In the middle of working on larger projects there is always going to be those small things that need to be addressed, or even opportunities that pop up that have to be capitalized on to make things better around a shop or homestead or both. This is the case with a simple area light that we had hanging on the power pole that overlooks the Chicken Yard gate and the back parking area where all the trucks are located. This is one of those solar powered lights with the two arrays of LED's and a motion sensor that triggers the light when someone walks into the area. The LED's bathe the area in a decent amount of light, either illuminating the way for a person passing through the area or illuminating an individual who doesn't belong. Well this light stopped working for us not even a few months after hanging the thing. We went for a while without even bothering with this thing until we recently stumbled across a clearance/return item at Walmart that was actually the next size up from the bad unit.
After pulling down the bad unit, leaving the base mount in place, all I had to do was slide the replacement larger unit onto the base as it's the same size. It sat in the sun long enough that it was plenty charged by the time nightfall came. Just like the old unit, walking in the area tripped the motion sensor, illuminating the area with extra LED light. I didn't know why this light was returned, but hey, it works for us so its a win as we got the thing for half off. The next thing that I wanted to address was an old tiller that we had sitting in one of the other storage sheds. This unit had a Predator engine on it that didn't have a carburetor but still freely spun around. Since we really don't need a tiller anymore, and this thing didn't have the original engine on it, it didn't make sense for me to keep this thing. Even fixing it back up to sell didn't make sense as I would have to buy a carb for it and what I would've ended up getting for it wouldn't even offset the cost of the Predator engine. The sensible thing was to remove the engine for use later on some other project. The Predator engine is a 6.5HP engine that is a common replacement on go karts and just about any powered equipment that uses a horizontal shaft engine. Also at the same time, this engine being common means there is an aftermarket for this engine as far as performance parts. This engine could be used in a go kart with some mods to make it more powerful. Another option is to use this engine as the basis for a steam engine conversion, which has been done in many different instances and would be cool to do. As for the tiller body, I could just sell the thing to someone for $25 just to get it out of the way as someone else might want to put together a tiller if they have an engine on hand. The only other option would be to save this thing for the few useable parts this thing does have, like the clutch cable for engaging the belt drive for the tines, as well as the pulleys. If I pull these parts off the tiller body, the rest would go to the scrap yard, which is fine, as the parts pulled from the unit would be more valuable than the couple bucks I'd get selling this thing sans engine. I'll more than likely strip the parts from the tiller body more sooner than later just to clear this large item from the scrap pile. I'm in the process of trying to clear stuff from the inventory of junk so adding this large thing is the antithesis of cleaning up the area. At the same time, I do want to do something with these parts for the same exact reason - not wanting stuff to pile up.
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