It was a bit challenging sleeping on such a sideways slope last night. I woke up again and again each time I moved, which isn’t out of the norm, but I think I was more awake than normal each time I moved because of the importance of making sure my body was in a certain position so as not to aggravate my spine too much.
Gratefully, I didn’t wake up with a whole bunch of spine pain, so I guess all the careful position adjustments during the night were successful. 🎉
Not too long after waking up, Cory came by to load some things up for his work day, so we chatted for a couple of minutes, and then I followed him over to home depot, where he bought stuff for his work day, and I bought a couple of spray cans of paint to try to slow the progression of the rust on Rover’s topper seam.
From Home Depot, we headed over to his first job site. I helped him unload stuff, and then, finding out that he had messed up door cables just like I had on my van (we basically have the same model and generation of Ford van), and having several repair ends still after having ordered a larger bag of repair ends, I decided to fix his door.
In order to get in his side door, he had to open his front door, reach around to pull the inside handle before being able to get in the door.
Slightly annoying when your job requires getting stuff in and out of the van often several times per job.
So I dug in and started working on replacing the damaged cable ends. The exterior handle was the only one broken badly enough to no longer be properly functioning, but once I had everything apart, I found that three out of the four cable ends were broken, not just one. Gratefully, I had plenty of cable repair ends, so I was able to replace all four cable ends with the metal ones that don’t break.
It wasn’t easy, though. 😅
Unlike the simple repair of the cable ends that I did on my own van yesterday, I had forgotten how challenging the replacement of the cables was on that particular door. Technically, it’s not crazy challenging. There are only a handful of steps that need to be taken to fix it, but in actual practicality, it’s kind of a nightmare.
I was reminded of the day that I spent repairing the cable ends on my own van down by the creek last Summer. I think I spent something like 3 or 4 hours on that door trying to get it all put back together properly.
Absolute pain in the butt.
I was smarter this time, taking a picture of how everything went before I took it apart. I remember last time getting myself all confused about how I took stuff out and put stuff back together because I hadn’t taken a picture, and there are all sorts of rods and cables and whatnot, and I didn’t want to mess up getting them back in the same places they were before disassembly.
What I didn’t anticipate this time was how ridiculously hard it was going to be to get the cable ends to slot back into the mechanisms that are inside the door frame.
While all of the interior parts were out of the door, I was able to relatively simply attach the two cable ends that hook on to the mechanism itself. I never dreamed that attaching the other end of each cable to the corresponding mechanisms inside the door frame itself would be challenging, but it was an absolute nightmare.
Not to mention the placement of the Sun in the sky was exactly where I needed to look back inside the door to see the internals. So over and over and over and over again, each time I would look up to see inside the door, I would be fighting the Sun blinding me.
Ugh.
I did so well for so long… referring to my level of patience. It was absolutely ridiculous that it was such a pain in the butt to get these two little cable ends snapped into place, but I was patient. And it kicked my butt. And I was patient. And it kicked my butt. And then it was stupid, and I was still patient but getting a little more irritated. And it was stupid even more, and I was getting more impatient.
After what was probably somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes of fighting just to put two little cable ends into their slots, my patience completely wore out, and the bombs began to fly.
😞
Definitely made progress, holding off on the bad language for so freaking long before the absolutely ridiculous nature of the predicament finally got me to snap.
Cory only needed help for one brief little part of that first job, me holding a piece of sheetrock up against the ceiling on one end while he screwed in the other.
I didn’t finish fixing the door before we had to leave the first job site to go to the next one. I had it to the point where the exterior door handle was functional, but I didn’t have the interior door handle cable properly slotted in.
Fortunately, I was able to get the last cable end slotted into its place within the first five or so minutes after arriving at the second job.
Chatted with my friend Matt for a little bit who called while I was helping Cory inside on the second job. I had sent Matt some pictures of Moab while I was there, and he was calling just to chat about the pictures and about what I was doing in utah.
I think I did a little bit of online car repair work. Not much. I’m still frustrated by the demotion, and there wasn’t much available today that came through anyway.
I don’t remember if I mentioned it in yesterday’s post, but in the community section where experts can chat with each other, several of us have been posting about our frustrations with being demoted, and there were a couple of people who chimed in who’ve been working for the company for more than a dozen years, one of them for 17 years, and they, too, have been demoted recently with no explanation, having changed nothing in the way they do their jobs for over a dozen years each.
One of them even made the comment that if anyone should know how compensation works, it should be them since they’ve been there for so freaking long, but they know just as much as the rest of us–pretty much nothing.
One of the experts chimed in with a very angry, profanity-filled (I’ll be covered by asterisks) tirade that I completely agreed with, identified with, and was tempted to echo myself. For my part, however, I refrained from unleashing the true extent of my feelings, not wanting to get fired.
But boy do I want to give that company a piece of my mind. Liars, cheats, and thieves, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t think the company itself, the leadership, gives a rats rear end about its customers or its employees. I think that if it weren’t for the experts who actually care about the customers, the company would pretty much be trash.
Anyway, I don’t have strong feelings on the issue. 🙃
Headed back to my brother Richard’s place after finishing up with cory. Nice to spend time with him. That’s one of the things I miss about Utah is being able to spend a lot of time with family and friends that I left when I drove away 9 years ago this month.
I never expected that drive to end up being what it was, with me living in Arkansas of all places for nearly a decade.
I’ve thinking that it was probably something like a 90% probability that I was going to move away from Arkansas, but now I’m maybe down to more like a 50% or 60% probability.
I do miss my family and friends in Utah. I have a higher concentration in Utah than anywhere else, if you’re counting blood family only but I have the highest concentration in arkansas, by far, if you’re counting extended/adopted family.
Anyway, after heading back to Richard’s place, I spent some time trying to diagnose rovers exhaust issues. Corey let me borrow his borescope, as I hadn’t even considered the need for bringing one with me on the trip, so I left mine in the shed in the lower Field in arkansas.
But I downloaded the app, and stuck the borescope down the passenger upstream O2 sensor hole, getting a relatively decent look at the honeycomb structure of the upstream catalytic converter on the passenger side.
It’s certainly hard to tell from the camera on the borescope, but I couldn’t see anything clogged in that catalytic converter.
Unfortunately, the catalytic converter on the other side, the driver’s side, was much less accessible, as it’s further down and around a bend. I got just a glimpse of the edge of it, but never really got a good look. I did get the impression, though that if one of the catalytic converters was plugged, it was likely going to be the driver’s side.
Though I couldn’t get the borescope to give me a clear view on the driver side, I did remember that I have my laser temperature gun with me, so I put the O2 sensors back in their holes, fired Rover up, and started checking the temperature of the sections of the exhaust system, back and forth, passenger side to driver side.
While idling, I think the driver’s side was something like 50° hotter than the passenger side, and when upping the RPMs just a little bit, the driver’s side was about a hundred degrees hotter than the passenger side.
So either I’ve got two plugged up converters with the driver’s side being much worse than the passenger side, or the driver’s side is the one that’s plugged up, and the passenger side is okay.
I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to do at this point to fix the issue, but I guess I’ve got a better idea of what’s going on.
I also did the preliminary two coats of rusty metal primer spray paint on The rusted portion of the metal where the topper is screwed on to the rest of the metal of the body of the van.
Went shopping with Richard to Costco and Lowe’s. Or maybe it was home depot? I forgot.
We got home and ate dinner, McKinley making some tasty sandwiches with Munchies on the side.
🤤
From there, Richard and I dug into trying to get his sprinkling system up and going. He did the vast majority of all the work, but I was able to contribute a little bit here and there.
After getting the rest of all the electronic stuff wired up and assembled, we tested the sprinkling system, and found that it had issues in a few different areas. Some sprinkler heads will need to be replaced. Some might be able to just be cleaned. And one station was staying on even when everything was turned off, indicating some kind of a blockage or something in the system.
So Richard took apart the valves inside the box, cleaned up one that looked like it was plugged up, and we got it all put back together, and gratefully, everything is working now. So it’s just some sprinkler adjustments and replacements, and everything should be good for the season.
🤞
We finished the sprinkling stuff well after dark, my headlamp providing the light to get it done, and once done, we headed down into the basement to clean out the basement bathroom that has yet to be finished.
The goal was to get everything out of the bathroom so that the project could go forward putting go board around the tub in preparation for tiling it.
So we got all the stuff out of the unfinished bathroom that needed to be out, piled up on a blanket in another room, and we started doing some mild demolition, so that Richard can redo with the go board what had been done by the other people with whatever replaces green sheetrock nowadays.
Apparently, go board is much better stuff, and Richard is all about making sure what he does is exceptional.
He and I are similar in that respect, perfectionists in our craftsmanship.
A trait that has both pros and cons. 😅
But we got the bathroom all cleaned out and ready to go, and we talked through the plan for what he wants to do going forward and what it’s going to take, so now it’s mostly just a matter of digging in and doing it.
That will happen another day, as it was after 10:00 by the time we got done with everything.
Richard ate some celebratory ice cream, and I pulled up some YouTube political / economic commentary news stuff, and we chatted a bit before I headed out to Rover for the night.
Gratitude:
- I’m grateful that I bought the bigger package of Ford van door latch cable repair and pieces, which allowed me to repair both my van yesterday and Cory’s van today.
- I’m grateful that the exhaust system didn’t fall off while driving on the freeway from salt lake City to Herriman.
- I’m grateful I was able to get at least a partial diagnosis on Rover’s exhaust troubles. I wish I had remembered my temperature gun on Sunday before I cut the exhaust system apart, but… oh well. 😅
- I’m grateful I was able to help Richard with his home projects. I know how suffocating it can be to have so many projects hanging over your head. He and I are also similar in the reality that we stack project upon project upon project on ourselves, and then we often find ourselves helping other people with their projects and neglecting the projects that we have on our to-do lists. 😅
- I’m grateful to have a real bed inside Rover, and I’m grateful that Rover feels like home. I’m cramped and crowded right now with a bunch of extra stuff that will eventually no longer be in here, which will open things up a fair bit, but it’s nice to just have this bed that’s with me wherever I go that I can crawl into. I love having a truly mobile home. 🙃
Success:
- Though it ended in a blaze of four-letter glory, I was much more patient today when the door repair efforts went ridiculously sideways.
Improvement:
- Want stouter patience
Loves…
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 