Snow, delays, batteries and a sunset

Sunday, Jan 10

Went for a short drive with Mariko, to check out her 4WD in a more extended manner on what I hoped would be snow covered road.  The area I picked did have some snow on the roads, but not much, more muddy than anything else (which is also a good test I guess) as the weather had been warm the last few days.

Aside from a slight rattling noise when engaging the clutch before bleeding down the speed, no issues encountered.  The PO told me he'd heard some noise too, especially in Low Range but I guess we'll see if its something to worry about.

I dropped Mariko off at the mechanic's shop on Monday, the 11th.  They estimated at the time it would take perhaps 3 days.

Wednesday, Jan 13

I'm not known for patience so it probably won't surprise you that I was disappointed to be called and be told by the shop that the carburetor rebuild was delayed.  

Looks like they have to replace the e-choke component involved with the radiator ( the fluid temperature tells the choke to activate or shut down ).  Also, apparently the float has to be replaced.  The delay involves finding the right parts for this old carburetor model: Hitachi DFB306-832.  The parts are due in Jan 21, Thursday of next week but they'll call me if they arrive earlier.

On the positive side, its good they found these problems now and are working to fix them.  Hopefully, it'll mean a more reliable key component to the Samurai being a dependable vehicle.

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I'd been exercising both Scarlett, my 2014 Ural Patrol and Brigitta, my '87 Airhead Beemer the last few days.  They've not gotten ridden much since the last three months or so as I was away camping.  Scarlett gave me no issues the couple times I rode her around the area.

Brigitta, on the other hand gave me the dreaded clicking noise of a dead battery.  This is even though she started fine at home, and no issues all the way to the RV storage yard where I'd been doing some work on the URRV.  

Sighing heavily, I got the jumper cables from the URRV, hooked her up and she started right up and caused no issues all the way home.  I looked up on her maintenance records when I'd last changed out her battery and it was over 10 years ago!  Dang.  Just goes to show how little she'd been ridden in the last ten years!  So a replacement battery is ordered and on the way, a PowerStar PS-NH12-18, which is equivalent to a BMW 51814 which is suitable for R Bikes.

More battery issues, the small lithium battery on Yagi, my 2006 Yamaha TW200 failed completely same day.  The battery had been stuck on 14.1 volts for over a day, so I'd disconnected the charger and reconnected...not bothering to check the voltmeter readout.  

As I was checking Brigitta, I finally noticed the voltmeter showing weird readings, changing rapidly, and reporting only 6.4 volts with the multimeter!  It was toast.  

Luckily, I still have the Yuasa YB7C-A  battery that had been installed in 2016 and which I'd changed out proactively when I brought the TW home.  I ordered a replacement battery as they're not too expensive and it should be here Friday this week.

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Jan 12

We had us a pretty good sunset, with some nice clouds being lit up by the sun's rays once it had sank below the horizon:

Wrote this blog entry to keep my mind off the delays involving Mariko's carburetor, yesterday I washed part of the garage floor and mowed/mulched the large amount of fallen leaves that were in the back yard.

Sigh.