Neighborhood Garage Sale

Yesterday was our annual neighborhood garage sale. I usually jump in my car and make a pass through the neighborhood, in the past I have gotten some good deals.

This year there was everything from a really clean 55 Chevy Sedan Delivery,

to a barely used Bocee Ball set.

A block from my house I found this brand new bike with a $20 post it note on it. I didn't really even look at it before pulling cash out of my pocket. After a quick conversation with the owner he told me he had been given they bike at work and had never ridden it.

After explaining I would be back to pick it up I started walking to the next house, thinking I would now need to find one for Tania as well. I had been looking for a his and hers set but nothing I had really pursued.

Next door there were two his and her Schwinns that I was not sure if they were for sale or if someone had ridden them there. I looked around a bit and then asked the home owner if she was selling them. At this point I was just curious since I had just bought a bike. She informed me they were for sale for $10 apiece.

Now I have three bikes...

I looked them up online last night and found the Polaris is currently available and sells for around $240.00. The Schwinns are about 8 years old and sold for just over $200.00 apiece. I think I will sell the Polaris on Craigslist (the Schwinn is a better bike) and use the money to buy some lights for the Schwinns.

There is trail head for a bike path about .5 miles from our house that I would like to start riding on.

Snowblower - Oil Leak

Two weeks ago I was "summerizing" my snow blower and noticed it had a fairly big oil puddle under it. It has always leaked a little bit since it was new, a few drops here and there but this was a puddle.

Looking at the motor it is mounted to a flanged steel plate which is attached to the main axle. It looked like the oil was coming from around the plate, which appeared to be the bottom of the sump or an oil pan.

Its item #14 in this picture.

The gaskets for this engine are not available separately, you have to buy them as a set for $52.00.

Last week I bought a hole punch set from Harbor Freight in anticipation of making a new gasket, and last Monday I started taking the engine out. It was of course the first thing they put in place when they built the snow blower so getting it out took a little work.

When I unbolted it from the engine plate I realized that was not the leak, it was leaking from the engine side plate. That wouldn't be any harder to make a gasket for, just more things to take apart.

My new Harbor Freight hole punches worked very well and I was able to make a gasket quickly. I did learn one lesson, punch the holes before you cut out the gasket. The material is brittle enough that it will split if the hole is very close to the edge.

Once I got the gasket made it only took a little over an hour to get it back together and running.

Pressure Washer

Tania bought me a AR Blue pressure washer for my birthday back in February.  I wanted a low volume pressure washer I could connect to my CR Spotless water de ionizer.  Utilizing it will allow me to use less de-ionized water when I rinse the car. The downside is connecting two water sources to it because demonized water is a solvent and left in the pump it will eat it up.  To make this work I needed a bypass for the de-ionizer.

Last year in anticipation of getting a pressure washer, I built a bypass out of PVC. When I connected it last week it literally exploded sending PVC shrapnel around the garage. Looking at it, I have no idea why it failed but the fragile nature of the PVC had me concerned to begin with.  I went to Lowe’s and looked at copper then quickly dismissed that idea due to the cost, so I started looking at PEX.  I was able to source everything necessary from Menards, including all the garden hose adapters.

Because the PEX is much more flexible than PVC or copper, I needed to build a bracket to attach the splitter valve to. I had some aluminum angle left over from a previous project that I highloked together.

Unfortunately I didn’t notice the feet on the valve were too wide for the aluminum.  I debated making a new support or adding a plate to the support. After looking at the valve again I realized I could re-drill the holes closer too each other.

After I re-drilled the holes I trimmed down the ears.

The bracket was easily attached through existing holes in the CR Spotless and the PEX went together rather quickly. I also purchased another section of Gladiator wall system. I had plenty of extra hooks to hang the pressure washer and more importantly the hose which allows me to store it in loose coils. Hopefully this will help with some of the memory these high pressure hoses have.

Now I can easily run normal water through the pressure washer to remove all the de-ionized water.

Steering Column

One of the few things I have never liked about the Corvette is the driving position. It seemed no matter how I adjusted the seat or the tilt column I could never find the right spot. Specifically I didn't like sitting so far away from the steering wheel, I have always liked it fairly close.

In most cars you can just move the seat closer and its problem solved. In the Corvette moving the seat closer puts my knees into the bolster and I am unable to use the clutch properly. This problem was very apparent when I went open tracking and felt like I was fighting the car instead of controlling the car. My arms extended straight to the wheel made it a very tiring experience along with making me drive much slower.

After that weekend I started researching options to move the steering wheel closer to the seat.

Option 1 was to buy a telescopic steering column ($350-$400).

Option 2 was to buy a custom made steering wheel with a deeper dish to the wheel ($1,500+).

Option 3 was to buy a quick release steering hub, after market steering wheel, 5 point harnesses to make up for no airbag and a track bar to mount them to ($2,000).

None of those options seemed reasonable at the time, so I did nothing.

A few weeks ago I was looking on Ebay for a trim piece and came across a column for $250.00, so I started searching to see if they had dropped in price. I ended up finding a column from a 2012 with 18k miles on it for $100.00 shipped. It was also a complete column with all the controls, clock spring and trim pieces installed.

After taking the disconnecting the battery the air bag and steering wheel took maybe 15 minutes to remove. Fairly simple stuff, I've had both off the car 3-4 times before. The column itself has one connector for all of the controls and one for the airbags. After disconnecting those, there was one cross bolt though the steering shaft and four bolts holding the column in place.

While the physical structure of the columns were completely different the mounting points and connectors were the same. The mounts are slotted so I was able to move the column towards the driver an additional 1/4" while installing it.

Once installed and after driving the telescopic motor fully extended the column moved the steering wheel 1.5" closer to the driver. Everything on the column worked properly except the telescopic motor, without memory seats in the car there is nothing to power or control the motor. I plan to rectify this with either a pair of relays or an H-Drive circuit, either way should be fairly easy to wire up.

In addition to replacing the column I took the drivers seat out while the steering wheel was removed. Its far from necessary but makes it that much easier to remove. This allowed me to easily access the drivers side seat belt. Over the last year or so it had become very slow to retract and many times would not retract without help. While I was looking for a replacement I came across a video on YouTube where the author claimed he had the fix for most all seat belts with this problem. He went on to explain that the oils from your skin and hands along from dirt the belt attracts would cause it to swell up and then become too large to retract properly. In the video he cleaned about 60% of a belt by soaking it in water mixed with detergent. I basically did the same thing but by removing it I was able to soak closer to 95% of the belt.

This picture shows the belt after soaking for about five hours. The water turned almost oily with a small amount of dirt in the bottom.

After reinstalling it along with the seat the belt retracted like it was a new assembly, I was actually quite suprised that it worked this well.

Parts Storage (Update)

This week I got my hands on 17 large hanging bins for next to nothing. They were covered with grease and oil which I tried to clean with little success until I loaded them in the dishwasher.

Now I can finish loading all the hardware I have in boxes around the garage.

Recover

A friend form work gave me some items his room mate no longer wanted. One of which was a rather nice NAPA "Balkamp Racing" creeper. There is no way I would ever pay over $200.00 for one of these, I just wouldn't use it enough, but if someone wants to give me one...

It looked like it had been used very little but the covering near the bottom had a tear in it.

I couldn't think of a good way to fix the vinyl that would have any longevity or wouldn't end with duct tape residue all over my back side. I decided to just recover it, so Tania and I headed to the fabric store to buy some vinyl. I ended up buying black, there wasn't a blue that matched and the black was cheap. Buying one yard is enough to cover it twice and was less than $12.00.

It did take a little work to get the old covering off it was built like a piece of furniture.

Putting it back together I used some 3M #77 spray adhesive to glue the foam pieces together along with the vinyl to the foam.

I'm happy with how it turned out, it took me longer to find my can of spray adhesive and the staple gun than it did to recover the creeper..

Spring has Sprung

Ten days into spring and after a 30+ degree temperature swing from this morning, this hits:

Its forecasted to be in the upper 50s again tomorrow.

Green Laser

I found this little gem online, it was $19.99 and probably pure junk, but I planned to have some fun with it.

It came in very impressive packaging, a foam lined box with a magnetic closure.

It came with two mounts and two tail caps, one is push button the other is a pressure switch. I would have paid $20 for the mounts alone.

I mounted it on my AR-15 and sighting it in was easy, white plate at 100 yards and line up the dot with the scope. The dot was easily visible at 100 yards in daylight and once I had it sighted in it was fairly easy to hit a 4" plate from a hip shot, once you spent 20 seconds trying to figure out where the dot was and move it slow enough you didn't lose it again.

Unfortunately it didn't care much for the recoil of the gun and after 5-6 shots it moved. I had guessed as much so I plan to move it to my 10/22 and see if it will hold up on it. If it dosen't like that it will become a desk toy until I can think of something else to do with it.

It does make me want to buy a real one.

Water Leak

A few weeks ago we had gone out to eat for supper and on the drive back home Tania mentioned she thought there was a water leak on the side of the house. Its street side on which I don't normally drive so I wouldn't have seen it. When we got home I walked over and seen fresh water running from our lawn, over the curb and into the storm drain, not exactly normal for 18° weather. After looking around a little more I notice water coming out around the cover to the water meter.

Our water meter is inside a 30 gallon barrel buried in the lawn. I took the mini man hole cover off of it and seen it was not only completely full of water but over running. Like an idiot I took my coat off and stuck my arm in the pit to see if I could feel any leaks, I could hear it leaking but it was so cold my hand and arm went completely numb in about five seconds.

Not having any way to drain the barrel, I called a buddy and was over at his house at 10:30pm borrowing two of his sump pumps. One made short order of draining the barrel and within three minutes I was able to look down at everything, there was no leak in the barrel and no movement on the meter. I could see the water running down the inside of the barrel from the street side so it was obviously leaking on the water companies side of the street some five feet under the dirt.

After putting away the pumps and cords I came inside and called the emergency leak number for the water company. I told the nice lady on the phone what the problem was and what I had done. She commented on most people not going to that extreme before calling and I explained I wanted to validate it was their problem to fix and not mine. That's when she informed me the line isn't drawn at the meter its where ever the easement is, great...

The next day they sent a guy out in a van, he looked around a bit and pulled out a 12v pump that looked like it belonged in a fish tank. We stood there for 20 minutes while this pump tried to drain more water than was rushing in only for him to come to the same conclusion I had the night before. He informed me that he would need to send out another truck that could locate the leak by sound.

A week later I came home and found this:

It looks like they fond the leak under the slabs, the main shutoff for the block is about 30 feet south of where the slabs were removed. They also managed to break one of the slabs with the backhoe so now Ill have three that dont match.

It will probably be a while bfore they come out and pour them, its too cold to do it now. The more important thing is, I still don't know if they are paying for this or I am.

Christmas Present

Normally Tania and I don't do much for each other for Christmas. Generally we buy what we want throughout the year that makes it the "how do you buy something for the person that has everything". This year I came up with the idea of each of us putting items on our Amazon wish lists and then we could go through the others list and pick what to get them.

Tania only had selected one of those fancy new pressure cookers so the choice for me was simple. I had like 10 different things picked, from those Tania bought me a Vortex Venom red dot. She even figured out the correct mount for it.

It was very easy to install and the past few weeks I have spent about three hours trying muscle memory exercises to allow for quick and easy sighting. It does take some getting used to along with resisting the urge to move your head to find the dot.

The thing I haven't yet decided is how I will sight it in. I don't have or have access to a sled that will hold a pistol, but since it does have a bottom rail and I have access to a good shooting table I might try this:

At least I think it will steady it for one axis, Ill find out.

I also picked up a trigger scale this week, I want to do a trigger job on my 10/22 and need a way to measure any changes. I'm less worried about the accuracy of the scale an more that it gives me a starting point to finish point.

Hopefully will have an early spring and I can go do some shooting soon.