What did YOU do today?

[sgtsandman]

I got some cut up logs from the sportsman's club while helping out during work day and got the string trimmer running again.

The logs are stacked until I get a dry day to split them and stack them in the firewood rack to dry.

As far as the string trimmer, I guess I was just too impatient after rebuilding the carburetor. I had bought a carburetor replacement kit and was in the process of replacing the thing when I noticed there was fuel in the lines. So I put it back together, primed it, and it fired right up. The idle screws got adjusted and rechecked the gap on the spark plug. In any case, I now have a spare carburetor, primer bulbs, filters, and fuel line for the future now.

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

As far as the string trimmer, I guess I was just too impatient after rebuilding the carburetor. I had bought a carburetor replacement kit and was in the process of replacing the thing when I noticed there was fuel in the lines. So I put it back together, primed it, and it fired right up. The idle screws got adjusted and rechecked the gap on the spark plug. In any case, I now have a spare carburetor, primer bulbs, filters, and fuel line for the future now.

That’s why I have a spare carb for my one chainsaw. Well, not exactly why. Thing wouldn’t run and I ordered a new carb. When I was pulling it out to replace it I found the fuel lines were trashed. So now I have 48’ of fuel line and a spare carb, lol

 

[Uncle Gump]

I spent most of today outside... just a beautiful day really. I trimmed and cut grass so the lawn looks good for company tomorrow for mothers day.

I also got the last of five boxes which contain my 12 x 20 metal roof carport. I also measured up the area in the back yard where I'm going to put a parking pad and said carport.

Then I made a materials list for a 6x6 frame for the parking pad and to build out a new double 9 foot gate to get into the back yard. It's hard to believe the price of lumber these days... well honestly... the price of everything.

In hind sight my wife said she should have just let me build a garage when we bought this place. This is a good amount cheaper and will get my Bronco II covered up.

 

[Rick W]

That’s why I have a spare carb for my one chainsaw. Well, not exactly why. Thing wouldn’t run and I ordered a new carb. When I was pulling it out to replace it I found the fuel lines were trashed. So now I have 48’ of fuel line and a spare carb, lol

Um, I’m not an outdoorsman like a lot of you guys. I have a 120v little chain saw that works for my needs. But, and I mean this with every respect, can’t you put gas right in the chainsaw instead of running a 48’ line?

 

[racsan]

Spent the day up north at my daughter/son in laws place, he has a 2012 1/2 ton dodge crew cab 4x that from what was described to me sounded like a bad front wheel hub bearing, earlier in the week I ordered 2 from rock auto, figured if one was bad the other couldn’t be too far behind, truck has just over 200K. Well we go through the fight of it all, one of the 3 hub bearing retaining bolts (M14x1.5/65) rounded off and we had to sawzall off the bolt between hub & knuckle. Then the hard part of sourcing a 14mm 1.5 bolt, especially on a saterday when dealer parts departments arent open. Did find hardware at rural king, got it all together & tried it out, no difference and from what I can tell the vibrations in a curve on the road is from the rack. Then I find out its been leaking fluid and has very little power steering fluid in it. So aggravated. Got home & unloaded the escape, put my tools away. Found a 87 (ranger) supercab on marketplace for $400. Runs, bad windshield, short-shifter manual (but that can be swapped for a better M5OD), 2.3/3.73 tempting, could take apart my ranger trailer & build the “supercab longbed” i’ve always wanted to build. Of course Id need a gen 1-2 bed, the gen 3 bed on the ranger trailer would’nt match and is more rust-ridden than that dodge from earlier today. Still tempting. miss having a truck.

 

[Rick W]

I mowed a little more today. Another couple days/times and I’ll get through it….

I’m on a half acre and 50% of that is covered with the house and garage and brick drives, so the 120v lawn mower etc. on cords work fine for me. I’d rather deal with the cord than the heavy mower, tune ups, gas, etc.

Buttttt, when I was injured and sick, I kept the front pretty, but I let a lot of the rest go for almost 10 years.

The last couple years I’ve been slowly claiming it back. Weren’t wisteria vines one of the ten plagues on Egypt in the book of Exodus? There was a little when I moved here 35 years ago and it took 10-15 years to get rid of most of it. It came back with a vengeance.

Middle of the yard is who knows what but it’s green and cuts like grass. The outside loop is privet and who knows what literally covered like a blanket with the damn vine. A couple weeks ago I spent $2000 to have a few bad trees taken down and cut all those vines around the outside. But now I have to keep going further when I mow or it’s just going to all grow up again.

So “mowing” after the middle is muscling the mower 20-30” at a time, then cutting the whatever just above ground level without damaging the chain, repeat. Some of the vines are a thick as my wrist, and they shred instead of cut clean.

Today was glorious because it’s the first time I have more cut and open than/since 2014. It almost killed me.

The good news is after a few more days of this torture, I’ll be able to just use the mower from now on. BYW, now the front is due again….

Sorry for the long note, but I had to tell someone and say woohoo, and Sweet Pea wasn’t the right audience….

It is a good feeling though.

 

[sgtsandman]

Um, I’m not an outdoorsman like a lot of you guys. I have a 120v little chain saw that works for my needs. But, and I mean this with every respect, can’t you put gas right in the chainsaw instead of running a 48’ line?

If you run it right, you can feed it in to a 5 gallon fuel can and run the saw until you drop without a refuel.

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

Um, I’m not an outdoorsman like a lot of you guys. I have a 120v little chain saw that works for my needs. But, and I mean this with every respect, can’t you put gas right in the chainsaw instead of running a 48’ line?

I think you forgot that I too have a shed of miracles. Actually a couple of them. The new carb for the chainsaw along with the 48’ or so left on the 50’ spool are in a box in one of the sheds that should be labeled “small engine parts” if the label is still on the tote and readable. I’ve been intending to do some cleaning and re-organizing because there’s a bunch of stuff that I’m sure I have more than one of and can’t find any. Pretty sure they weren’t used or stolen, but there’s a lot of buried stuff right now. Plus the roof is going bad on the one shed. Actually all the sheds and the 2 stall horse barn have bad roofs. I’ve been trying to get creative and work around that problem because I really need my garage up. Not sure how much longer that’s gonna go before I don’t have a choice any more.

If you run it right, you can feed it in to a 5 gallon fuel can and run the saw until you drop without a refuel.

Well, I mean, that is a legit possibility. I don’t know that I’m young and dumb enough still to actually attempt it though. Seems like a way to have to work harder. If I had a mini excavator I’d be figuring how I could run a chainsaw on the boom and how to have one that mounts off the front blade or something so I could use the bucket with a thumb to move logs around. I’m lazy like that. Might have to see about making a cutting/splitting device for the skid steer when I get it going again. It needs tires and some hoses, but it has double hydraulic pumps for running things like asphalt cold planers so it’s got the juice for processing firewood. Sounds like a good winter project after I get my garage up to be honest…

 

[JoshT]

Engine tear down complete. Block, crank, rods, and pistons loaded in truck to drop at machine shop thisd week. IMO it looks like a clean, hone, polish, and new cam bearings are all that will be needed. Need to make some decisions this week on heads, cam, and intake. Definitely leaning towards cam upgrade, maybe a slight improvement on heads and intake as well.

 

[scotts90ranger]

Engine tear down complete. Block, crank, rods, and pistons loaded in truck to drop at machine shop thisd week. IMO it looks like a clean, hone, polish, and new cam bearings are all that will be needed. Need to make some decisions this week on heads, cam, and intake. Definitely leaning towards cam upgrade, maybe a slight improvement on heads and intake as well.

When I rebuilt the 5L for my '00 Explorer last year it still had crosshatching at 255k (and the 206k before I got it was rough, the trans was destroyed and the rear spider gears were stripped) so I just honed, re ringed and put a full set of new bearings in it... then did a slight port/polish job on the heads only and put a cam in it with the Trick Flow valve springs and ground the valves... I was able do to everything myself since we have a cam bearing tool at work, I have a ball hone and there's a valve grinder at work...

Yesterday I started the day by trying to tackle the driveway some, the blackberries are making it narrower so I thought I'd be fancy by using the corded hedge trimmer, that worked fine for about 10 minutes until I found the sparky vine... will resort to loppers and or machete instead I guess... problem for another day... After that I went to a car show, rumor has it there were 600 cars registered, was neat, some cool stuff for sure, bunch of '65-69 Mustangs, 3 Cobras and a slew of other neat stuff... After I got home I took it easy for a while since it was near 90F again then about dark I went to tackle fixing the riding mower deck, dremeled the teeth for the blade drive and successfully extracted the broken bolt and fixed that then welded the couple cracks on the deck that I ignored last time...

 

[JoshT]

When I rebuilt the 5L for my '00 Explorer last year it still had crosshatching at 255k (and the 206k before I got it was rough, the trans was destroyed and the rear spider gears were stripped) so I just honed, re ringed and put a full set of new bearings in it... then did a slight port/polish job on the heads only and put a cam in it with the Trick Flow valve springs and ground the valves... I was able do to everything myself since we have a cam bearing tool at work, I have a ball hone and there's a valve grinder at work...

Both my engines still have cross hatch and the bearings in this one were worn, but not worn out. If I'd installed this engine instead, I probably wouldn't be building one right now. We ain't got cam bearing tools or a cleaning vat and it looked like the crank journals could stand to be polished. We could have slapped it back together with new rods, mains, and rings and been fine, but I'd have always wondered about the cam.

I dropping it off at the machine shop for cleaning anyway, and I'll be head of the game to have them do the rest while it's there. It will cost more, but the results will be better. Besides the government is printing money every day and mine comes directly from them. Just work a little easy overtime and it'll be covered. While they are handling that I can use my time to work on improving transmission shifting and sorting suspension.

As for the heads and intake porting, I'm probably going to hire that work out. As I said above the government is constantly printing dollar bills and putting them in my pocket. I'd rather hire a professional that can get the most out of it in the least amount of time, than spend time trying to get it right myself. My time could be better spend handling other aspects of this or other projects.

 

[Daltoids]

Nothing because of weather I wanna try taking off some trash tomorrow or next week because I CANNOT stand how my family just throws garbage bags in the back of my truck and we always just let it pile up.. it's disgusting so I'm trying to start to take it off more often

 

[Rick W]

As I said above the government is constantly printing dollar bills…..

….I'd rather hire a professional that can get the most out of it in the least amount of time…..

Are you implying that government workers aren’t the best and most professional? Wow, never considered that….

 

[Snoranger]

Government worker here…

I always claim that the County prints it’s own money.

 

[Rick W]

Low motivation. Spent some time cutting the wisteria & English ivy vines from the tree trunks and fence, but never touched the mower.

Super glue gel-ed the phone holder back in the Missing Linc. It worked before. I knocked it off when I got cut off and had to whirlpool the steering wheel and caught it with my knuckles.

Yes, the masking tape is temporary!

I also got under the 88 Town Car and wired the new sending unit (new crimp eyelets needed), and moved the float around to test it. No joy. Gauge still just reads zero. Glad I didn’t pull the old one yet. I packed it up and put some more sticky notes inside to track the gas.

On that, if anyone has expertise on that electronic dash set up (I think 86 to 89), I could use a little help. Electronic dash was only a few years, no parts for 25 years. I had a pro rebuild the sending unit, varies from zero resistance empty to 200 ohms when full. That would indicate a short, not a broken connection. It’s my understanding if the dash gauge lights up at all, it’s not the computer/circuit board. I know how to trace it down & I have the schematics, but any specific ideas/locations on where to look from experience could save a lot of time and sanity. I. E., exactly where to check connections. Btw, the car is garage kept, rust free, 99% pristine.

& I put some more screws in the joints of the old kitchen chair I use when I play with Lincoln in the yard. A real widow maker. With the new screws, I think there’s more metal than wood. Getting ready to paint it with you know what.