Taps

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Our truck died. Completely lost compression in a cylinder. Our truck was a 1993 Toyota Four Wheel Drive Truck - that's what it was called, with a 3.0 litre EFI V6 engine. It was replaced once by Toyota because of a well documented problem with a defective head gasket. Several years later it developed the same problem we have now and we replaced the engine. $6000. Four years later we have the same problem. Vehicles. Like boats- just throw money at them. I am adverse to buying anything new - well I can't afford that anyway, but just don't know how much to put into keeping a 17 year old vehicle running. The problem is as a mechanic I make a better electrician.

Well it's only 21 klicks to town. Maybe it's time for a mountain bike. Seriously.

In the mean time while I am trying to figure out what to do we're trying to get an old Astro Van running that was dropped off here. It's got AWD and two sets of tires, one studded winter and one summer on rims. Keep your fingers crossed.

Managed to get the door fixture installed. I have an L.E.D. outdoor flood light in the fixture. It takes 3.5 watts!


That's half of a seven watt Christmas tree light. Mind you the thing was hugely expensive, but over the life of the lamp it is very inexpensive. The wave of the future. We are gradually converting all the lamps in the place to L.E.D's- even the compact fluorescents when they go bad. Mind you that can be quite a while too. Basically they will reduce the lighting load of the plant over 90%.

Which means, besides the dollar savings in energy costs, our new diesel generator can handle practically the whole electrical load. It is an electrical start 5000 watt model that I got in trade for doing some electrical work for a local internet provider's transmission sites. Sweet deal and another project to get going..

But the electrician is getting a call back today because he hooked the light up to a switched circuit instead of the proper powered one. The chickens seem adverse to having the coop lighting on all night just so the outside lamp works.

One of those days..

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