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A couple days before my younger brother showed up to build me a new gate for the side yard a couple weeks ago, he came over and dropped off an old Craftsman riding mower that he had been using once in a while for many years.

It quit moving on him and he got fed up with messing with it. This after he spent $500 having some guy do a bunch of work to it earlier at some point.

This wasn’t just any old mower.

My Dad had owned it for at least a few years and I had wanted it after he passed away but the wife threw a fit saying I didn’t need it and when my brother piped up saying he did, away it went.

Talking to my brother, he said that dad has been dead for 12 years now. I can’t remember things like that to save my life. Me and dates don’t work well together. Armed with that information, I guessed that the mower must be at least 15 years old but it is actually in pretty decent shape, especially compared to the POS I have been constantly thrashing on to keep operational for the last few years.

My brother even still had the original manual and records for the thing and while I was busting my ass all day last saturday on the thing, I opened it up to discover I was way wrong about how old it actually is.

The damn thing was built in 1997 which makes it 28 years old!

I know the Old man always kept it in a tin shed while he had it and my brother kept it inderneath a covered area next to a tool shed which goes a long ways explaining why it still looks halfway decent after all these years.

When he brought it over the battery was dead, the carb was leaking fuel and when I tried jump starting it the spark plug got gas fouled. It also had a very flat rear tire.

We pulled the deck out from under it and pushed it into the side yard which is when he volunteered to replace the rotten gate.

I started in on it and started ordering parts as soon as I could.

First thing was a new carb with a new fuel shut off solenoid. The old one was leaking gas and the solenoid only worked when I wiggled the wiring connector.

Then I ordered new spindles for the deck and some tubes for the back tires.

The carb showed up a couple days later and came with the solenoid, a connector and some wiring, a new fuel filter, spark plug, some cheap fuel lines that were too small and a manual in-line shut off valve.

Yup, she was a virgin.

A dirty, nasty, crusty old virgin.

After short thrash session last Saturday I finally got the engine to run and it runs like a sewing machine.

After all these years.

When I put a couple gallons of gas in the tank and while I was messing with the drive belt I noticed that there was gas leaking onto the inside of the tire that keeps going flat. Something else I am going to have to fix and that is going to be a bitch.

I have to tear the entire back off the thing because the tank is under the rear fender assembly and the seat.

Oh Yay.

After I got it running I jumped in the seat, pushed on the clutch pedal and put it into gear.

When I let the clutch out, the engine immediately bogged down and smoke started pouring out from underneath the thing.

That would explain why it quit moving on my brother, the drive belt had jumped the pully and got wedged under it on the Hydrostatic rear end.

That turned out to be a story all of it;s own.

When I went to the parts store and talked to my Go To guy, he said it took an 81 inch belt.

When he brought it out, I had the old one with me and I asked him to make sure they were the same.

Long story short, they weren’t actually. I spent two hours laying on my side in the gravel fighting that bastard to get it on and when I finally did, I discovered that I had almost no travel left on the clutch pedal.

I could get it to go into gear and get it to stop by shifting the transmission in and out of gear but I had no neutral using the clutch.

Later on during the week I did some homework and the numbers in the manual weren’t matching the 81 inch belt.

After messing with it and actually running it around a bit I finally got about an inch of travel on the clutch pedal but I had to go back up to the parts store for some oil and a filter for the thing and showed him the number for the belt I found in the manual. It’s 82 and 3.4’s of an inch long. I bought one but I’m going to change that out later.

Yesterday spent several hours changing out the spindles.

I could see that someone had replaced at least one before but when I finally got them out, the actual shaft and the bearings just fell out of one of the housings so I was glad I was replacing them before dragging the deck back under it and attaching it.

I did that today.

After messing with figuring out some of the linkage that my brother had disconnected while I wasn’t watching when we stuck it in the side yard originally, I finally got the damn thing put back together today.

I fired it up, ran it in front of the garage and put air in the tires.

Then I took it out and actually mowed the damn lawn with it.

Fifteen minutes after I got done, Fed Ex showed up with the 2 new rear tires I ordered for it last week.

So now I have to jack the thing up, take the wheels off and throw everything in the back of the truck. One day next week I will leve early for work and stop by the ancient tire shop that I drive by on my way to work and have the young guy put the new tires on.

Right now I am tired and sore from thrashing on it but I am a happy camper.

The Old man would be happy to see his old mower put back together and working and I am happy that after I get the new tires on I won’t have to be constantly thrashing on a POS riding mower anymore.

After working on this two days of a three day weekend plus both days last weekend, I am taking tomorrow off. I called my kids and we are all going over to Washougal and going fishing on the Columbia off the dock there tomorrow.

Just like we used to do when they were little.

Except this time my 6 foot 2, 12 year old grandson is going to join us.

And I’ll be sober.

Found over at Gab and exactly on point.

Someone leaked 100,000 Emails of Ehud Barak’s (ex prime minister of Israel) and Ian Carrol delivers the goods. Epstein was secretley working with Barak and they were surveilling Hillary Clinton’ campaign, Peter Theil, Putin, Netanyahu, Bezos and a bunch of other people. Not only were they Emailing back and forth, they were magnitudes smarter than Hillary and would either meet face to face or use the phone to discuss really sensitive issues because they didn’t want to leave a written trail.

This is a Must Watch and you need to realize that they have just begun to analyze all of this so we can expect some real bombshells coming later.

So we can deal with some completely different bullshit on the weekends…

The little fucker has good taste too.

Every one of us takes that shit for granted, until it doesn’t work.

His well pump shit the bed and the guy has more than enough troubles already. He lost a leg a couple years ago due to a severe infection that almost cost him his life and then lost THE OTHER ONE here a while back too!

Mike is as American as Apple Pie and Hot Dogs.

He played in a Rock and Roll band, worked on and rode Harley Davidson’s too.

So if you can spare a couple bucks so the guy can get back to brushing his teeth, flushing the toilet and washing his nasty ass, he and I both would be extremely grateful.

The link to his fundraiser is HERE and Thank You in advance!

UPDATE

After donating myself, it looks like he has met his immediate needs but Social Security STILL hasn’t declared him “Disabled” yet so keep this going anyway. The guy has to eat too!

Again, Thank You in Advance!

Let the fun begin.

And proud of it.

I get a kick out of this young lady. She is smart as a whip with multiple degrees, works with her husband in an oil field and is kinda cute too.

Yeah, I know, I’m a sick bastard but this is funny.

No shit?

WHICH FUCKING ONE?!!!

Sweet Jesus what a nightmare.

Got to 111 degrees here, in Oregun. Phil sez’ it was hot up there. What is your boil point?

This can’t possibly be real.