I’ve been pretty busy as of late; grooming the weeds, putting up blueberries, working on the boat and busting my knuckles, back and ass on the Jeep and the brush-hog.
I took the brush-hog off of tractor the other day in order to move rolls of hay off of trailers and stack them in the hay barn. Can’t do it with a 15 foot mass of metal on the back end, but no problem: I’ve put that hog on/off maybe a hundred times: the trick has always been to configure the brush hog to go back on as you take it off.
This time I decided that I’d be ‘the good farmer’ and perform a little preventative maintenance on it’s drive shaft before hooking the hog back up. Essentially this is nothing more than extending the shaft by a 2 feet or so…clean it…apply grease.. and move on with life. All is dandy unless you extend the shaft by more than a 2 feet (or so) and it pulls free from the female end, when that happens you have a 20lb, 5 foot in length, drive shaft attached to 40lb U Joint assembly.
What I was able to figure out in the more-than-a-hour that it took to place it back together is that: that SOB was indeed ‘keyed’, grease on a 60 lb object makes for challenging times, and cursing God and his entire creation does not reassemble a keyed and greased drive shaft.
On the Jeep: I decided to put a little effort and Social Security money into my 2016 Wrangler JK and it turns out that while the costs were predictable/controllable, the ‘little effort’ component turned out to be unconstrained. My efforts on the Jeep are to replace the front bumper so I can add a winch and improved lighting.
Let me say at the outset that I’ve always viewed installation instructions as a guide and subject to both interpretation and available tooling. In hindsight I suppose when you’re told that the installation requires an impact wrench/driver, get (beg/borrow) a fucking impact wrench.
There is nothing quite so iffy as tying off the end of a rope to a 18mm offset wrench in order to apply the pull needed to break a bolt free. It took me 5 hours to remove the exist bumper and 1 hour to install the new one.
The first portion of the project is done; I’ve built out the platform for the winch and a light bar (Jeff B. tells me they will both be delivered next week).
I’ve ordered some (supposedly) super-duper blackish dye that is said to make faded vinyl come back to life.
Given that what ain’t sheet metal is plastic/vinyl I’m hoping that this is a viable remedy for the all of the fading.
Everything else that I’ve researched has the same basis for their claim of effectiveness as the Snake Oil of yesteryear.
We’ll see.
The blueberry bushes are really producing this year. It seems that the more they are neglected the better they do. . . not a good reflection on me I guess. I’ve been put 11 pints up in the last two days, and in another day the nearly ripe fruit on the plants will be ready for harvest.
Time is flying by. In a few days we will be at the longest day of the year (again) and then we’ll start the slow shortening of days into a colorful fall and brilliant winter. There are wonders all around us and if we can lift our heads and furrowed brows from the grease and stubborn bolts for just a little bit and look around we can see the glory of God’s creation.
Double rainbow around the sun.
