Did several little things with the L. And wouldn’t have nearly as small and relatively effortless without it.
First thing was a little “new machine” maintenance on the new Farmi winch. It has a few hours on it now and has been great, but last pull (which was a hard pull), there was a not nice grinding sound for a couple seconds before I could get off the clutch. Being a big brainless, I got back on the clutch, finished the pull without further incident, and later pondered the origin of the sound. Didn’t take long to suspect the drive chain in the winch was loose and had slipped.
OM makes it look like chain tensioning is on about the same level of difficulty as cooking a Pop-Tart so I grab a couple wrenches and dive into what should be some really shallow water.
For whatever reason I’m expecting the lack of detail to mean this to be pretty straightforward: access panel somewhere or something else obvious. Wrong (at least for my stupid self).
I know where the chain is because it’s a really simple machine and there’s only one place for it to be. That and I can just barely see it. Can feel though, so I know it’s way loose.
Probably everyone here has one of these but this LED lighted mirror on a double knuckle mount on the end of a collapsible metal stick is awesome for stuff like this.
After seeing it, I could see to loosen the two bolts, use a screwdriver in one of the upper holes to pry over the idler, rotate the eccentric plate with the two small holes to help hold it in place, and tighten the bolts.
The chain was VERY loose. My bad for not checking it. I’m aware roller chains aren’t supposed to be “tight” but the slack in this thing was way out. Don’t know if it came that way or stretched a bit breaking in or what. Regardless, no damage based on visual and tactile inspection of the chain and cogs, so adjusted it.
Then used the forks to swap a couple couches around. I’m probably supposed to know why that needed doing, but I don’t. I know wife wanted couches swapped and I didn’t care so long as I retain the ability to sit somewhere occasionally. No pics. Imagine the couch of your choice sitting on forks on a loader. Thats what it looked like.
Then used it as a wheelbarrow to fill in a depression in the yard at the unoccupied house. Wife had been complaining about it once in a while for a few months. Don’t know if there was an old stump there or what caused the depression. Filled it in with some creek/swamp dirty sand, put some grass seed on it that probably won’t germinate due to temps, and on to other stuff.
Wanted to shrink one of the brush piles and wanted some fresh chips for a couple upcoming projects so spent a little time chipping.
BTW, I’m aware the rather large beech tree is hollow and sort of rotting at the bottom. It was damaged by the track loader that graded the lot off 30 years ago when we built our house. Knocked a chunk out of the bottom and cut a LOT of the roots on one side. For a couple years the wound grew and the leaves came out on only part of the tree. After a while it stabilized and has been thriving for the past 25 years or so. That and if it fell, it wouldn’t hit anything other than a bunch of scrawny trees. I fully expect it to be standing long after I’m gone.
