Going on pretty much 3 weeks straight I have had shit to do.
2 weeks ago I got a text from my Ex, the mother of my childrens, asking if I could do the front brakes on her little Hoopty on a Sunday.
I also had to go to a birthday party for my neice’s 4 year old boy.
I called up Saturday and ordered brake pads and rotors for it.
While I was at the party I ran into my boy and his kid, my Grandson.
He is 14 years old, SIX FOOT TWO and 180 pounds!
He was over six foot tall a year ago!
Because I have been in really bad pain for a long time, I wasn’t looking forward to this brake job so I asked the Grandson to come over and I would show him how to do it.
I’m old, not stupid.
It worked out good.
Of course I still wound up doing a bunch of it but he did a great job. His dad dropped by when we were about done with the brakes but I noticed the thing needed the tires rotated real bad and the oil and wiper blades needed changing REAL bad.
So my son dove in and helped out too. It turned into a little family affair.’
I had him run me up to the parts house and I sprang for the oil, filter and wiper blades out of the goodness of my heart. Came to another $120.
So we knocked all that out too.
Then of course work all week and then last Saturday I started in on more projects. The band saw aduster etc.
Sunday I was busy as hell all day until Oh Dark Thirty trying to get a little electronic tachometer installed on my Bench top round column milling machine,
It’s been kicking around getting moved from one place to another for well over a year and I finally got enough gumption to start in on it. Of course my little Partner in Crime Jesse was no where to be seen so I was on my own.
That turned into a much bigger project than I had anticipated.
First I had to pull the original On/Off switches out that don’t work anyway because the original owner had installed something that isn’t quite a Variable Frequency Drive but is more of a 120v to 12V comnverter plus a little dashboard of sorts with switches, dials and a volt meter on it, to run a really nice and expensive looking big 12 volt electric motor that drives the belt.
On top of the switches, I had to dig out a bunch of wiring that had been disconnected and was in the way inside the cast iron head of the thing.
Then I had to come up withsomething to snap the tach display into that I could mount over the opening where the switches had been.
I got to looking around and found a small plastic case that a lever arm dial indicator came in that looked to be a perfect fit if I used one half of it.
I trased around the display with a scribe, mounted the plastic box in the machinist’s vise on the mill and used an end mill to cut the opening. It took a bunch of fiddling and some hand filing but I finally got it to fit.
Then when I went to mount it, I found that it was too wise to fit in the opening and so I had to come up with some stand off to make it fit.
Into the junk drawers I went and came up with a couple of brake lone fittings that I have had for twenty years.
Worked like a charm
The wiring kicked my ass for over an hour because the wiring that was already in there was too big to fit the tiny connectors on the back side of the display so I wound up finding some dinky wires and making a couple of small jumpers to get it wired up.
Every time I thought I had it connected it pulled back out until I made the jumpers.
I finally got that fixed, got the display mounted and got the sensor put in. There was already a hole in the belt cover but it was too big so I used some big washers to make it fit.
.
But I finally got it pretty much done. I still have to glue a magnet to the aluminum pulley and will probably have to adjust the gap on the sensor but that will be easy.
I’ll also tidy up that sensor wiring while I’m at it.
So that was all day Sunday.
Monday I got to work to find out that there was huge safety inspection going on and I spent the whole night cleaning up a big area that is basically a Catch All for pallets of stuff, boxes, a couple dead grinders on stands, sheets of steel, a huge steel work table and several really huge electromagnets that weigh about 700 pounds apiece. I was running a forklift, moving stuff by hand, cleaning and throwing shit out all night. I was exhausted by the time I got home. Then I didn’t sleep for shit. Tuesady was another ass kicker and I was so tired by the time I got off I had trouble driving home because I was spacing out from exhaustion.
I got home, sat down in my recliner and was out in less than ten minutes.
I finally woke up enough to go to bed.
Yesterday was another busy day and I didn’t get done with an equipment repair I was doing until 8PM, plus dealing with some crane techs the last 3 days who have been working on an overhead crane that broke down Monday.
I start at 1 and get off at 9:30 so I was literally busy almost all day.
To say I could use a day off is an understatement but I know I still have a full weekend’s worth of things to do out in the garage so there will be no rest for the wicked.
Sometimes I wonder where I get the energy. but I know that the only way I can do all this is because I live on pain pills and caffeine but still, I seem to get a lot of shit done for being so crippled up.
I pay for it though.
Trust me.
I can’t stand up straight anymore and I have to use a cane to get around now but I don’t let it control my life.
