Misc Bits and Pieces and Smoke In The Air

 Ordered some shear pins and "drift cutters" for the Ariens DeLuxe 24 I'll be picking up next week. I'd really like a Honda, but I'm not paying $2300, and the only used ones I've been finding are the 30" monsters that have tracked drive. I could do the whole neighborhood with one of those, but wouldn't have any place to store it!

And I got a new "work table" for the garage:

It's 72" long, and 30" wide. Quite an improvement from it's little brother who measures out at 48" long by 24" wide:

 

Yes, the Supra still slumbers....I have a few more spots to apply the filler to before I start sanding it all down. I've been using my flashlight held parallel to the bumper surface to highlight the defects, and found a few more patches of bad sanding scuffs from the hand-held oscillating sander I used.

Sweet Little Wife got a wheelbarrow at at garage sale for $5. Every single nut and bolt was "finger loose", and the tire hadn't seen air in quite a while. Spent some time cleaning it up a bit, got it squared up and tightened the hardware down, and put some air in the tire. It's held 30psi for 48 hours now, so I'm hoping the tube in the tire isn't completely shot. And while I had it apart I put some "Red Sticky Synthetic" grease on the axle and the bushing inside the wheel. So now we have a decent little wheelbarrow to move mulch from the pick-up bed to the flower bed, all for $5 and some of my time.

And I painted the pinch welds under the rocker panels on the truck today. I have the steps assembled, and now I have to mount the brackets. There are pre-punched, capped  holes on the inside of the rocker. You remove two rubber plugs, slip a clip nut into each hole, and then mount the bracket to the rocker panel. Then the steps get mounted to the brackets, and it's done.

SLW thought I was being all "Adrian Monk" about doing this, and then she walked by 10 minutes later and said it looked very nice. I didn't think to take a "before" picture, but it does look cleaner.

Sunday is the last "Summer" family get together, Monday is mount the steps day, and Tuesday or Wednesday will be pick-up a snowblower day. That should give me adequate time to put it together, go over the checklist, and run it a bit before I have to use it. I was surprised to find out most snowblowers run the engine without an air cleaner. I'm pretty sure you can get an air cleaner kit for it, so I might look into that. The air is usually pretty clean when you're blowing snow, but I'd feel better if it had an air cleaner on it to run it this time of year, and do the preseason maintenance on it.

The smoke today is very heavy. We have ash and half-burned pine needles ( ! ) all over the cars, and the light outside has eerie orange color to it. This is from the Cameron Peak fire, which is now up to almost 25,000 acres, and is 6% contained. This last week of hot, dry weather caused it to pick up some steam. Hopefully the rain and snow on Monday and Tuesday will knock it back and give the firefighters a break. Lord knows they need it, and some prayers, too.

 

A burnt pine needle to the left, a green one to the right. SLW's car had one that was green on half it's length, and charred black on the other half!

 

If you stand outside for 5 or 10 minutes, you'll start to notice the ash coming down, like little snowflakes from hell.

 

The smoke is dense enough to show up as "rain" on the weather radar. Normally when you're inside an area that color green, you're getting sprinkled on.