Bob's Eyes

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.

Thursday November 30, 2023 Guerneville CA.

My new machine

I got down to the dealers just after noon to close the deal.

The other dealer that was also giving me quotes and competing with this guy called this morning and when I told him,  he lost, he offered to lower the price another 500 bucks.

But yesterday, I asked for final bids and told the guy who win last night that he’d won.

So being a guy of his word, I thanked him and said no to that.

Anyway, I used that to get the other guy to throw in a repair manual and we’d close the deal and we did.

While he was doing some phone work, I went out to check out my new machine. I’m getting a different blade and bucket, so they have to order them up so I won’t get delivery of this for a couple of weeks.

Here’s a few views of the machine as I checked it out.

The back is pretty clean. It’s hard to see when backing up so these things come with a backup camera which is good. They also come with a backup beeper which is going to drive me crazy up in the hills, so I’ll likely figure out a way to silence it as there is usually no one else around when I work in the woods.

Those things on the back are counter weights which help when picking up heavy things.

Being part of the machine

Being a good dozer operator means making yourself part of the machine. The nice thing about this one is, where you are seated in it, makes being part of it even easier.

Sales guy

Here’s  my sales guy as we closed the deal.

Temped

After that I went over to Costco to get some stuff to feed myself. Just inside the door was some robot vacuums that were on sale for under five hundred bucks. I was temped and still am, but was able to pass them up.

I’m a happy camper with this new machine. It’s really just a big new toy. :O)

Nice day.