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Plastic Carburetor? Whats next?

I know this is not a Volkswagen post. Boop! My Site! In all fun, we have not done much on the bug due to time constraints and Injuries. Don’t worry, everyone is fine and on the mend. We will get back to the bug soon enough. We visited a Volkswagen bug car show last weekend. This got the juices flowing again and had a wonderful time as a family. One of the cool things was watching my kids inspecting each car for the elusive “Auto-stick”. Ours has this type of transmission, and we found none at the show that was an Auto-Stick.

We worked on the Lawn Mowers today

I picked up a mower for nothing in a shed find that looked as though it had never been used. The previous owner confirmed that she moved on to an electric model for ease of use and that the one in the shed indeed had been used maybe 5 or 6 times, but that it had been several years since then. I threw it in the truck and took it home. I found a kit on the big auction site that included a carburetor, air filter, and spark plug for 10 bucks. It also had a few other bits and parts for tune ups.

First time failure

A few weeks ago when I was bored, I pulled out the mower and swapped the carburetor and plug. I had done this on an older sears mower and had immediate and excellent success. The difference was that the sears model had a tried and true metal carburetor on it and those things are pretty durable. With the plastic model, the mower did start up pretty well on the first pull. I did not notice a problem until a few more weeks later when I tried to start it up and had no success.

New is not always CLEAN!

After waking up and having breakfast, I talked to our budding mechanic and we got together on fixing the mower. Last night, by myself, I spent some time on the spark plug as it was a very generic plug and the spark was a but dimmer than I would like. Easy enough, I found another one from a reliable brand and eliminated it from the possible causes of failure. Big tip in repair work is never assume. Guilty as charged. I totally made the assumption that a new carburetor would be clean and free from debris. Sometimes I think the extra money for products goes for cleaning services and better storage facilities. Maybe not. This time, me and the 2 kids focused on the carburetor because last night I found that I can get the mower to fire using ether, but it would not keep running.

Down to business

Each kid took turns removing pieces until we had everything out and ready to inspect. Sure as God made apple butter, that new carburetor was full of varnish and about a quarter teaspoon (a lot for a small device) of dirt and grime. To be utterly fair, this could have been dirty gas, or the carburetor may have indeed come with a side of goo. That is not important.

The road to success

Totally relying on our learned skills from the Volkswagen, we disassembled the plastic carburetor and immediately both kids recognized the clogs and grit. After a couple near empty cans of cleaner, we got it all clean and reassembled. With fluid shooting out in all the right directions and from all of the right holes now, the mower then started and stayed running. There must have been a tiny bit of residual goo in there because we still had to spray some cleaner in the throat and pump the bulb to get the last of the junk out. A cap full of stabilizer and a 5 min run, now it starts on the first pull and stays running. We shall see about next time. I am still not super convinced about the plastic carburetor. Time will tell.

I recently had a wonderful opportunity to play some music for a local Theater production. It was my honor to be the “Voice of Otis” . A dear friend of mine contacted me to fill in for this role and we had a great time working together again. Together, we explored new talents, and reminisced back to old times. Forging new art to support local performers and artists is now one my favorite memories. I never met the cast, crew, or writer, but, I still feel like I had a small part in this story. This production will be put on by Dayton Playhouse thru July 25th. Tickets can be purchased here. https://daytonplayhouse.thundertix.com/events/187414. Please enjoy the hard work and artistry of some of Dayton’s best.

Excellent Musicians

The music of the show had some excellent talent. Mr Kareem Powell (another dear friend) and Mr Adam Ben Ezra did amazing work for this show as well. Seek them out and Enjoy their works because they are AWESOME!

Kind words from the Writer

The writer gave us all some wonderful comments related to the music of the show. It is always nice to read a heartfelt comment that makes you fell good. What a pleasure to work with local artists and make some art together.

Welcome!

Good afternoon! It is good to be back in the nice weather and out working on the old beetle again. Before winter put our fun on ice, we were at a point where we needed to replace the fuel pump. Last week, we did just that. I prepped the student with some time before so she could be ready to take this on.

The Pump!

The fuel pump that was in there still kind of worked, but, one of the nozzles was squirting gas out last season, so it was time to replace the Classic Beetle Fuel Pump. Initially we thought is was going to be more difficult. What a pleasant surprise. Only needed to remove the distributor and we were able to leave the carburetor alone. Once the distributor was out of the way, we had a clear shot at the bolts holing the pump on. Removal was a snap. The old gasket came off nice and easy and the we had the grease and new parts all laid out and ready to go. We did get it all back together with ease but then ran into the issue with the ignition switch.

Next Project.

Looks like we can turn the key, but the connection is not always made so the starter motor wont engage. I would much rater start with replacing the switch than trying to do the starter itself. twelve bucks seems more livable than a couple hundred, not to mention, the starter is well hidden in this car. The replacement has arrived. It won’t be long before you see another post. This time we get to remove the steering wheel! Gotta check to make sure I have all of the tools we need for this one. I might just need to go buy a steering wheel puller.

https://dwits.biz

Greetings!

Now that Spring is settling in, it is time to get back to working on the cars. Sadly, this is not a beetle post. We had a pressing issue with the front suspension on the family Kia. You could say our Soul was wobbly/Noisy when driving on bumpy roads. Who would have thought that this could be fixed with around $85 and a little elbow grease.

Well, I assumed that this would be an easier job than it was.

After all, you can see in the picture that there are only 2 connections on each part. FYI, these do not come with replacement nuts, so plan ahead. I did not. It added time to the job. Me and the budding mechanic went out and jacked up the car. We then stabilized it with chocks and went right to work. She is growing in her skills and I did not need to coach at all.

Things seemed to be going well.

Then it came time to remove the top nut. Work, work, work. Lots of movement was happening, but no progress was being made. We found that we needed an extra wrench to get it to move. That got it almost off, when the nut just would not move any more. Vice grips did not help either. This only made things worse. I called my brother and he came to our rescue in short order. I love that guy.

He has a bit of a drive to get to us, so we continued with the lower connections and got those off without any difficulty. This allowed us to reuse the nuts for the bottom, but we still needed to solve the problem with the top connections, and we found that both sides had the same issue. The bottom connections were problem free, but the tops were not coming off. By the time we got to this point, My Brother arrived and gave us some needed company and different perspective.

The Adventure to the stores

We decided that instead of fighting with this for too long. We visited the local hardware store and get new nuts after using my grinder to cut off the old ones. 2 or 3 stores later, we had new hardware in hand and headed home to finish the job. I set my daughter on the path of installing the new link while my brother and I worked on cutting the other side. She did an excellent job. We finished cutting and then stepped aside so she could install the driver’s side link. We all 3 double checked the tightness on the connections for safety and then put the wheels back on and lowered the car. The test drive was nice and quiet. No more wibbly wobbly bumpity bumps.

Now, for the rest of the story.

In the winter, the rear brakes needed done and the local repair shop way overcharged us to fix them (still kind of worth it since I did not have to do it in the winter, but it stung). The informed us that we needed all new shocks and struts in the front and rear. I assume new links would have been part of the total repair, but the cost would have been far higher (guessing around $1100 to $1500). We decided to try it out and learn together with my daughter, and this time, it worked out and we got away with a nice day together learning a good skill and only spending about $85. What a great experience, I am so proud of what we accomplished, and thankful for people in my life that came to our rescue.

Good Afternoon,

I hope all is well with you and yours. My daughter and I decided to try our hand at making some soap. This was from a mail in kit that was gifted to her for school. We spent the afternoon reading the instructions and working through the process of making a small amount of home made soap. As always, she picked out a very cool design and we sailed through the process with the greatest of ease. There are some more options in the kit that we will be doing at some point. I have also purchased some ingredients to make some Shaving soap for me. That project will be a bit more involved. I am so proud that we can do stuff together and have fun. Have a great day.

Good evening. This will be a short one and a lot less soap boxy than the last one. By the by, the famous roadside company still has not paid me back for my battery though. So, back to business. My boy has added Mario brothers to his repertoire of games he likes to play. One of the characters in the game is the hammer brothers. They typically appear in pairs, but can be alone from time to time. We did a little research and it looked pretty simple. This is what we came up with. I had some scrap 4×4 from another project and a dowel pin that we cut to size. He got to learn how to size a hole to fit the dowel and how to cut an angle with a miter saw and some basic staining. It has been fun to watch him carry it around. Another thing that he and I have been working on is some gamer play through videos. We (mostly I) worked out the tech and he is working on the gaming and commentary. Once we get some stuff down, I will put something up for the world to see. Who knows how long that will be. But it will be his own brand of fun.

Hey folks. It has been a while since I posted anything. It was a nicer day so me and my budding mechanic got a quick job done on the family car. Even though this was not for the bug specifically, it is a needed skill for any mechanic to have. A while back, I got a call from my beautiful wife that the car had died on the way home. I took the truck to go give the jumper cables a try and see if we could deal with the issue in the morning. No dice. After a couple attempts, we called a tow truck and had the car brought home. Soap box moment. I pay for a premium battery replacement service that claims to be able to bring me a battery where the car is in trouble and replace it free of charge. I was rudely awakened to the fact that the very large company I pay to provide this only provides it when and where they choose. Real handy for someone who is stranded on the side of a cold dark road. The tow driver was kind and professional. The problem was not with his service at all. The next day, I called the roadside assistance company and verified that, Yes, I was entitled to a free battery provided and installed by them, however, I would have had to have them tow the vehicle to one of their shops and have one of their installers do the work. I asked if I could simply go to the garage and pick up the battery, I am fully capable of installing it. The answer was a definite “NO”. Instead, They were “Happy” to tow my vehicle to the nearest shop with their name on it (10.6 miles away) and have one of their people install the battery. So, this means I now have to wait on a tow truck, then wait on a garage and then get home after. I figure this would take a few hours at least, when I can go to the big box store right in town and have the whole thing done in 15 minutes. Oh, I forgot to mention that the reason the battery was dead was that the factory alternator had finally given up its existence. The poor thing only lasted 190,000 miles. So, here I am having to replace the alternator and battery and the roadside company is taking away my precious time and standing in the way of getting the car back on the road where it belongs. Thanks be to God alone for my brothers who came over and helped with the alternator. I could have done it alone, but having them with me made it much more enjoyable and faster. It did not take too long for me to tell the roadside company to buzz of and I went and bought a local battery and replaced it along with the alternator. After a few weeks, I am still waiting for my refund for the out of pocket expense. They will gladly reimburse me, if I go buy the battery itself, but, they won’t just hand me a battery over the counter. I understand fully that their service is more about them than it is about the people who are stranded. Climbing down now from the soapbox. All of that was brought on by the battery terminal was eaten away from corrosion. Of course, this is no ordinary battery terminal. None of the local parts stores carry the one that fits this vehicle. The universal ones all have a bolt that is too big for the hole in the cable. I had no choice but to buy one that did not fit only to order the right one and wait a few weeks for shipping. The new battery terminal arrived and me and my daughter went outside today since it was reasonably sunny and replaced the terminal. It all fits together nicely and seems to work just fine. She did this one all on her own, and I am so proud.

It is not often that I get into the Christmas spirit. When I do, it does not last long, but, it does satisfy that in me for about a year. This year, it came out in song. I added my own version of O Holy Night. This is really one of my favorite songs.

So. Even though this happens every year at the same time and we all know its going to happen and when, Christmas has managed to sneak up on us again. I was spending some time looking through the interweb shopping things and ran across this old Telephone/Radio/T.P. holder. It spun my wheels and in a few short clicks, I was caught in a CORNADO! I guess funny toilet paper rolls are a big thing. I won’t blast with as many as I can find. You can explore these things on your own. I picked the ones that rang a Bell with me. You see what I did there? When someone says they will bring an Apple Roll for dinner, I admit that I thought of something resembling a pumpkin roll. I did see another roll with an IPOD attached and thought “Someone misspelled this…” Merry Christmas And Extra Special Blessings to you and yours for the Holidays. This year will be a tough one for the extroverts and social types. To be fair, it will be just as difficult for the introverts and anti-socials too, we will all process it in our own ways as usual. Stay safe and healthy. Keep on rollin’

P.S. I got rid of my Day Job, so I also got rid of the page. I replaced it with the Christmas Play I wrote a while back. With it moving farther away on the Posts page, I figured it might be nice to have a more permanent home. And when I say Home, I don’t mean Home as in Home page, but “Home” as in where it lives on The Play page. Its only 30 pages long, give it a read and get into the Christmas Spirit.

To the veterans out there who may find there way here. I personally, thank you so much for your service and dedication to this country. Without you, we would have fallen long ago. We really do owe our freedom to you.

On to something a bit different for me. Since School has started, the bug is on the back burner, and we are focusing on other things. Sorry to the bug enthusiasts, we will return to the project when the weather becomes more accommodating, or, when I have time to clear space in the garage. I did release a couple songs recently and I certainly hope you continue to enjoy them along with the earlier projects with friends. I also did another “Tall Tale” and put it in that category. These are total drivel and are for the sole purpose of my getting some weird out in another creative way. This post is strange because I an venturing into different waters by adding some of my own thoughts and feelings instead of simply reporting facts. Not to worry, I am not going to go into politics or other taboo subjects. This is just something different to stretch my writing and try to entertain you with other tools in the toolbox.

Nothing like a simple project to ruin a day off. Don’t get me wrong here, I enjoy doing things that improve my living space. I feel like when I accomplish something positive, it helps lift my spirits and make me more pallet able to the people around me. Some times, little projects come up that are involuntary. This project, you may have already figured out by the picture, was replacing glass in a very old garage window. I have been told be more than a few people, that I just think differently than “Normal” people. As I work on this project, I cannot help but relate the window to perspective. There are the obvious things like windows are used to open up perspective in a closed room so that one can see things they were unable to see through a solid wall. This is what I would consider low hanging fruit in the “Things to be learned” department of any situation. You see, I have been a repair person for 22 years. It has been my job to walk into unfamiliar situations, and figure things out. Let’s define Low hanging fruit. This is the easy stuff to pull down and benefit from. If you are hungry, this is the fast cure that can get you by for the time being. This is all well and good, but, there is almost always more. Being a professional in the IT world, it is difficult to go through a career without attending classes or training that addresses the idea of changing your perspective socially by standing on a desk or dividing the room into categories in which you self define as whatever they want you to cuss and discuss until you see another perspective. These are well meaning and do have an effect on people and assist in the breaking down of barriers between people of all shapes. The point is to get beyond yourself, and try to see things from the other person’s perspective. I try to do this on a regular basis in as many different situations as I can. I know this makes me strange. I know this puts me at odds with most people. I promise you that this does not bother me. On to what I learned about me during this little unexpected project. A few weeks ago, I was mowing my grass and passed by my garage window. I noticed that it had several cracks in a nice spider web pattern that all met into a tiny hole. This was not the size of a BB, but bigger. It was round, ruling out rocks or lawn mower fodder. Those of you who know me, likely understand that I don’t get hung up too much on blame. At this point, the damage is done and it really does not matter who done it. The real issue here is getting it fixed. Dealing with broken things at work all day kind of cured me of trying to spend time figuring out who’s fault things are and moved me to a place of getting things resolved so people can return to normal life, and I can move on to the next puzzle. As any dad would do, I asked the kids what happened. I got a nice story of archery and accidents. The thing that surprised me was that all of the people that were there decided that I might get angry and didn’t tell me, or, they just plain forgot. Again, this doesn’t change the broken window or the path back to normalcy. Turns out one of the neighbor kids along with my own, were shooting arrows and one got away and went through the window. I am glad it was a piece of glass instead of something important. I am glad the kids were having fun together and not causing real trouble. Thinking more about the window itself, I came up with a different perspective. A window is also limiting. Yes, it can give you a view, but it does limit and change the whole experience. You can see out, but you are still behind a wall. You can experience the light, but, the sounds change. The window limits your other senses. Your sense of sight is only opened partially, but the other senses are all limited further and change your experience of the world. We all do things to windows to alter our own perspective as well. We buy curtains, and blinds and other decorations to make the window fit into what we want or how it comforts us in some way. This is natural. Some of the things we dress our windows with are to make them more pleasing to us, and other stuff we put on the windows are for the purpose of limiting the prying eyes of our neighbors and passers by. We do this with almost everything we encounter, so why not windows too. In a time when we have been forced to isolate and view things through the window of the media, please be extra careful about being aware of your perspective. Be cognizant of the fact that we are seeing the world through the lenses of media and technology more so than ever before. Do with this what you want. I am not trying to change who you are or what you believe. I am simply showing you something I thought about. The reality here is that I am thankful for the neighbor kid who shot an arrow through the garage window. It gave me something to think and write about. I also think that I learned that sometimes thing happen to teach me about me. Today, I learned that I despise glazing old windows. I am glad I learned a new skill and that the weather allowed me to do this on a nice day. So, there you go. A long and pointless journey into my world that you will never get back. I hope the rest of your day is filled with enjoyment and turns out in your favor.