Wednesday April 13

Wednesday was a great day for me. I went out and spend a good part of the day with Tuggy, 'pulling wrenches' on my trike... or as I sometimes refer to it, 'my broom'. We first had a cup of tea at his place, then decided to go in to town for lunch before getting to work. We shared a hamburger and fries, he had coffee & I had Rooibos tea.... then back to his place and to work.

This is how 'Broom' was looking when I got there. Tuggy had to pull it all apart recently to get the drive shaft hooked up properly, and had to take one of the wheels apart to fix it, replacing the axle seal.

We moved the rear end (from 1974 Datsun B210 car) over and into place, then got it all lined up and bolted the manufactured trike frame to the bike frame... and bolted the drive shaft in place. In this top photo, they are not yet bolted together.

Here they are bolted together and the shocks are in place.

One set of coil shocks, and one set of air shocks.

We pushed 'Broom' outside and cut off excess metal as well as shortened some too-long bolts.

Last fall when we took it too the welder, he removed the pipes. Since then, they were put back in place, sort of, and we had to take them off to sort them out and figure out which one went where as they aren't a 'one pipe fits all' type of thing. We got 3 of them in place in the engine and the other part that I don't know what to call it but it's one piece that all 4 pipes have to fit into... part of the exhaust system. The 4th pipe was giving us a lot of trouble, not wanting to fit right, so we called it a day. Sometimes you just have to say 'enough' and go back to it another day.

When I had hauled Big Red on my flat deck trailer (Big Red story is on Reba's Run: Big Red, Big Red 2, and Big Red's Resurrection), a fuse in my truck burned out. I had this happen before with this trailer, so know it's a wiring problem on the trailer. I remembered it was a 20 amp fuse that Larry had put in at Quality Auto Electric, but didn't know for sure where or how to find the fuses and change them. I took it to Quality on Tuesday and Larry is not back from Arizona yet, and the guy there wouldn't even take 2 minutes to do the job... said 'Bring it back tomorrow.' even though I told him how important it was I have it that evening, and couldn't drive it after dark with no tail lights. Anyway, Tuggy & I changed the fuse, so now I know how to do it if it happens in future. Tuggy will help me find the problem on the trailer and fix that too before we need it.

Yes, Wednesday was a busy day, and a wonderful day. A lot was accomplished on my trike, my truck was fixed, and I so much enjoyed 'pulling wrenches' again after years of not doing so. When I was married I wanted to take a mechanic's course and my husband totally forbid me to do so. It's too bad as I think it would have been a good career for me... and that is another very long story that we'll not go into just now.

After we pushed both trikes back into the shop and closed the door, we said our good-byes and I drove home. Fed Reba, washed up, got changed, then drove in to town where I went to the Army Navy Air Force club with Nancy. I also got a call from Mark, long time friend who lives over in the Kootenays now and is coming over here next Wednesday.