Wednesday June 12, 2024 Guerneville CA
Cherries
I was thinking there might be a few cherries left on my neighbor’s tree if the birds hadn’t eaten them all yet.
And since I needed to check on how Jerry was doing repairing this rig that had a lot of water in it’s fuel, I went over there to see if I could find Jerry.
He saw me first and said he’d be over to the rig in about five minutes, so that gave me time to check out the cherry tree. The birds had eaten most of them, but there were still a few dozen left high up on the tree so I climbed the ladder and ate most of them.
Bad fuel repairs
Jerry came over and explained what he’d been doing to bleed the diesel injectors and hadn’t gotten it started yet.
So I said to get a wrench and we’ll bleed all the injectors as you crank the engine. One of the injector pipes reached pressure so I had him close that one. The others didn’t seem to want to prime, but we did think we heard a small putt out of that one, so that was encouraging.
So, I said to close all the injector pipes and lets see what it will do. when you turn it over.
Well, it started and ran at full bore, no matter where we put the throttle. I said to try the compression release as that’s how you stop this one, but that didn’t work either.
The only way I could figure out how to shut the engine down was to loosen the injector feed pipes. I had to tell him twice before he understood that it was the only way to stop this run away engine.
He did it and it stopped.
Jerry trying to shut down the run away diesel engine.
Once the engine was stopped he looked at the throttle linkage and it seemed fine so after monkeying around he tried to start it again and it took off again.
I said to drain all the diesel out of the fuel tank and drain all the fuel lines as I believe there is some gas mixed in with your diesel as that’s about the only thing I could think that might cause the run away engine.
I left him at it.
Forest work
Tom wanted me to get the water flowing down the pipe on an old spring so I drove on up to the pipe and this downed tree blocked my way.
I needed to cut this into pieces so I could move it out of the way.
I cut it into smaller pieces I could handle.
You can actually see the road now.
I checked that spot out then I drove up to this spot at the spring and checked the water flow. Lots of water here, but it’s not going down the pipe.
I hadn’t planned to walk down the pipe line as it was real steep and slippery, but I started down the hill along the pipe line checking it as I went, pulling it up and adjusting it.
I got the pipe mostly unplugged just by shaking it but I found it had come apart at a connection near the middle. I was in the process of putting the pipe back together when, all of a sudden my right angle bone was stinging and them my angle and my left arm. I heard a buzz and knew what that meant. Beat feet and I did.
Yellow Jackets
If I hadn’t beat feet, I would of gotten a lot more stings. It’s important to move out as soon as possible when getting stung, or you might end up in a real bad way.
I beat feet down the hill instead of up the hill where my rig was parked and now I was real tired out, so I walked on home to get a ride back up to where my rig was parked. Tom took me up to the rig and I drove on home for a rest.
Its’ not the first or will it be the last time I’ve been stung messing around in the roads. When you get too close to an unseen nest, that’s what is going to happen unless you hear the buzz before you get stung, then you might have a chance to run first and avoid it.
Nice day.
