It’s 5:00am and I’m just raring to go, just like yesterday, the penultimate day in May it actually feels like summer once more 🙂 Ok it still rained and there was one ferocious hail shower but they only lasted a few minutes had little effect on my moral.
For the first time in weeks I was able to poke my head out of the bedroom window without getting wet and the Proven was stationary.
I could even see the Trotternish ridge on Skye
the basalt cliffs of Borroraig and even a little sea. I really must trim those trees to retrieve my sea view 🙂
The window at the top of the stairs was just as encouraging though I was saddend to sea our hazel tree had taken a battering during the last gale. It was not the only one the sycamore had lost a limb and a hawthorn at the rear of the house had fallen onto the garden shed. Not with enough force to do damage but it’s going to be a pain to remove it.
The first job after feeding everyone and just soaking up the morning was to take the boy to school, his pal to the ferry, the ‘beetle man’ south and wifey to pick up her car. Unlike wifey I set off early for most of my journeys, firstly I don’t like driving fast and secondly you never know what you might come across.
Like this fine stag who looks in terrible condition as he’s putting all his energy into growing that beautiful velvet crown on his head and shedding his winter coat.
It will not be long before he has eight or more points on those antlers, which he’ll then remove the velvet from by rubbing them against branches. In this state hell look quite peculiar with the bleeding skin trailing from his head 😦
Arriving south early we took the trailer onto the beach at Clachan to load up with stones before saying farewell to our passengers, another reason for leaving early 🙂
Preparing for ‘The Monster Weekend’
Most of the rest of my day was spent in, under and around our 70s vintage Thomson caravan doing the brakes and wheel bearings.
And I took that picture before I’d realized that I’d put the top shoe on the wrong way round 🙂 All was fine in the brake shoe department, a little light rust was sanded off the drums and a bit of copper grease applied to the moving parts was all that was required.
The bearings were also fine, hardly surprising when you see the size of them, but the oil seal on the right hand side was leaking so I decided to remove it to get another, something I’m now beginning to regret 😦 I actually think that the seal was OK and the leak was a combination of the breather hole in the end of the grease cap being blocked and me driving half a mile last year with the handbrake on 😦
On the whole oil seals are cheap, readily available and very easy to change so why take the risk of contaminating my brake shoes thought I, so I removed the seal to measure it. In retrospect I should have left it, for the number written on the metal case tells all.
W. 256162.37.R4 translates into 256 or 2.56” = 2.9/16”. 162 is 1.62” or 1.5/8” and .37 is 3/8” wide, the R4 at the end signifying ‘metal case’.
Armed with all this info and a computer you’d think I’d have found a seal without difficulty, not a chance, two hours of searching last night failed to turn up a seal, sometime you just need to speak to ‘one who knows’ on the phone 🙂
That was about it really, I cleaned the hydro turbine, finally managed to cut the grass that had been wet for two weeks and shared a bottle of wine with wifey 🙂
It’s 6:15 and just look what’s less than four meters from my kitchen table,
This is him seven weeks ago with only one handlebar 🙂
