all low, which means they need charging. His cart takes more juice to go forward than backwards, so I told him to put the charger on the batteries and see if that would fix it.

Headlights back together and now need adjusting

I was able to get the headlights back together just before dark. I need to go back out there now that it is dark and see what I can do to adjust them somewhat.

It appears that my built up rib is going to do the job.

That was my day.