(Do Not) Beware of Doug

It's been three weeks since I took "Doug," a fast-growing rat snake, to the back of our property and let him loose in a pile of scrap metal, invasive plants, and leaf-litter: snake paradise. "Go get 'em, Tiger!" I said, meaning that Doug would displace a few venomous Copperheads.

I rather miss him. He'd taken up residence in our newest large chicken coop, and once when I took him to the ravine at the western edge of our property, he was back inside a week. I found him curled up, with hens and a rooster just stepping over him. I put out feelers for a name on Facebook, and my grad-school bud Alan came back with Doug, for "I shall return" General Douglas MacArthur. Alan and I are both WW 2 geeks, so it was an easy pitch.

Now Doug is gone. I picked him up that last time with my snake grabber because he was trying to eat eggs, not just mice. And baby chicks were on the way.

I've long enjoyed having black snakes (Black Racers and Rat Snakes) in all our out-buildings, as they keep down the mice that eat wiring harnesses in vehicles and farm equipment. Though I can find no peer-reviewed study of the matter, black snakes are said to keep Copperheads away, which is more than enough reason to want these rather curious and gentle (unless provoked) creatures around.

Doug never tried to bite me, even when being carried and he slipped loose from the grabber, hanging out and inspecting his surroundings. I suspect I'll see him again. I already had a sign on our dog house that references an old Far Side cartoon, pictured up top. It feels like a welcome sign now.

Chainsaw Logic, Part II

In January, I wrote of my feelings concerning Stihl and Husqvarna saws. Now I'm ready for a farm-yard necessity: a second saw.  

It's a good idea to have two chainsaws handy when you cut as much wood as we do, and of course trees fall across roads regularly in hurricanes and ice storms. If one saw fails, the other can be brought right out. We did this for years, and in winter, when our Stihl saws could act up, I loved having a backup chainsaw.

2022 brought down at least 20 trees on our Buckingham County Property, across all the farm roads. Those are the ones I can see. I suspect more than 50 will have fallen, by the time we re-open the back road to our upper field.

Sadly for my wood stove but luckily for the forest, most are pines. I'll cut, season, and burn the pine mixed with hardwood to maintain a good burn temperature and avoid creosote.

Wood cutting with my current "Husky" is just not going to do this job. So several of their larger saws, ranging in price from $800 to $1400, are in contention.

First off, for most home-owners and casual sawyers, a small saw like my current one will be more than anyone needs. You can see other tips at my earlier post. And for your safety, please read this guide for using a saw from The University of Missouri's extension service. With hurricane season coming, there will be many emergency-room trips for new saw-owners. Do not become one of them.

Yet there comes a point when only a bigger saw can do the trick.  I'm still not ready to buck and fell large trees, a job best left to a professional. But our situation in Buckingham remains in my realm of experience, with the right tool in hand (both hands).

What is "bigger"? In a saw, it does not mean a longer bar but a more powerful engine. With that power, however, comes weight. Let's consider stats for two saws I may purchase as soon as next week:

• Husquvarna 572 XP: 5.3 hp, max torque 8200 rpm, 14.5 lbs.
• Husquvarna  372 XP X-Torq: 5.5 hp, max torque 6600 rpm, 14.6 lbs.
  

Both feature a 20" bar though longer ones can be had (and are not of interest to me). My current saw, a 440, has an 18" bar and gets categorized as a "residential" rather than professional model. It weighs 9.7 pounds and has 2.4 hp. It suffices for cutting limbs and firewood, as well as felling small trees (a foot or less in diameter and perhaps 30' tall). 

Both of the contenders are a LOT heavier than my current saw, which means no lifting the saw high. It's unwise to use a saw by reaching up above one's shoulder, in any case. 

Most of my heavy-duty cutting involves keeping the saw's center of gravity below belly height. I learned early to "let the saw do the work" by never pushing on a saw; that's a recipe to get the bar pinched or worse, have it kick back right at your face. Keeping the saw low avoids exhaustion, in any case. Gravity becomes friend.

Of one thing I'm certain: I want their pre-computer models. I've already had a long telephone conversation with one of my dealer's salespeople. Their newest saws promise smoother power and lower emissions but are not user-friendly to a DIY mechanic like me. That means I cannot replace key parts like a carburetor. I'd depend upon service, likely expensive service, at the shop.  If the X-Torq system (which does lower emissions and fuel consumption) can be had without too many electronics, one of these saws will be coming home with me.

If I were to go the really high-tech route, I'd consider their professional-grade electric saws, but I need to learn a lot more about Husqvarna's battery tech first. I dislike being what I call a "Dewalt orphan" with a bunch of 18V cordless tools for which the maker no long makes replacement batteries. In consequence I have to source re-manufactured battery packs from China. These replacements work until they don't.

I will continue this series as I get a new saw and put it to work stacking logs. As noted in my first post, the old saw is not going to be idle. It already got its annual tune up: new fuel pickup, spark plug, and air filter. Now is the time for a second chain in the case and maybe a new bar. I'll have my dealer look at the old 440 when I go shopping.

Stay safe in the woods. The dealer does not stock new arms or legs.

A Mechanic's Lesson From the Yoga Mat

Before you know it, seven years pass. It has been nearly that long since I purchased a deceptively decent-looking 1974 Buick Apollo advertised at Hemmings.

My next column for Hemmings (the 12th installment of "Project Apollo") will focus more on some lessons leaned from failure, but here I want to wax a little more philosophical for my general Tractorpunk reader.

After more than $5000 invested over 6 and a half years, the car does run well enough to take regional road trips, but despite the money spent and many skinned knuckles since 2015, it's been on the lift since February 2022. Why would I do such a thing? Old cars are meant to be driven, right?

The answer is "it depends." My goal for the car has also as rolling classroom, so I'd get over my fears of being a first-time restorer and novice mechanic. To a large degree, I've met that goal. I have a 99 Miata to flog on backroads when I want some cheap thrills.

What I did not anticipate, however, was how failure with a relatively minor-seeming repair would lead me to realize an important lesson that applies far from the garage.

Gearhead Yoga, Parking Pawls, and Flight Attendants

During the pandemic, my Thursday evening Yoga practice moved to a Zoom conference. One benefit of Yoga, physically, has been my ability to contort myself in a car, while seated upside down on the front floor, legs over the driver's seat as I cram my head under the dash to fix wiring.

Little did I know a more subtle and probably more important benefit would happen. Our teacher, Kerry,   shares a short mindfulness lesson with us early in class, as we begin to warm up for the stretching and strength-building ahead. One week she noted how a woman on a crowded, tense, and very uncomfortable flight summoned an attendant for some small need. It took a while for the flight attendant to arrive. Just before barking at the airline employee about how awful things had gotten, an epiphany struck the passenger. Instead of barking, she apologized for interrupting the harried woman and thanked her, personally, for what she'd done on the flight thus far to make it as pleasant as possible.

Instantly, the attendant's face went from wary to grateful, and she and the passenger talked for several happy minutes. A weight was lifted  and of course the passenger's need got addressed speedily. The lesson? Try to turn frustration into gratitude. 

I began to try this with humans, and the effect resembles a magician's spell. It fails sometimes: the UPS clerk who replied to my "How are you?" with "I'm here" answered my "better than the alternative" with "not really." But I tried, and by being pleasant, I got a real smile by the time I left the UPS store. 

Outside, the sky was tumbling with storm-clouds that said something to me about the need to look at the sky. Life is short. You can fix a car easier than a life. Two days later, a tornado ripped through a spot about five miles from that UPS store.

Trying the Technique on the Toughest Person of All

Then I tried Kerry’s idea on myself. My car's parking pawl, a small metal piece in the guts of the Apollo's transmission, looks undamaged, but it does not hold the car in park, no matter what I try. I've replaced the spring, checked the fit of the rod that engages the pawl, and kept the bottom of the transmission off while doing all this work. While I was at it, I realized that the car needed new universal joints. Getting the correct size for the front of the drive shaft proved tedious, involving calipers, some guesswork, and lots of searching around local parts stores. When I got a fit, I saved the empty box for next time!

The delays taking off parts and re-installing them multiple times were infuriating for a while, until I recalled Kerri's story of the passenger. A few worn parts, some hard to source, are not my fault. Would I rather be stuck by the road with the drive shaft on the ground, something that happened once to a friend's 1974 Dodge Dart? So I would tell myself "every time you do a chore again and again, you are turning it into muscle memory. Soon you will be able to remove a drive shaft or install a universal joint blindfolded. Be grateful for the lessons."

When I got both u-joints home, the attitude learned in Yoga Class made all the difference. I learned to install the joints with my shop vise, lubed them properly, reinstalled the drive shaft, and went back after the errant pawl, teaching myself to adjust the car's shift linkage in the process (I did that at least five times. It is getting there). When the flimsy plastic tab that holds the shift-indicator needle in the dash broke, instead of screaming I took the dash out for the seventh or eighth time, and using a pin vise from my scale-modeling supplies, I drilled a tiny hole for hooking the little spring in place. It's better than stock now.

Even when I learned that the parking pawl could not be mended without pulling the transmission, I decided to be grateful. Now at least I'd isolated an issue to its probable cause. I will pay a shop a thousand bucks or more (if the gear the pawl engages is worn) to fix it later. Maybe I'll eventually pony up $2000 and have the entire transmission rebuilt, as I know a good shop for that work. Meanwhile, parking the car in gear is not an option as it is on my manual-transmission Mazda. I'll keep a chunk of 4x4 wood in the Buick's trunk as a backup to the emergency brake, so the car does not roll off, park it on level ground or touching a wall (Yay, 1970s 5 mph bumpers with thick rubber pads).

One Over-Torqued Bolt

As I finish work under the hood (at least until I add a heater) I'm focusing on upgrades, such as new finned valve covers, plugs and wires, and a dipstick from the parts car I found in South Carolina. Yes, the cheap aftermarket one that a prior owner had installed broke, with the end of the dipstick falling off.

Remember how Tom and Ray Magliozzi warned us about that, on their wonderful, and sadly gone, Car Talk radio show?

So be careful when you check that oil!

One justifiable, rather than cosmetic, upgrade to the car is a new transmission pan with a drain plug. Transmissions notoriously spill fluid everywhere when a pan gets removed for service or a fluid change, so lots of gearheads add a drain to the existing pan or switch to a pan that has a drain, as I wanted to do. Summit Racing has some good aluminum pans for my car's TH 400 transmission, so I ordered one to the tune of $130.

I installed it with an upgraded gasket and new filter in the transmission. Yes, I was proud of myself. Too proud.

On the final bolt, tightened to spec of 10 foot-pounds by the manufacturer's instructions, the pan cracked. I felt it rather than saw it.  Looking up, I saw the pan was ruined, a solid crack running from the bolt hole down the side of the pan.

It would have really been  easy, even on a Sunday when Summit's phone lines are closed, to "scream" at them through their text-messaging service. Instead, heeding that lesson from the Yoga mat, I texted what had happened and said how sad it made me, because I like the product and so appreciated all the other products I'd purchased from them over the years for the car and others. What might we do next?

In five minutes, I had their customer-service person thanking ME and sending me a return authorization, under warranty.  Everyone was smiling. I got a full refund and for now, my stock steel transmission pan goes back on the car, which then goes back on the road. Maybe later I'll tap it for a drain plug. Steel lasts.

 Out of the Shop and Into the Mean Check-Out Lines

Side benefits of this new approach to frustration continue to multiply. I am the least-likely peacemaker imaginable but recently I stopped a fight in the making in line at Food Lion. 

Letting a man with two items in his hands go ahead of me, I thought to an unattended shopping cart. I figured he'd forgotten two things and stepped back to fetch them. No. Another man came rushing up and began berating the shopper for pushing into line past HIS cart. The man I'd let in line retorted with an unfortunate and unearned "I think you should show some respect." That the speaker was white and the man with the cart was black turned those words into a dangerous spark.

There I was, with two badly over-torqued bolts. 

It hit me to take the blame. So I said "Gentleman, Let's show some mutual respect. It's all my fault." I quickly told them what I'd done. They both looked at me, none too happy, so I rushed on. "Everyone is so angry nowadays. I'm to blame. I'm sorry. Life is short. "

It ended there. They both gave me a nod and though neither apologized to the other, we all checked out and went home. I needed a stiff drink after that. It could have blown up into a fist fight. And these days, maybe one or both of them would have a gun.

Still, my words worked. Maybe breaking aluminum pans and fixing a balky transmission "well enough for now" provides a life-lesson to take outside the shop into our imperfect, angry world.

 Coda: Let The Good Times Roll, Even When The Car Won't

The Buick is about to go back on the road with the old steel pan back on. I fired it up--no leaks!--but it won't move in any gear. Time to adjust the shifter linkage--for the nth time. It will roll. I have an assembly manual for the car now.

I even changed the oil. When it rolls, I can get back to upgrades for the engine bay and a center console I'm building for the interior.

So what frustrations repairing things have you dealt with, creatively? And have you turned frustration into gratitude, like the lady on the airplane?