Good Morning!!!! 51F @ 6:15AM. Partly cloudy. High near 55F. NNE winds shifting to SW at 10 to 15 mph.
A brief power outage woke me up at about 4:45AM, triggering relays to go clunk in the night. It's been windy, hopefully it wasn't power lines slapping together showering the ground with sparks somewhere. Not that there's much danger from fire here these days; there's precious little left to burn.
Had lunch with my evac host yesterday, oddly enough in a bar. The food was good, but I don't drink during the day, especially if I'm driving, and he's not drinking alcohol at all these days. But apparently the place is his "Cheers", and every so often someone he knew would come over to say hi. Very friendly place!
Noticed that the clutch pedal was slippery on the van as I arrived, and there was brake fluid on the floor. Turns out that the master cylinder for the clutch was leaking. Called the mechanic, who agreed to look at it, and verified that the seal around the actuating rod on that brand new part was leaking. He didn't have a replacement on hand, but agreed he'd fix it, and confessed it's a PITA to get one in and out. But not until after the holiday; he's booked up with work on evacuee vehicles and from time he took off at Thanksgiving. :confused2: : I wrapped a rag around the leaking line, and will limit driving it for the next few weeks. The leak is small, but it's for sure not going to get any better and will in all likelihood get much worse.
The good news is I figured out what I was doing wrong with the speedo pulse frequency box and was able to fix the ignition cutout problem. My first clue that I was onto something was when the van cutout at 5 MPH in the driveway! By the time I got to the main highway, I had it tuned pretty closely, and two more stops had it right on. Turns out I had to hit the reset switch after each adjustment, and I was leaving it in the adjust position. That wasn't mentioned anywhere in the instructions.:eek With that fixed, the van saw 80 MPH for the first time, and still had pedal to go...
Also picked up a new cap for the fuel tank on the chainsaw. Just as I was paying, another clerk set a new chainsaw on the counter for the customer standing next to me and announced the price. It was the same as mine five sixty-one. Except his had a couple extra zeros tacked on.:laughing:
It was dark by the time I headed home yesterday, so I got to try out the new
LED headlight "bulbs" I'd installed in the van. What a huge difference they made! For the first time, the road ahead was well lit and I could see clearly several hundred feet out. I'd even guessed fairly well on the alignment, and only needed to tweak them just a little during a stop on the quiet road close to home. The high beams were also very good and cast light even farther. The cheapo LED matrix lights I substituted for the old high beams are broad work lights, which will help with cornering, but didn't do much at all for distance, though. So if I install an LED light bar, it'll be more of a pencil beam. That's a pretty big if because the regular high beams are probably good enough.
More tree hacking and dragging on the agenda for today...
