Serves me right.

I thought I was clever last weekend when reading of the disease Don Bradman had that got him turfed out of the military in WW2 and realising it was almost exactly describing the pain I've had for years. Fibromyalgia, or Fibrositis as it was called back then. I've been so happy finding a name for it that my body must have decided to strike back, now I've come up with what feels like another dose of diverticulitis, at least this is an old man's condition rather than the woman's one Fibromyalgia is.
Anyway the walking stick is out and I do resemble a question mark a bit more than usual until it hopefully wears off.

 Now I'm going to sit back and have a beer, and since this is a picture weblog here's a photo of the coin toss. South Africa won and will bat, good luck to both teams, pity the USA doesn't play much cricket, the T20 game here would suit them, being only long enough to get a beer glow, rather than the longer game's drunken stupor.

Work lamp.

I grabbed a LED floodlight to replace one of the old units at the rear of our house but became disenchanted with what I'd need to do with the wiring to make it up to spec, so I decided to turn it into a workshop light.
This gave me a good excuse to recycle some old stuff into something useful again.

Now a bolt and old mower blades don't feel useless and unloved any more.

Lambda sensor.

Since I'm fairly hardcore DIY I took the harder but much cheaper option to replace Cubby's oxygen sensor, and as I'm getting a bit fancier with my work these days, I even used heat shrink tubing to make it look a bit fancier. 

Since the cheap universal sensor came with bare wires I decided to adopt readily found computer power connectors. The old sensor was obviously original because it was as tight as buggery in the manifold, and since they're supposed to become tired after 130,000 km or so I thought the less than $20 expense to be a fair idea, as well as much cheaper than the $100 odd for one with the proper plug.

The finished job. The blue thing is a bit of steel strapping I cut, drilled, bent, and painted so it had a pretty new mount, easy to access and out of the heat.

Rates time.

Only $106 more than last year, after years of savage increases I haven't groaned (and shaken my fist, muttering damn hippies get a haircut) at this one.

Anyway it's paid thanks to the wonder of internet banking.

Quick delivery too as the council only had their meeting yesterday to approve the amount, or should I say rubber stamp them through.

Lovely but cost a fortune.

The pathway to the new footbridge over Log Creek has been laid and it's most welcome.
We see far more non-vehicle people pass by our house since the bridge was built.

Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.

Naturally the seal I'd bought a month back to hopefully stop a slight leak from the diff was the wrong size, so Jimmy had to pushbike up town to try and find the right one, fingers crossed tomorrow morning the seal will arrive and I can finish the job. I was pleased to see the old one was slightly damaged, so it should be the culprit.

Tightening the crank bolt.

Jimmy had to think outside the square to think of a simple method to tighten the crank bolt again.
I suppose it's a no-no but resting the pulley on a jack stand buffered with a bit of rubber did the job.
My rattle gun is as weak as water so I had to nut out an easy way of getting a satisfactory result.

Almost a Jimmy repair job.

Spotted in the car park today when I staggered Lurch like to do some shopping. In my strange opinion it's not a bad patch up, a Kia Rio of a few years ago is never going to be a classic and it certainly appears to at least have had a bit of an effort made to straighten it out. About all would do differently is splash a bit more paint on it, but now with a bit of rust about would treat that as well.

Timing belt.

The belt I ordered from pommyland arrived this morning and after I'd removed a few things to check it was the right one decided I may as well carry on and do the job.

For those who have a Hyundai with a beta engine note the pink arrow I drew (rather badly as per usual) that points out the hole that you line up to the mark on the block in order to have the timing right. there's very obvious marks on the crank that line up then as well. The engine mount at the bottom centre of picture has to be removed and you will also need another jack under the sump (with a board in between since alloy sumps don't take kindly to force) to make life easier, as I found I had to manoeuvre things up and down a bit. The new belt is a genuine one and was certainly the right price, it was offered as fitting a 2005 onwards model but checking my source showed it as the part number for Cubby, I think the seller may have himself been shafted with the wrong part for a 2005 model.

Jimmy used the first number 22 socket he found and broke it, so spent another minute finding a strong one.
My method of sticking a spanner/socket on the crank nut, then resting the end against something solid and giving the starter a quick turn has always worked, far more difficult is tightening the bolt again.

About to take the old belt off here, plenty of things have to be removed to do it, today was a three hour job that left me thoroughly exhausted, Artie's belt only took 30 minutes including taking photos and singing the entire score of HMS Pinafore.

The new belt's on now and Jimmy's about to bolt the engine mount on again, not long afterwards I realised that the job was finished. I've left the top cover off for a little while so I can check on things and re-tension if needed. Don't over tighten timing belts, the rule of thumb is being able to twist the belt 90 degrees halfway along the drive side, however the beta engine has an idler pulley along it so I allowed a bit less twist.

Go Cowboys.

A win last night in their elimination semi-final. Grace and Jimmy had a few drinks to celebrate it (as well as Rhonda's birthday), the down side was having to wait till midnight to see the game with a clear picture. The free station that shows it live must have special equipment that applies blurring, so I wait till subscription TV replays it in a decent quality. For this game they must have finally shipped the HD gear up to Townsville, as I've never noticed anything better than SD from there previously.

Stiffen up.

My feets have been threatening to break through some boards out the back lately so Jimmy replaced a couple of them. It's only a little job but these things are becoming more difficult for me now.
The last piccie is of a wafer thin bit of an old board.
In my younger days I would have been half a packet of nails trying to bash them through the solid new board, but now that I have a fair variety of tools I made life easier by drilling pilot holes.

Free WiFi

This sign surprised me when I was in town the other day, hopefully the days of pay through the nose internet access for travellers are ending.

The Lee's Hotel is famous for the poem that inspired Slim Dusty's legendary song "Pub With No Beer", Written here during the WW2 days of shortages by Dan Sheahan when the pub was known as the Day Dawn.

Oh joy, colour.

How nice to see some coloured cars in town today, the Nissan is a really delightful purple that the camera doesn't do justice to. So much better than the grey that is currently way too popular.

Sometime in the future I shall probably start spelling colour the American way, the *u* isn't needed but it takes a bit of steeling myself to bravely make a change for the right reason. A few years ago I changed from using "gaol" to "jail" without lightning bolts striking me down when I stepped outside, so the precedent is there.

Immobiliser, more bad luck.

Since Cubby only came with one key I decided to gain a new skill by buying a programmer and some ID chips. Naturally the first one I used, sitting uselessly here on a bread tag, was faulty. This of course led to a wasted few hours included a worrying time when I'd managed to wipe the original key, thinking I was so far out of my depth that only a meteor strike could avoid bringing shame to Jimmy.
Anyway after reading the manual and learning about a few more things I didn't need, I tried another chip, success, so I programmed three of them as well as putting the original back into service, plus removing the old spare key that I never got from Cubby's memory.
An expensive way of sorting out a spare key but the new toy should work on a large selection of vehicles.