So did about 2 tonnes of steel from some customers to be turned and/or milled.
It certainly means that not much truck work is being done for the next couple of weeks but hopefully that will help stem the financial tide.
So now I have a cut up scaffold plank and a very solid landing outside the door, and I did manage to fix a small water leak near the pump. Yea!
Also I finally organised (and committed to the expense of) upgrading the alternator from 40 amps to 110 amps so I can cool off the house unit while driving without discharging the batteries. That was done today and it looks to be quite successful. As long as the engine is doing more than 800 rev's it seems to cope with all the electrical demands. This new alternator is an American made variety (NOT Chinese) and is commonly fitted to most larger trucks so there are plenty of them about.
In the picture above you can see where the mechanical belt tensioning device has been left off. Not a huge problem but it can't have been too difficult to get it to work. Looks like a job for the weekend. I think I have all the parts from the old installation as backup so I hope the original fixture is still among them - maybe I can get it to fit.
The second problem is more serious!
You can see in this photo that the bolt which is the main retaining bolt for the alternator is about 10mm too short !! The nut is a nyloc but it is never going to work without the bolt going all the way through . . . So they have put a spring washer behind it, which sort of makes the problem even worse in some ways. Looks like I'm off to West Coast Fasteners tomorrow to get one the right size. It would probably be OK forever around town, and even if not can easily be repaired, but some of the places I'want to go it could be a serious problem if it fails.
These people were originally recomended for the electrical work but it turns out they do automotive air conditioning as well. Thee has been a small leak showing on one of the hoses to the condenser. These days air con systems also have some dye mixed in the gas so if it starts to leak it can easily be identified. While here I asked them to look at it and by the time we had finished looking it was decided that several hoses needed replacing and the condenser had a fair proportion of the fins damaged and had been painted several times with chassis black paint which can't have made it work any better. So all that was replaced at the same time - none of which was cheap. . . .
So now you can understand why a few weeks work to top up the coffers is in order - even if it does mean slowing truck progress temporarily . . .
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