Monthly Archives: September 2013

The ’79 Winnebago Brave, Mowing, and Gas

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Last night Diane pointed out to me that we haven’t really done much all summer long and, specifically, we haven’t gone anywhere with the RV. All of that is totally untrue. I’m sure we’ve gone places and done things during the summer but I just can’t remember what they were right now. I do, however, vividly recall driving the Winnebago to our church, Bethany Lutheran, for the parking lot sale a few weeks ago. I’m sure I did that because I have pictures.

OK – I looked, and I don’t have pictures of the RV, but I have pictures of Ron sitting in a chair outside the RV. Still, it’s not proof, I guess, so I might have to concede that it didn’t really happen. But, I’m sure it did.

Back to last night – our Winnebago friends, who also have old Winnebagos, went to Lincoln City over last weekend. They stayed at the Elks Club where parking an RV is pretty inexpensive. Most Elks Clubs provide that service which is nice. Kinda makes me want to be an Elk again. We were going to go, too, but I still had work to do on The Bathroom and wasn’t comfortable being gone from it for so long a period. So, we stayed home. Now it’s time to get contradictory and report that we are now going to Fort Stevens State Park in Warrenton tomorrow, returning Sunday. In our defense, it’s much closer to us than Lincoln City, and it doesn’t involve driving long distance on a holiday weekend. But, still, we should have gone to Lincoln City, too.

In preparation for the trip I thought it would be a good idea to see if I could get the rig started. I worked and worked at it for a long time, until the batteries were almost dead, then I gave up for a little while and connected the battery charger to one of the batteries. Then I went to the local Chevron station for a can of gas, thinking the tank might be dry, and to ACE for a can of starting fluid to give the engine a little more incentive to be nice.

Before climbing into the driver’s seat, I removed the engine cover so I could squirt the starting fluid into the carburetor and give the engine a crank right away. As I suspected it would, the engine snorted it’s acceptance of the highly flammable mist from the can, but didn’t keep running right away. It took a few more squirts to get enough gas from the tank to the carburetor, but once done it ran well. And I let it run for a long time. 

While it was filling the garage, which is directly in line with the right exhaust pipe, with fumes, I disconnected the battery charger, the DirecTV antenna, and the 115V AC power cord so I wouldn’t be dragging anything behind us when we were finally ready to take it for a spin to get gas and run some errands. 

Then it appeared we weren’t going to leave right away, so I turned it off with confidence it would start right up when Diane was ready to go.

But it didn’t. I cranked, and cranked, it until it was obvious it wasn’t going to start without another sniff of the starting fluid. So, with Diane in the passenger seat, I risked serious injury by removing the engine cover so I could do the deed, and also allowed all the wonderful fumes, that should remain in the engine compartment, into the cab. All those fumes went directly to Diane and hovered over her while I got the engine fired up and running. Then I just slide the cover into place, kinda, and away we went with fumes surrounding us and hot air blowing on our little feet. I should have locked it down, I know, but we were going to the gas station and I wanted to have easy access in case it wouldn’t start right away so we wouldn’t be overly embarrassed. To me, none of that mattered, because I really don’t mind the odors emitted by a running engine. It’s kinda nice.

On the way to the gas station we stopped at our church, mentioned above, so Diane could drop off the aprons she had washed, and so we could spruce the joint up a bit because we are the assigned cleaners this month. Diane signed us up so we have to do it. As soon as we got within eye-shot of the church it was evident that the lawn needed a severe mowing. Since Floyd resigned as our arborist, and lawn maintenance person extraordinaire, such tasks are now available for anyone who wants to volunteer their time, like Floyd has for the past 28 years or so. Maybe it’s not 28 years, but he’s been doing it for a really long time. Now someone else needs to pick up the reigns and get it done. Since I was there, my conscience dictated my path to the mower barn, a little room at the end of the church car port, and I got to work. It’s a fairly new Craftsman, and works just great. I think it took me only a couple of hours to get it all mown, and the mower washed. I had to wash it because that’s what Floyd did before putting it away. There’s no way I was going to ride it hard and put it away dirty. No sir! Not me. So, I washed it, top to bottom and it looked good as new when I put it away. Now my conscience is telling me that I should probably do that with my mower at home. I treat it terrible and I’m surprised it still runs, but it does. It’s been very faithful to me. So, before using it next time, I will wash it and change the oil. Then I will wash it when I’m done. I don’t have a mower shed to store it in, however, because I haven’t built it yet. One of these days … until them, I park it under a holly tree where it’s protected pretty good from the rain. When it rains.

After leaving the church we headed for Scappoose to see how much gas we could pour into the rig. I truly don’t have any idea how many gallons the two tanks hold, but it’s a lot. We went to the Fred Meyer gas station, across the street from Fultanos and Les Schwab, and used Diane’s Fred Meyer card to drain their pumps. Luckily, Diane shops at Freddie’s fairly often which provides some relief at the pump when a lot of shopping has been done. She recently took all of our related school children there to buy school clothes which resulted in 45 cents off a gallon. They have a 35 gallon limit on that, however. Fortunately, the front tank didn’t take 35 gallons, so we just moved the rig up a little (it started right up!) so we could finish the 35 gallons in the rear tank. When it stopped, we ran the card again so we could fill that tank, and wound up getting 15 cents off whatever they could pump into that tank. It’s a smaller one, so I was sure it wouldn’t take 35 gallons. It didn’t. Total cost was just shy of $150 for the two tanks. I suspect that will get us to Fort Stevens just fine. Perhaps it will even get us home, too. We’ll see.

Now it’s almost 9 pm, I’m hungry, and need to stop and get a snack.

1968 Chevy Truck, Electricity, Spaghetti, and Soccer

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Today I spent a lot of hours on the old pickup truck. Here’s what it looked like before I started.

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It actually looked the same once I was done, but it’s now turned around, pointing to the right. I don’t remember when I took this picture, but the truck just never changes.

Today, my efforts were focused on just getting the starter to function correctly. Before I got into it too far, I decided to just remove the starter and take it back to NAPA for a test. You see, it functions OK for about 2 seconds, then the Bendix just quits and the starter keeps spinning. If the Bendix gives up, everyone in the entire world knows that means the little gear on the end of it isn’t going to turn the big gear on the engine. All those people also know that if the engine doesn’t rotate, it’s not going to start. As I said, however, the little gear engages the big gear for about 2 seconds before it quits, allowing the starter to spin wildly out of control, consuming massive amounts of energy, until you release the key. So, the Bendix was suspect.

The guy at NAPA, Dave, I think his name was, happily took the starter to the tester, strapped it down with a bungee cord and applied power to it. The Bendix kicked out like it’s supposed to and it remained out the entire time power was supplied, so it was deemed to be working just fine. No amount of whining on my part could convince Dave that his test was a no-load effort. So, I took the starter back to the truck and took a critical look at the wires and noticed that they probably weren’t in the best shape ever. They do, however, conduct electricity and they aren’t shorted to ground. “Shorted,” for those who may not be familiar with this term, means the wires are short enough that the electricity can’t reach the ground. That’s true.

It was a perplexing situation, for sure. I turn the key, the engine would turn for a couple of seconds, then the Bendix would disengage. Not knowing what else to do, I decided to just eliminate as many connections as I could between the starter, the battery. That meant bypassing the ignition, the little switch that makes sure it’s in Park, and the one behind the fuse box that goes through the firewall. It’s a purple wire, and purple wires don’t go through a fuse so it isn’t really connected to the fuse box so it can go directly out through the wall into the engine compartment.

Whether or not you want to know, here’s how I did all of that.

First, I went into the newest of the old RVs we have, and retrieved a push button switch that I previously had installed in it because the ignition switch quit functioning for the part that sent power to the starter. But, the button kept fall off, and getting in the way, so I removed it and now all I have to do to start it is turn the key on and hold two wires together until it fires up. Probably not the best solution, but it works quite well.

Taking the switch to the pickup, I first found a likely hole on the left side of the dash into which the switch would fit. I found the perfect place, but before securing it, I had to make sure it worked like I wanted.

It just occurred to me that I should give everyone a little refresher course on basic electricity, even though everyone in the entire world already knows this stuff, and I probably should have done it sooner. Better late than never, and doing it will help me get it straight in my head.

First Rule – there are two types of electrical current – AC and DC. Both of them require copious amounts of electrons which are the little critters that make you jiggle all over when you happen to touch a bare wire that’s connected to a power source. They literally ‘fly’ through your body and the jiggling you experience is caused by all the cells in your body dodging left and right, trying to get out of their way. Got it? It’s not a good thing to do, touching a bare wire. Exciting, yes, but still not a good thing to do.

AC is Alternating Current – that means the electricity is created by exciting a bunch of electrons with a generator that causes the current to go up and down, up and down, like a yo-yo, until all the electrons in the wires develop a bi-polar disorder and they don’t know which way they’re going. To them, it’s back and forth, back and forth in the wires, going through stoves, air conditioners, washers, dryers, refrigerators, light bulbs, and, once in a while, a warm body.  Behind pretty much every wall in your house there are wires jam-packed with excited electrons that are just waiting for the chance to go somewhere else. The preferred destination of every one of them is ALWAYS the shortest path to ground. Yes, to ground. Like the dirt you dig in when planting flowers that will die unless you water them. Or a garden you plant that the deer just love. That ground. That’s because the ultimate desire of every electron in this ‘circuit’ is to return to its source, as in the other side of the motor that excited them so much. To do this they must use the earth because the power companies chose this manner in order to save money on wire. By stuffing a huge wire into the ground and connecting it to one side of their generator, and just providing one wire from the generator to a house, the house must also be connected to ground, to complete the circuit, allowing the electrons a way to get home, they save an absolute ton of money. Sounds kind of lame, I know, but it works.

DC is Direct Current – that means the electricity flows only in one direction so all the electrons have a sense of purpose, all moving together from the positive side of their source, back to the negative side. You are familiar with this type of power in the form of batteries. The kind the run your cell phone, portable radios, iPods, flash lights, and your vehicles. The complexity of today’s vehicles is mind-boggling compared to what I was dealing with today, but the concept is still the same. The battery sends power, if it’s charged, to the parts that are connected to ground. In the case of a vehicle, however, ‘ground’ is any metal surface on it, especially the engine. In the case of my truck, the negative side of the battery is bolted directly to the engine block. The positive side is bolted directly to the starter. Now reading this, you may think that the starter should be spinning all the time, but it doesn’t. That’s because those who build vehicles use trickery on the electrons to make them stand around for long periods of time before ‘closing’ a circuit, by means of a switch or, perhaps, a key. A key! You turn it clockwise, and things happen. Lights dance around on your dash-board and the  ‘system’, your vehicle’s computer, goes through the same kind of start-up routine your home computer does, but different. If you watch the lights and gauges, they all do the same routine when you turn the key “ON”. Then the system waits. The electrons have been given a glimpse of the excitement to come, and are all crowing up to various switches, waiting to explode down their assigned wires when a circuit is ‘closed’ with the flip of a switch. When you turn the key a little bit further, you engage the starter. Although the starter is connected directly to the positive side of the battery (at least in my truck it’s a direct connect because in 1968 things were simple) the starter doesn’t spin, and the Bendix doesn’t engage, because it’s waiting for you to turn that key a little bit further, allowing electrons to rush to the Bendix which closes contacts that allow all the electrons in the BIG wire on the starter to engage the Bendix and spin the starter motor. When you hear the motor start, you release the key and it magically goes back to the “ON” position.

Now, where was I? Oh, yes! I was eliminating the various connectors between the battery and the small wire to the starter, the one that closes the contacts that allow power to be consumed by the starter motor. What I did was connect one wire from the fuse box, that only has voltage when the key is ON, to one side of my push button switch. I know, I probably told you it went behind the fuse box earlier, and it does, and it’s purple, but the power is connected to it via the ignition switch, not the fuse box. Since I removed the ignition switch from the equation, I needed a new power source, but one that was only available when the key is turned ON. I used a big red wire which is probably illegal in someway, but I did it anyway. I didn’t have a purple one.

From the other side of the push button switch I ran one wire, with no connectors, through the firewall, directly to the little wire connector on the starter. Now all that was between the starter and success was one little switch.

Before doing that, however, I hooked it all up to the starter, which I jammed under the right front tire, to make sure the push button did the trick. Everything sounded like it worked OK, but I couldn’t really see it because once wires were connected to the push button, I bolted it into the nifty hole I found on the left side of the dash. I layed down on the seat and pushed the button with my left foot, but I still couldn’t see the starter, I could only hear it. It sounded just like it did when Dave checked it at NAPA, so I figured everything was good to go. Here’s how I did it …

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Reinstalling the starter is a whole other story so I’ll just skip that part and get right to the meat of this story and tell you that absolutely nothing changed. All that work, and the Bendix still released after only a couple of seconds.

I was all pumped up for a successful ending, and nothing had changed. I even stopped in the middle of all that to eat a spaghetti lunch, that Diane fixed for me, with half a loaf of baguette bread, my favorite. I was READY.

I knew, however, that repeated attempts to start the engine in this manner would ultimately work. The engine does start, but it takes a while.

Tomorrow I think I’ll drive the truck down to NAPA and invite Dave out to start it for me and see what he thinks.

To end the day Diane and I went to the High School to watch the JV soccer team, the one Lydia is on, play against Aloha High School. Aloha won 2-0. Both teams had lots of kicks at the net, but only Aloha’s went in. It’s still a very confusing game, to me, with the referees blowing their whistles in a seemly random manner and making odd gestures with their arms and hands to identify the infraction as if everyone in the crowd knows exactly what’s on his mind. I guess I’m going to have to study this a little more closely. Maybe get some pictures from the internet that shows me what those gestures actually mean.

Now it’s 2222, swear to God, and time for me to go to bed. I’ve got a big day ahead of me tomorrow because I have to make sure the newest old RV starts, then take it down to get gas so we can go to the beach on Thursday.

If it doesn’t start I may have to run some more wires, or get a lawyer.

Oh. This is all the ‘stuff’ I had left over when I was done with NOT accomplishing a single useful thing today …

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College Football and Falling Gracefully

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Whether or not you follow college football, you need to know that the Ducks are pretty awesome. They won their game yesterday 66-3. I know, it was one of those warm up games, getting ready for league play, and it wasn’t the most scored by a team this weekend, but, still. That’s a whole mess of points. The most scored in a game was by Indiana who won their game 73-35. The Ducks also racked up 772 yards of total offense, a new school record, and enough to currently lead the nation in that category. It looks encouraging. The Oregon St. Beavers lost yesterday, but they still scored 46 points.

Now I must report a weekend accident and the lesson I learned because of it.

Let me set the stage for you … we have underground sprinklers that kinda work, enough to get the bushes around the house nice and wet, along with our front porch. Diane found a need to turn them on yesterday afternoon because she didn’t think the water bill was large enough. She’s given up on watering the yard, which has turned a nice khaki color, my favorite color. The only thing that grows in it are random dandelions. Not many, but enough to make it necessary to lop their tops off once in a while.

We have 4 sprinkler zones in the front that are layed out in an odd pattern … one zone has about six sprinklers on it and they all overlap a great deal, and one only has 2 sprinklers on it. The latter is the one that sprays the porch, and also sprays Diane’s side of the bed if she forgets to close the window on her side of the bedroom. This has been tested.

She only lets each zone run for about 10 minutes, then switches. After turning them off, she called me to the front porch to look at something but I can’t remember what it was because when I stepped onto the porch my feet slipped right out from beneath me, causing me to go airborne for a brief moment in time.

It’s really amazing how much data your brain can accumulate while you are in an unplanned free fall, no matter how short. For instance, as my feet slipped, I did a swift calculation as to about where I might land. I had to take into account that there are three cement steps in the landing zone, so I had to run through the calculations a couple of times to make sure they were correct. By the time I was done with that, I was about halfway down and I was looking up at the porch light. It reminded me that I need to switch that old thing out for the new one that’s laying on my table saw in the basement.

Knowing the steps were going to complicate things, I just decided to land on my elbows, mostly on the left one because it’s the worst one I have, anyway. Plus, I remember what happened to Jack’s wrist when he fell off a truck and tried to block descent with his hands. Yes, I didn’t fall nearly as far as he did, but it still crossed my mind.

About that time, my left elbow hit the top step about the time my rear end hit the third step, as planned, to distribute the impact a little better. Then, all of my parts slid the rest of the way off the steps allowing the back of my head to clang against the top step.

Then, all was still. Diane was standing right next to me the entire time and didn’t make one move to stop my fall. She just watched. Admittedly, however, it happened pretty quickly so she didn’t have time to think about it. She just said, “do I need to call 911?”

I layed there a bit, taking inventory of my previously moving parts, and discovered that I could feel pretty much everything except most of my left hand. That concerned me because I didn’t want a broken wrist like Jack. But, I hadn’t heard anything snap, and I could move my fingers without pain, so figured I dodged that bullet. Part of my hand is numb all the time anyway, so a little more wasn’t a big deal.

Though I didn’t lay there very long, it was long enough to actually get kind of comfortable. But, my head started to ache so thought I better move. Plus, Diane was still asking me if she should call 911. She didn’t take my pulse or anything. I guess I was blinking and breathing so she figured I was probably a good judge of whether or not I needed emergency treatment. I actually am pretty good at that and used to be on a first name basis with all the folks at Urgent Care here in town. Most of my severe injuries were accomplished while I was home alone thereby creating a need for me to either dial 911, or just drive myself to Urgent Care. The latter was always the easiest, and quickest, so that’s what I did.

Finally, figuring I wouldn’t know what didn’t work correctly until I tried to stand up, I sat up and jump to my feet. Yes, that’s what I did. I may have even say “Olay!” when I did it, but I’m not sure. I do know that on the way up I didn’t experience any debilitating pain, which pleased me, so told Diane, “No, we’re not going to the emergency room.” I wasn’t bleeding and nothing appeared to be broken, but I wasn’t really sure how hard I hit my head, so stayed awake for a few hours to make sure I didn’t fall asleep, while Diane went to bed to read.

Don’t get me wrong, she was concerned, but not as much as a normal wife might be. She’s used to me injuring myself in odd ways much worse than this simple little fall, but I am getting up in zone where falls like that can cause serious damage. Apparently I’m part of the ‘Lucky Group’, so far.

My elbow hurt a bit, but feeling was returning to my hand. Oddly, too, my right shoulder and arm weren’t hurting and they’ve been hurting for weeks. Maybe I fixed it, somehow.

So, “what’s the lesson?”

Don’t wear your worn out Crocs out on a slippery wet porch unless you’re going to take tiny little steps and walk flat-footed. I knew that’s what I was supposed to do because I’ve slipped on the garage floor before, but never fell down. There aren’t any steps in the garage though.

Today I figured I’d be black and blue, but that didn’t happen. Can’t even see marks where I landed. I felt cheated, somehow, by going through all of that and not coming out of it with even a little evidence that ‘something’ had happened.

Maybe tomorrow will be different. I’m going out with the Lion’s Club to plant flags around town tomorrow morning in honor of Labor Day, so I better get to bed.

Hope everyone had a good weekend. In a couple of days it’s back to school for the kids. They’re real happy about that.