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If It Ain't One Thing, It's Several

Got our water situation fixed with a new well, but that wasn't the end of our problems. Discovered The Old Lady's car needs a brake job. It's only got almost 82k miles, why would it need new brake pads and rotors?? I'll deal with that next week.

Recently we had a short power outage. The power was only off for a short period of time. By the time I called friend on the cellphone and found out he didn't have power either, the power came back on a few minutes later. Later that evening I decided we would have some ice cream on some pie for desert (or evening snack) and discovered the ice cream was very soft. I put the ice cream in the big freezer and started checking the temp in the refrigerator. The temp in the refrigerator was pushing 50° and in the freezer it was 15°. If the freezer isn't down close to zero, ice cream will get soft. Thought at first the refrigerator needed to be reset because sometimes after a power failure the compressor won't start again until it is reset. The way to reset this one is to turn off the power and turn the power back on. (Learned that a couple years ago when we returned home from spending some time visiting The Kid and the refrigerator wasn't working. We bought a new one and later when I went to figure out why it died, it worked when I plugged it in.) The Old Lady put stuff like milk in a cooler with some ice.

The next day it was not keeping the temp cold enough in either the freezer part or the refrigerator. It was cycling between 20° and 40° in the freezer. I pulled it out and started looking at it to determine why it wasn't working right. The compressor and some lines were warm and some lines were cold. I decided to look in the back of the freezer compartment. Had a hunch the fan wasn't working. Pulled the back of the freezer compartment off and the coils had frost on them. The fan wasn't running and after I pulled the fan out I discovered why.

The power surge must have fried the solder joint of the wire and it came loose. When I pulled the fan the wire wasn't out like in the picture, it just didn't look quite right. 

I swapped refrigerators, put the old one back, the one I thought had died a couple years back. One of these days I'll see about fixing the fan. First I'll see if I can solder the wire back on, but I'll need to cut away some of the housing to find where connection is for the wire. It was all sealed up. If that don't work I can always order a new one.

Someone Did Half A Tuneup

The other week I decided to tuneup the "The Guppy". When I changed the plugs I discovered that someone previously had done what would amount to half of a tuneup. Of the 8 sparkplugs 3 were original equipment plugs. It's a wonder it wasn't running worse than it was considering there are almost 70k miles on it.

As the picture shows, three of these plugs are not like the others. The plugs that had been changed (Autolite) were the ones that were easy to get at when you removed the engine cover in the cab. The two front ones on the right side of the engine and the one in front on the left were the Motorcraft original equipment plugs. Those plugs are difficult to get at to change. I had to remove the air cleaner box and some of the ducting to get at the front plug on the right. The second plug back I had to go thru the wheelwell with several long extensions  and universal joint on the plug socket, also to change the front plug on the left. While I was at it I changed the distributor cap and rotor. 

The new plugs I put in were ones I had bought for my pickup. It turned out the motorhome engine takes the same plugs as the pickup even tho the motorhome engine is a 460 and the pickup is a 302. The new plugs are platinum tipped ones, so I don't think I'll ever have to do this again.

We got a bunch of maintenance records with the motorhome. So far I haven't found anything about it having had a tuneup. The original owners kept a record of every oil change starting at less than 2000 miles for the first oil change, and repairs that were done, but didn't see anything about a tuneup.

Now I need to take it to my propane dealer to have the regulator on the propane tank replaced and the propane system checked out.

Cabinets

A while back The Old Lady ordered a couple of cabinets for the kitchen. Thursday they were delivered and I started to work on installing them.

This is how they looked when they came off the truck. One cabinet is trying to fall off the side of the pallet. When I pulled the cardboard off the cabinets I discovered both were damaged. The smaller one was basically destroyed.

The smaller cabinet had damage on all four corners. The front was bent out of shape and almost ripped off, Now we have to drive over 100 miles to return it to a Home Depot while they send us a replacement.

This is the before picture. There was a base cabinet that came from someone that replaced their kitchen cabinets and a small table. We wanted to do a more built-in set of cabinets.

I made this picture bigger so the damage would be easier to see.

The larger cabinet only had some minor damage on one side. I was able to glue and clamp it to repair it before installing it.

This is the larger cabinet installed with a piece of plywood for a temporary countertop. When I get the other cabinet installed next to the refrigerator, I will do a better countertop. Still working out the details on what materials to use and how to install it.

We have a division of labor here, The Old Lady picked out the cabinets and ordered them, The Kid will pay for them and I get to install them.

The Rand Paul-EO Diet

The Colbert Repor

How about a shout-out to cousin RuPaul!!

Almost Enough To Make Me Want To Get A Twitter Account

I guess someone at US Airways tweeted this picture to someone that had sent in a complaint.

Of course you need someone to guide the airplane when it backs out.

Stupid Shit Going Around on facebook

The other day the widow of a cousin posted this on facebook.

In less time than it takes to tell about it, I went to snopes.com and typed in "Army cutting back to two meals a day in Afghanistan" and TA DA, got a result that said it was bullshit. (In the comment I just posted the link to what I got on snopes.com) In some areas they are cutting out hot breakfast and giving MREs for breakfast. In fact the troops can get up to four meals a day. Lunch and dinner are hot meals and breakfast and midnite chow are MREs.

Now I'm willing to bet whoever started this bullshit was hoping people would blame Obama for starving the troops, but anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of how government works knows spending and appropriations start in the House. And who controls the House??

A Full Service Garage

Tow Dolly

Yesterday we drove almost 400 miles round trip to buy a tow dolly so we can pull the car behind "The Guppy."

We only paid $400 for it so the drive was worth it. We have been pricing tow dollies since we got the motorhome and most used ones are selling for about twice what we paid for this one. New ones are close to fifteen hundred and up. There's a couple of minor things I need to do to it to get it ready for travel. Noticed on the way home that the ramps were bouncing up and down a bit. Checked it out after I got home and the bolts that hold the ramps on are loose and may be worn. I will check them out and probably replace them. Also noticed a couple of cracks, but I can get a friend to weld them for me. The metal is too thick for my little welder to be able to get good penetration.

I just checked with the Secretary of State's (Michigan's version of the DMV) office and I don't have to get a license plate for the tow dolly. (Wait until the current FuckingRepublican Governor leaves the state broke again, they'll be licensing everything to get money to get the state out of debt like happened the last time. You used to be able to get a trailer plate for 6 months or a year. Now the only choice is a permanent plate for $75.)

On the way to get the tow dolly we stopped for lunch. We had crossed over into Central Time and it was close to when fast food does the switch from breakfast to lunch and The Old Lady decided she wanted a sit down restaurant. It's a good thing we aren't secret shoppers because that place would have gotten a very shitty review. (Sometimes I wish we were secret shoppers and/or reviewers) When the waitress brought out our orders, she went to the next booth and then finally ours. After I dug into my omelet I discovered it wasn't what I ordered. Instead of having sausage, onions and cheese, it was mostly ham with barely enough cheese to qualify as ham and cheese omelet. (Not only was the omelet wrong, it wasn't even a very good one. It was like fast food eggs wrapped around some ham and cheese and nuked to warm it up). I didn't feel like waiting to get the right omelet, so I ate that one. When the waitress was informed the order was wrong, first she said they gave me the wrong one, then later admitted it was her fault. I was in the bathroom when the waitress brought the check. She never offered to correct the error in any way shape or form. When the order was wrong, she should have deducted the wrong order from the check. The Old Lady didn't leave a tip. The waitress was an older lady, but if she is starting to suffer from Alzheimers, maybe she shouldn't be working there anymore. I may ask The Old Lady to do a thing on Yelp on the restaurant. (She has a way with words!!)

Like I said, sometimes I wish we were secret reviewers because we seem to get a lot of lousy service. We are just ordinary older people and for some reason some seem to think we don't deserve good service like the pretty people and the ones in suits!!

Next time we'll do Burger King. The eggs will be better quality.