Vicious Dog Attacks Bb (about every night)
Caly and Bb have a little chin-licking game. Caly loves it. I suspect that Bb liked it better when Caly wasn't quite so big (and when it wasn't quite so muddy outside).Fun times here, fun times. Still raining.
Old, but not over the hill
So you think you're tough? Try this on for size:Grandfather kills leopard with his hands.
Nothing tough here. Except the roads. Still very tough. Still raining. Nice and cool at night, though, which is great.
Nothing tough here. Except the roads. Still very tough. Still raining. Nice and cool at night, though, which is great.
Monks use hi-tech camera to read ancient texts
Pretty cool article here about hi-tech photography overlapping with history and religion.Monks use hi-tech camera to read ancient texts.
In more mundane news, spent the day yesterday cleaning up our old Tuffy center console and getting it ready for a new coat of paint to match the interior of the new 'Cruiser. Despite the large number of very small rust spots and scratches in the finish, that Tuffy powder coating was difficult to get off. Took a few hours of grinding away at it with a wire brush on an angle grinder... then hitting the whole thing with sandpaper to get it cleaned up. Looking forward to finishing the repaint so I can use it. Also got the clutch re-adjusted. Seems that part of the problem associated with our recent clutch-less-ness was that some idiot failed to tighten the bleeder valve on the slave. Since I am the only person to have worked on that, ever (new part), it is looking like the idiot is me. The upside is that I've gotten even better at clutchless shifting. Which is a pretty esoteric skill, but hey, at least I've got that. Swapped out a connector rod on the clutch master, so hopefully the whole system will work much better now. Hopefully.
Also managed to fix the rear wiper, swap out the lock on the rear tailgate to match the ignition, and generally cleaned a few things up.
Oh- before it seems like the whole weekend was cruiser cruiser cruiser.... I did spend the better part of Saturday morning touring a beautiful ranch on horseback with a client. Which was a wonderful way to spend the morning! Stinks to be working on Saturday, but really, it is hard to call a horseback ride through the mountains, followed by a cool drink on the patio with some nice people, "work".
The four hour meeting I had in the afternoon with other area realtors, trying to hash out a voluntary road maintenance tax, *that* was work. Yuck.
In more mundane news, spent the day yesterday cleaning up our old Tuffy center console and getting it ready for a new coat of paint to match the interior of the new 'Cruiser. Despite the large number of very small rust spots and scratches in the finish, that Tuffy powder coating was difficult to get off. Took a few hours of grinding away at it with a wire brush on an angle grinder... then hitting the whole thing with sandpaper to get it cleaned up. Looking forward to finishing the repaint so I can use it. Also got the clutch re-adjusted. Seems that part of the problem associated with our recent clutch-less-ness was that some idiot failed to tighten the bleeder valve on the slave. Since I am the only person to have worked on that, ever (new part), it is looking like the idiot is me. The upside is that I've gotten even better at clutchless shifting. Which is a pretty esoteric skill, but hey, at least I've got that. Swapped out a connector rod on the clutch master, so hopefully the whole system will work much better now. Hopefully.
Also managed to fix the rear wiper, swap out the lock on the rear tailgate to match the ignition, and generally cleaned a few things up.
Oh- before it seems like the whole weekend was cruiser cruiser cruiser.... I did spend the better part of Saturday morning touring a beautiful ranch on horseback with a client. Which was a wonderful way to spend the morning! Stinks to be working on Saturday, but really, it is hard to call a horseback ride through the mountains, followed by a cool drink on the patio with some nice people, "work".
The four hour meeting I had in the afternoon with other area realtors, trying to hash out a voluntary road maintenance tax, *that* was work. Yuck.
Straight Veggie Oil Experiment
Finally got a chance to try Straight Vegetable Oil (SVO) in Louie.
I've been waiting until the fuel level was very very low- which is risky here because fuel stations aren't on every corner and running out of fuel with clients in the car is a pretty poor way to impress them. So anyhow, finally got the needle down below E and decided to give the veggie oil a try. It just so happens that we got a bad gallon of olive oil (sat in the sun too long, tasted rancid) so I poured that into the tank and drove off to Santa Cruz, which is 33Km away (about a 30-45 minute drive).
My estimate is that there may have been as much as 3 gallons of diesel left in the tank, so the 1 gal of SVO should have made for around a 25% SVO/Diesel mixture.
I couldn't tell any difference at all in power, but it did seem to smooth out the motor just a little... not sure if that was a placebo effect of just really wanting it to be better in some way.
Regardless, the experiment seems to have worked reasonably well and I'm now looking at doing a 50/50 mix. Just have to get ahold of some more oil- one of the local restaurants has promised to get me 5 or 10 gallons, but so far they keep forgetting to keep it apart.
I've been waiting until the fuel level was very very low- which is risky here because fuel stations aren't on every corner and running out of fuel with clients in the car is a pretty poor way to impress them. So anyhow, finally got the needle down below E and decided to give the veggie oil a try. It just so happens that we got a bad gallon of olive oil (sat in the sun too long, tasted rancid) so I poured that into the tank and drove off to Santa Cruz, which is 33Km away (about a 30-45 minute drive).
My estimate is that there may have been as much as 3 gallons of diesel left in the tank, so the 1 gal of SVO should have made for around a 25% SVO/Diesel mixture.
I couldn't tell any difference at all in power, but it did seem to smooth out the motor just a little... not sure if that was a placebo effect of just really wanting it to be better in some way.
Regardless, the experiment seems to have worked reasonably well and I'm now looking at doing a 50/50 mix. Just have to get ahold of some more oil- one of the local restaurants has promised to get me 5 or 10 gallons, but so far they keep forgetting to keep it apart.
Labels: landcruiser
Recipe for Failure
Ingredients:
1 stuck Propane Truck
1 20,000lb strap
1 HJ60 Landcruiser
a pinch of "sure, I'll try that"
a dash of skinny pedal
Result: Nothing. Barely even jiggled that wallowing beast. Snapped the 5 year old strap, but it was headed that direction anyway. But at least I gave it a try. Just think of the glory that would have been mine if I had managed to pull it out!
Labels: photo
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