News and ramblings.

I’ve been really busy working on the computer lately reading things, running facts and figures and writing plans for the coming summers projects. The one problem with this is I have been running my battery dead doing it!

I guess I’ll have to explain that comment a bit before I go on any further.

As I am sure I mentioned before, the sole electricity source here is a battery that is charged while I drive the car. I have a tiny, hand cranked diesel engine connected to a 125 amp bus alternator but so far I have not been motivated enough to get it working, the engine runs fine but the alternator needs some attention since it won’t charge. The story on that is several years ago we were all traveling through Montana in our old school bus when the headlights started getting dimmer and dimmer and Dad realized that there was something terribly wrong. He stopped in the next town but by this time the lights were essentially non existent so we had people calling the cops “There is this gigantic bus driving around town with no lights on!” The cops found us just about the time Dad decided we could do nothing about it at that point and we were just going to have to stay in a parking lot with the engine running all night. There was just no place with a spare alternator or even parts! We have spent many nights in the bus with the engine running for heat so that wasn’t new to us, but the delay in the trip was maddening! The next morning we drove to Missoula and found a new alternator, put it on real fast and got on our way, which is why I now have this alternator for charging my batteries! I’ve rebuilt them before, so when I took this one apart and found that it was like brand new inside (the bus only had 108,000 miles on it) I was surprised that we had had trouble with it, that is until I found the two wires that had been shorting out! I fixed that and it still won’t work, though it’s like new. I’ll have to think of something else to get it going I guess, so far it has been cold enough to destroy my desire to work on such things!

For the shop I have a bank of 4 huge 6 volt batteries that weigh more than I do. I’ll always remember how I got them; a guy was moving and had this bank of brand new deep cycle batteries in his basement that he had bought for an off grid system that he was going to build. The problem was, he couldn’t get them out of the basement! So he called in desperation and said, “If you come right now and get these things out of here you can have them, just as long as I don’t have to get them out of here.” I wasn’t about to let such an opportunity slip by me like that so I took the only available vehicle to his house and got to work. I about passed out several times but I got all 6 of them out of there in record time! Fortunately, the trunk of my Mercedes just barely held them all if I left the trunk lid open. I don’t think the guys at the Benz factory designed the car to have a half ton of lead and acid stowed in the trunk and I think the hydraulics in the suspension got a workout that trip!

Anyway, I have four of those monster batteries here in the garage waiting to power lights that I have yet to install out there and for the occasional use of a power tool or two. Once I get the inverter hooked up that is. For the house I have a small deep cycle battery that I can pick up and walk around with and every time I start the car I put it on the floor in the passenger side and hook up a set of cables that I wired in for that purpose. As I drive it charges the battery and I have lights and computer for a few more nights. Simple enough as long as I drive the diesel car. That car has somewhere near a half million miles as close as I can tell and while it is still in remarkable condition for those miles it isn’t a showpiece by any means. I can comfortably haul batteries, kids, chickens, sacks of grain, boards, table saws, chain saws, gas cans, old engines, an old safe, hoses, bags of insulation, drive through mud, snow banks, down prairie trails, across stubble fields, down ditches etc. I think you get the point! It’s like a small truck for me. One battery won’t make much difference. Our family has put a ton of miles on it through the years and made a lot of memories in it. Hauling 15 people around one time, making emergency trips halfway across the country in record time, visiting friends all across the country, a relative was halfway born in the back seat while racing across town to the hospital, yes, half born, that’s not a typo, he was born the rest of the way when they got to the hospital. I remember a friend drove the older children in it following the ambulance that took Mom to the hospital when she died, and I drove it back alone to tell the children that she was dead the next morning. I was listening to Vivaldi’s 4 seasons and I cannot hear one bit of that music without mentally going back to driving that car slowly up and down the hills with tears streaming down my face dreading ever getting to my destination because I didn’t want to have everyone see me crying and I especially didn’t want to tell them the news! We have spent many nights sleeping in that car piled with 3 in the back seat and two in the front, always in winter so we had to leave the engine running for heat. One time it ran for about a week without shutting off doing that sort of thing. I’ve slept in that drivers seat in probably half a dozen different states by now!

Now the car is relegated to my every day runaround and battery charger. Unfortunately, being diesel it starts well down to about 0 degrees, then it starts getting tougher and tougher as the temperature goes down. The past couple of weeks I have not been driving because the temperature has been quite cold, well below the 0 mark! Even if it warms up to 0 in the afternoon, it doesn’t help if the engine is still 30 below zero. I have a truck but that is diesel too so it wouldn’t be any better, and I have another car, a gas Mercedes, and it starts fine at any temperature, but I hit 3 deer with it so it doesn’t get driven much anymore. Lately, I have been walking wherever I need to go, which means I all of the sudden don’t need to go very many places! It’s easier to just not go anywhere instead of dealing with the exasperated and horrified people at the destination “You actually WALKED in this weather?!!” Yes, why not? I am fully dressed.

Today I had to go to town though. I can get to Leeds on all gravel prairie roads so it isn’t too much of a drive but far more than I want to walk. Things would have been different if I had not been lazy and parked the car in the garage like I am supposed to. Instead, the last time I used it I drove up to the shack and unloaded everything the easy way and shut it down right there. Big mistake, the next morning it was too cold to start!

Anyway, with some pushing and shoving and a little tow from Kyle I got it in the garage finally. In the garage is a pit, one of the best inventions in a shop yet in my opinion! I park the car over this pit and at the bottom is a wood stove. I have the stove pipe go up directly under the transmission and then an elbow and another length of pipe that ends directly under the oil pan. With two good sized handfuls of sticks broken off of a dead tree not too far from the garage I can have that engine and transmission warm enough to start and operate like summer! I even have defrost as soon as the car is started! No more waiting for 10 minutes to be able to see through the windshield.

So now that I’ve gone out and about, the battery is charged and I can use the computer more! I was getting really low on power there and was wondering if I was going to have to go back to using oil lamps for a while. I didn’t. I could have used the batteries in the shop but I would rather go without light and computer than lug those heavy things through the snow all the way here to the shack. I guess it should be incentive for me to put a door on the garage so I can heat it and get to work on that alternator so I have a reserve charging system. Otherwise, I have been reading like crazy, trying to catch up on all that I need to finish reading. For some reason the more I read the more comes my way, which is fine with me! But it seems that I can’t catch up even when I am reading until 1 am every morning. I stopped by the library and got a stack of books to help in this years farm planning and for some new projects I am wanting to do. Now if I can just get it all planned out and the needed supplies bought I’ll be in good shape! I’ll probably write a bit about some of the things I am working on in that area just to give an idea of what I’m working on. But I’ll do that another time!