Engines, Machines, and Still No Baby!!!
Yesterday was quite a day, which is why I'm writing about it the next morning instead...
The day started off with replacing an electrical outlet in the baby's room. I've been meaning to get that done for about a year now, but there has always been something else that needed doing first. The job took less than 15 minutes, and that's one more thing off the To-Do List. After that, I spent most of the morning cutting down more grass for the horses; It's a slow, tedious process that has to be done by hand (albiet with a gas-powered trimmer) because neither of the two swathers is operational, nor do I have time to do swathing even if they were working properly. Plus, the grass in question yesterday had to be taken down anyway, and it was in a place where even the smaller machine wouldn't have been able to get at it. IE: Right around the house and well-pit. The fact that the grass there is overly tall and heavy, and wet, didn't make the job any easier; I was using the smaller hand-held whipper and the lines were constantly snapping off, forcing me to open up the line-reel and feed out the line again. Major pain in the butt, but at least the job is done. In the past, all this grass would have been dumped in the compost-pile, but now we're feeding it to the horses.
I know that most people will say you shouldn't feed fresh grass clippings (or cuttings) to horses, but I've been doing this for more than 13 years now and I've never had a problem. Perhaps I have smarter horses; Rather than eating non-stop, they'll eat a little, then have a snooze. Then eat some more, then run around and play, then eat some more, and snooze again... I don't just dump it all in a pile either; It's spread all around their paddocks so that they have to wander around and "graze" on it, just as if they were out in the fields. Perhaps it's also because this is basically just wild prairie grass, and not high-energy Alfalfa hay, that prevents them from foundering. In any case, they know the sight and sound of the mowers and trimmers and that always seems to get their eager attention.
I got a lot of In-Town stuff taken care of yesterday; I picked up a lawn-mower from a customer, ordered the manuals for the IH 201 Windrower, picked up my B&S Shipment from Jack, and finally picked up the fancy indoor waterfall/fountain that Trixstir and I had purchased at the local Sears outlet two years ago! We had asked them to hold it (it was a floor demo unit) until we managed to get the new floors down, never expecting that it would take so long! It's a tall thing; Close to 6' tall, with water running down sheets of slate and illuminated by LED lights in the base and candles behind the waterfall near the top. It should look really nice in the room once we get everything else cleaned up and in place.
Trixstir believes that the baby will be coming soon, as the "mucous plug" has come out, and that's an impending sign that things are going to start happening. Not as big a sign as the waters breaking, but still an important sign. She felt that she was starting to experience labour pains as well, but they were far apart at the time and although important to be aware of, not enough to panic over yet. It made for a rough day and evening for her though, and she really wants this kid out ASAP. :)
While Trixstir was trying to keep herself comfortable, I was working in the shop; Jack expects to deliver the Sea-Can sometime this week, and he now plans to actually put it in the place we actually want it. That creates a bit of a problem as there's a lot of uncut grass there that I really wanted to harvest first. Problem is (again), neither of the two swathers is working properly. I tried using the IH-201 to see if it could just clear a couple of short rows, but it bogged down after just a few feet. I'm not sure if the reels aren't feeding the grass into the augers properly, or if the knives are too dull to cut, or if the grass was just too wet, or what. In any case, there's no way it's going to get the job done before Jack shows up with the Sea-Can. I'm going to have to try to cut down as much as I can manually.
Over in the shop, I was able to fix the spark issue with the old 16HP B&S engine from the cement company; Turns out that the Magnetron ignition I had was fully functional, but I just couldn't spin the flywheel fast enough to produce a spark. I had picked up the two news ones earlier in the day, and even they weren't firing; That's what made me consider that I likely wasn't spinning the flywheel fast enough, so I dug around for some battery cables and connected the electric starter to a battery. Once I did that, the fast-spinning wheel produced a powerful spark, so I put the rest of the engine back together (shrounds, air-cleaner, etc.) and tried to fire it up.
Nothing...
A closer examination revealed no fuel in the line (a clear one, thankfully, so I could actually see that there was no fuel.) The glass fuel-bowl was full of sediment, so I tried removing it and cleaning it out. Of course, the gasket ripped and the filter-screen fell out into the jerry-can full of "rotten" fuel (getting it back out wasn't a pleasant task!) but I got it cleaned up and re-assembled. Naturally, it leaked a little because of the damaged gasket, but at this point I just wanted to see if it would fire up. Nope, because there still wasn't any fuel flowing. At this point, since it was leaking anyway, I decided to remove the fuel-bowl assembly completely, which also required the removal of the fuel-tank. No biggie, there were only four bolts holding it in place. Once I removed the fuel-bowl, I found the cause of the problem.
Rust. And not just a little. The outlet of the tank, and thus the inlet of the fuel-bowl, were completely clogged with rust scale. I tried swishing out the tank, and so far I've removed more than a 1/4-pound of rust scale from it! There's still a lot more in there, but this is now a job for the parts-cleaner tank, not just swishing a little gas around in the tank! I've never seen so much rust in a tank before, but it sure explains why the engine wouldn't run. Hopefully none of it got into the carburetor, so it shouldn't take too much to get it all back together. I'm not sure if I can even get a gasket for the fuel-bowl again, as that technology has long-since been replaced with a simple fuel-cock and a disposable in-line filter. More than likely, I'll have to upgrade it to that instead. It was getting close to 9pm by then, so I decided to call it a night and see how Trixstir was doing.
Still not much change, so I stayed up to watch Deadlist Catch (sad ending on this episode!) and went to bed shortly after midnight. Only to wake up again around 1:30am with my gut feeling like it was on fire! This would have been a fine fix; Trixstir going into labour and me with a bout of food-poisoning, or something. Thankfully (for me anyway) Trixstir hasn't gone into labour yet, and my burning gut settled down by this morning. Not sure what set things off, but that kind of pain is definitely some kind of poisoning, and not just a simple belly-ache.
That brings us to 6:30am this morning when we both got up again. No signs of labour pains or anything for Trixstir, and thakfully my own stomach is settled again. I've got a fresh loaf of bread baking in the bread-maker, and I'm about to head out to the shop to get some more engine-work done. Mom was prepared to head out from Calgary today, but with the latest development she now plans to come first-thing tomorrow morning instead, and per her original plan. I just hope that when things finally start happening for real, that it will be in the morning, afternoon, or early evening, and not at 3am or some UnHoly hour like that! ;)