Pellet heads!! What's up today?

...and somehow I grabbed the spanish version of that comic

 

Took me 7 Kubota's to figure that out, I'm a slow learner. I've 'arrived' at where I need to be now. 90 pto horses is enough. Not about 'affording' it, more about buying sufficient power and weight with me.

 

X6 wet behind the ears.

 

Si

 

Performed a basic cleaning on both stoves Friday. At least one more cleaning to go. The stoves still have at least a couple of weeks to go with the cool, rainy weather that is expected for a while.

 

We had a GREAT SUMMER....It came Friday.....We hit 90 F by late Friday

5 full days with the Stoves off.

Friday I serviced the AC
Been since early October since it had been run.
Checked the condenser (Outside unit) made sure there wasn't any sticks or small tree branches that had gotten into the fan......Checked the fan to make sure it turned OK

All seemed fine for a start up......Flipped the stat to COOL and cranked the setting down some to get things started..

Stepped outside and the unit is making the proper noises

Let the system run for about 15 minutes and took a look at the thermometer in the closest vent to the air handler....It read 45 F OHHHH CHIT.....Too cold......Filter dirty.......This can lead to an evaporator ice up
Should read 50F when things are in good shape...

Yanked out the washable filter OH YEAH....Full of last years long summer dust.

Washed out the filter really good.....Let it dry.....Did a restart......JOY.......50 F spot on

Checked the pressures on the system ......Right in the sweet spot..

After 29 years since I installed it....THIS UNIT IS NOW A SENIOR CITIZEN.....


Unit ran fine all afternoon and through the evening .....Yesterday was cooler....but the unit came on late in the day and ran several times into the early evening.....


We are ready for summer......

Got up this morning and 46 F outside....Small stove lit a few minutes ago......Rain on it's way


One final shell run before we shut down for the summer......

Then along about mid June it will be time to service the stoves for the LOOOOOONG HOT.

 

I haven't used ours in a couple weeks, but its too early to close it down.

 

Been running the one in the shop pretty steady to keep the RH low and mitigate the flash rust on my machine tools. On low fire all the time. 50-50, corn and pellets.

 

These cool long wet stretches are the days the stove heat feels so good. I've got to get my son to bring in a bag of pellets so I can run the stove when I feel the need.

 

Still burning. I usually don't clean the stove at the end of the season. Usually with this type of weather I just use the propane furnace. Not this year with propane prices.

I did a complete clean out a few days ago, leaf blower, pipe cleaning stick thing and all passages in stove and clean out T.

I figure it should still be pretty clean at the start of next season, can't imagine using it much longer or very many more bags of pellets.

 

Ran the little stove most of Yesterday....Shut it off late before bed.
Back on this morning at about 3:30 am ....only 67F in the house.......

Weather is a bit sketchy....Showers around.

Now that it's warmer out.....much more fun to get to work on the Snow Cat project.

So much little stuff to deal with......
Spent quite a bit of time this winter doing engineering on several bits and pieces.

One area is the transmission shifter ..
I purchased a Winters Side Winder cable shifter for the Cat.....The S-10 Donor cab was from a stick shift rig ....so nothing there to work with....plus the location of the engine and transmission made trying to use a factory shifter impossible.....

The Winters is popular with the Rock crawler buggy crowd ...It is simple and pretty rugged....

As soon as the weather is stable....the plan is to get going on the cab.....A lot of work there...

The tilt front end needs to be finished, as does the radiator mounting,.
Going to swap in the steering column from the S-10 Blazer that donated the rear cabin..

Bench seat comes out and the Bucket seats from the S- Blazer go in.......
Need to remove the bucket seat mounts from the front area of the cab that got cut off and is now laying in the yard next to all the cat track parts.

Seat mounts are spot welded to the floor pan....Easy job to drill out the welds...

The new shifter needed some changes.....I changed things so the shifter shaft is always centers in the gates and stays where you put it.....Factory set up required the lever to be moved by the operator and purposely placed in the lock position between gears and the biggy was PARK

The modification will not allow any accidental movement of the shift lever.......
Several other mods were also done...

The factory used roll pins in places to secure parts.....A PAIN TO REMOVE.

I drilled the holes oversize a bit and installed Allen head screws with nylock nuts.....Easy to get apart for service if need be.......

The cable attachment was a standard little stamped steel clip held in the shifter by two little Allen screws.

A real pain to get it all stuffed into the shifter up in the cab..

The cable must be connected to the tranny and then slipped up though a boot in the floor as the cab is set on the cat.....Then the shifter can be mounted on it's location in the cab....


I decided to machine a split aluminum block with two bolts that slip in to hold the cable (Cable has a groove in the jacket for retention ) The two little bolts hold the assembly in the shifter frame.....Much simpler to install.

Might sound complicated....Not really......

The shifter mounting over the tunnel has to be finalized (Engineering pretty well done)
The cab originally had a console between the seats....It was useless and pretty well trashed.

Carpet on the floor is headed to the burn pile.....Once we are getting closer will get a new rubber floor covering.....Carpet is pretty messy....especially while tracking SNOW in...

The original stick shift hole needs to be covered over in the tunnel......Sheet metal and a bit of finesse will handle that issue.

A few piccy's

I did not have any short bolts to hold the new cable mount into the shifter...Used a couple long ones just to make sure stuff fit.....Will get bolts today in town.....

Looking at the shifter the stick is centered in the gates.....The bright aluminum square part was the replacement detent......
Original was black plastic.......

Shifter had to come completely apart.....
Fun stuff

Almost as much fun as working on a pellet stove.....

 

We ran the P43 for a while yesterday to take the chill off. May run it a couple more days during this week if the forecast is to be believed. Yup the heat from the stove just feels good on those days.

sam

 

Last time I fired the frankenstove was in 2017.

Swimming lesson time.

Dead pest count

Tree rats
Red 3
Gray 0

Chipmunks 1
Mice 1

Got away from me 0

I have to go back to teacher school my pupils all fail, must be the Math classes.

 

Cute pup! How old is he/she? Has a lot of small features so I am thinking a little dog.

 

Have you taken him out on the boat yet?

 

On again/off again rain...SUN and juggling stoves..
Shoulder season....
Had the big stove on yesterday morning for about 4 hours to get the chill off..Shut it off around 8:30 am
Cleaned the little stove in the afternoon and fired it up.....Ran through the night and up until a couple hours ago.

Cooler and wetter weather on the way soon.....
Ran Munchy today and ground up the 1/2+ last barrel of the 3 runs we did last week.......
Then dragged up one of the full barrels of old stock and packed up 4 buckets full to take care of things for a couple days......

Early May weather can be fickle.....From the looks of things the weather will be cool and showery the rest of this week and into the next week....The long range forecast looks like mid 70's F coming up mid month....

We don't usually shut down fully until first week or so of June (Then there may be a few spot fires though the summer to take the chill off on those few days we get with showers or cloudy days.

Still one more shell run to do....