Installed the Van Speedometer, Fixed the Weed Mower and Ate Some Kumquats

Saturday April 4, 2015 Guerneville CA.

This morning I decided it would be a good day to get my new speedometer installed in my van so I started with that.

Marty comes by for a visit

I started to get things together when a friend, Marty, came by for a chat. He’s just back from Arizona snow birding and is planning to go up to his cabin near Boonville soon. We made some plans to meet at his cabin next week and spend some time and also a plan to go to the Noyo River in Fort Bragg to do some kayaking for a day.

We shoot the bull for a couple hours, then he left and I had a little nap, then started back on the speedometer install of the van.

Installed the Van speedometer

I had to hook up all the wires for the lights for it. Of course there was just enough wire to barely get it hooked up, but I got it. Then I tried to install the gauge assembly into the dash, but it was sloppy, so I pulled it out again and  realized I had the clips on the top of it in backwards, so turned those around and it snapped right in. I hooked the battery up and tried the lights for the dash. They all seemed to be working, Next, I tried right turn signal, left turn signal. No left turn signal. Lucky I had an extra bulb for it and was able to just reach behind it and install it and it worked, so all was good. Except, I just realized I never hooked up the speedometer cable yet. I’ll do that tomorrow and should be easy.

I should of started the van too, as I was pulling all he wires under the dash and who knows what I may have done? I’ll start it up tomorrow.

Did some watering

After that, I set the water on my blueberry patch, which is also my potato patch. I had to watch it to make sure it was doing it right,……………. right. :O)

Fixing the weed mowers belt problem

With the watering job in progress, I tackled the job of replacing the belt on my weed mower, which has been prematurely failing. I put the new belt on and checked it all for something wrong with the belt setup, but all looked good, so I started to do some mowing of the weeds, still watching the belt for some trouble. After a short time, I was just barely able to detect some smoke coming off the new belt, so stopped it and checked it out some more, very carefully.

What I discovered was the side of the belt was rubbing on the head of one of the engine mounting bolts under the machine. Hummmmmm? I must of installed that incorrectly when I put the new motor on a couple of years ago.

I took the bolt off which wasn’t easy and was going to just leave it off, but when I removed it, a piece of metal grass guard fell down and would now rub on the belt, so I had to put a bolt back in there somehow. After a good break to consider the problem, I decided to grind most of the bolt head off so it would clear and also removed the washer that was under the bolt head which gave it some more clearance. I put it all back together and started it up and did some mowing and no smoke, so maybe it will stop eating belts.

Sitting around enjoying the yard

Of course after mowing some weeds, a rest was required and I spent the rest of the day just sitting in the yard doing some planning for my Boonville trip next week.

I did notice my roses are just getting ready to bloom.

Yummm, Kumquats, oops, Loquats I mean

Added later: I was informed these are loquats, not kumquats. Still yummy.

I’ve had this loquat tree that is growing good, but never has had much fruit. But this year, for some reason, maybe the warmer winter, the tree has lots of fruit. They are just barely getting ripe, but I’ve been doing some sampling of them. I’ve found that I like them a lot and besides they are the only thing in the yard that is eatable right now.

Here’s what the loquats look like.

And just before dark, I noticed these caterpillars on my California Dutchmen’s Pipe flower plant. They eat all the leaves which is ok with me as I don’t eat them.

I didn’t work too hard today, but I did get some things done for a nice day in the yard.