High as a kite :-)

Well, not now but I was yesterday (Thursday) when I spent much of what turned out to be a beautiful day sniffing glue in the back of me Land Rover.

   

The previous day’s ‘brain twisting’ electrical work having been abandoned in favour of some interior trimming. The liberal use of contact adhesive in such a confined space putting me ‘into a spin’ on more than one occasion. Removing the seats and undoing much of the work done by Tayside Land Rover to redo it in a way more suited to my OCD leanings. So out came the seat mountings, seat belts and various trimmings to be cleaned, painted or just plain replacing the many nuts and bolts with stainless steel ones. Luckily the weather was good and the wind fresh so wee dug got plenty of walks in-between coats of paint and glue.

 

  

Firstly to check on the hydro turbine inlet and wander round the old ruined township of South Arnish.

  

The houses now long abandoned but at least one garden well tended

though not as well as it would have been at the time this was taken around 1885.

 

The fireplace on the left not having belched any peaty smoke as in the 19th century image in decades.

Friday did see me returning to the ‘spaghetti’ though I must confess to a feeling of gong backwards at times. Having got all the rear lights bar the reversing ones working the day before. I then lost my rear fog lamp, ignition lamp, side light indicator lamp and a few other things

   

Managing to restore all bar the ignition lamp by ‘close of play’ yesterday

Friday

Friday, at least most of it, was yet another pleasure to behold despite loosing the sun until next year

 

There will still be brief afternoon rays on the croft and plenty visible from inside Sonas. There will even be afternoon solar radiation on some of the 9kW of installed solar panels but there will be precious little on the house now until February.

 

Unlike my neighbours at Torran who’s solar panels and house will be catching sunshine all year In search of some colour, Molly and I wandered down to the holly tree in front of our house to admire the riot of berries as the last gales have removed most of the colour from my garden. The rosehips, fuchsias, daisies, hydrangea  and purple buddleias scattered by autumnal gales.

 

Still, I should have no shortage of holly for my Christmas decorations

   

And ultimately I was quite pleased with what I’d achieved in the back of the ‘Old Girl’, even if it did take days to do just a couple of hours work.

Well, that’s it really, not sure whether to call it early or late, the clock says 01:33 and I’ve been up since just before midnight when I arose for a hot chocolate and banana, probably as a result of far too much coffee throughout the day. So methinks I’ll turn in now for a chapter with HMS Rodney before arising early to listen to more Trump buffoonery on the World Service at ‘stupid o clock’. You couldn’t make it up could you, the leader of the free world, a feckin’ reality TV star throwing his toys out of the pram. The two enduring memories I’ll have of the American election campaign have to be senator John Marcain’s 2008 speech (God rest his true Republican soul)

 

and Donald Trump’s ‘spiritual advisor’ Paul White’s prayer for him.

You really could not make this stuff up hey.

Wrestling with Satan :-)

Not got much in the way of enthusiasm this morning peeps but then I’m only half way down the first strong cup of coffee. Once more it’s lashing down, this time, like me, without the same enthusiasm as on previous days. Still, it is wet and forecast to get even wetter, though yesterday it was actually a pretty nice morning, the deluge not arriving until later.

 

First thing I did after the morning feeding round was go and investigate my closest hydro turbine as the voltmeter in the kitchen was lower than it normally is first thing in the morning. The house battery bank is nominally 48V but having lain overnight with both turbines putting out a combined 1.6kW it’s usually just shy of 60V. Yesterday morning it wasn’t even 50V which is what I would expect were I relying on solar alone. Meters in the ‘power station’ that is my generator and battery shed confirmed that the Stream Engine was only producing a couple of hundred Watts so Molly and I went to investigate.

 

Sure enough there wasn’t enough water going into the header tank due to the intake being partially blocked with fallen leaves. An all to familiar occurrence on this turbine surrounded as it is by birch, hazel and hawthorn. Soon had it cleared right enough  but the cold water took my breath away, it was much chillier than the last time I unblocked it at the start of the month.

As ‘wee dug’ seemed to be enjoying herself I decided to wander over to Torran. Molly has got to an age where she prefers to lie in the car all day rather than go walkies but yesterday she seemed to have reacquired a little of her former youthful bounce.

    

So, in the forlorn hope of collecting the odd late ‘shroom we cut through the enchanted birch woods towards the golden aspen of Torran. Calling at the Schoolhouse on the way to refuel with a strong black coffee with my Mate who had just returned from his morning swim in Loch Arnish. Sure the fresh water burn that powers my hydro was much colder than the sea but still it must have been boodly cold.

 

Specially considering the amount of fresh water that had gone into the sea these last few days. The Torran track was noticeably filled with trenches and washed gravel left by the torrents of rain.

Smokeless

As the forecast showers showed no sign of arriving I decided to continue with trying to sort out my spaghetti  like wiring by trying to make some sense of the confusing array of colours.

  

I had managed to run two new cables through the chassis and terminated them in junction boxes at either end. Now it was just a matter of deciding which ones to marry to the originals. Not too difficult in theory as I would just use the international standard for the 13 core cable used on tow bars for the lighting and the 7 core cable could do the other stuff like fuel gauge, rear wash wipe, heated window etc. I would have plenty of spare wiring so I could double some of these up for the higher current of the wiper and heated window.

It’s one of those jobs that requires much more ‘thinking’ time than actual ‘doing’ time and isn’t helped by my chaotic working practices and poor memory.

I seemed to spend most of my day looking for things I’d just put down and still have not found my phone yet Still, I was pleased with my progress despite the best efforts of ‘Lucas Prince of Darkness’ to thwart me. https://www.ntnoa.org/LucasSmoke.htm

The function of the wiring harness is to conduct the smoke from one device to another. When the wiring springs a leak and lets all the smoke out of the system, nothing works afterward.

Starter motors were considered unsuitable for British motorcycles for some time largely because they consumed large quantities of smoke, requiring very unsightly large wires.

It has been reported that Lucas electrical components are possibly more prone to electrical leakage than their Bosch, Japanese or American counterparts. Experts point out that this is because Lucas is British, and all things British leak. British engines leak oil, British shock absorbers, hydraulic forks and disk brake systems leak fluid, British tires leak air and British Intelligence leaks national defence secrets.

Remarkably I got most of the legally required circuits for the lighting working despite the demon Lucas. Right enough I had to order a new rear fog light switch but at least I never let out any of the ‘Magic Smoke’ for now

https://forums.parallax.com/discussion/155680/lucas-prince-of-darkness

Come the afternoon I had to abandon the ‘Prince of Darkness’ due to the pishing rain so turned my attention to the 1200kg of forklift batteries nestling on my trailer.

 

The 24 cells had been sitting there for a couple of weeks now awaiting the arrival of my enthusiasm. The crate was just too heavy for Calum’s boom and dipper at the height and distance required to lift the whole crate off the trailer bed. Consequently I’d parked it near the shed they were going in, planning to lift them off in two or threes at a time.

  

However, it was now so wet that I didn’t want to risk slinging the slippy plastic casings with wet strops so I lifted all 24 off by hand and put them in the generator shed to await yet another bout of enthusiasm which may arrive sometime around the next full moon At least now I’ll be able to move Calum the Kubota and Ifor Williams out of the way. Perhaps then I can continue my work with Satan in the dry shed