Friday, Nov. 23, 2012, Guerneville, CA.
A hard working day, digging trees up.
My plan for the day was to dig up the prune and plum trees I want to transplant to Boonville and then go down to the river to do some yakking.
I had about ten trees to dig up. They grew up in the wrong places so had to be moved anyway. I started in the back yard with the prune trees first, as they were in the shade. It wasn’t too difficult, as the dirt was damp and fairly soft, but getting those roots out with minimal amount of work was the hard part. Those roots really know how to get rooted in the ground.
Around the sixth tree, I heard my good shovel snap inside, so I had to be real careful digging the rest, if I was to make it without getting a new shovel first. I always buy the toughest shovels as I’m a digger and I need the best, but, the best isn’t always good enough, especially when I abuse a shovel so much digging up trees.
In the back yard, the trees grew up too close to the house, so they had to go. I just got these dug up. The dug up trees are laying on the ground, next to the wheelbarrow.
Most of them are six or eight feet tall, which is good because the deer like them real well and where they are going to get planted has a lot of deer with no fence. So, maybe they might just be deer feed?
I also dug some plum trees out of my blueberry patch so I had about ten or so trees. That was a lot of digging. I washed the roots off and tomorrow, I will put ropes around them to tighten the bundle and put a tarp around them for transport to Boonville. Marty is coming by Sunday to pick them up in his van.
After that and a short nap, I was going to go kayaking, but, I thought, it’s black Friday, lots of people out, best to stay home and enjoy.
Continued working on the van injection project.
So, I puttered around and figured out a design to make my throttle linkage for my new injection system for my van. I always like to come up with an idea, then make it simpler, or as simple as I can, as it’s easier to make and maintain and it usually lasts longer, and works better too.
A little piece of bicycle type cable came with the kit to do this, but their idea wasn’t so good, and I didn’t originally like the idea of using the cable as it can break, but then I realized the cable was a bicycle type and could be replaced almost anywhere so decided that wasn’t such a bad idea using a cable. The way they used it, had the cable in a tight turn that I didn’t like, because they used such a short piece of cable. But if I made it longer and took the kinky part out, it would work much better and I only had to make one bracket to do the job. I fabricated that and put a coat of grey paint on it and put it by the wood stove to dry.
I then studied what I had to do to finish the job off. I designed a bracket to hold the fuel pump relay and fuses and took measurements for some type of air cleaner, which I will have to buy once I figure out what will fit in there.
I also need to put a fuel return line back to the gas tank and put a vent in the gas tank also, which it needed anyway. So, I studied that for awhile and am digesting ideas to make this happen also. Think I just about have this part figured out also.
Then there’s the fuel filter and electric fuel pump that has to be mounted back at the fuel tank so I worked on figuring out how to do that and of course it will need to be wire too.
I think I’ve got most of it figured out now, except for finding an air filter that will work. I have something figured out, but will have to go out and look for something that will work for the application, which means waiting until Monday to shop a little in Santa Rosa. In the mean time, I’ll keep working on the little things until they all get done.
Had a real nice day and got a lot accomplished too.