All Mother's sons.

I found this on the wall at Mother's place, it's possibly the only photo of the five of us together, I believe it was taken at Brother Ken's first wedding back in 1982, he's the tall one beside mother (Jan) I don't know his whereabouts now. Brother Mick the youngest is beside him, he died in May 1984, a lesson that road rules are to be obeyed, plus a reason that no similar photos could be made after then. Eldest Brother Reg is looking sophisticated and handsome on the far left, and the smiling chubby fool behind them is number two son me Jimby.

Now that our Mother has died we can't really get any more family snaps, it's really time for us to move on to the younger folk, something I can't do having not had children.
 

Out with the old, in with the new.

 I've been playing Sudoku and practically nothing else on my cellphone for a while but I broke the screen on my Doogee Y8 when my mind was muddled having to replace Oscar's rear screen, and sadly fixing it wasn't as simple as hoped, so I blew another $120 I don't have on a new cellphone, this time a Umidigi A7S, again a phone that has ample power for my purposes, plus being sold from another country can also be bought in a non-black colour, unlike almost any consumer product imported by major sellers here.

So now I have to work my top solution times down again.

I'm been very lax at posting of late and have had much family stress culminating with my Mother dying on the 2nd March, some six days after moving my Dad into aged care. I'm afraid it's made me a bit bitter about the system and just how much red tape and barriers are put in the path of ordinary punters to gain some help. It isn't going to stop for a long time yet, it looks like I'm gaining all of her bills but the assets appear to be getting carried into limboland like the end of the first Indiana Jones film.

A change of flowers for Grace's birthday.

 A busy morning ahead so we popped out early to the cemetery. I had hoped it'd be quiet but it was noisy with activity. The whole town must have awoken from their slumber since Summer started, also we're currently under a blitz at home which has explosive noise before dawn every morning in a futile bid to scare the bat population away, it doesn't work people and you've been at it long enough to stop wasting taxpayer money.

I also said hello to our friend Shirley's husband Ron whom if I stay alive a few more days shall outlive. That feels like a big "if" now.

Also broken when Oscar felt pain.

 

Another casualty of Oscar's broken rear windscreen. I had popped the phone in my back pocket and forgotten about it when driving to get a quote. Bugger but at least I've ordered a new digitiser screen thingy and hope I'm good enough to fit it. I only use the phone for two things, to receive calls from Olivia, and to play Sudoku, I can't claim to be a natural at Sudoku but I've found the logic challenge quite captivating for many years now, I only play at the hardest level.

Oscar is now fixed yippee.

Nearly a write-off.

 

I was mowing out the front and heard a noise so looked around and went ouch.

I thought I might have to write Oscar off but the local shop quoted $420 to fix it, so a big ouch on that price but I'll do it.

Now it looks better.

 

Some 10 mm tubing arrived yesterday, and today the new cheap Chinese pumping bulb arrived, so I was able to make Oscar look half decent again. A much quicker than normal delivery too so that cheered me up.

As usual a simple job becomes a disaster.

 I changed Oscar's fuel filter and when I primed the system I noticed I had cracked the squeeze bulb, which is quite a disaster.

I did a bit of nutting things out and used a bit of old pushbike inner tube with a bit of fairly large heat shrink underneath.

Hopefully it'll hold until a new generic bulb arrives which I'm hoping I can splice into Oscar's never to be serviced fuel line.

Slow progress with the scooter.

 

A new control board arrived the other day and it's tested up fine, wheels are a turning again, eventually I'll meld it into the circuit so things will be operational again. The old control unit also suffered flood damage and although I think it could have been fixed, this unit from China wasn't expensive.

Something to cheer me a little after nearly a month of misery.

 Roadworks have made our life hell of late, made worse by knowing the state government as per usual are only wasting taxpayer money on this, when it's all done things will be the same as they always were. Our road has a concrete depression era base and has always been pothole free, the worst was it's been too narrow for today's standard but I don't think it'll be widened.

Anyway what's made me happy is the 60 speed limit has been moved out of town to just past the entry to the sporting ovals, some genius must have noticed how odd it was to have that in an 80 zone. A decade ago I hounded Main roads and the council about it but merely being a below average punter I was shunned as some sort of moron, now I'm feeling good as I suspect the sign will be permanent. The downside is I suspect more cars will overtake me as I turn into our driveway when coming home.

I think I might repair this.

 

It's a motor off a mobility scooter that the mother bought very cheaply. I can see why now, I think it must have been underwater. Prices for bits aren't cheap so I'd better clean it up, at least the bearings are common and very cheap skateboard ones that I already have at home.

Cleaning isn't my forte :(

About right now.

 

Some may have noticed the high odometer reading on a previous post, that was from a bit of playing that created a headache that took a lot of investigating to correct, the short story is Oscar has two chips in separate places to record distance and they can only be easily modified upwards, now at last I again have about the correct number showing. 

The trip meter is accurate 503 km using a bit less than half a tank, much of that (way too much) has been driving around town barely warming up but a big chunk was a trip to Innisfail to buy some vitamin B12 and smell the flowers. Oscar is a very economical car on the highway, extraordinary actually, Google Peugeot 307 HDI if you're cynical. 

I've also found that I've been saying the unpronounceable Peugeot name wrongly as Pug-a-lot, it seems Pay-Joh (named after the greatest ever Premier of Queensland no doubt) would be more correct but I'll have to train Jimby's tongue and swallow some pride to do it. 

Teeth be gone.

Jimby had fun at the hospital today, a morning visit where they took an impression so they could add to my partial plate, then an afternoon visit so they could pull my front teeth, and as usual it was a major job with them stubbornly resisting efforts to extract them. They were sound but needed work and apparently my bite was such that it would destroy any repair in short order, and our free system doesn't cater for advanced repairs, so out they came. This is the rear view as they were in my mouth.

This is how things look now, they slapped the plate straight in and advised me to try not to remove it for a while. A little bit of blood but they stitched things and it isn't gushing out like it did after my last extraction. That rotten looking tooth on the lower right of photo is scheduled to be filled next month, if it remains viable, it was slated for March but a little thing called COVID-19 and a lot of scaremongering got in the way. I might even try to learn to smile with my teeth showing now :)

Weather station dropping out, look for frogs.

 

If you have one of these weather stations and it drops out fairly often then it may not be batteries or only good for throwing in the bin, I've found they're a haven for frogs, they love them and cause us here in Ingham NQ plenty of headaches.

The fix is to get the frogs out and block their reentry. Take the unit off the post and undo the six screws around the base, a number 2 philips head will do that. Next undo the 4 number 1 philips screws holding the little housing I've marked in magenta here. That little housing is where the frogs love to hide, it also houses the electronics that transmit the signal to your indoor console. The cyan markers on this photo also show where you should probe with wire to see if froggies are hiding away, the long of it is look everywhere.

You'll have to pull the mainboard out of the housing and care should be taken as it's a tight fit, often the aerial will snap off (it looks like a spring) but it's an easy job to resolder it. Take care with the wires as they get fragile and can be a nightmare to try and fix, I've lost sleep over that (sorry Alan). This shot shows some of the frogs that were in Chris's unit when I cleaned it a week ago. Give the board a clean before carefully refitting.

One of those frogs about to be relocated, I love the little things so they're safe with me but nature and birds will take their toll and that's nature.

The cyan areas marked here are what I think are the entry points, there's three little oval ones near the mounting pole and a fair gap between the temp/RH sensor housing and the body, I block them with hot melt glue but find whatever you can and bung them up. The most important entry point is through the mounting pole, make sure you bung that up, a bit of rag will do but a great coincidence is that at 30 mm it's the same size as a soft drink bottle cap, easy peasy.

Showing me wire probing.

Edit: It appears google now trim the piccies to be that rather irksome vertical style that phones love, so I suggest you double click on the piccies to open them up to see what I've written about.

Goners.

I saw the dentist (the lovely Brittany) the other day and she advised me that's time to call it quits on my two upper front teeth. They're sound but any filling she could do would be only a short term repair due to my bite putting undue pressure on them, as it destroyed the previous repair job.

Oh well it'll just be an even more gummy Jimby in the near future.

Poor Brittany really feels for her patients so I'll have to make sure I put her at ease about this job on me when she gets me in the chair for the job. She's a great dentist and deserves any success that comes her way but I hope she stays in the public system. 

I think she's a gunna make another set of dentures too, I'll likely need to use them a plenty too.

I love this, 1100 km until empty.

We went to Townsville today and I bought two tyres for Oscar, good Chinese ones that have ratings, not brand name ones that offer no information to the customer except they have a tread pattern and come in various sizes, I'll fit them in the near future.

I've been working on improving Oscar's economy and 1100 km is a good predictive range considering Oscar had done 135.9 km since filling its 60 litre tank, and done with the A/C on the whole time too, as well as stuck in the traffic jungle of Townsville.

This genuine Anchee is what Oscar will soon be wearing, note that it has both USA and EURO ratings which are quite reasonable, Australia it seems has no rating system for tyres and it sure seems that the makers don't want us to have any knowledge either.

The UTQG of 420 is the USA wear rating number, probably too low to be acceptable in the USA market but likely way too high for our traders to handle.

Caliper bolt.

The upper caliper bolt fell out of Oscar the other week when I was at Chris's place to check his weather station, my fault as I'd failed to torque it properly, this created a really weird problem as the caliper rotated and wedged cam like against the inside of the wheel rim, you can see the contact point at the lower right of this photo. Anyway Chris was a hero to me and even drove me up the road to get a bolt that fits, which got me out of trouble until the fancy proper one arrived.

I was really rattled for a while having a car that wouldn't drive forward yet could be reversed. Another case to put into your memory bank.

A little wave to Grace.

It's ANZAC day so I popped out to the cemetery to say hello to Grace, as well as to the veterans who are buried there. No flags for the veterans this year but COVID is affecting everyone and every thing.

A happy and surprise fix.

Our oven gave up the ghost a while back, or rather the oven display stopped displaying, which meant some fancy sleuthing required for this stumblebum. Judging by the heat damage to the board I was thinking capacitor drama as there was no marks on any components. So I ordered some new supply ones which I've fitted one at the far left here with the much larger one behind (weird that as they're the same value except the new one only rated to 400 V Vs the old one at 450 V, which I'm hoping is good enough), in hindsight that one was likely OK and just stressed by parts downstream, the two green capacitors to the right of the yellow transformer I replaced from my parts bucket, these were larger but are 100 V Vs 50 V originals (going up is no drama), I replaced one the other day when the line it was using only measured 7 Volt when 10 V was indicated on the board. That brought it up to 10 Volt but only resulted in a faint glow for the temperature side of the display, however that gave me hope.
When the ordered capacitor arrived I replaced that and the second of those twins on the right which supplied another power line, then got a lovely surprise when powering up the oven again, back in business and I'm chuffed too as I have grave doubts that it could have been fixed locally if I didn't do it.

Another one bites the dust.

The fancy filling fell out of my number two incisor a few months ago and left a sharp spike in my mouth, today it was time to have it pulled, poor Brittany the Dentist was only hopeful of it working when she repaired it last time, today we signed off on the old thing.
Nine and a half hours later my mouth is still bleeding but it'll come good when it's ready.

It's Grace's Birthday,

So I popped out to the cemetery to say hello. As per usual though the wet season has struck at this time and it wasn't a pleasant time to be there. I'm dressed up fancy style as I'm on my way to see the Doctor, at least there was no bad news this time except I have to do another blood test in three months time.