Tuesday, July 23, 2024

Motorhome. Chainsaw. Problems.

Another annoying day.   I'm moving irrigation pipes twice a day which messes up my day and sleep pattern.   Now that the NE pasture has been irrigated I wanted to move the motorhome out of the corral and back to the NE pasture.  I also wanted to drive the motorhome a few miles down the road to give it some maintenance rather than just starting and stopping it. 

I let Donna know I would be driving by her place and she and Rusty planned on riding the few more miles along with me.  Just after I drove out of the pasture and on the road the motorhome stopped running.  I restarted it and tried to drive to my neighbor's driveway to get off the road.  The motorhome stopped again blocking both lanes of traffic.  I couldn't get the motorhome to restart.  And then the battery died.

I told the pickup driver that was stopped that I would be back with my tractor and if he could steer the motorhome while I pushed it off the road with my tractor.  Fortunately Curtis was outside when I started my tractor and I asked him if he could steer the motorhome while I pushed it.   When I got back to the motorhome with my tractor I seen the pickup driver had left as he drove around the motorhome partially using the ditch.

I pushed the motorhome onto the neighbor's driveway and off the road.  Since the battery was dead Curtis offered to recharge it.  I looked at the battery's date and saw it was a few months past its lifecycle.  We recharged the battery. On my "to-do" list is to buy a new battery.

Since Curtis wanted to take several hours to recharge the battery I decided to drive to Donna's place and haul off the rest of the branches I had cut last week.  I also decided to chainsaw a little more of her shrubbery.  After removing some cut branches last week I saw an area had a large dead section down to the root.  I decided to chainsaw this section at ground level to get rid of this entire section.   Prior to doing so I spent time trying to sharpen the chainsaw's chain as it had gotten dull from the cutting last week.

It was hard wood to chainsaw, but I got it done after some effort.  I then cut a few more branches to make to shrubbery area that had been cut more straight.  The chainsaw chain quit moving.   I then learned the chainsaw's blade was messed up now.  The blade has a small "wheel of teeth" at the end of the blade to help keep the chain on the blade.  To cut the root section I had to sometimes use the end of the blade to reach and make the cut.  The "wheel" now no longer moved.   This has happened to me in the past and I had forgotten it could happen until it did once again.  So I will have to buy a new blade.

I loaded up the cut section.  It was big and difficult to get into the pickup bed due to the other branches in the bed.  At the top is the root.  Not a big root considering how large the whole section is.


I did get it up there.  Not as well as I thought as when I got to my place to unload the branches I saw this root section was missing.  I unloaded the branches then drove back down the road to find this root section.  I did, close to Donna's place.  It was easier to load in an empty pickup bed.

Once I unloaded these last branches several hours had passed.  I went to Curtis's place and got my battery.  I called out I was there but Curtis didn't hear me.   I put the battery back into the motorhome and it started right up.  I no longer was going to drive a half dozen miles, and I was able use Curtis's driveway to turn around as the driveway I had pushed the motorhome into wasn't big enough to easily turn the motorhome back around.

When I drove into my pasture the motorhome stopped running again.  At least I was off the road now.  I restarted the motorhome and tried to drive across the pasture.   After a little bit the motorhome stopped again.  This time it wouldn't restart even though the battery still had power.  I talked with Curtis.   Our theory is the fuel pump may have a problem.   He and I will look at it another day.   I went back to the motorhome and it restarted.  I was able to drive it to a spot in the pasture where I can later work on it.

It was after 1 pm now.  And the temperature was now hot.  I ate a full breakfast then went to sleep until 6 pm to get my full sleep for the day.  I had irrigation pipes to move again in the evening.  Jan called me while I was asleep for some help but we ended up putting that off until tomorrow.

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