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.

A little greenery.

A shot of behind our place this morning.

Success at last.

Finally I've changed the tie-rod end of Oscar, I had some spare time this morning and was able to tackle what I knew to be a difficult job due to finding its thread was pretty well seized when I wanted to do the job the other week.
Without a hoist and with my lovely ramps lent out for what seems a longer time than I'd hoped access is rather awkward so at last I got my brain to think outside the square.

 So I welded a nut onto the back of my lovely gripping tool so I could fit a socket to it and get leverage in a Z fashion. I leaned like buggery into it and my weld held firm and eventually I heard a creak, yes it moved, so I carried on huffing and puffing and it continued squawking, then after a few turns I'd go upstairs and rest for a while, a few sessions and it became easier, then it at last came off.
It should have been a simple job but certainly wasn't.
BTW I use what the Americans correctly refer to as a stick welder, stick has two meanings but I have one of those tiny units the Chinese sell very cheaply, they look like a toy but they're fantastic.