Saturday June 4, 2016 Guerneville CA.
Tackling the van spring job
I needed to get the springs straightened out in my van today. The spring under the driver’s side was a little out of whack. At least one of them was. I needed to tighten the bolts up on it but first I needed to loosen them up to reset the spring, then I could tighten them up.
So I got out a blanket to lay on and got the tools together to do the job.
Kitty came by to check things out, but decided there was too much work going on so took off. Some cats got it made.
I had oiled up the bolts previously so I was hoping things would go good.
I got under the van with my tools and with a bit of work was able to loosen up the U-bolts a bit and with a big hammer got the one spring that was out of whack back in place. Then I tightened up the nuts as tight as I could get them using a cheater bar on the wrench I was using. A cheater bar is a short piece of pipe or tubing that goes over the wrench to extend it and make it easier to turn hard to turn nuts. And I surely needed one for this job.
The springs really look warn out
I got the job done. I inspected the springs good and what I could see is I really need new springs as these ones are a bit bent and they’ve lost most of their arc. But I’m not into doing that right now, so they’ll just have to be ok for now. They bottom out more than they should, so I have to just take it easy a bit when I’m driving, trying to watch out for big bumps.
I put away the tools I used for that job and then had a little break before starting the next job.
More debris off the roof
I moved the ladder to the back of the house and went up on the roof to blow off the tree debris that was up there from last winter. I’m doing this mostly for fire protection.
It looked like this before I blew it off.
The blower made quick work of that and I needed another break.
Removing these weeds in the driveway
These weeds have grown up in the cracks and needed to be removed, so throughout the day I worked on cutting them off with a hoe, a little at a time as it was hard work.
By the end of the day I had most of them cut. I did leave the poppy plant on the lower left. The blower helped clean up that mess too.
Using tree debris for mulch
Yesterday, I blew off a section of roof that had a lot of redwood mulch on it and it needed to be cleaned up as it was a fire hazard being too close to the house. I found a tarp to transport the redwood tree mulch to my potato patch which you can see here..
I find a tarp works fairly well for moving around leaf litter. I moved two loads of that. Of course that meant I had to rake the mulch up first to put it on the tarp, but I did get it done and was getting fairly tired out by now.
Just too tired out
Earlier in the day I had called Ray to see if he’d like to go down to Jenner for an evening kayak, but he had plans.
I was still thinking of going down kayaking earlier in the day, but by the time it came to go, I was on the couch pretty warn out, so it was just as well Ray was already busy, or I would of had to get up and get it going.
As it was I spent a good deal of the rest of the day resting on the couch. Later in the evening I did go out and puttered around the yard until dark.
I got some much needed work done today, which I’ve been trying to get done so I can go off and play soon this summer.
Nice day.