September Fixes.

September is generally a good month, chiefly because it means the end of cleaning seed. To start off the month though, there were a few nagging problems which I finally had time to address.
To start, I noticed this water stain on the inside of the Puma. Now how did that get there?

Two nice holes in the roof courtesy of the April 29th tornado/hailstorm. Apparently I wasn't quite thorough enough in my post storm inspection. "Luckily," since we had passed our insurance deductible on that storm 5 figures ago (hello new roof), I was able to get both the roof and the liner replaced at no additional cost.Then there was the manure loading zone on Thompson's. This is where they piled the manure and loaded the trucks. Step one, break up the compaction:


And step two, break up the clods and more importantly mix in that manure residue:
If I didn't do this step nothing would grow on this spot for a couple of years. I know this because I had tried doing nothing in the past a couple of different times on a couple different locations. It still makes me unhappy to have to till any ground, especially without rain in the forecast. This spot now has the potential to dry out and really start blowing.

Then there was the combine unloading auger grain saver:
The grain saver is just a little spring loaded door that is supposed to keep whatever grain is left in the auger when it is shut off from spilling. The door got bent up after coming into contact with the grain cart during wheat harvest.

It looks like the new one will do a little bit better job...

Then there were the trailer brake lights. They had also stopped working during wheat harvest. I suspected the trailer brake light pressure switch. First I had to find it.

Here it is. at the top of the picture behind the red hose.I then tried to take it out so I could get a new one. I tried for a long time. I tried many different approaches. Then I decided to let a professional try. That is, after I was able to get the stupid red hose pictured above reattached. This (reattaching the red hose) took about two days worth of trial and error and thinking and purchasing of funny wrenches (in vain) and borrowing of a wrench from a neighbor (in vain) and very scratched up, sore, and cramped hands. Once in the shop in town the professional quickly determined that it was not the pressure switch, and then spent several hours worth of money testing and thinking and testing and thinking until Eureka! he decided to check the... wait for it... turn signal lever. Apparently Frieghtliner routes the brake lights through the turn signal lever. So the actual repair (replacing the turn signal lever) took all of five minutes and was accomplished with 1 screwdriver.

When I got the truck home I decided to fix the problem of chaff getting into the trucks air conditioning. Here is the factory installed mesh:
I stole some mesh from a window on the barn and tucked it in there like so:
And then I (and by "I" I mean "Dad") had to fix my seed auger. It has plastic flighting which is a little more gentle on seed (especially important for soybean seed). This works great for loading seed into a drill, its intended purpose. It does not work for unloading wheat chaff, which a certain person with the initials CL attempted.


"I" also replaced the original two piece tube on my auger (the black part) with this handy three piece tube. This made loading my drill this fall way way easier.