(written on the 11th from notes taken previously)
I was tired this morning, not a lot of sleep. I listened to my uplifting music, worked on my scripture memorizations, and spent some time journaling.
I don’t remember if I mentioned it or not, but Happy’s passenger window switch got knocked down into the center console (the place it’s supposed to clip into has been broken since I bought it), so I got to work fishing it out of the hole and then fashioning a little plastic washer to hold it in.
That was a lot easier written than done.
😅
I used one of the plastic shims I bought to mount my solar panels on Rover’s roof, using wire cutters to get it down to a workable size.
Then I traced the outline of the switch onto it, drilled some strategic holes, and then tried to cut the outline out with my wire cutters. 😅
Not the most effective, but I was lacking more precise tools. I suppose I could have used a razor blade, but I… didn’t want to?
🤷
After a fair amount of work, my first one broke, the shock of the wire cutters clipping it like scissors just… snapped it. 😕
So… I started again.
This time, I used the drill to make a whole bunch of holes and then used the drill again, using the side of the drill bit to carefully, and very slowly, make the hole bigger.
Since the switch was a square, and since the square hole in my makeshift washer needed to be exactly the same size as the switch, so it was perfectly snug against said switch (any larger, and the switch would just fall right back through), I used a file to painstakingly grind off plastic until the switch fit super snuggly into the washer.
🥳
Next, I needed to shave down the outside of the washer, because it was far too big.
I didn’t dare use the wire cutters to take larger chunks off for fear of fracturing my precious little washer again, so I started going to town with the file. 😅
Which took a long while.
Gratefully, after spending a bunch of time filing, I remembered my grinder! The grinder doesn’t sand down plastic very well, but it melts it pretty well. 🙃
Well, it sort of grind melts it. 😁
So I got to work grinding the washer down on all sides. It was trial and error a bit, as far as sizing was concerned, and I was super cautious, because I didn’t want to accidentally break this little prize. 🤞
But even being careful, the process went so. much. quicker! 🙏 You just grind melt and then peel away the melted plastic.
Eventually, I got it all down to the perfect size, installed it, and boom!
It fit perfectly. 🥳
The window went down. I was all set… I thought.
…except the window wouldn’t go back up. 😅
😬
Oh! Wedge! It’s a wedge shape!
My washer was too thick on one side!
So I uninstalled it and carefully removed the washer from the switch (it fits so tightly that every time I remove it, I’m concerned I might break it. 😅)
But I got it off, and I ground down the high side with my grinder, reinstalled it, and we were golden. 🥳
🙏
While working on Happy, I noticed that his spare tire was hanging down awkwardly, so I popped the trunk and found that the retainer holding the tire up was unscrewed. I’d never seen that kind of design before, but it was intuitive and… ingenuous, honestly. A nice surprise, especially given that BMWs are generally ridiculously over-engineered from my perspective. 🙏
Oh! On an unrelated note, I don’t remember exactly if it was yesterday or today or when, but one of the times I was walking off the front porch, looking up at the nest in the corner that my mom thought was empty, the little ones having learned to fly and left, I saw a feather sticking out over the edge of the nest.
Thinking it was just a leftover loose feather, I reached up and gave it a gentle tug.
But the feather resisted. 🙃
So I gave it another gentle tug, and over to the edge of the nest slid a fledgling that promptly deposited a very large white present over the side of the nest.
Ker splat!
Oops.
🙃
Moving on…
After getting Happy’s window switch and spare tire figured out, I asked my mom what else I might be able to do to help, and she mentioned that she had a couple of storage bins full of stuff that were destined for the storage barn. She also reminded me that I had one more bin of my own stuff in the basement. Before I left the last time, somebody was interested in buying my powered monitors, so I had left them with my mom, because the buyer seemed super serious (he had just bought a nice keyboard from me), but then he never showed back up, so my mom got saddled with the heavy bin full of stuff. 😅
I was grateful for the reminder, loaded all three bins into Rover, and headed back to Haven Hill, where I put the two bins in the storage barn (just outside the door, as the door was blocked) and started working on the tractor again.
Just like yesterday, I spent a good long time working on the tractor, and just like yesterday, all my efforts failed to find the exact cause of the no start.
I think what’s going on is that on a tractor (or maybe just this tractor?) the starting circuit actually runs through the instrument cluster 😶, and as best I could tell, it didn’t seem like I was getting the proper voltages on the wires that went to the instrument cluster.
Without a wiring diagram and an explanation of how the system works… I’m not gonna figure this out.
I think Jim mentioned something about having heard of instrument cluster issues causing problems like this before, so I’m thinking that’s what the issue is. One potential piece of evidence that might support this is that after it rains, the underside of the instrument cluster transparent plastic is fogged up with moisture.
By the time I spent several hours battling the crazy electrical issue, I finally decided I was going to throw in the towel and recommend just wiring up the starter bypass switch.
That had been my original recommendation the first day before I dug in as far as I had. I told Jim that it would probably be best to spend an hour troubleshooting, and if we couldn’t find the issue, to just go ahead and wire in the bypass.
Well, I probably spent closer to 10 hours testing before I finally gave up. 😆
Unfortunately, in the process of doing my testing, I also noticed that the coolant was leaking from the lower radiator hose. 😕
I guess that could also be a “fortunately.” (to notice it now before the machine overheats). So we’ll give it a 🙏
While I had been working on the tractor, I also started doing a little bit of the cleanup, dragging the burn barrel over to where I was working, and throwing branches in it, so they could be burning while I was doing other stuff.
Multitask, right? 🙃
After working on the tractor, I started working a little bit on my truck. It was throwing some codes and not running very well at all, and as I looked throughout the engine compartment after seeing the codes, I noticed that squirrels (or mice or rats) had chewed through the wiring harness in two different places.
Ugh. 😒
[sigh]
And the little stinkers chewed the harness almost all the way down to the connector on one of them, leaving me maybe a quarter of an inch of wire left to try and do a splice.
Ugh.
So I spent probably the next hour or two trying to wire up a splice that would work without having to buy a new connector, but even after getting it wired up, I still had a throttle position sensor code, and I was just… done.
I wasn’t sure if I had it wired up properly because the colors of the wires were so faded that they were hard to tell apart, and I just wanted to be done with the truck, so I decided to put an ad up on Facebook Marketplace for it as is–2003 Chevrolet Silverado. Tons of problems. Run really low on oil at least once. Squirrels chewed through wires. Consider it a parts truck. $750.
Something like that…
I didn’t know if I could even get that much. I thought maybe I could get 500 bucks, but my phone blew up pretty much immediately, and I started answering questions the rest of the day from interested parties.
In the meantime, I had also started looking on Facebook Marketplace for a dump truck, thinking about my friend Andrés’ encouragement to buy a truck and add it to his fleet, saying that I would probably make about $350 a day in passive income by doing so.
He makes more than that with his trucks, but he’d be taking a $10 an hour fee for being the person who finds the jobs and runs the fleet, and takes care of everything, etc.
So I messaged a few people who were selling dump trucks and talked to one of them on the phone. The guy I talked to on the phone was selling a dump truck that I was thinking could be a fantastic deal, ’til I realized later that the truck had almost a million miles on it. 😲
I suppose it still could be a good deal if I got it for a good enough price, but a million miles… Wow. That’s… a lot!
I texted a bit with my South Dakota neighbor Darrin, and my friend Matt for a bit. I hung out with Hunter and Mieko and their kids for a bit just talking (I think that was today? 😅)
Andrés offered Hunter a job with good pay driving dump trucks if he could get his CDL, so he’s been working toward that. They’ve also got another baby on the way. 🎉
What else… Oh! I got my first tick bite of the trip. 😅 Little stinker bit me right inside the belly button.
Twice!
I guess I must have brushed him off the first time without knowing it.
Let’s see. What else… Oh, I spent a fair bit of time trying to figure things out with windows for my sister Heather. Windows are so blasted expensive, and I think hers are mostly custom sizes, which adds to the expense.
I’ve been hoping to find some way, somehow, to save some money on the windows. They are just ludicrous prices.
It’s mind boggling.
Sometime late in the evening, one of the people who is interested in my truck, upon hearing that someone else was going to show up about 6:30 in the morning to look at it, asked if he could come tonight. I didn’t have the title with me, so I arranged to meet him after I picked up the title for my mom’s place, so I headed over and picked it up (but not before in my distractions, I drove right on past my mom’s house and had to drive down the country road a ways to be able to turn around. I then proceeded to miss my turn off on the way back to Haven Hill, causing me to have to go all the way around 😆).
After finally getting back to the entrance to the street Haven Hill is on, I waited for the gentleman to show up, and then had him follow me in.
It was dark when he showed up, but after looking at it (and after a brief scare where I briefly misplaced the keys for it and was worried I would have to drive all the way back to my mom’s house to get the spares), he was able to listen to it start and run.
Amazingly, after checking it out for a fair bit, he decided he wanted to buy it and went ahead and gave me the full $750 I was asking. 🙏
He asked if he could come pick it up the next day, and I wondered if his reasoning for coming back to pick it up was simply that he didn’t have anybody to go with him, so I offered to drive it back to his place if he would give me a ride back to the farm, and he was pleased with that.
(There were concerns before he came that it wouldn’t even drive at all, but when I reattached the damaged wires (which happened mid-text conversation with him 🙃), I was able to get it to drive forward and was able to relay that information to him.)
The drive over to his place was relatively uneventful, though it seemed like the truck was in limp mode or something. It might have been because the wires weren’t fully connected and possibly shook loose, but I told the buyer all of that.
He gave me a ride back, and I finally made it back to my mom’s place a hair before 11:00 p.m.
It was late, but the truck was sold.
So long. You were really useful at times. 🙏
Yay!!! 🥳 That’s one albatross off from around my neck. 🙏
Four to go. 🙃
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 