December 16th - December 22, 2023 - Workbench; Hanger; Storm; Outlet; Charlie; Golf Cart Shocks; Steering Wheel; Visitors

Saturday:

Yesterday, while at Harbor Freight getting the angle grinder, I found that they had eighteen inch magnetic strips on sale for $3.99. I bought two to organize my tools. The workbench has a partial backboard made of particle board. A lamp cable was strung between staples to hold tools. It just didn't work for me. I took out all the staples and screwed on the magnetic strips. I'm very happy with the result. All the tools I use daily are readily at hand rather than in a tool box. I may replace the particle board with a larger piece of plywood to double my tool hanging capacity and to keep from dropping tools down behind the board. An issue with doing that is I will have to reroute the electric BX cable. I don't want to by a bunch of BX cable and wire to make a change. I'll study the situation.

There is nowhere in the shed to hang clothes as they come out of the dryer. I ordered an aluminum folding clothes hanging bracket. It folds out of the way when not in use. Love it! Laundry day will now be easier! LOL

 

Saturday was granddaughter Violet's seventh birthday. We Facetimed to wish her a Happy Birthday. She loves to draw and color so we bought her an artist's case full of drawing supplies. She loved it.

During the video call Granddaughter Violet named the fish we bought for $3.00 at a garage sale, Charlie.

 

Interestingly, Kelly found online that a fish identical to Charlie sold on eBay for $300.00. Yippee! I knew he was special! He will part of the permanent decor.

It was forecast that overnight Saturday we would have severe rain storms and very high winds. We lucked out. We got about three inches of rain and lots of moderate to strong wind. Many businesses on the coastal area of the county were flooded and the beaches eroded badly. A big expense to repair.

Sunday:

The sun is out this morning but it is still quite windy. The temperature has dropped as well. After church I had a project.

The shed only has one outlet that is over the workbench. On the wall in back of the washing machine there is a double light switch box with a switch missing. The switch turns on an outside light which we never use because it just shines light on the top of the outside shed. 

If the wires inside the box are hot, the second switch slot could provide a spot for an additional outlet. Adding an outlet here would be a lot easier than running more wire and putting in an additional box somewhere.

I took the face plate off and checked for power. The wires with the wire nuts on them in the picture below are hot. It will be a breeze to add an outlet. I just needed to buy a receptacle and a new cover plate. The narrow shelf below it will be great space to plug in battery chargers, up out of the way.

After churched I stopped by Home Depot and purchased the needed receptacle and face plate. The wires inside the box were short so installing the receptacle required me to sit on the washing machine to make pig tail connections for the new outlet. The new faceplate was installed and two chargers put on the shelf and plugged in out of my way.

Wednesday:

The hall closet houses lots of housekeeping items - ironing board, vacuum cleaners, stepstool, broom, mop, etc. In the shed I found a nice metal broom holder. It was a little rusty so I painted it. Since the mop and broom hang over the hanging iron board, I had to add a piece of wood to make it work. It is nice not having all this stuff fall all over when you are in the closet.

Thursday:

When putting the new tires and wheels on the back of the golf cart the other day I noticed that the bottom nut for holding one of the shocks on was missing. I pushed on the shock and there was no resistance so the shocks are shot. The other day, in anticipation of getting the old shocks off for replacements, I sprayed the top shock bolts with "PB Blaster" to help loosen any rust. This morning I jacked the cart up to see how difficult it was going to be to get the old shocks off. The top bolts were accessible over the wheels so I got to work. The bolt on the top of the "dangling" shock came right off. I just had to hold the bottom of the shock with a pair of Channellocks. The other rear shock proved much more challenging. I couldn't hold the bottom of the shock with the Channellocks. I got a pipe wrench on it but quickly learned that a pipe wrench doesn't work very well on thin metal. It would just keep bending the pipe and then slipping when turned. After fighting it for a while the bolt turned a little then broke off. Yippee! Surprisingly the bottom nut came off easily. Here is what the two shocks looked like after I got them off. You can see the top one is pretty mangled.

Of course, I can't do any work anymore without scratching my old man, thin skin and bleeding like a stuck hog. In the process of getting the bolts off I scraped my arm a couple of times on the fiberglass body around the wheel well. Here is a picture of my arm. I spared you a picture of the blood that dripped on the the driveway. LOL

I ordered four new shocks from Amazon. They will be here Christmas Eve. With two daughters and two grandsons being here for Christmas, installation will be an after Christmas project. 

In the evening we went to downtown St. Petersburg to see "Napoleon", Kelly has lots of gift card money for this theater. She got a large popcorn. I got a medium soda. It was $6.99! I couldn't believe it, not a nickel's worth of syrup to make it. Highway robbery!!!!! I won't make that mistake again even though it wasn't my money.

Friday:

A little morning project was pulling the steering wheel off the golf cart and repositioning it. According to YouTube videos you just remove the nut and tap on each side of the steering wheel and it will pop off. The shaft is splined so you can then reposition the steering wheel however you like.  I did this a year or so ago on the cart at home and it ended up being a beast of a job. With John's help we got the nut off and then beat, and beat, on the back of the steering wheel. It wouldn't budge. Finally, with the help of a gear puller we got it off. With this prior experience in mind I brought down my gear puller for the steering wheel on this cart.

The top screw and lock nut came off quite easily. I then hit each side of the steering wheel with my rubber mallet (the $1.00 garage sale buy) and the wheel popped right off. I drove around and repositioned it, greased everything, and put it back on. So nice to have a project go better than expected.

The other reason I brought the gear puller down was to pull the "Forward-Neutral-Reverse lever off. I wanted to clean it and paint it to make it look better. Unlike the steering wheel, it did not cooperate. With the help of three different length bolts inserted into the handle for leverage for the gear puller, it slowly came loose. The handle is a hard plastic pushed onto a six-sided metal stud and it is then held in place with a lock screw. The metal was a little rusty but not enough that it should have been that difficult to get off. I painted the handle. It will dry flat black.

While the handle was off I sanded the metal stud on all sides and greased everything in anticipation of a future need to pull it off to get the body off.

Ugly, ugly, ugly!  The prior owner put brown indoor-outdoor carpeting all over this cart. I started ripping it off in the back. It is glued down and it will be a chore to get the old glue off I'm sure.

I'm sure the carpet is glued to the floor as well. I may not have to get all that glue up because I plan on putting an OEM rubber mat over the entire area. I'll see how that works out later. Luckily the pieces of carpet on the dash were not glued down. I pulled them both out today and threw them away. All of the dash area will be painted flat black once I get the body damage fixed and a new voltmeter installed. The carpet really makes the cart look old and haggard.

Daughter Alexa arrives from St. Louis this evening at the Tampa Airport. Daughter Erin with grandsons, Kellen and Free, arrive from California on Saturday morning. It will be fun having them all here for the holidays. Santa has a lot of presents to put out on Christmas Eve. It has been a long time since we had a two year old around for Christmas. Here is a video of Free wishing Merry Christmas to everyone as he waits in the car to pick Kellen up from band practice. It's a hoot.

I'm hoping Erin packs his Santa hat. I'll run him around the park in the golf cart where he can spread Christmas cheer to all he sees!

Merry Christmas to all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!