May, 2013 | Life of Pat and Nat

Longest dog

Farrell is the longest dog in the world according to Guinness

A Day on the lake

After some hot sweaty car repair it’s time to cool off.

Something odd floating out there. Turns out it’s a dead bloated groundhog. Ew.

Leaving a trail of destruction... — Leaving a trail of destruction…

Sneaking up on a floating mat — The shark closes in on its prey

Continue reading “A Day on the lake”

The engine block in my father in law’s boat was spraying water so we investigated. I found bondo covering something. A grinder showed that it was welded in the past. After cleaning I used JB Weld to cover and fill any voids. Tomorrow will tell if the operation was successful.

Well the next day showed that this fix held. Unfortunately the freeze plug just above this started leaking when the block held pressure. Then with the boat in the water we found water streaming in through the transom somewhere. Time to cut our losses and sell this thing.

Shaking out the Sunflower Quilt

This beautiful sunflower quilt was made for Amie by a girl I was dating. It’s been put away for about 5 years while Amie gets done with school and settles into a permanent home.

quilt with sunflowers — Sunflower quilt made for Amie by a girlfriend

Baby and grandma

Grumps too.

Rear mount

The rear mount on the front subframe was as bad as the others. This one had clearly been repaired before but it rusted badly around it. I really had a job trying to cut this out with limited clearance. The torches were out of the question with the fuel line an inch away. Welding required my pipe sweating pad.

Pieces after the struggle to cut it out. I had to cut back farther than the length of the repair plate.

So I had to lengthen it with a piece of steel. I got it sized the way I wanted and then had to get funky with welding it. Reaching up inside the frame blocked my view so I had to figure out when I was welding the end of that extension plate. I got it but it ain’t pretty.

After all the struggle to get this side I was dreading the next side. I took the bushing out and found it was in pretty good shape! I sprayed it with rust stuff, painted it with Rustoleum, and put in the new bushing. Done with subframe mounts. The ones on the front at the radiator support were okay though the bushings were rusted out inside.

Repairing the front subframe mounts on Nat’s Camaro

bushing holding car and repair plate — New bushing sitting on repair plate with alignment

Now that I have all the parts I set the repair plate on top of the subframe mount. Then I put the new bushing on that and bolted it in. I ran my large drift into the alignment holes at the edge and put the weight of the car on it to keep it still. Then I traced it with crayon.

wider angle view of the bushing repair plate traced — Wider angle view of the bushing on the repair plate with the plate aligned and chalked out.

This picture helps orient your view. This is the left front, that’s the firewall, and the subframe to the left.

Crayon marks the line I'll cut. — Note the size of that hole. The crayon marks where I’ll cut first

This shows the rusted subframe. The car was a daily driver for its early life and lots of salt accumulated and rusted under the bushing. Continue reading “Repairing the front subframe mounts on Nat’s Camaro”

Lake levels are receding

A few days ago the water was up to our light pole. As it drops it’s leaving us lots of trash.

We could have a bonfire for days.

For The Birds

We put up a purple martin house and fairly quickly got some residents. They work hard at making their nests and we’ve witnessed purple martin porn so we know they’re getting ready to have broods. The trouble is European starlings show up and tear out the nests and harass the martins. We looked it up and see that the starlings will kill the baby birds, they’ll kill the adults if they can trap them in the box, and they’ll peck the eggs if they find those. Oh and to discourage the martins in the first place they tear the nests apart and chase them around. So following what we found on the internet we’re preparing a little surprise for them.

Here’s the parts

Here they are being painted

Home sweet home

With a fire escape?

Oh Dam

Given the high levels of the lake we made a trip out to see the dam. We were curious to see how close to the top the water was.

Dam on Douglas Lake — Downstream side of the dam on Douglas Lake

Coming up on the dam from the overlook side it’s hard to tell how close to the top the water on the other side is.

Campgrounds in danger of flooding next to the dam on Douglas Lake

Closer still you notice the campgrounds. Better have your sleeping bag on an air mattress.

High water starting to flood the campgrounds near the dam — Flooding is starting in the campgrounds.

High but still water held back by the dam — The lake side of the dam on Douglas Lake

Over on the lake side you can start to get a feel for the height.

Structures on the dam by the generator intake

We hope to go back and get pictures here at normal and then winter low levels for comparison

View across the lake from the dam's overlook — View across the lake from the dam’s overlook

While on the overlook side we went up to take advantage of the long range view.

View of the dam, lake, and mountains from the overlook on the dam at Douglas Lake — Zooming in on the overlook view

Man I love this area for its views as well as the people and fantastic motorcycle roads.

View of the dam from the bridge over the tailwater. — Driving by below the dam

Heading over to the campground to see from water level what things look like. This is from the bridge over the French Broad river just below the dam. The other side of the bridge shows another campground being flooded by the amount of water they’re releasing.

Downstream campgrounds seen from the bridge below the dam

Then we got to the campground on the lake side that we showed earlier. Here’s some of the campground and some of the dam beyond. Try to notice the crow on the railing to get a sense of scale and how close to the top the water is.

The view of the dam from the campground next to the lake.

Showing the water level against the dam.

That’s a lot of water. It rained hard later this day and more the next.