Year: 2021

First Mow

Steven Guccione

Got my second battery in and finished up the wiring. Made more use of these wire nut clip splicer (or whatever they are called). They not only connect wires, but also secure them. Once it was all wired up I couldn’t resist a quick test. The results were mostly good, and I would say everything functions well, but I ran into a couple of hitches.

First, I was worried about the swinging of the blade unit. It did tilt forward and “dig in”, but nothing broke. I probably need to put in a spring to keep the blade unit from swinging back too far. I’m also considering cutting some of the front faces of the blade shields down a bit, exposing the blades, at least on the front side. They are underneath the mower and shouldn’t be a safety problem. Should allow better cutting. I’ll note string trimmers that use these blade do this.

Second, I blew another fuse. This is the one I have on the big line connecting the batteries. I bumped it up to 35A. It blew when I tried to move forward from a stop in the grass. Not sure how to handle this. Tempting to remove the fuse and rely on the circuit breaker.

“THE GRAVEYARD DOESN’T LIE”

Steven Guccione

The graveyard might not lie, but the state of Texas sure does. My gut feeling was that the recent Texas blackout was going to be on the scale of Hurricane Katrina. The official death count of 151 seemed much smaller than I expected. According to this article:

“The true number of people killed by the disastrous winter storm and power outages that devastated Texas in February is likely four or five times what the state has acknowledged so far.”

“THE GRAVEYARD DOESN’T LIE”

PC Upgrade

Steven Guccione

My wife has been using the same PC since the 1980s. Well, I’m have upgraded the OS several times, from MS-DOS to Windows 95 / 7 / 10. And I have moved to bigger disks a few times over the years. And changed the hardware. But there are still files on the drive with dates back in 1980s.

I recently realized the OS is somehow 32-bit, even though the processor is a relatively modern i3. And I can’t get the drivers to update to the point that the on-board WiFi and Bluetooth doesn’t work. Recently Chrome stopped working and even a reinstall wouldn’t fix it. And then there are various crashes. My plan is to start clean and install Windows 10 Pro 64-bit onto a new 1 TB SSD drive and move all my wife’s files over. I suppose you need to do this every few decades. Say a prayer for me.

Mower Final Assembly

Steven Guccione

I started out planning on putting the main power wires for the blades and drive motor into a conduit and securing them. I will eventually have to do this. I wasn’t going to do the final assembly because I was waiting on some lock washers from Amazon. Turns out I found a few washers and was able to move forward.

I finished the blades PVC work and added a bit of black paint. Then I got to securing the aluminum plate that will interface the blade unit to the lift mechanism. All went well, and the sun was out and the weather was cool, so I pressed on.

Put the mower on its side to attach the lift mechanism. Even without the old 14 HP gas engine and old blades and deck it was still heavier than I expected. After some wrestling I had the lift mechanism in place and connected. At this point it was an easy maneuver to attach the blade unit, so I did. It worked surprisingly well.

Was tempted to strap on the single 12V battery, wire up the blades and give it a run, but it was getting late. Enough success for one day. Truth be told, with all the rain, I need to mow. Will be a good test. Maybe tomorrow. Not a real test. Need to wait for Lowe’s to deliver the second 12V battery.