GRIPES

[nomadpete]

6 hours ago, facthunter said:

went to the Playbox theatre in Hobart and was treated like a creature from, outer space

That might not have been just parochialism.

 

What WERE you wearing?

[facthunter]

Very normal attire. IT WAS because we  were Not Known to them. They even asked us ( My wife and me), WHO we were.  Nev

[onetrack]

"You ain't from around here, are you stranger?" 😄 

[onetrack]

I can just hear the Tassie ukuleles from here on the Left coast!! 😄 

 

 

[facthunter]

I think  you are Missing the Point. Anyone who they didn't know would be unexpected They would NOT know whether I was from the Mainland.  Hobart is by far  the Biggest town in Tassie. Nev

[Jerry_Atrick]

I am not having a great run with vehicles lately. First the deer and the mini.. And on the weekend, the Volvo decided to emit clunky noises from its rear end. So off to the local mechanic, and since it is the only one around after their competitor retired, I am in for a wait as there is a solid pipeline of work to be done ahead of mine. No probs. Thought I would hire a car for a week. 

 

This evening, driving through the village down the road, I hit a massive pot hole at low speed but enough to cause some rumblings coming from its front end. FFS, another damaged vehicle. Thankkfully I took full fat insurance, but crickey, I have just had enough of cars at the moment.

 

Have to be thankful of small mercies - although I got my medical, I am not flying yet. 

[nomadpete]

1 hour ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

I am not having a great run with vehicles lately. First the deer and the mini.. And on the weekend, the Volvo decided to emit clunky noises from its rear end. So off to the local mechanic, and since it is the only one around after their competitor retired, I am in for a wait as there is a solid pipeline of work to be done ahead of mine. No probs. Thought I would hire a car for a week. 

 

This evening, driving through the village down the road, I hit a massive pot hole at low speed but enough to cause some rumblings coming from its front end. FFS, another damaged vehicle. Thankkfully I took full fat insurance, but crickey, I have just had enough of cars at the moment.

 

Have to be thankful of small mercies - although I got my medical, I am not flying yet. 

Might be a good idea to postpone any flying until your bad vehicle patch has passed.

[onetrack]

It must be all in the stars. Yesterday, I went to mow my 95 yr old neighbours lawn, and his Briggs & Stratton powered Scott Bonnar reel mower refused point blank to start.

This is a good used mower I purchased for him about 6 mths ago, and I went over it, and gave it a "birthday" on maintenance, as soon as I bought it. It has run well for that 6 mths.

 

B&S engines rarely fail to run, but nonetheless this one refused. No spark, dead as a Dodo. Took the cowling off, checked all the electrics, decided the coil was RS. Went and tested it - yep, open circuit.

Went to no less than THREE mower crowds, before I actually found a crowd with one in stock! FFS, this is a B&S coil, there are millions of B&S engines out there.

What's even worse, they ripped me off mercilessly to the tune of $95 for it!! You can buy them from China for $10!! The one I was sold, is made in Argentina! They probably bought it cheaper than a Chinese one!

 

I haven't fitted it yet, because I went to have an annual hearing test just after lunch yesterday, and even though the audiologist told me there was little deterioration in my hearing in the last year, she revised my hearing aid settings, and hooked the hearing aids (via wi-fi) to her computer to do the reset. All good.

Went to walk out the door, the RHS hearing aid went dead. Went back in and told her, she looked puzzled and hooked them up again, and reset them. Went home, walked in the door, the RHS hearing aid went dead again. Went back to the audiologist (luckily, she's only 10 mins away, the advantages of city living), and she checked it out again, and declared it totally US, and in need of major repair.

 

I'm annoyed because these hearing aids are only 12 mths old! They were a brand new build in Jan 2025. I'm getting a bit sick of the reliability of this Oticon stuff, they seem to pack up regularly.

And when they need repair, they need to be sent to the East Coast to do the repairs!! It takes 2 weeks to get them back. FFS!! I live in a major city with a population of 2.3M people! - why can't Oticon have a hearing aid repair centre here in Perth?

Then, it gets worse. The hearing aids I have, are a matched pair of "in-the-ear" hearing aids. They "talk" to each other, the button on the RHS one sets the programmes (there are 3 programmes in them), and adjusts the volume up, while the button on the LHS one adjusts the volume down, and also changes the programmes. As soon as you lose the RHS hearing aid, you lose the ability to raise the volume up. 

 

So they lend me a "loan" hearing aid. But the loan hearing aid is a "behind the ear" type of hearing aid. It's not anywhere near as powerful as my originals, and it has no compatibility with the LHS in-the-ear hearing aid. So it's like driving a car with 14" highway tyres on one side, and 18" off-road tyres on the other side, it makes life quite difficult!

 

Meantimes, SWMBO has had to go in for a skin cancer op this morning. She's not happy, the doc insists on cutting a big chunk off the top of her ear and has to do a skin graft to repair it. 

She hates being cut up at the best of times, and the Skin Check WA doc (a woman) is a tiger on cutting bits out of you at every opportunity. So now she's got a fortnight of restricted activity and recovery, while her ear heals up.

Hopefully, this afternoon, things will start looking up, when I fit the new coil to Barneys mower and get that operational again.

 

Meantimes, my Chamberlain tractor engine repair is a struggle, I'm having serious levels of trouble getting the Perkins 6 cyl engine apart for reconditioning, it's really dragging out.

The engine was full of water, and the pistons were all rusted into the cylinders. I soaked the bores in a 50-50 mixture of diesel and ATF for over a month, a highly recommended cure for engine corrosion, and it has worked to a certain degree.

But every piston is fighting all the way to be removed from those cylinders. I've got 4 out so far, and 2 more to go. What is making it harder is, I can't turn the crankshaft, so I'm going to have to pull the crankshaft out now, so I can get proper access to the underside of the two remaining pistons, to drive them out.

And I found the crankshaft has already been ground .030" undersize, and I'm not sure if .040" undersize bearings are available. I hope I don't have to go looking for another crankshaft.

 

One upside is, I found a bloke from Parkes, NSW, on FB, who had two NOS Perkins 6 cyl engine overhaul kits for sale, for $900 each. He delivered one to Perth for me in that price, so that is a big saving on buying a new engine O/H kit, they are close on $1500 to buy new, now.

 

Jerry, I trust your bad luck run ends soon, and you find a top-condition used car for a bargain price. I love deceased estates, the relatives nearly always sell off a mint-condition car that the deceased person bought not long before they died, and you usually acquire a bargain in a private sale. 

I got SWMBO's Camry that way in 2014, the owner was a WW2 tail-gunner in a Halifax, he lived to 91, and bought the car new when he was 88! Accordingly, it had seen little use (13,000kms), and his son was wealthy, and just wanted to quit it.

We got it for $19K, when it was listed everywhere as being worth $23K. What was worse, after we bought it, SWMBO spotted a handwritten note the son had, where he'd listed $18K as the likely car sale price! But he was a really nice bloke, so we didn't mind paying him the extra $1K!  😄 

[facthunter]

New Cranks are readily available. I wouldn't run a crank that was Ground to that Much Undersize. It's likely to be fatigued. My Dexta has a radiator leak. it's only 68years old, Nev

[Marty_d]

Talking of tractors, we went on a bicycle tour a couple of days ago, the local guide was very informative.

Apparently here the water buffalo were traditionally used to work the rice paddles. Now however there's a communal tractor in each area. The locals refer to them as "Chinese buffalo".

[facthunter]

When are You returning?  Communal Tractor? I wonder WHO looks after it?  Nev

Edited 17 hours ago by facthunter
typo

[Marty_d]

57 minutes ago, facthunter said:

When are You returning?  Communal Tractor? I wonder WHO looks after it?  Nev

As far as I can tell a lot (in agricultural areas) is shared between a few families - fields, animals, equipment etc. 

We met an old lady who has the machine which separates the rice grains from the husks. Each farmer pays her according to the weight of rice processed - at 700 dong (about 4 cents) per kilo.  To give some comparison, street food like bahn mi (salad roll) is around 20,000 dong ($1.10).

Poor old thing had lost the fingers on her right hand to the machine, and was about 80, but still working all day. Fortunately now the tour company pays her a bit to show foreigners how the rice is processed.

 

As far as looking after equipment, I reckon they're a country of motor mechanics - they must be good to keep the millions of scooters on the road!

 

We've been here for 2 weeks today, and fly back Tuesday (arriving Wednesday).

[Jerry_Atrick]

4 hours ago, onetrack said:

It must be all in the stars. Yesterday, I went to mow my 95 yr old neighbours lawn, and his Briggs & Stratton powered Scott Bonnar reel mower refused point blank to start.

This is a good used mower I purchased for him about 6 mths ago, and I went over it, and gave it a "birthday" on maintenance, as soon as I bought it. It has run well for that 6 mths.

 

B&S engines rarely fail to run, but nonetheless this one refused. No spark, dead as a Dodo. Took the cowling off, checked all the electrics, decided the coil was RS. Went and tested it - yep, open circuit.

Went to no less than THREE mower crowds, before I actually found a crowd with one in stock! FFS, this is a B&S coil, there are millions of B&S engines out there.

What's even worse, they ripped me off mercilessly to the tune of $95 for it!! You can buy them from China for $10!! The one I was sold, is made in Argentina! They probably bought it cheaper than a Chinese one!

 

I haven't fitted it yet, because I went to have an annual hearing test just after lunch yesterday, and even though the audiologist told me there was little deterioration in my hearing in the last year, she revised my hearing aid settings, and hooked the hearing aids (via wi-fi) to her computer to do the reset. All good.

Went to walk out the door, the RHS hearing aid went dead. Went back in and told her, she looked puzzled and hooked them up again, and reset them. Went home, walked in the door, the RHS hearing aid went dead again. Went back to the audiologist (luckily, she's only 10 mins away, the advantages of city living), and she checked it out again, and declared it totally US, and in need of major repair.

 

I'm annoyed because these hearing aids are only 12 mths old! They were a brand new build in Jan 2025. I'm getting a bit sick of the reliability of this Oticon stuff, they seem to pack up regularly.

And when they need repair, they need to be sent to the East Coast to do the repairs!! It takes 2 weeks to get them back. FFS!! I live in a major city with a population of 2.3M people! - why can't Oticon have a hearing aid repair centre here in Perth?

Then, it gets worse. The hearing aids I have, are a matched pair of "in-the-ear" hearing aids. They "talk" to each other, the button on the RHS one sets the programmes (there are 3 programmes in them), and adjusts the volume up, while the button on the LHS one adjusts the volume down, and also changes the programmes. As soon as you lose the RHS hearing aid, you lose the ability to raise the volume up. 

 

So they lend me a "loan" hearing aid. But the loan hearing aid is a "behind the ear" type of hearing aid. It's not anywhere near as powerful as my originals, and it has no compatibility with the LHS in-the-ear hearing aid. So it's like driving a car with 14" highway tyres on one side, and 18" off-road tyres on the other side, it makes life quite difficult!

 

Meantimes, SWMBO has had to go in for a skin cancer op this morning. She's not happy, the doc insists on cutting a big chunk off the top of her ear and has to do a skin graft to repair it. 

She hates being cut up at the best of times, and the Skin Check WA doc (a woman) is a tiger on cutting bits out of you at every opportunity. So now she's got a fortnight of restricted activity and recovery, while her ear heals up.

Hopefully, this afternoon, things will start looking up, when I fit the new coil to Barneys mower and get that operational again.

 

Meantimes, my Chamberlain tractor engine repair is a struggle, I'm having serious levels of trouble getting the Perkins 6 cyl engine apart for reconditioning, it's really dragging out.

The engine was full of water, and the pistons were all rusted into the cylinders. I soaked the bores in a 50-50 mixture of diesel and ATF for over a month, a highly recommended cure for engine corrosion, and it has worked to a certain degree.

But every piston is fighting all the way to be removed from those cylinders. I've got 4 out so far, and 2 more to go. What is making it harder is, I can't turn the crankshaft, so I'm going to have to pull the crankshaft out now, so I can get proper access to the underside of the two remaining pistons, to drive them out.

And I found the crankshaft has already been ground .030" undersize, and I'm not sure if .040" undersize bearings are available. I hope I don't have to go looking for another crankshaft.

 

One upside is, I found a bloke from Parkes, NSW, on FB, who had two NOS Perkins 6 cyl engine overhaul kits for sale, for $900 each. He delivered one to Perth for me in that price, so that is a big saving on buying a new engine O/H kit, they are close on $1500 to buy new, now.

 

Jerry, I trust your bad luck run ends soon, and you find a top-condition used car for a bargain price. I love deceased estates, the relatives nearly always sell off a mint-condition car that the deceased person bought not long before they died, and you usually acquire a bargain in a private sale. 

I got SWMBO's Camry that way in 2014, the owner was a WW2 tail-gunner in a Halifax, he lived to 91, and bought the car new when he was 88! Accordingly, it had seen little use (13,000kms), and his son was wealthy, and just wanted to quit it.

We got it for $19K, when it was listed everywhere as being worth $23K. What was worse, after we bought it, SWMBO spotted a handwritten note the son had, where he'd listed $18K as the likely car sale price! But he was a really nice bloke, so we didn't mind paying him the extra $1K!  😄 

I didn't know whether to give a sad or like or a thanks to the post; I went with the thanks in the end because of the gist of the post, but hope SWMBO's op goes well and she gets better soon. Also, hope you have your hearing aid back by the time you read this!

 

(And I usually find a new engine solves all my old engine issues  - hope Perkins pistons come out soon).

Edited 15 hours ago by Jerry_Atrick

[onetrack]

Jerry, one bright spot that's turned the current position better - SWMBO came back from the operation very pleased, because the Doc had avoided a skin graft with a "flap" surgical removal process.

This process is used quite commonly now, and many Docs are skilled at it. They make an incision and lift the skin back, then remove the cancerous bit, then pull the flap back and stitch it in place over the area of tumour removal. Done properly, it looks very good when healed.

 

I had the flap procedure done on my face a few years ago, when I had to have a weeping cyst removed from one cheek. It's nearly impossible to see the scars and stitching on my face, so no-one can call me "Scarface"!.

SWMBO is home now and resting, no bending over for three days, a need to keep her wound covered in the shower, and back to get the stitches taken out in a week. She's much happier than when she went in this morning.

[Jerry_Atrick]

well, here is the vid of the road where the potholes are. There are a few of them:

 

 

Nice to get on the bike again.

[nomadpete]

8 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

well, here is the vid of the road where the potholes are. There are a few of them:

 

 

Nice to get on the bike again.

There's the problem.

You need faster potholes.

[onetrack]

 It must be time to start up a "pothole repair" business, as a highly profitable side-hustle, Jerry. "Mr Pothole" here on the Left Coast charges like a wounded bull, and makes substantial profits.

 

https://www.mrpothole.com.au/

[facthunter]

It's ONLY a "Fill In" Job till a better one comes along.  Nev