Bob's Eyes

Saturday, December 2, 2023 Guerneville CA.

Replace bike chain

I’ve had this new chain for some time now and haven’t had time to get it installed.

But today, it was raining lightly so it was a good day to work on it. I tried to find the master link that should hold the chain together when it was on, but after, looking and looking, I didn’t find one, so couldn’t get the old chain off.

I’m either blind or there wasn’t one. I got the grinder out and ground off a chain link to get the old chain off and then pulled the new chain on hooking it to the old chain with a master link that came with the new chain. That worked well. I adjusted the new chain and that was done.

 

Bike ride

I took the bike up into the hills to test out the new chain and to see if anything was hitting. The light rain had stopped so I headed on out and made a quick ride up and back. The new chain seems ok.

Dull chain on the saw

I’d cut out a stump when I last used it. It’s hard to do that without dulling the chain on dirt and rocks while cutting the stump and the chain was pretty dull.

I sharpened up the saw and gassed and oiled it for the next job I had in mind.

 

Looking up to the hills from my house showed a little rain up there, but it looked real light, so I headed on up there with the chainsaw on the quad runner.

 

Nice trail

The forest was damp and real nice and peaceful as I rode up this trail, headed for some downed trees that had fallen across the roads.

 

I stopped here for a short break and to check out the view.

 

The view showed a bit of light rain out there, but it was so light it didn’t get you wet much.

 

From there I rode on over to where the first trees I wanted to cut off the road were.,,,,,,,,, But.

I tried and tried to start the chainsaw, but it wouldn’t even pop after much trying, until it wore me out.

 

Procedure

You follow the procedure to start the saw, but if that fails, now you don’t know if the saw is flooded with gas or there’s just not enough gas, so you pull and pull, hoping for a pop, but not this time.

I decided to move on to the next tree which was across the property, so maybe after resting the saw might start.

 

At first the saw wouldn’t start, but after I turned on the on/off switch I was able to get it started up and cut the tree stuff out of the road.

 

Then I went up to this one, which was part of the tree I just cut and cut it up.

 

That log is going to take off down the hill when I get it rolling and it’s pretty big.

 

I moved the quad back, just in case and got the big log rolling and it took off down the hill and landed somewhere down below where the quad was, not hitting it.

 

Then I drove on back to the first log where the chainsaw wouldn’t start  earlier and cut these up.

 

That was enough work to tire me out and my back wasn’t too happy either.

 

I made it home just before dark and it started to actually rain a bit after dark. Good I was in the house for that.

Nice day.

Friday December 1, 2023 Guerneville CA.

Dirt bike work

My spanner wrench came in the other day, so now I can adjust the shock pressure.

 

I had most of the stuff out of the way so I could get at the shock to adjust it.

 

I wasn’t sure where I should set the shock adjustment. In the end I decided to set it to it’s highest setting as it was just too much work to get into here. There’s the new spanner wrench that I used to do the job. It wasn’t too hard with the right tools.

 

Getting all the plastic parts back in was quite a challenge as there are a lot of bolts in weird places. It was quite the puzzle. Trail and error got it done.I had one bolt left over. I looked hard, but couldn’t find out where it was supposed to be. I guess I don’t need that one, but I’ll save it, just in case.

I measured the seat height and it was around 34 inches so adjusting the shock didn’t cause the bike’s seat to rise any, but hopefully made it a lot stiffer so the tire won’t bottom out and hit. It was hitting real hard before, tearing stuff up.

Test ride

It was starting to drizzle as I took off for the hills, but, so far, it was real light, hardly enough to get one wet.

I rode up to the hilltop and stopped for a bit. You can see the light drizzle off in the distance.

 

I was riding down this road and ran into these downed trees. I’d forgotten about them, more than once as this was the third time I ran into them while riding around.

 

I made it back down to the bottom of the hill and stopped to sit on a chair on this trail I’d been working on to contemplate life for a bit. This is a nice quiet place to sit.

 

I made it back home. The shock adjustment seems to mostly be doing the trick. It still rubs a bit once in awhile but it’s a just barely rub and not tearing stuff up, so I’ll try it this way for awhile and see if it’s acceptable, which I think it is.

I spent the rest of the day in the house studying my new operator’s manual for the new machine.

Nice day.