Sunday, March 28, 2021

Sunday auto work...but first a road trip...

Supposed to rain starting late morning. Wouldn't mind it warming up a bit, plus some caffeine would be good.

As usual the bee-bopping road trip went longer than planned, but I finally went down Hewitt Road. It goes through! And it's a nice little town park along it.





Battle order of the day now that the hood works:

-- Battery
-- Low pressure fuel sensor
-- Spark Plugs
-- High pressure fuel sensor

After which it'll need to go to Sorel's for coolant, and I may have them flush the transmission ahead of schedule too.



Removed battery. New battery is in car. Car has electric locks. It is locked. :/



Upgrade from factory 590CCA battery which is shot as shot can be (wasn't starting at all below freezing, and barely starting after a few days in warm weather) to a 740CCA NAPA battery.



Plugs from Driver's to Passenger side.

Holy moly...these were only 3,000 miles over the recommended service at 100,000 miles o_O







So I also had fun *finding* the plugs and sensors. By the time I did, Eric got here just after I replaced the low pressure sensor.

He added Peachtree to the garage bar, and we had some good bar time as he tinkered with a chainsaw and I got the plugs replaced.

However...still have the high pressure fuel sensor to replace. Got the electrical connector off, then discovered I need a 1-1/16" long socket. Short? Got it. 1" and 1-1/8" longs? Got them. The tool I need? Nope!



So we'll get the socket and button this job up tomorrow.

We all need our purple unicorn...



https://people.com/pets/dog-stealing-unicorn-toy-from-dollar-general-store-rescued-north-carolina/

Thursday, March 25, 2021

Peepers 2021

First heard 23 March 2021

3/21/20
3/30/19
3/25/18
4/5/17
3/10/16
4/10/15
...
3/21/12
3/30/11

Sunday, March 21, 2021

First Day of Spring & The Charlton Chew

Opening up the old logging trails and Eric's

But first, the video!


























Hmmmm...new toy has arrived. While you may never forget how, and I've been doing good on the recumbant bike in the house, based on this morning's test ride...I've gotta do some strecthing and limbering exercises before warm weather is here in earnest :D



Ups and Downs of a Rear Diff ...and how my long week was...

So it ended up being a long week for me -- emergency patching on the F5 equipment kept me up to 11 on Wednesday and Thursday. As well as Saturday but I had to roll those back *sigh*.

So somehow this became emblematic of my week -- since I wanted to open the diff to check if the e-locker was working, following my "if you're doing the labor upgrade the parts" rule I got a heavy duty Poison Spyder cover.

But...I ordered the wrong part number and got the unpainted one.

Hmmm, screw it -- can of Husqvarna Orange spray paint from Lowes and my pumpkin will be pumpkin colored:



Then I got double-dog dared to paint the spyder. How to mask it? Googled for a bit and came across using Vaseline.



With the vaseline mostly removed:





First Bronco (Sport) I've seen in the wild, albeit still Dealer plates:



Oh, new (short) road to explore in RI, but I think I found a slightly longer one near it as well. Didn't go down them today, checked maps at home though and they look good to explore:



Danielle came over to pickup more of the black & yellow bins left over from my house rebuild:



Allen Hill & Rukstella Road as they start cleaning up the field edges ahead of the solar development (I think with gravel extraction first?):





That doesn't look too bad...



LOL...so the tools that took off the old cover don't fit to put on the new thicker cover without dropping the trackbar (which would then need me to break out jacks I think to re-position everything). Off to HF for some box wrench-to-socket adapters and a low profile 3/8". The adapters did the trick, and the low-profile wrench wasn't low profile enough.




Well, shit. How did I break a bolt using a torque wrench? I was going around double checking I hit all the bolts (at least all but the two the torque wrench wouldn't fit to get to that I just had to guesstimate with a regular wrench)...hey did I forget this bolt? Wrench isn't clicking then...snap.

So I'm thinking one or more of these issues occured: HF wrench isn't the most accurate, bad bolt, picked up some vaseline I didn't fully clean from the cover and it lubricated the threads.