A sad time

 Its taken me awhile to be able to write about this but it is my sad duty to report the passing of our little buddy Buster.

In the run up to our last trip to Maine the boy wasn't feeling well and during the trip we could tell that he was really suffering and we had to let him go.

Getting a dog is signing up for sadness, you know that day is coming but there is really no way to prepare for it.

Buster came to live with us in 2008, he was the first dog I'd ever had. Looking back I mentioned him on this very blog June 23, 2008, we were set to pick him up on the 28th but there doesn't seem to have been a picture until the ChowdaQ 2009 post.

The shelter he was in called him "Feisty" which is kind of a dumb name for a dog. They claimed they were trying to encourage him to be more outgoing. He never really was outgoing but he was inquisitive and always wanted to check out what everybody was up to.

I want to use this space tell a couple Buster stories, the picture above he's got his head bandaged. This was our first Coleman collectors gathering all the way back in 2010. We'd driven to just north of Syracuse, NY and arrived well after dark. Then through a series of dumb events Buster got bit on the ear by our host's dog. I could get the bleeding to stop but only until he would shake his head. So we went to the emergency vet who bandaged him up. That bandaging came after he shook his head and sprayed blood all over the wall.

This is a shot from 2015 which was a big snow year. I'd taken to walking Buster in the state park near our house because there was a plowed section. As a low slung dog the deep snow was difficult for him. This was early in the era where I would let him go without holding the leash. The deep snow made this pretty safe because there was really nowhere he could go.

At some point he was off digging in the snow on the side of the road. I thought he was digging up poop to eat and tried to hurry along to catch up to him. Suddenly he stopped digging and ran to me with something in his mouth. Prepared for the worst I was very surprised when he gave me this $10 bill and then just ran off again. I posted about it on Facebook and immediately had a bunch of offers to walk my dog for me...

Like most dogs Buster wasn't much for wearing clothes, unlike most dogs he tolerated it fairly well. I wish I had more pictures of him in the little cowboy hat.

He didn't mind other dogs much, in fact late in life he barely noticed them. He'd give a sniff if they got really close but mostly he didn't care. There were a couple people, other than Angie and I of course, who he really loved and one was Fred.

The other was our neighbor Bill, I wish I could find pictures of them together. In the last couple years Buster could barely see or hear but somehow he would know if Bill was out and would immediately head over to see him. Bill was without a doubt Buster's favorite person and Bill likes to tell how Buster was the first to introduce him to the neighborhood.

Buster got allowed into a lot of places dogs weren't normally welcome or normally didn't go. A good example was on Thanksgiving at Angie's uncle Rick and aunt Carla's house. Rick and Carla had a little dog Jimmy who was kind of high strung and "doesn't like dogs." We were going to Maine after dinner so we just kept Buster in the car, it was only a couple hours and we'd go out to check on him, no problem. Well about the first time one of us goes to check on him Rick and Carla decide it'd be okay if Buster sat in the sun porch off the back of the house. The sun porch has a glass door and Jimmy eyed Buster through the door. It wasn't long before somebody opened the door and Jimmy burst into the sun porch and nothing exciting happened. Pretty soon Jimmy thinks Buster is his best friend. Buster of course didn't really care. I wish I had pictures of that, it was pretty cool.

The number 1 thing I will always remember Buster for was his ability to dismember toys. Soft dog toys are rated 1-10, we usually got #10 tough toys but we figured that number was really just the time, in minutes, before Buster could have it torn to pieces. Tough toys are more expensive so for Christmas he'd get a variety of cheaper, low rated toys. Since it was Christmas we'd allow him to do whatever he wanted which meant dismembered toys.

We've still got a bag of soft toy pieces that need to go to the fabric recycler.

Buster's relationship to hunting was complicated. He'd never had any training since I wasn't hunting much when he first came to live with us. Early on he was fine with the sound of gunfire and I used to take him to the shooting range with me frequently. Then he got really sensitive to the sound of gunfire and extended that to not liking guns at all. Frankly he'd kind of freak out at any gun shaped object, like a stick or piece of pipe. That ended a year or two ago and last fall I took him with me to deer camp.

It was hard to get a picture of Buster, me and the grouse all at the same time.

Up until very recently he really needed to be walked every day or every other day at the least. In recent years those walks didn't need to be very long but they needed to happen. On two different occasions I took him after lunch into the field behind the camp where I managed to shoot a grouse. In both cases the gunshot prompted him to take a glance back "I hope this isn't going to interrupt our walk."

The last few months were tough for all of us, its rough knowing the end is coming but not knowing exactly where that is or how it will arrive. He was with us just about 17 years and even now, almost a month on I still think "Do I need to take the dog out?" or I'll walk by his bowl and think I should get him some water.

We'll get another dog at some point but there will never be another Buster. Farewell little bud, may there be rabbits to chase, a soft bed to lie in and all the treats you could ever want.

Well heres a stupid thing

 Dad has a 2017 Jeep Renegade. During their last trip to Caribou the external thermometer quit and set to 128 degrees.

When that happens the car suddenly decides "You don't need any cabin heat" unless you use the defrost setting which is 100% heat all the time.

So I jump on the google machine and find that the exterior thermistor has failed. Chrysler says you need to replace the passenger side mirror, $350. Fortunately I found a YouTube video with a link to the part required. Its too bad that the video stinks because its got good information in it.

Anyway the hardest part of the job is disassembling the mirror:

I really shouldn't make fun of the video creator too much because I didn't get pictures of the clip locations either.

With the back of the mirror off there is a little like pimple down at the bottom of the mirror that houses the thermistor. Digging that out with a little screwdriver caused it to totally fall apart.

Putting the new thermistor on is easy although I did break off all the extra plastic to get 2 clean wires I could slide heat shrink tubing over so there wouldn't be a short. I then potted the new thermistor into the little pimple with some silicone sealant.

Totally fixed the problem and the new thermistors were like $10 for 60...

Unfortunately the failed thermistor sets a persistent check engine light. I own an OBD-II adapter for my phone but it was, of course, at home. I'd bought another one for dad but he's lost it...

When we're up in July I'll reset the check engine light but the good news is that it doesn't seem to hurt anything else...

A refinished floor

 Geez its been awhile. I keep thinking "gotta write the blog" and keep not doing it. Fortunately a bunch has happened.

Most recently I refinished the floor at camp:

This is a good before shot, you can see, down at the bottom the damage from 60 years of usage.

The floor is not actually "flooring". Its just 4" birch boards and family lore tells that those boards were green when the place was built.

I didn't realize (but should have) that those boards weren't flat and because they weren't flat I couldn't just quick sand them like I'd planned. I had to buy 40 grit belts and cross sand (sand against the grain) to flatten the floor. This took 5 HOURS on my knees with a belt sander.

The 60 and 80 grit passes took 1 hour each (16x24 room) although during that last pass my knee pad straps sawed 1 inch square chunks off the back of each knee... No picture, trust me, you don't want to see this one.

I bought a new "WEN" brand corded belt sander for the job and it was flawless. That first pass produced 5 gallons of sawdust.

After sanding to 80 grit I took my old Harbor Freight palm sander around the outside of the room, also at 80 grit. I bought that sander to refinish a hood to put on Hammie my '83 240D when I bought it the second time. That'd have been 2007ish. I've gotten good value for money on that.

Then swept the floor 3 times, vacuumed the floor 3 times and ran a tack cloth over it 3 times. Even with all that I still pulled up mouse turds on the roller while putting down the finish.

This is after one coat of oil based finish. Unfortunately I was unable to locally source additional oil based finish so additional coats will have to wait until July. Because of the wait I'll have to sand again to 220 grit. I'll do that with the palm sander, it shouldn't take all that long, just enough to scuff and provide adhesion.

Progress on the great northern estate

 

You might remember the house and barn we bought in northern Maine. After mucking about for a couple years I finally made contact with the builder who worked on our camp and got him to work on the house.

Step one was to put garage doors on the south end of the barn.

The original builder never bothered to put doors into those openings, they were covered with a kind of conveyor belt like matting used for making paper. This spring I spotted a raccoon sneaking in through a gap and knew we needed to do something.

One substantial application of money later and we've got doors. If you look carefully you'll notice that the cap between the garage doors and the hayloft door has increased. The door openings were originally 9'x9'. Nine foot tall garage doors are very expensive, like double the price, so our builder shrank the door opening a foot and put in 8'x9' doors. We don't need the big height here because of the big barn doors on the east and west walls which allow the tractors to pass through.

Looking back at these old pictures I'd forgotten how much stuff was in the house...

The next plan is for the kitchen and bathroom. As a summer house you could get away with bad windows and no insulation in bedrooms but you can't really use a house that has no kitchen or bath.

Of course the first step is demolition.

This is ahead and to the right of the first picture above. I actually did this work, there was a little stub wall where the ladder is, which I removed. The window in the left of the picture has been removed. That's the north wall of the house which is the coldest so a window there is kind of silly. The window in the center of the picture has been replaced with a larger one.

This is facing into the bathroom looking north. The window pictured here has been replaced with one just over half the height. I like having natural light in the bathroom but there is no need for a big window. This door is new, this used to be the "stairway to nowhere" which went up and stopped at a chimney with little steps up to the right and left to get into bedrooms.

Looking into the bathroom facing west, this is where the door used to be. The shower will be just on the other side of this wall. We decided to go with a stand up shower rather than a tub, who takes baths anymore?

I talked to the builder this week, the drywall is all hung and kitchen cabinets are ready to go in. This project has consumed way more money than I expected but this is really the most expensive phase of construction because of needing to buy things like cabinets and the shower and whatnot. Hopefully in a few weeks I'll have an update where things are going in, not just getting torn apart.

Well that was weird

 Growing up my family had a gas stove with a wall mount oven. The two were separated but both fired the same way, propane from a tank outside. Since moving out on my own I've only had electric stoves, our apartment had an elderly push button range, our house has a glasstop Whirlpool unit.

Not so long ago I was sitting in my recliner reading while dinner cooked, from the kitchen I heard "BZZZZT" and saw a bright light. Fortunately Angie was sitting by the stove, jumped up and shut it down.

Upon investingation I found:

 I'd never really thought about how an electric stove/oven burner works. Of course I knew that there was a wire that got heated but it had never occurred to me that of course that element has to be insulated or it will arc to the frame of the stove.

So what happened here is a failure of the coating allowing the angry pixies to get out of the element.

Looking online there are lots of options for replacement burners. The official Whirlpool replacement is around $60. Aftermarket get as cheap as $15. 

I went for a $25 unit. These are super easy to replace, two screws and then the two wires above, pull the failed on out and put in a replacement.

The new one is thinner than the original but it's otherwise the same size and hooked up the same.

It works perfectly, there must have been some kind of coating on it but that burned off quickly with just a little smell. As of this writing it's been working fine for 3 months. Chalk another one up for the do it yourselfer, cheap and quick replacement.

I hope I don't lose my membership

 In the Procrastinators Guild.

Over the last couple weeks I sealed up the hydraulic tank on my garden tractor loader project. I got the machine back in 2017, you guys might have forgotten about it. Checking back it looks like I haven't written about the loader since 2017 which is weird, we've come a long way...

Heres a shot from back when I got it:

Last week I reinstalled the tank, it had leaked where I added the hose fittings so I slathered the inside with POR15 gas tank sealer. It didn't leak overnight so yesterday I fired it up. It did NOT want to run but finally got going, smoked a lot but I'll be darned if it didn't work pretty good.

I moved some snow out of the shadows on our yard over to the storm drain which gets more sun.

Everything was going great until:

That's the upper bucket cylinder mount, or rather there should be a mount there. Apparently I'd only tacked it on and the tacks broke. I wanted to move the mount a little higher anyway.

While I was working I finished cutting the bucket down: 

I took 3" off each side of the bucket, bringing it down to 38" which is still about 2" wider than the machine. Took probably 25# off the weight of the bucket making it much more manageable for the machine. There's still some more to come off but it's much improved.

I'm going to take it over to buddy Ben's house for final welding, he's got a big stick welder so I can really burn in the mounts, my MIG works okay but doesn't really have enough heat for the job...

That which bears me

 About this time last year Angie and I took a trip to Pennsylvania. During the return trip my 2015 VW Jetta TDI started to make a weird humming noise at about 65mph. Interestingly if you went a little faster or slower the noise went away.

I ignored it up until about a month ago when the humming turned into a grinding noise at all speeds. Sounded like a wheel bearing to me. I jacked up the car and, yup, definitely a wheel bearing gone bad in the rear passenger side. I ordered parts and then had to order tools. The wheel bearing is held in by an 18mm triple square bolt. I had a 14mm triple square socket to remove the caliper bolts but not one any larger. I was unable to find one locally so Amazon sent me a set of Capri brand. Hopefully the set will have all the bits I need..

The bearing itself is really easy to replace, jack the car up, remove the wheel, remove the brake caliper with that 14mm triple square socket, remove the torx (t30? I forget) screw that holds the brake rotor on and remove the rotor. Then pound a screwdriver into the gap that holds the cap on. Mine was really stuck, took a lot of pounding.

Then use the 18mm triple square socket to remove the axle bolt. This was REALLY tight. It just laughed at my Makita 1/2" cordless impact. I put the 30 inch breaker bar on it and added a 24" piece of jack handle. Took a lot of body weight even then.

As you can see the old one was really grungy. There are two bearings there, the inner one was okay, the outer was pretty terrible.

Installation is reverse of removal, no tricks here. I torqued the bolt to 130ft-lb and then 90 degrees. Along with the locktite on the bolt explains why they were so hard to remove. These are torque to yield fasteners, single use only. I ordered a new bolt but the bearing came with one so I've got a spare for what it's worth.

A test drive shows that the noise is gone but now I'm thinking there might be another failed bearing in the front. I didn't check those since I only had the rear of the car jacked up, I did check the passenger side, it was silent.

Oh well, in a day or two I'll jack it up again and have a look see...