one monkey typing

Rotated the tires on all the vehicles. While I had the tires off on the Taurus I found that the front brakes were in very bad shape. Not dangerous but probably reduced stopping power, and deteriorated parts to the point where one of them could have gone south easily. Replaced the pads and rotors.

When I went to start the Taurus to road test the brakes, it ran for about 3 seconds and died, and afterward sounded to me like the starter gear was just stripped. However, after pulling the starter motor and finding it in fine condition, I determined that the motor was actually turning, and the cams as well, though there was hardly any compression. My guess is that the timing chain jumped. It has 142,000 miles on the original chain so we'll have it towed to our local shop and have that taken care of next week. Assuming it's just a timing chain, it should just be a few hundred bucks, though I don't really know what's involved. If they have to drop the engine out to do it, it could be a bit more.

Sheesh, I didn't even get to move the car an inch after fixing the brakes. And I never did change the oil, that was on the list too.

Odometers:
Taurus, 142371, van 113956, Fusion 58475

The van has been handling ATROCIOUSLY the last week, clearly the shocks were gone, at least on the right side, and today I decided to do something about it.

I grabbed the manual and found that it actually did have SHOCKS on the back, not struts. I had thought they were struts, and had been trying to decide whether to go buy some cheap spring compressors and tackle it myself or just pay someone. Once I realized it was shocks, I just went and bought some and put them on. It took an hour start to finish but only because I had to dig out and then put away some tools. The actual shock replacement takes about 5 minutes with hand tools. Other than the fact that you have to take the wheels off, I'd rate it about equivalent to changing the oil.

I also have to remember to get to Sears sometime and make them replace the 1/2" ratchet that's barely working at all any more.

The rear right was as bad as I've ever seen a shock. It was just a tin can with no gas pressure or fluid left in it. I could easily compress it all the way with one finger. The left didn't seem too bad but it definitely wasn't as strong as the new one I put in.

Luckily it only got this bad in the last week or two, and I don't think it damaged the tire. I still should probably rotate them, it's due anyway and tomorrow morning is my regular scheduled vehicle maintenance time.

Odometer: 110,000
Installed Monroe SensaTrac shock on the rear of the van. Lifetime warranty, purchased from O'Reilly Auto Parts, Ann Arbor

Last night the color laser printer decided that all of the colors were empty, all at once, so it was time to try out the refill kit I bought off a Chinese vendor on eBay.

It was the most trivial refill I've ever done. Pop off the refill cap on one end of the cart, shake out the old toner (it looked to me like 1/3 of it was still there), put in the right amount of toner (half of what I got, more on that later), recap, then unscrew the cover over the gear train on the other end, move a gear, put the cover back on, done. About 8 minutes once I figured everything out.

The official Brother color carts cost about $67 for the half-full ones, $140 for the full ones. Generic ones are $65 for the full ones, so it would have been $200 for a full set of 3 colors. The refill kit was $100 for toner equivalent to one full set (two refills on my half cartridges) thus the need to put in only half the toner I had.

The carts I refilled were the ones that came with the printer, which are the infamous half-full cartridges. They're supposed to be good for 1500 pages. According to the printer stats, we actually printed 1858 color pages, 2675 pages total. Yes, this is a consumer-level printer, the carts don't have that much toner in them.

BTW, the gear that needs moving is a reset gear. The thing has a flag sticking up that hits a switch inside the printerexactly once in its life, the first time it's started up. There are only teeth on the gear about 3/4 of the way around, so it goes around this far, runs out of teeth, and a spring holds it in place after that. It hitting the switch tells the printer that you just put in a new toner cartridge, so by moving the gear the printer resets everything for that color.

Next time I think I may try turning the reset gear without touching the toner, since it appeared to me that there was still significant toner in there. Since the printer also has windows on either side that it can use to actually "see" if there is toner left, it seems a good idea to just reset it and let it keep printing as long as possible, instead of dumping out 1/3 of the toner as I did this time.

Looks like I'll get a chance soon; I printed 5 pages and it's blinking toner low on the black cart. It could be a few weeks before it gets cranky and says the toner is OUT.

Odometer 12907; installed SPD pedals, TT2000 tires.

A couple of days ago I swapped the platform pedals (which I use in cold temps < 15*F so I can ride with heavy boots) for my SPDs.

Today I took the studded tires off, put on a pair of Continental Top Touring 2000 tires given to me by the generous erikvolson. He says they have only a dozen or two miles on them and they look new. They're only rated 75 PSI so I'm not sure how fast they'll be though of course after the studded tires they'll feel like lightning for a while.

I also powerwashed the bike (MAN was it dirty; it's been 500 miles in the winter gunk since it was washed). Also lubed the chain and the derailler, and tuned up the rear brake; the cable had gotten pretty sluggish (oiled it) and the pulloff springs weren't balanced anymore.

The odometer is at 12907, so assuming I'll only get 3 days of riding in this week, it should be rolling to 13K next Tuesday or so.

That means I only put about 660 miles on the studded tires this winter. I think the rear is about done in though. There are a dozen studs missing, and several are twisted sideways in their holes. I think I may replace it with the new Marathon Winter, which has more studs up the side. I love the Nokians, but this particular one has only center studs and they're useless for climbing out of icy ruts, which can give control problems. Nokian makes a W240 model with 240 studs, one farther out, but it's pretty knobby, looks very rough and high rolling resistance. Most of my riding is on pavement and ice. I do ride some snow so some tread is desired. The Marathon Winter looks to be about perfect, plus it's $10 cheaper than the W240, and still has 240 studs in 4 rows.

Also the Schwalbe has kevlar puncture protection belts and reflective sidewalls, so those are both bonuses.

If I only buy one, the old Nokian will go in the back, the new one up front where it's most needed.

I finally got around to swapping on the new rear derailler on my bike last night. It's shifting properly again. When the original one went bad, it went quite bad quite quickly, in just a couple of weeks. I was having to overshift in both directions at the end, and the drivetrain was getting pretty noisy. Now when I click it into a gear, it just quickly and quietly goes to that gear, like it's supposed to.

It's funny how you can get used to quirky equipment if it goes bad over a period of time. The overshifting wasn't really bothering me, but now that I have the properly working kit on there, I'm wondering why the old one wasn't bothering me more than it did.