Monday Night: Small Engine Repair

Brian, Danny and I attended our first class Monday. I learned several things during the first class. They probably did as well.

#1 Ninety percent of problems with small engines is simply bad gas.
#2 Of the other 10% of problems, 90% percent of those can be fixed by rebuilding the carburetor.

I also now know what is wrong with my pressure washer. Based on the instructors experience, its pilot jet is clogged. A carb rebuild should resolve the problem.

Tuesday Night: Wood Working

Tuesday evening's WW session consisted mostly of sanding. The boxes are nearing completion. The hinges need to be installed, a little touch up sanding, and then applying the finish. Total hours to complete: maybe 3. Total weeks until completion: maybe 12.

The kids went back to school today.  I don't think either was really ready for Summer (or their vacation) to be over.

Universal Joints

I wasn't ready either.  Fortunately I had already planned to be off today.  I spent spent a little time working on the truck.  Not much was achieved.  The plan was to blast and paint the drive shaft.  Unfortunately it got hot before I was ready to start the blasting.  Too hot.

First I had to remove the old u-joints.  This turned out to be not as difficult as it first seemed.  After viewing a couple of videos online and calling in reinforcements (Capt. Dan), I finally realized that my u-joints had their clips on the inner edge, not the exterior.

So I learned a little something about my truck today also.  It turns out not only is the engine out of a later model ('82), the transmission and drive shaft are as well.  Because the drive shaft is from a latter model truck, it has also been modified to connect to the differential on the '72.  This made obtaining the correct u-joints a considerable challenge.  Fortunately my reinforcement had in a previous life worked in a auto parts house and managed to manipulate the folks at the local parts store into handing him the parts catalogs so he could find the correct part numbers.  The parts numbers from the computer were all wrong.  We eventually prevailed.

I never did get around to the blasting or painting, but there is always next weekend.

I really enjoyed my day off.  Back to work tomorrow.  The 'Small Engine Repair' class starts tonight.

It has been a busy busy week. During times like this I usually have a lot to write about unfortunately most of it never gets written.

This semester of school is almost over. I took my final for the second of three classes yesterday afternoon. The final final will be on Tuesday.

Over the last week I have managed to effectively procrastinate on several occasions by building a set of wall cabinets for the garage. I build three cabinets spanning a total of 12 feet. Hopefully the extra storage space will allow me to finally get the work bench cleaned off.

That is all for now. I am heading to the high school to sub in a Spanish class. (School started two hours late today due to possible inclement weather. We all knew it wouldn't really snow, didn't we?)

Two of Ten

I have now completed two days of observation in a local middle school. This semester I am required to do a total of ten days. So far so good. It is a nice school with a very friendly set of teachers, faculty, and administrators.

The school I am visiting is on the block system. Today I learned the names of about 50 kids between the three classes I am observing. I hope to know them all, about 90, by the end of the week.

It is still odd being addressed by my sir name. I feel a power trip coming on.