Christmas blog

We cheaped out this year and decided to post an electronic Christmas Card this year. (Thanks for the idea, Al!) Click the link below to pop over there!

Merry Christmas to all our loved ones!

XR's Christmas Card

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Gosh! I love the Japanese!

Check out this cool story in a blog I stumbled across. If you're like me, you'll end up loving the Japanese too - even if just a little.

Make sure to read the entire story so you don't miss the best stuff!

Ogori Cafe
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MyParentsWereAwesome...

Like nostalgic old photos? Check out this cool blog I ran across...

MyParentsWereAwesome.com
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Volleyball Season Again

Charlotte is in Yellow, Jersey #7, Teal shorts.

Klara is in dark blue, Jersey # 1, light green plaid shorts.

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No longer just a gatherer!

FINALLY!

We glassed a hill all afternoon on opening day and at about 3:00pm I spotted two small bucks working their way over the top of the hill. We watched them for a little while as they wandered through the bushes and then back over the crest of the hill. We were about 420 yards from where they were and had to move into a better position. We circled around and down to a closer ridge over the next hour, keeping an eye on them as we crept ever nearer. Our friend, Clay, ranged them at about 180 yards. I waited for quite a while for a good shot and finally at about 4:30pm one presented a side and stood still for a few seconds. I squeezed one off and hit him, but he didn't go down immediately. A few seconds later he popped up again about 30 yards to the left and just stared at me. The second shot dropped him where he stood. Then it was the steep climb to get to him and the half-mile uphill drag out. After many years of deer hunting, I finally have my first Coues Whitetail. Thank you, Clay, for all the advice and support!

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You're gonna be jealous...or not.

It's been 35 years in the coming, but I finally saw ABBA perform live...sort of...
It's actually "Waterloo" the tribute band. At least they're genuinely Swedish!

Fun in the desert

Dad and I were out in the desert about 20 miles North of Globe yesterday scouting for whitetails. We had done some pretty gnarly driving (at least for my truck) and were on our way back out to the highway when we decided to check out one more trail we had skipped earlier.

A couple hundred yards up the trail we were off in the bushes and there was no more steering the truck! The pitman arm shaft on the steering gear had snapped off!

Using a jack to reposition the steering and tie-downs to sort-of hold it in place, we managed to 'steer' the truck back into a position where we could work on it. Luckily, we were near the top of the ridge and had good cell phone signal. Dad got Mom to go over to Scott's house and wake him up (he works nights). Scott rounded up a new steering gear and some tools then came to the rescue. We got the job done pretty quick and were on our way down before dark. THANK YOU SCOTT!

Thinking back, we couldn't have been more blessed...

• After not seeing anyone all morning, a rancher showed up within minutes of the breakdown and eventually returned to take Dad down to the highway to meet Scott. We never saw another person out there.
• The steering broke while we were in a safe location. Had we not turned onto the side trail we would have been driving on the edge of a near vertical drop-off several hundred feet to the bottom. Or worse...we could have been going 75 MPH on the highway and turned into on-coming traffic!
• The Autozone closest to Scott's house had the steering gear in stock and there was only one other in the Valley at the Chandler warehouse.
• I have never in my life done this kind of work without at least one bolt or joint that needed serious persuasion to remove, but everything came apart and went back together like a dream.
• Mountain Lions didn't attack us. (Well, okay. They probably wouldn't have anyway.)
  

There's just no way to write that all off as coincidence.

Steering (the hard way.)

The broken steering gear


Under the hood


A friend I made while waiting for Dad and Scott to arrive
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Charlotte's Wedding

I meant to blog this a while ago, but I've lazy about figuring out how to get the pictures off my cell phone...

Charlotte came into my room one day and said "all I need now is Colter." She had made herself a wedding dress, veil and a bouquet and was ready for Colter (a boy she likes in our ward) to show up for the ceremony! I couldn't resist snapping a few pics.

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Here we go again...

Extra wood means extra work. The basement carpet was just nasty, so we decided to use the extra wood we had to replace the carpet.

Voila!~

How my $150 welder saved me $600...AGAIN!

While we were at Lake Powell last month The Tird broke after a couple of days of hard driving. My slight vibration went to a horrible shake and we ended up cruising 25 miles back to camp from Rainbow Bridge at about 7 miles per hour. Yuck! (Thanks to Kevin and Ash for being so patient during the 2.5 hour drive!)

Last week I yanked the outdrive expecting to see a couple of wasted u-joints. WRONG! They were quite solid. I looked into the bell housing and saw the transmission shaft was sitting at a very odd angle. A little tug on the shaft and what should have been pressed in, fell out into my hands. The shaft bearing was almost completely gone. There should be a bearing on the shaft where the pink arrow is in the picture below. What looks like a bearing in the bell housing cone is the dead oil seal.



Here's what's left of the bearing. I had to weld the the pieces of the outer race back together so I could measure it in order to spec the new bearing.



Here's where the welder saved me a small fortune. I needed a snap ring tool that would fit down deep in the cone ($60), a seal puller ($150) and two different special bearing pullers (about $200 each). Boats are quite greedy mistresses indeed! Below are some tools I cobbled up from scrap I had around. The top one is a deep snap ring tool, just a nail welded to a piece of rebar. The next one is my special prying seal puller. The third one is a threaded bearing puller made from scrap and a grade 8 nut. And the bottom one is an impact bearing puller (think slide hammer) I made from a scrap of chain bolted to one jaw off my gear puller.



It took a little longer than having the real tools, but that's $600 I can spend on something better. Also, it turned out Volvo-Penta would sell me the wrong bearing for $54, but couldn't give me the part number of the correct one. I spec'd it myself and went off to the bearing store. I put the bag of disintegrated bearing parts on the counter and before I could utter the series number I needed, the clerk toddled off and returned 10 seconds later with the correct bearing! "That'll be $10.95" What a deal! It was even a higher quality bearing than Volvo would have sold me if they could have found the part number!

Anyway, I wrapped up the installation today and The Tird is again ready for the lake! Now...to find time to go...