Dinner / BCS: Canter - A Resolution

We went out last night with a mechanic who used to work here a the Baptist Haiti Mission. We went with his wife and son to do a little running in town and then we went to eat. We ate Kibby (which was like rice and ground beef in a corn dog casing) and beef shishkabob. It was so very good and so very American tasting! At about US$15 per person it was a little expensive (as usual, Tina and I split with the kids so we got two servings of everything), but we haven't had food like that in a very, very long time. We had great conversation and have continued to build this new relationship. They are great people and live close by.

Here is a picture of a pretty flower with a pretty flower:


I now have generator duty (starting and stopping). Here is Carter helping me out - there are two of these big, loud things:


When we patch Lou's eye, once in a while we have to hold his head so he moves his eye instead of his head. I thought it was funny yesterday when Tina was holding his head, so I took a picture:


I am finding out that my clothes are not lasting very long. I have two pairs of pants that I wear 3 days in the shop before having them washed. I have a total of 4 pair here and I don't want to mess up the other two pair. I am going to be ordering another pair for working in the shop. My boots when I bought them were purchased because they were cool in temperature. My next pair will be leather so the do not get ripped. I am looking forward to a package that my parents sent (thanks Ma and Pa!) because it has Mechanix gloves in it. My hands are getting pretty beat up and I seem to have a new cut or gouge everyday. I do not remember where more than half of them came from.

Boring car stuff...

I started working on the four wheeler with the two boys here (Carter and Christopher) as a way of having shop class for homeschooling. We got interrupted (this is the second time), but from my perspective is was a good thing. After talking with another mechanic for a few days in a row, he stopped by and walked through everything that I had done. There was nothing that we went over that sounded incorrect. After looking at a number of things, he looked at the travel on the brake pad through the viewing hole and saw that it was moving too far - it would be using all the fluid up just to make the pad travel that distance.

The brakes on the Canter have a manual adjustment (not automatic like on most cars). I had adjusted these once (twice in the case of the rear wheels). Two things happened that I learned from. One was that the other driver/mechanic had adjusted the brakes (the wrong way apparently) since I had last looked at them and he didn't do it correctly. I should have started all over from the beginning and looked at it as a fresh new vehicle (which is hard after looking at it for a number of days in a row). The other thing that I learned is that parts are made differently as the vehicle ages. There is an arrow on the back of the hub that points in the direction that you are supposed to move the adjustment wheel. Well...that arrow was pointing the wrong direction. The wheel needed to go the other direction. This may be why the other driver/mechanic did it incorrectly. So I made the adjustment and the Canter now has brakes. Praise God! (coincidentally it was after I had my revelation yesterday morning, my life-lesson learning experience).

One of the Haitian guys wanted to take a picture of me working (yes, my pants are 2-3 sizes too big and I have to add a notch to my belt):


Before we figured out the Canter, I needed a break and so I worked on a mount for a hubodometer (the odometer doesn't work) on the big dump truck. I measured and had the metal workers make it for me. I put on the final touches (like rounding the sharp metal corners and enlarging the mounting holes) on the mount using my die grinder (which I will need a new one soon because this was a $15 cheapie from Menards and is starting to fall apart). I found out that it could be fun to use a die grinder as an art tool!