Posts Tagged ‘flooded engine’
Dog Tired
He did it to me again. That’s two days in a row. Asher took off when I wasn’t looking and disappeared beyond the range (I’m assuming) of my ability to persuade him with the electronic collar. They should have a setting where the collar automatically starts vibrating when your pet gets a certain distance away from the controller.
For some reason, on Sunday, I grabbed the mailbox off its base when plowing the driveway, and I left it in the shop garage. There would be no mail delivery, so I took it off with a plan to replace it after the township plow cleared the road.
As Asher and I headed out for a walk yesterday morning, I took him to the shop garage to get the mailbox. The garage door button is inside the shop, and I stepped inside to close it. When I came out, Asher was nowhere in sight. I thought he had gotten trapped inside the garage when I lowered the door, so I opened it back up.
Nope. He was gone. I grabbed the mailbox and started hustling my way down the driveway when my phone rang. It was our closest neighbor, Eileen, who lives on the other side of 650th St, reporting that Asher was at her place. At least that was closer than a mile down the road, and this time my forced march to retrieve him was all on plowed surfaces. Still, that’s more walking under stress than I wanted to be doing.
On his second walk of the day, Asher was confined to a leash. When we got to the end of the driveway, I discovered the plow had come by a second time and filled the end of the driveway, and also knocked the mailbox into the ditch as it passed. So much for my bright idea the day before.
Under protests from Asher, I tied his leash to the hay shed to give him a grand vista to enjoy while I went to get the Grizzly to clean up the end of the driveway. Unfortunately, the ATV wouldn’t start. I guessed I might have flooded it using the choke to entice it to fire, so I left it to sit and did some shoveling by hand.
First order of business was to clear a path out of the back of the barn so I could dump manure. The mess around the overhang was about to get out of control, and the wheelbarrow was already full because I didn’t have that pathway cleared to dump it.
That should have been enough time for the flooded cylinders to clear, but I still couldn’t get it to fire. That left me carrying a shovel to the end of the driveway to heave scoops of the mess by hand until I had enough of an opening for Cyndie’s car to fit through.
I ended the day exhausted and muscle-sore. And tired of the dog. But a solution to my dog concerns arrived last night when Cyndie successfully returned from Florida. She had tennis shoes on when she walked in the door, and it looked so funny to me.
She will be back in winter boots today!
.
.
Great Generosity
Much to my horror, I have become that guy who hangs on to a borrowed item way too long. It ends today.
Last fall, my sister’s husband, Tim, offered to let me try out his chainsaw to give me a reference for deciding what I wanted to buy. I hoped to do some wood cutting right away, before winter set in, and then get it right back to him.
In a blink, fall was gone, and I hadn’t done any cutting. I eventually found two convenient opportunities to try my hand at starting it, and doing some light work on small trees in our woods. I was pleased to have successfully started it on a cold winter day. The saw seemed the perfect size for me, but I had only tried to do the smallest of work with it at that point.
Then the days rolled off the calendar, and winter became spring. I checked in with my sister, to report that it hadn’t skipped my mind, that I felt bad I’d kept the chainsaw for so long, and that I wanted to get it back to Tim before he found a need to use it. I really didn’t want him to have to ask me to get it back. Mary assured me that he wouldn’t be needing it for a while, which provided some peace of mind for a few more weeks.
Now spring has turned to summer, and storms are throwing trees down, left and right. If ever there was a time to have possession of your own saw, it is now. Unfortunately, I still had Tim’s. Then, last weekend, we had a tree fall onto the road, down by our driveway. It was the perfect opportunity for me to give his saw one last trial run, and then return it. I boldly collected everything I thought I would need, and loaded it in our little trailer, driving the lawn tractor down to the road.
Then I promptly flooded the chainsaw engine and it failed to start.
A flooded small gas engine is one of my weaknesses.
I took the chainsaw back up to the shop and removed the spark plug to dry it, and revisited the manual and a couple of online sites for advice, and then gave it another try. Yep, flooded it again. They make it sound so easy. That’s the part that eats at me. Why can’t I figure it out? I gave up after a couple more failed attempts, and went down to finish the job with a hand saw. Cyndie had already stepped in to help, using a ratcheting cutter to trim all the branches up to the trunk.
After the multiple failures over the weekend, I wanted to prove to myself I could successfully start the saw again. Yesterday, after work, I fired it right up, first try, and it worked like a charm. I headed around to the back of the house where a dead tree stood within view of our bedroom window. For the first time in my life, I felled a standing tree. I’m proud to report that my first felling also happened to be a tree leaning the opposite direction from where I wanted it to fall.
It took an extra cut, when the height of my first one was too low, and then a little persuasion from a strap to swing it over and snap the “hinge,” but it landed right where I wanted. And, I didn’t nick the adjacent tree I was hoping to save.
A chainsaw like this one should work just fine for my needs here.
Thank you, Tim, for the generous gesture of offering the loan, delivering it to us here, and being patient with the long wait for me to return it.
We are ever so grateful for the encouragement and support from both my sister, Mary, and her husband, Tim!
Relative Something 