Moving Wood, Measuring the Valley Water Level and Working on the Van’s Engine Idling Problem

Saturday October 22, 2016 Guerneville CA.

Yard chores

Being a weekend, I decided to stay home and do some yard chores and just take it easy.

I started with the hard stuff and moved several loads of firewood to the woodpile.

I picked up the cut wood here where this big Chinese elm tree fell down last summer. There’s not too much wood left to move, but there is still a lot of brush.

What’s the cat after

While I was getting the wood in the wheel barrel, I noticed my neighbors cat chasing something up in an apple tree. By the time I got the camera, kitty was sitting under the tree looking innocent enough.

She knew she had a little pine squirrel up in the tree. I spotted the little critter clinging tightly to the tree and not making any moves. It sat still like this for quite some time.

The cat hung around for about a half hour doing some preening before wondering off. The squirrel took off sometime later as when I checked it had gone.

Woodpile

I moved five or six loads of wood before I got tuckered out and had to quit. This is most of the wood from the tree which I will now cover up so it doesn’t get rained on too much.

Valley water level

I wanted to measure the depth of the valley water level so I dropped a line down this unused well to see. The water level is down to about twenty three feet, three more feet than about a week ago when I measured it. I’d like to see it down to about thirty feet before we drill the next well so I know any water we get is not coming from the valley water supply.

Here’s the string and tape I used to measure the old well’s water level which is also the level of the water in the valley at this location.

Of course I took some breaks and puttered around a bit.

Working on the engines rough idle problem

I’ve been having some rough idle problems with the new V8 engine I just installed in my van and did some work looking into that.

Something to do with the MAP sensor

Steve identified a problem with the map sensor while I was up visiting with him at Gold Lake. I found some gas in the  line then and cleaned the sensor out and tried it while on my last trip. It worked ok for a bit then started running rough again.

This time when I looked in the line that the Map sensor plugs into, I found it full of gas which should not be.

Changed ports

I cleaned the gas out of the the sensor and installed the proper vacuum line on the unit. I also moved the vacuum tap from the back of he unit to a new port in the front of the unit as there just should not of been that much gas in the rear port, so I plugged that port up for the front port.

I started the engine and found it operated a lot different. I had to increase the idle screw a lot to keep the engine going, but then it seemed to work better.

More pep

I took the van for a little test drive down the road and it seemed to have a lot more pep so I think I’m on the right track.

Tomorrow I will reset the computer’s memory and set the idle as the service manual specifies and see how things look. It’s no longer idling rough, but I think it needs to be calibrated.

By then it was evening and I just sat around and chair hopped mostly. I did move one more load of little pieces of wood to the woodpile and that was it for my day.