Something disappointing about Elmer.

Our new mower Elmer is a lovely cheap mower but I'm not happy about its wheel bearings, although it has two on every wheel the R8 spec bearings have imperial measurements and to me that's rather sad as its lovely Chinese engine has proper ISO fittings which make it easy to find a spanner to suit, unlike those wretched B&S engines that still use those old obscure fittings that went obsolete here before we even had colour TV.

This is the rear wheel housing showing the gear that drives a matching ring gear cast into the plastic wheel, a simple but certainly not well sheltered system, however it's probably as good as it needs to be. That axle has a 12 mm diameter, something I don't consider a good fit for a 12.7 mm bearing, I'm hoping a couple of 6001 bearings that I've ordered are suitable here and if so I'll order another 6 and change things over.

New eyes.

Olivia and I got new specs in the mail yesterday, I got mine as they're the same frame as my computer eyes and I like the professor look they give me, Olivia just needed new eyes and these looked pretty.
The two sets were a few cents under $40 delivered from http://omnioptics.com.au/
They've been my supplier of choice for years as I find the traditional optical market in Australia to be rather poisonous price wise.

Poor Postie.

Our postie delivered four householders today, I suppose mail volumes have dropped a lot from when I delivered mail but this would have been no fun at all.

Another fiddly job.

I mounted another thermometer today to monitor the outside temperature, the old unit I'd been using for ages had became fairly useless due to a centre darkening of the LCD panel, something I think is common from age, and I'd replaced it earlier in a failed manner due to the clever makers reducing costs and heat welding the case together which is very difficult to replicate after opening it to solder in a remote sensor. Lesson learned I bought another cheap unit and just spliced the wire from its remote sensor to the one I already had. Hopefully this will serve for years.

Yesterday I had the misfortune for the second time of being refused service at the hospital because I was too ill, hopefully eventually I'll recover enough to enable them to follow up on the temporary filling they put in my aching tooth 3 months ago. It can't be all bad though as the State Government would have to be reducing their losses from their health service by being more selective.

Wooden Guira.

If you ever want to get the sound the Drifters had in their recording of "Under the Boardwalk" then one of these little things gets close enough. Just a little something that was a mystery to me.

Ingham.

I saw this while Olivia was shopping on Friday, used plenty of zoom and framed it quite nicely so I may as well post it.
The Ingham looks like it could use a coat of paint.

Pretty but a real prickly bugger.

 This pretty flower is from what's known as a sensitive plant, a real prickly bugger that's become a curse in our yard.

This is a pretty flower that Olivia planted, it's quite welcome.

Two years today.

It's Daisy's 2nd birthday today since we adopted her.
It hasn't all been perfect, she cracked her windscreen early on, and on our last big trip we hit kangaroos twice but otherwise there's just been simple maintenance.

It's huge.

I saw this in the fridge, a friend had given it to Olivia, it's the biggest banana I've ever seen.

Daytime instrument lighting to help ageing eyes.

I've been having difficulty reading the stuff on the panel in Daisy's tacho during the day when the lights are off, night time though is fine so I thought I'd try a method of lighting it whenever driving.

 Rather than use two diodes I ordered some rectifiers to give things a fancier look, this is a  Schottky one but normal silicon ones should be fine as the extra voltage drop should be fairly meaningless.

All ready to plug in now, the yellow wires are for the Voltage supply, one for the lighting and one for an additional accessorises input I wired in that will come on whenever the key is turned, I used a rectifier as I was quite cautious about what effects it could have on things and this isolates the current.

 This is the plug on Daisy (a Proton FLX S16/Saga) that fits into the instrument dimmer, the Voltage is supplied via the green/white wire on the left here, I cut it and fitted spade connectors to suit. This was the hardest part of the job as there was very little room, and it also explains why I fitted flying wires to the rectifier.
The end result though wasn't what I expected, it only lights when the ignition is on, and also the tacho and speedo binnacles only light when the lights are on, but when I thought about it that's exactly the result I desired as I can now easily read the little panel and it doesn't turn other things into a xmas tree.