To get some outdoors chores done.
I did more excavating on the missing section of the front watering system, with pickaxe and spade, and used the shiny new sozzle to buzz through some nasty tough tree roots - hey, no problem! - and to cut the busted pipe end off cleanly - this was more of an adventure, given the flexibility of the pipe, and resulted in quite a vigorous foot massage.
Actually installing the patch calls for a trip to the hardware store for pipe cement; postponed for a while.
Then, there are those dead branches on the avocado tree. I want to use the chainsaw on the lowest one (i.e., the one that doesn't involve ladders), if only to confirm that the chainsaw still works after 2 or 3 years on the shelf without benefit of the approved mothballing techniques.
OK... bottom of the case is full of oil. Presumably that means the oil reservoir is empty? Yup. Grab the bottle of bar & chain oil and remedy this. Also, the fuel tank is empty, or maybe has a bunch of oil residue in the bottom. Whatever. Grab the can with a slosh of stabilized gas/oil mix in the bottom, and refill the tank.
Make sure the chain is oily and moving properly. Review starting instructions. Prime, choke, ON, throttle. Pull cord four times, as instructed. On the fourth pull, it tries to start. Choke to half; pull again. Vroooom!
Let it warm up for a few seconds. Choke to run; release throttle. Seems to be idling kind of fast and rich, but it's running. Head for the tree!
Pick a spot to start cutting (a medium-sized, low-hanging bit). Hold blade above branch; squeeze throttle; cut!
Gets about a quarter of an inch in and stalls. Foo.
Restart, idle for a couple of seconds, squeeze throttle with no wood under the chain. Vrooom, cough, sputter, stop.
Hm. Smoky exhaust, and doesn't like More Power!... not enough air, something gummed up, too much oil in the fuel...?
Remove the top cover. Air filter isn't obviously clogged, but certainly could use replacement. Carb looks fine, and its moving parts move properly.
Guess I'll buy a new air filter (perhaps along with the pipe cement). Maybe that'll fix it, or maybe I need to flush the fuel system. Or disassemble the whole thing and give all the bits a proper cleaning.
In any event, that little old no-longer-available-in-California chainsaw has been a treasure; it's needed remarkably little maintenance, especially compared to what I've heard about the newer, CARB-compliant ones.
But, for the current task, I may just end up using the sozzle with one of those tree-pruning blades I bought with it. The chainsaw will have plenty of work post-move.
Update: Orchard Supply doesn't have anything resembling the right air filter. Someone on eBay is offering the whole air-cleaner assembly for $10. Someone on Amazon has a rebuild kit for $10.25, but the air filter looks completely wrong; maybe there was more than one model 3216? Apparently so; mine takes (according the the PDF manual I found, which has the right picture) a 300985-33, and the one listed on Amazon has an entirely different part number, as well as seeming to be the wrong shape.
Such a lot of trouble to replace a silly block of foam. But, given that it's kind of crumbly, I probably should replace it before trying to run the thing again, since foam crumbs are probably not good for the engine.
Anyway, this is now tagged as "for later", and I'll just use the electrical cuttifier for now. Prolly gotta drain and rinse the tank, at least, and maybe replacing all the routinely-replaceable bits (after all these years) is a good idea.
Update 2: The irrigation repair has also run into a snag. I got the pipe spliced in to replace the missing section, and it is (so far as I can tell) good. But... aside from the missing section, the sprinkler nearest the door had gotten broken off recently. No big deal, right? Dig a little, unscrew the riser, screw in a replacement riser, and cap it, because I don't really need a sprinkler there in the new scheme of things.
Well...
Shoulda been easier that that, actually. After the last time that sprinkler got broken off, I'd put in a piece of iron pipe surrounding the riser, to protect it. When the plumbers dug up that area and the reburied the sprinkler pipe, it turns out they'd put the iron pipe back in place, but set a bit lower, so the top was flush with the ground. So I just need to grab the top of the riser, and... oops. It's broken off at the bottom, too.
Dunno how that happened; maybe the postman dropped a 40-pound box of kitty litter on it or something.
Anyway, I had to dig all the way down, and it's broken darn near flush - I can't grab the little bit that's protruding. This calls for a big enough EZ-Out to grab a stub of 1/2" pipe.
Not this afternoon, though. It's hot, I'm tired, and I'm going to rest for a while and then see about doing some pays-the-bills type work.
Update 3: It occurs to me that I could just fabricate my own broken-threaded-thing-extractor, good enough for use on PVC. Maybe I'll try that.
Update 4: It's called a "stub wrench", and it costs $5, complete with a suitable handle for using it in a small pit.
Update 5: So, after I removed the label, extracted the broken pipe end, and went to put my like-new, only-used-once-on-a-Sunday stub wrench away in the logical place?
A million guesses what I saw before me, the handle toward my hand.
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