Fixing Things...
Still busy both at the shop and back on the farm. This is a good thing - being busy keeps me occupied, and keeps my wind from wandering into places that it shouldn't. I find during the times when I'm not busy, my thoughts tend to dwell on the negatives, and this is just A Bad Thing overall. I don't think I'd call it outright Depression, but it's certainly not Happy Fun Time either. :/
At any rate, I've gotten through more of the backlog of machines at the shop as parts have arrived. It's terribly frustrating to have parts arrive for a machine, fix the problem, only to have a new problem pop up that you now have to order more parts for! Case in point is a customer's Scott's lawnmower; It's a really nice fairly high-end machine with a B&S engine on it. Somewhere along the way the owner lost a few of the screws holding the air-cleaner assembly together, and they had to be ordered. Of course, they were back-ordered so it took a little longer. The parts arrived on Tuesday, but I had to wait until Wednesday to contact the owner to find out if he actually wanted a complete tune-up, or just put the thing back together. It definitely needed a tune-up, but that wasn't on the chart so I needed confirmation first.
The owner said to go ahead, and thus I did. If the carburetor looked grimy on the outside, that was nothing compared to the inside! Definitely a case of rotten fuel, the inside was full of "tank boogers" - little globs of... stuff... that form as a result of the Ethanol in the gasoline leeching molecules of plastic from the fuel-tank and gumming up the works. A thorough spritzing of carburetor-cleaner followed with a good blasting of compressed-air cleaned out the carburetor, but now there's a new problem: It leaks! More correctly, the needle-valve keeps sticking open, and the fuel just keeps flowing until it starts spurting out of the main jets like a little gyser! So now we have to wait another couple of days for a new valve-and-seat kit to arrive. :/
I was supposed to meet with the fellow who installed the roll-up door on the shop to fix the back door on the farmhouse. It's been sagging in one corner all through the Winter - much to my annoyance as I thought the fellow who had helped install it in the first place actually knew what he was doing! More on that later... I wound up have to cancel that meeting because a customer who had brought in a Deutz-Allis garden tractor asked me if I could deliver it rather than them coming into town to pick it up again. I agreed to do so for an extra $50, but that put such a wrench into the evening that I really should have charged more. Still, good to keep the customers happy, particularly if there's a good chance that they'll be repeat customers!
We did eventually get the door repaired - we did it yesterday afternoon right after lunch. Turns out that the door had been installed more-or-less correctly, and that the real problem was that the screws in the upper-most hinge were working loose, and that's why the door had been sagging! Basically, it was hung using cheap little screws that really couldn't hang on properly. The screws were replaced with long wood screws that bore right through the door-frame and into the solid wood behind it! This gave it the support it needed, and now the door opens and closes smoothly. Time to repair? Less than five minutes! Since I had him out there anyway, I also got him to install a storm-door that we brought from Calgary, and which had been sitting in the quonset-shop for the last three years. Turns out that at least one of the hinges on that door aren't quite right, so it's not a perfect installation, but it's a far sight better than not having a storm-door at all. At least now when we get these gale-force Southern winds, they'll be pushing against a door at opens outward, so they'll actually be keeping the door closed rather than blowing it open. This would be a considerably relief of extra worry if I was actually going to Calgary tomorrow, as I was quite concerned about the risk of the wind blowing the door in again while we were away. Since I'm not going to Calgary, it's a moot point - but at least that long-overdue project is now done.
I ordered three engines last Friday, and two of them are now sold, with the third one likely being sold tomorrow! My supplier screwed up on the freight policy again though - I'm supposed to get free shipping with an order of 3 or more engines, but they charged me full freight even though I had met the requirements. I left them a message to fix that, but no response so far. If it isn't fixed by tomorrow morning, I'll Email my representative - he usually gets me results within a couple hours! With any luck, by the end of tomorrow night I'll have enough in the bank to make the mortgage payment which is due on the 24th.
We had an incredible Thunderstorm last night! Severe enough to the point where the satellite receiving lost the signal right at the end of America's Got Talent, so I didn't get to find out who the judges picked for the fourth spot. trixstir saw the earlier broadcast, so I'll have to ask her what the results were. We got just over an inch of rain during the downpour as well! Tonight we have partly cloudy skies under a Full Moon, and the forecast is for warm and sunny for the next week. Let's hope so!
At any rate, I've gotten through more of the backlog of machines at the shop as parts have arrived. It's terribly frustrating to have parts arrive for a machine, fix the problem, only to have a new problem pop up that you now have to order more parts for! Case in point is a customer's Scott's lawnmower; It's a really nice fairly high-end machine with a B&S engine on it. Somewhere along the way the owner lost a few of the screws holding the air-cleaner assembly together, and they had to be ordered. Of course, they were back-ordered so it took a little longer. The parts arrived on Tuesday, but I had to wait until Wednesday to contact the owner to find out if he actually wanted a complete tune-up, or just put the thing back together. It definitely needed a tune-up, but that wasn't on the chart so I needed confirmation first.
The owner said to go ahead, and thus I did. If the carburetor looked grimy on the outside, that was nothing compared to the inside! Definitely a case of rotten fuel, the inside was full of "tank boogers" - little globs of... stuff... that form as a result of the Ethanol in the gasoline leeching molecules of plastic from the fuel-tank and gumming up the works. A thorough spritzing of carburetor-cleaner followed with a good blasting of compressed-air cleaned out the carburetor, but now there's a new problem: It leaks! More correctly, the needle-valve keeps sticking open, and the fuel just keeps flowing until it starts spurting out of the main jets like a little gyser! So now we have to wait another couple of days for a new valve-and-seat kit to arrive. :/
I was supposed to meet with the fellow who installed the roll-up door on the shop to fix the back door on the farmhouse. It's been sagging in one corner all through the Winter - much to my annoyance as I thought the fellow who had helped install it in the first place actually knew what he was doing! More on that later... I wound up have to cancel that meeting because a customer who had brought in a Deutz-Allis garden tractor asked me if I could deliver it rather than them coming into town to pick it up again. I agreed to do so for an extra $50, but that put such a wrench into the evening that I really should have charged more. Still, good to keep the customers happy, particularly if there's a good chance that they'll be repeat customers!
We did eventually get the door repaired - we did it yesterday afternoon right after lunch. Turns out that the door had been installed more-or-less correctly, and that the real problem was that the screws in the upper-most hinge were working loose, and that's why the door had been sagging! Basically, it was hung using cheap little screws that really couldn't hang on properly. The screws were replaced with long wood screws that bore right through the door-frame and into the solid wood behind it! This gave it the support it needed, and now the door opens and closes smoothly. Time to repair? Less than five minutes! Since I had him out there anyway, I also got him to install a storm-door that we brought from Calgary, and which had been sitting in the quonset-shop for the last three years. Turns out that at least one of the hinges on that door aren't quite right, so it's not a perfect installation, but it's a far sight better than not having a storm-door at all. At least now when we get these gale-force Southern winds, they'll be pushing against a door at opens outward, so they'll actually be keeping the door closed rather than blowing it open. This would be a considerably relief of extra worry if I was actually going to Calgary tomorrow, as I was quite concerned about the risk of the wind blowing the door in again while we were away. Since I'm not going to Calgary, it's a moot point - but at least that long-overdue project is now done.
I ordered three engines last Friday, and two of them are now sold, with the third one likely being sold tomorrow! My supplier screwed up on the freight policy again though - I'm supposed to get free shipping with an order of 3 or more engines, but they charged me full freight even though I had met the requirements. I left them a message to fix that, but no response so far. If it isn't fixed by tomorrow morning, I'll Email my representative - he usually gets me results within a couple hours! With any luck, by the end of tomorrow night I'll have enough in the bank to make the mortgage payment which is due on the 24th.
We had an incredible Thunderstorm last night! Severe enough to the point where the satellite receiving lost the signal right at the end of America's Got Talent, so I didn't get to find out who the judges picked for the fourth spot. trixstir saw the earlier broadcast, so I'll have to ask her what the results were. We got just over an inch of rain during the downpour as well! Tonight we have partly cloudy skies under a Full Moon, and the forecast is for warm and sunny for the next week. Let's hope so!