It seems

my luck is running about the same as always. I took off early last Thursday to mow and made about four rounds and noticed that there was fuel absolutely pouring out of the front fuel filter on the Ferguson. For some reason one of the seals for the new filter failed. I've never had that happen before. Wasn't that big of a problem to fix, but it knocked me out of an hours mowing time. 

A little later I started having problems with the belts spinning in thick grass and remembered that I had forgotten to loosen the tension on the belts last fall and they had probably stretched over the winter. Naturally, I didn't have the right wrench in the toolbox, so I lost another half hour on that. 

Finally got finished in the main field ('cept for about half an acre that is waaaay too wet) and made about a round and a half on the other field when it got dark on me. Not a problem! I had the bright idea that I'd just get up early and mow it before I went to work, so the next morning I got up at 5am and headed to the field. As I was driving down the path to the field, I hit a rut and heard something go "pop" and the next thing I knew, the mower cutterbar was laying across the back wheel. It seems the weld in the main shaft that the mower pivots on* had broken. 

I wasn't able to get a new shaft until today, but I'm close to having the mower back together.

I also had to get one of the neighbors to roll my hay for me, because I'm a moron of course. I started doing some work on the Ford tractor just before hay season, thinking I'd have it back running in a day or so. Nope! It's been sitting for over a month in many, many pieces and naturally, being the idiot that I am, I parked it right in front of my round baler....

*The mower only pivots when you hit something hard enough to trip the breakaway. This is supposed to keep from damaging the mower, but all it seems to do to my mower is destroy the driveshaft every freaking time it trips. So, naturally of course, I had to do a little redneck engineering on it to keep that from happening.... that of course, will be a forthcoming Redneck Engineering™ post.

dang

I went with Tony today to look a tedder that he was interested in and may have found myself another tractor provided I can secure the funds...

This one probably qualifies as a Redneck Engineering post...

because of the lovely wooden "brackets" on the generator...

Although it may not look that big in this picture, that has got to be the largest Briggs I've ever seen.

Allllllllmost have the 3600 back together... need to bolt the radiator down, plug the wiring harness back in ( that is the result of another moron moment I had last fall which I will save for another time) and stick the nose back on.

In the lawnmower world, I have parts and pieces of FIVE pushmowers scattered around the barn and can't get any of the three (theoretically) "running" ones to crank... on the other hand, I have all of the weedwhackers working now.

Bigger brother slung a rod in his little Terramite backhoe and charged me with the task of finding him another motor.... and boy did I ever. His only stipulations were that it be a "big" horizontal shaft engine. One of the neighbors has an ancient garden tractor with an huge single cylinder briggs on it that I think dates back to the sixties... the problem is, its so blasted huge, he doesn't think it will fit on the frame! There will be pictures to follow of this monstrosity... 

I'm getting dumber by the day

I've got the front end off the 3600 right, putting a new radiator and water pump on. Not really that much of a chore, until my inner moron kicked in. I got the bright idea to clean some of the crud off the block while I had it exposed. Sprayed 2 cans of good ole' gunk cleaner/degreaser on it, dragged the waterhose down there... and promptly filled the $^&%$ intake full of water.

Now, that isn't a good thing to do on any engine, but on a diesel it's velly, velly bad. Sooooo, my relatively simple chore turned into a fairly involved project, because I had to pull the injectors and drain the oil. I thought I was going to have to pull the manifold too, but managed to dodge that bullet. I invested $2.65 in a bottle of Marvel Mystery Oil, poured it into the holes for the injectors and spent about half an hour with a wrench cycling the crankshaft by hand until I got all of the Marvelous Mysterious oil out of it. That still wouldn't have been too bad, but instead of doing it this morning whilst it was relatively cool, I had to be a big dummy and do it during the heat of the day.

Hmmm, also managed to break Sweetie's ™ pushmower today too, but my current lawnmower misadventures is another story for another day.

wow

I did not realize that it had been THAT long since I'd posted anything. A lot has happened in the past couple of years, but one of the biggest reasons I've not written anything is because I simply have not had the time. Another reason is I forgot my stupid passwords and just didn't want to take the 10 minutes to reset everything. I am going to try to start doing a little more posting, maybe once a week anyway. I think I will concentrate on my "Redneck Engineering" posts, as they seem to garner the most comments.

ok, so I was wrong

Redneck Engineering chapter XXVII will not be appearing today. Maybe tomorrow.

News from the sticks

The past few months have been more than a little busy. I have scarcely had time to read blogs, let alone write anything, but I hope to go back to posting at least occasionally.

I will have a new Redneck Engineering™ post tomorrow and boy it's a doozy.

Me taking a trip to town...

In truth this was shamelessly stolen from Yesterdays tractors.

Feeding hay

I put out the last of my rolls Saturday. I am hoping that the rain from the weekend and the warm weather this week will make the grass green up a little early this year. I probably have enough square bales left to feed another month, but that's it.

I dread hay season this year, haven't had time to fix any of the crap from last year and I have a host of new problems to contend with too. I think I just need to win the lottery and buy some equipment that isn't worn out.

Now, if I can just figure out those winning numbers...

It's gonna be Monday

all day long.

My F-150 is probably totalled. I was rear-ended by a Mack truck on the way into work this morning. My back is a little sore and I have a cut on my head where I busted the back glass with it but other than that I seem to be ok, my poor truck, on the other hand, is in pretty sad shape.

I had came through a traffic light near the interstate when a semi came around the cloverleaf with a load of rocks (as in big rocks, as in landscaping boulders), one of which rolled off the truck in front of me as I went forward when the light changed. I stomped brakes to avoid hitting this thing (it bounced when it hit the ground... once. They said it weighed about three thousand pounds) and got hit twice by the truck following me. I didn't realize it at the time, but he knocked me a good thirty-five or forty feet.

I am one lucky SOB. If I hadn't stopped at the red light a few seconds earlier, I would have either A) been in the path of the falling rock, or B) been going about 40 when I was hit instead of 15-20, in either case I would be in the hospital or the morgue.

The truck is AFU, bed looks like an accordian, back glass is broken and there is a major oil leak up front. The hitch is bent into an L-shape and the frame rails have a nice bow to them now. Both doors are screwed up (I had to pry the driver-side door open to get my crap out of it).

As for the Mack... I think I scratched the chrome on his bumper.

A quick annoucement

before we return to non-blogging...


I am NOT the father of Anna Nicole Smith's child.

A sign of the times

Bowater (or Meade or somebody like them) is selling or has sold a large (250 acres) tract of timber a few miles away from me. It is sandwiched between 4 or five poultry farms, one dairy and a couple of beef operations. The folks who own the dairy are right beside this property, which is being sectioned up into 2 and three acre chunks to sell at auction. They put up this sign in hopes of heading off some future problems...

I believe that people have a right to buy property and live anywhere they choose, but these days it seems more and more people want to move out to the "country" and then bring the "city" with them. I've seen it happen several times in the last few years. Urbanites move out to the "sticks" and immediately start complaining about the noise, the smells, tractors on the roads and cows in their flowerbeds (the last in a little tongue in cheek, but such things have happened around here).

I don't know whether their sign will help any, but I hope it does.

I feel bad, because

I promised gun porn and I just don't have much worth showing. Nothing really caught my eye today in the way of firearms, other than this Dragoon...



Which I found interesting simply because it was converted to cartridge. To me that's an awful big weapon to carry on your hip, even though I have used Dragoons as belt guns in my foolish youth. I am now firmly of the opinion that Dragoons and Walkers belong in pommel holsters on the front of your saddle, not your belt.

And here we have the ever popular LeMat. I will get around to getting myself a repop one of these days, just to plink with.



I have more pictures, but they're pretty crappy and not all of them are firearms, I also took pictures of some saddles, a nice looking pair of Mexican spurs and a Rev War era Dragoon helmet.

This is all for now, if I do a little photoshop work on the other pictures, I may put some of them up later this week.

Railroad Graffiti

This is a little different from the usual obscenities that seem to be everywhere. Whoever did this took some time with it.

Snow, snow, snow

Got enough on the ground that it put out Tony's brushfire.



The horses were walking around saying "whats with all this white sh$t? I can't find any grass... ooooh noooooo I'm going to starve!"



In othe news, I can't view this page. Dunno if it's a blogger thing or a Safari thing. I get an error code "bX-vjhbsj" when I try to pull it up. If anyone is seeing this, send me an email.

hmm, this IS weird. I can view the page now.

and now I can't... most be something wrong with blogger.

Ok, this

is actually the view from my window.



Not a great picture, but considering it was cloudy today and I was actually shooting through inch thick glass, it ain't bad.

The relic show is this weekend. They are a couple of weeks early this year, not sure why. I hope to have some good gun porn to post this weekend.

In other news, I have some DR tales, but they're going to have to wait just a leetle while.

I've been tied up helping my neighbor burn a humungous brushpile. We've been running the crap out of the Case. Hells bells, my neighbors have got more use out of it that I have so far. I need to bring it home and do some work over on the back side this winter whilst I can kinda see what I'm doing. We keep kicking around the idea of rebuilding the motor on the Cat before it has trees growing up through it, but to be honest, I don't have the freaking time. If scrap metal stays high I may junk the damn thing.

The view outside my window

sort of...

This is a frontal view. I'm actually over to the right on the second floor where I can look out over uncle Joe's bald head all day.



This is only known statue that was ever done of Gen'l Johnston (somehow I'm willing to bet it's one more than Braxton Bragg has tho'...).

Roadside Georgia has a nice little article about Gen'l Johnston and his bronze likeness here.

It has been requested

that I get off my ass and starting writing again. So since I have a little free time at the moment I will try to do so.

Things have calmed down a bit at work, we've went from constant insane/chaotic frenzy to a steady pace... at least for the next couple of days anyway. The past couple of weekends have been the first time in months that I haven't had to go into the office. I took the time today to do a little fence repair.

One of the four-legged wrecking machines had broken a gate post near the hay barn and sweetie asked me to fix it and do a few other minor repairs on the board fence. Not a big deal except for the gatepost. For some reason that I don't recall, I had poured concrete around it. I don'tnormally do that anymore as I have learned it can cause the post to rot at ground level. Needless to say, that was the case with this particular post, so I spent about an hour with a
sledge hammer and a big cold chisel busting concrete. Didn't make much headway until I took a break to put out some hay and had the great brainstorm to use the loader forks to pop the concrete (and the bottom of the post embedded in it) out of the ground. Worked like a charm. If I were as smart as I wish to be, I'd have thought of that to begin with.

I don't have any good DR stories because I haven't seen him in three weeks. I should probably go by and check on him, but I have been busy doing honey-do projects.

Truck update II

DR has wheels now, granted they aren't the greatest wheels, but it is transportation.

He was was running a little scared yesterday when we went after it, it's been sitting for several months and we had a heck of a time getting it started, but after we got it going it ran surprisingly well (after we blew the soot out of it).

The gas tank has a hole in it and it's going to need a new starter soon, there is an occasional rattle in the engine that TC thinks may be a lifter. It's intermitent and may go away after he drives it some more and gets the oil changed. The rocker panel on the drivers side has leprosy (I'm surprised it isn't worse... I've never had good luck with Chevrolets and rust).

But, for five hundred bucks, what do you expect?

On the plus side, it has a tool box, bedliner and is 4 wheel drive (which actually works). It's not beat all to hell and it should clean up pretty nice.

I discovered the reason for his jumping the gun on purchasing it... it seems he was about half drunk the other day when we went to look at it... my head was stopped up so I didn't smell it and although he acted a little groggy, I didn't think anything about it because he said he'd just got out of bed. It usually takes him an hour or two to get woke up good so it never occurred to me that he was in the condition he was in.

I looked over his Dodge when we robbed the battery out of it to go in the S-10... tried to pull the dipstick and it literally got stuck halfway out... I'm willing to bet he hasn't checked the oil in that truck in weeks... which is probably why that pretty '97 Dodge is now a lawn ornament, at least for several months.

Just a reminder

The Art with a Heart auction is still going on, so go bid on something!

Truck Update

DR is still without wheels at the moment, but with luck, come Saturday, he will be tooling around in an '84 S-10.

I took him to look at it Sunday evening and the dork ended up making a down payment on it without ever hearing it run...

Long story, but I took him around to the title pawn places last Saturday and we didn't have much luck (the boy is 42 years old and although he can drive a stick, he doesn't like to), so I called Junior at the barber shop, who is always wheeling and dealing with something and asked him if he had anything. He didn't, but he knew an ole boy who did have two S-10 pickups for sale at $600 each, so I took DR to LOOK.

The one he liked needed a battery, so he couldn't test drive it then. My intention was to let him look and if he liked one, to go back Saturday with TC and look 'em over again (with a battery this time). We got to talking to the owner, who seemed like a decent guy (his references were good anyway) and kind of told him the situation and he told DR he'd let him have it for $500 to get it out of his yard, whereaupon DR whipped out his wallet and said "I ain't got the money, but can I give you a hundert to hold it fer me til I git my bonus check?"

I'm standing there flabbergasted that the boy was that damn dumb... He knows better than to buy a pig in poke like that.

We got in the truck and headed home and I said "ummm, DR, I meant for you to LOOK at the damn thing, not buy it without driving it."

"Well, damnit, why didn't y'tell me that fore we got there?"

More tall tales from the campfire

Skinner had a weenie roast a month or so back. The usual crowd was there, including Donald, who was in rare form.

Ever wonder where your money has been before? I will try to relate this tale of a twenty-dollar bill in his own words.

"Year or so back, I run off one morning without any cash, so I called my wife and told here to leave a twenty on the front steps and I'd swing back by the house an' git it.

I pulled in a few minutes later and there was half of a twenty under a brick on the front steps. Looked like somebody had just took it and ripped it in half.

I called my wife and asked her what was the big deal and why she'd left me a tore-up twenty. She didn't know what I's talking about and swore up an' down that she'd left it sticking out from under that brick so the wind wouldn't blow it away.

Later that afternoon, I came home and the neighbors’ dog was visiting. When I walked up to the front steps, I saw that he'd left us a little present there in the yard. I noticed they was sumthin' sticking up out of it and sure enough, it was the other half of that twenty. Funny thing is, it was in a perfect roll, just like you'd roll it up to stick in yore pockets.

I set a bucket on top of it to show it to my wife 'cause I knew she wouldn't believe me.

When she got home I said "Honey, you ain't gonna believe this, come take a look at where I found the other half o' that twenty."

I showed it to her and we went on in the house to get a paper towel... I was gonna retrieve that other half. I came back out to get it and it was gone. That dadblamed dog had come and swallered it again."

We asked Donald if he ever got the other half of it back...

Well... this is kinda sad, but the pore ole dog got hit by a car the next day and I never did get the half back. I've still got my half though.... an' I'll get that other half back one of these days 'cause I know where that dog is buried at....

Talk about bad luck

When I got home tonight (at 11pm) DR was standing on my front porch. I asked him where his truck was and he said "Sitting in my driveway."

"So, how'd you get over here?"

"Walked." He lives about four miles away...

"ooooooook... why?"

"blowed the motor up in it this morning, I was hoping you could give me a ride to work." (Have I mentioned he has no phone anymore?)

"why did you walk instead of riding your bike?"

"fraid I'd get run over in the dark."

I don't know what to do, I am not exactly in a position to help him right now. I think he's looking at going to one of the title pawn places and getting a $400 car to drive until he can afford to get his truck fixed.

Remember the "gloom, despair and agony on me" song they used to sing on HeeHaw? I am beginning to think DR is the living, breathing embodiment of that.

If anyone is still reading this

Go here and bid on some artwork. The registration is a little tedious, but there is some nice artwork done by local kids with the proceeds going to a great cause.

And that is the public service anouncement for the day. Lack of blogging will continue now.