(written on the 10th from notes taken previously)
I headed out from Mom’s place relatively early this morning, wandering back over to Liz and Mike’s house to hang out with Mike a bit. He had mentioned last night for me to swing by in the morning, so I did. 😊
We chatted for a little while, and then we headed over to look at the tractor because both tractors, apparently, have been down for a little while. 😬
Kind of hard to take care of a piece of property this big without a tractor. 😅
Mike had replaced the starter and the ignition switch in an effort to fix the issue, but it persisted; so I grabbed my multimeter and found that we weren’t getting any power to the starter at all with the key turning.
Jim came over from working on a work project at Ramona’s house, because we needed something in our efforts with the tractor, though I don’t remember what exactly at this point?
That kicked off what was supposed to be only an hour of attempting to diagnose before deciding to simply wire in a push button start.
Supposed to be. 🙃
Mike needed to go get ready for a trip to Utah to bring back my niece, so he left, and I continued on with the tractor diagnostics.
And continued.
And continued…
Well past the hour. 😅
I think it was more like six hours. 🙃
I chased voltages and grounds here, there, and everywhere, and it just… didn’t make any sense. I didn’t have a wiring diagram for the starting system, so I didn’t know what all was included in the starting system in a tractor. I figured it would be super simple because… well, it’s a tractor. 🙃
Not much seems to be super simple for me. 😅
I fought with it and fought with it trying to make sense of everything, tearing the whole steering column and surrounding trim apart, opening up the access to the fuses and relays, and just going to town, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t make heads or tails of the readings that I was getting.
I also chatted with my friend Andrés recently started a dump truck company and is absolutely killing it. He recommended that I buy a dump truck and add it to his fleet, which… got me thinking about it a little bit. 🙃
Eventually, the rain that started to come down forced me to call it for the day (which is probably a good thing, as I had spent far too much time working on it).
I did work out in the rain for a little bit, so I was wet and cold, already relatively bone cold by the time I called it. Instead of warming up first, I headed over to visit neighbor Dan.
We talked for a good little while while I was still wet. I should have just changed my clothes, but I didn’t. 😆
At least not at first.
After we’d been talking for a little shy of a couple hours, I suggested that we head into town and that I’d buy him dinner.
Wendy’s was an easy choice, and he ended up buying dinner for me instead of the other way around. 🙃
Thx, Dan. 🙏¹
After eating, we headed back to his place and hung out and talked until… gosh, after 10:30, I think. 🤯
Talked a lot about what all he’s got going on in his life. He lost his father recently, and he lost his wife last year.
Rough. 😞
We ended up talking God and gospel stuff for a good little while. I don’t know/remember what Christian denomination he hails from, if it’s any in particular, or if it’s just a local non-denominational Christian church.
He’s such a good guy.
After leaving his place, I headed back over to Haven Hill for just a bit to check the charging on the batteries. I’d pulled the batteries out of my van and truck and the tractor to get them all charged up. The battery for the tractor wasn’t charging up at all, so I swapped my charger over to charge up the battery for my truck, setting it to charge overnight, before heading back to my mom’s place.
By the time I got over to her place, it was almost 11:15, and lights were out, so I just parked and crashed in the same spot I usually do when I visit her.
Wow, short entry. 🙃
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 