Today ended up being a day of addressing some things on multiple fronts. As is always the case, there's something that needs to be worked on, whether it's bringing it back to working condition or touching up on something so it can be pressed in to service. Such is the case with the three subject areas I'll visit today. The first area is where I left off the previous day, and that is the Dog Kennel Greenhouse, more specifically the hydroponic gardens I had to restore to useable condition. I restored one of the HPG manifolds by changing up the fittings that the soda bottles would attach to, as well as the soda bottles themselves to make for a more sturdy coupling for the assembly. I still had one more of the manifolds to redo, so I can have both assemblies done and secured on the framework in the greenhouse. I did the same, but made a mistake with the gathering of PVC fittings and came up short for one of the reducer bushings, due to my grabbing of the wrong bushing, so the second manifold is complete, save for one of the ports. I still mounted the unit down on the framework next to the other HPG manifold anyway, as this repair will be as simple as applying glue and pressing the fitting into the port and letting it set overnight before I put the soda bottle planter in place. With that little order of business taken care of, until I can get the reducer bushing and start the greater work on the greenhouse, which is installing the roof, I moved on to the John Deere Tractor. A good while ago, I converted this thing from a regular lawn mower to a utility tractor by removing the cutting deck and installing several new parts on the engine to restore operation. Of course, I had some issues with the steering that needed correction, and after making those corrections, the tractor ended up not being used for the following year afterward. In the meantime, sitting outside is never a good thing for any kind of machine. As is the case, the carburetor became scummed up, not allowing fuel to flow, even the old fuel that was still in the fuel tank. I pulled the carburetor and broke it down, cleaning it out as thoroughly as possible. I had to clean out the jet as well as the solenoid due to the idea there was some form of algae and scum in the float bowl. After running the internals through a parts washing and reassembling, I put the carburetor back on the engine. With a little fuel poured into the intake tube, the engine started right up on full choke. Fuel was obviously flowing freely as the engine kept running. When I opened the choke, the engine wanted to act rather erratically. After letting the engine run at partial choke for a while, it started to level off some. Of course I had to dump another gallon of fresh fuel into the tank to dilute the old fuel so hopefully that would help things along. At this point the engine seemed most happy at partial choke. I was able to drive the tractor around like normal, but if I tried to open the choke all the way, the engine would act a little stupid, enough so that I wouldn't trust it under load. We'll see how things work after running the old fuel through. Worst case I'll have to replace the carburetor, again. The last thing that needed addressing was Stubby. Well just a few things needed to be looked at. One was the functionality of the radio. It turned out the radio worked, but the tuning feature would sometimes have the frequency bounce around, a common thing I notice on old car radios. Other than that, the radio worked just fine. I normally use a bluetooth module to connect my phone to the radio so I'm listening to things from the phone through the radio. The next thing I had to check were the locks. The ignition key apparently doesn't work with any of the other locks on the vehicle, so I will have to replace the lock cylinders on all three doors. The next thing was tightening up the molding pieces for the door levers so they wouldn't be bouncing around when the levers are operated to open the doors. The last thing that I had to check out for functionality was the AC system. Turning the unit on yielded nothing. I hooked up the refrigerant hose and dumped a can of stop leak into the system, and didn't get anything yet. I started adding refrigerant and not even a half can was needed before the compressor engaged. I dumped a little more until the operating pressure was within the middle range. Even at a standstill, the system was blowing rather cool. I let the thing run a while to determine that there weren't any leaks anywhere and that the engine wouldn't start overheating for any reason. Once everything looked good I shut the truck down, confident that the vehicle was ready for the road. With these things addressed, I can now move on to other things. For one, I can start on the final phase of the Dog Kennel Greenhouse construction. At the same time, I can finish things up on the hydroponic gardens, by installing a pump so when I get power to the structure, I can get that system operational. The John Deere will be seeing more use as a utility tractor for going up to the garage, as it was intended to be used before. One of the bigger reasons for this is to allow the ole lady to ferry a pack of 60v batteries up to the garage for installation in the new electric zero turn tractor we recently picked up. There will be more on that in the very near future. And with the checks made on Stubby, I can start driving the vehicle in the normal capacity as with the full-sized Tracker. At the same time, I'll also be ordering the locks so I can get the vehicle to the point of being able to be locked down properly so we can drive around anywhere safely, being able to lock the truck down.
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