Tag Archives: old tyres

Tuesday 8th October 2019 – I’VE BEEN …

… Mr Computer Repair Man again today.

having revelled in my triumphs a few days ago about getting my old Acer Laptop up and running after it crashed out on me in the USA and being able to salvage all of the data, down at the office today Rachel bunged another old laptop at me to see if I could raise that one from the dead too.

I spent a couple of hours working on it and, as much to my own surprise as anyone else’s, it’s now up and running again with not only all of the data still intact but all of the programs too.

It’s an old 2009 Lenovo with a 1.3ghz processor running Windows 7, but now that it’s working again it’s quite sprightly for its age as long as you don’t try to do anything too ambitious with it, but for taking down to the storeroom to do an inventory (which is why it was here in the first place) it’s just the job.

And talking of the storeroom, I’ve checked again and we do have indeed a large supply of 165/80 x 13 and 185/70 x 13 tyres for Ford Cortinas, as well as several other obsolete sizes too for other makes, so I’ve been posting the info on various North American classic car groups to try to drum up the sales.

All in all, I’ve had quite a busy morning.

A relaxing morning too. Although I heard all of the alarms go off, it was about 07:00 when I finally managed to raise myself from the dead. And with no school run this morning I was able to have a leisurely start to the day.

Not to transcribe the dictaphone notes though. There’s a couple on there from during the night and I’ll have to copy those over as soon as I can.

For once, Cujo the Killer Cat co-operated with me so I was able to leave the house pretty much when I wanted to without having to hunt her down.

This afternoon was more running around. Taking the cheques to be posted (it’s that time of the year) mainly.

But I had another task assigned to me which I managed to accomplish. In the garage is a 2004 Dodge Ram 1500 pick-up with a major electrical problem. With my little home-made testing apparatus I can tell that there’s a live feed reaching the relays at contacts where no live feed should be. This points to a short circuit in the fuse box somewhere and these are impossible to repair.

The easy answer is to replace the fuse box but, to my amazement (or maybe not, because I’ve long-since ceased to be amazed at the antics of modern motor manufacturers) the part is “no longer available” from the manufacturers.

Consequently, with the repaired laptop (and I’m glad now that I repaired it), I’ve been scouring the scrapyards of North America and I’ve eventually tracked down a rear-ended Dodge of the correct year and model in a scrapyard in Colorado.

A photo of the part on that truck looks identical to the one here, and so that’s now winging its way northwards in our direction. And who knows? We might even be able to make this Dodge start properly without having to hot-wire it all the time.

Fighting off waves of fatigue yet again (and I’ve no idea why) I went to pick up Amber from cheerleading practice after school, only to find that our little visitor had stayed behind too. Never mind the crowded cab when we have half-a-million strong therein by the time we get to Woodstock, it was pretty cramped in there with three, but we managed all the same.

Everyone was out this evening so I made myself some potato thins with onions, carrots garlic and assorted herbs with some vegan sausages, and it was delicious. Especially when followed down by one of the vegan muffins from the weekend.

Later this evening after tea I retreated to my room. I’m not feeling myself at the moment … “and quite right too” – ed … so some peace and quiet will do me good. I’m beginning to feel the strain and I really need a couple of days in bed to haul myself up again, but I doubt whether that will happen any time soon.

Looking at my schedule over the past three and a half months, it would have been pretty hectic for a younger person in good health. For an older person who is slowly dying, it’s been taxing to the limit and beyond.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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Thursday January 14th 2010 – I notice that the weather is now back to normal.

Yes, dark grey skies, miserable windy wet rainy weather and not a trace of the sun anywhere. It’s just like old times.

So this morning, even though I had an early night I don’t know how I managed to sleep through both alarm clocks and it was 09:40 when I woke up. And you can tell that the weather has changed as it was warmer in here. And also a full 9.5 degrees warmer than downstairs so this insulating lark is definitely working. In fact, even as I write, there’s no heating on in this room.

This morning I fitted another vertical on the first floor. That’s the last of the free-standing ones. The afternoon saw me commence the first one of the ones that will be up against the wall. That needs to be planned carefully as the fitted wardrobe in the bedroom will start here.

But I didn’t get much done as once again I was held in conversation on the phone, firstly by the guy who is sorting out my webhosting and secondly by a guy with a 30 year-old Ford Transit. I noticed it on the car park at Brico Depot the other day and happened to see that its tyres were somewhat the worse for wear. The Luton Transit is the same model as his, and I have two almost-new spare tyres that would be worth a fair bit of dosh for someone, as well as all of the other bits when I start to break it. So I left a note under his windscreen wipers with my telephone number. He’s interested in the tyres and a few other bits and he might come round on Sunday.

It was almost pitch-black by 17:00 and so I knocked off early and came upstairs. If I’m going to have the light on I may as well have the light on up here in comfort.

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Thursday 31st December 2009 – Fiat even more Lux!

12 volt LED light electrical circuit les guis virlet puy de dome franceYes, the lighting is slowly progressing around the house now. Even with having light up and down the stairwell, it still meant that I needed a torch to move around the house as the living room was in darkness. But I remedied that this morning by using the other half of the light switch at the foot of the stairs and an old redundant light switch by the door into the kitchen, and I now have a light by the front door over the control panel and I can now happily move around torchless.

You might think that this light isn’t all that bright. But firstly, it’s plenty bright enough to move around with and secondly, it’s only 1.2 watts, believe it or not. Yes, these 12-volt LED lights from LIDL, at €4.49 a shot, they are definitely the way to go.

Don’t look too closely at the wiring by the way. Terry takes the mickey out of it even when I do what I consider to be a good job. But here, I ran out of wire and had to cobble together whatever I could find .

I also ran out of time. I did in fact allow myself plenty of time but Claude came round. He’s got a puncture on his old Clio and was wondering if I had a spare 155×13 tyre. I have a couple but they are for the diesel Escort and I’m not going to part with them so I offered to run him into town or to a scrapyard to pick something up. But no, did I have anything? In the end I found 2 165×13 tyres on Volkswagen wheels that belonged to the Passat before I had a lucky find with those 175/70×14 Golf wheels and tyres. So they are the wrong size and on different wheels and they have been hanging around outside for 7 years in all kinds of weather. But they are free so he’s taken them and will change them himself onto the Renault wheels with a crowbar.

Now I did some crazy things with cars and the like in my youth but I drew the line with tyres long before this particular point was ever reached. Second-hand tyres of good quality from a scrapyard is fair game but perishing (in both senses of the word) Uniroyal and Courier remould tyres – well, it’s a problem in the making, this is. And I’m not quite sure how a crowbar will affect the rims of the wheels, especially when you need to rely on the integrity of the rims to keep an airtight seal with tubeless tyres.

This afternoon I fitted one of the offcuts from the verandah roof over where the plant-pot beichstuhl is. There’s no roof over where I’ve fitted it although the scaffolding planks on the scaffolding overhead so protect it somewhat. But with a driving wind causing everything to swirl about, I had a good soaking while I was riding the porcelain (or in this case, aluminium) horse this afternoon. Time for action!

In between all of this, I did a load of washing. After last night’s brilliant and clear skies the sky forgot to cloud over this morning and for a couple of hours we had a brilliantly clear sky. I seized the opportunity to do a load of washing but the clouds caught up before I had finished and now everything is receiving a final rinse from Mother Nature out on the washing line. And more rain is forecast.

I nipped round to Claude’s this evening to give him and Francoise a bottle of champagne for New Year, seeing as I forgot to give it to them on Christmas Eve. Beethoven is ill and they are going to have to take him to the vet’s. He’s 16 and in reasonable health and has bags of character. I’m not into dogs but in his case I could make an exception. I hope he’s going to be ok.

And that was that. I had a nice tea with some roast potatoes, and now I’m going to do nothing except listen to the torrential rain beating down on the roof.

Happy New Year to you all. And I wish for you for 2010 everything that you wished on everyone else for 2009.

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