Wednesday October 3, 2018 Guerneville CA.
Winding down my projects
Today I’m finishing up and winding down all my projects to get ready for a trip to the Montpelier Idaho area next week.
It started with a small setback
So it was time to move the van into position to load stuff and get it ready.
I started it up and tried to move it but I couldn’t get the shifter to go into first and reverse. Seems the other day when I made the bracket for the column shifter support I goofed up. I’d checked out the operation of the bracket I made and it worked quite well. But I tightened it up some more after I did the test and didn’t test it again. I took off the bracket and filed it enough for the rod to move more freely and put it back on with the two new bolts I got for it at the store the other day. I messed up the paint job on it but it now works like it should and I can now shift into first and reverse. I tested it out driving around the yard a few times. All is good.
Good thing
Good thing I tested it out today as it wouldn’t have been good to find this the day I was leaving for the trip. I’ll have to touch up that paint a bit.
New tire valves for the quad
The next thing I did was put new valves in the valve stems of the quad as the tires seem to go flat all the time and I know at least one of those valves was leaking, so I replaced them all and inflated the tires. We’ll see if the new valves help any. There’s only about two pounds of air in each tire so loosing a little makes a big difference.
I then loaded some oil and a funnel so I can go up and run the dozer for a bit to charge up the battery.
The quad ready to roll, but not today.
Finally got the grow panels installed
The next thing I needed to do was install the grow pane’s I made for the garden the other day.
Here they are mounted in the garden area. I only needed to add some steel wire to them to hook them up to the enclosure. I had already planted some seed in that spot a week or so ago.
Setting up my rat trap
After a break I found a piece of plastic that would work for a one way door for this rat trap I’m testing. It works like this I hope. The rat or mouse comes into the pipe and sees some bait on top of the plastic flap at the top of the bucket which is also the bottom of the pipe. It jumps down on top of the plastic flap to eat some food and the flap drops and they fall into the water in the bottom of the bucket.
I don’t really know if this will work, so I’m testing it out and only time will tell.
Might as well get the painting done
I wasn’t going to paint the chicken’s nest boxes yet, but I had the time so I got the paint out and applied another coat inside the nesting boxes as I thought they’d dried out enough from getting wet from the rain the other day.
Even got the tires and brake drums off
I wasn’t going to remove the Toyota’s wheels and brake drums yet, but the air wrench would do most of the work so I got that out and removed the tires and then worked all four brake drums off using a big hammer. So now I can see what I need to get to put the brakes back in good working order. Somewhere I have brake shoes for the front one that came unglued if I can only find it and I’ll have to order some brake cylinders when I get back from my trip.
Good to get all that stuff done
Today, unlike yesterday when everything got more complicated, things seemed to go right today and I got more accomplished than I expected which is good as now I have more time to prep for this trip.
Nice day.