Christmas in March, Making good use, innocent inspection
So last night Ali needed to get down a container from the hobby room. She came out with a confused look on her face. She asked me if I bought her some Under Armour shorts. I had no idea what she was talking about. She took me into the hobby room and showed me three pair of UA shorts that were on top of the container. Then I remembered.
I bought those shorts when I went to the outlets with Randall. They were indeed intended to be Christmas presents for Ali, I just forgot that I stuck them up there as a hiding place. Well I wished Ali a Merry March Christmas.
So this morning I had to stick around the house to wait for the wind mitigation inspector to show up. He had a window between 8AM-11AM. I figured the odds of him showing up right at 8 was very low so I decided to make my spare time productive.
The first thing I wanted to do was put in the new ECT (Engine Coolant Temperature) sensor I bought for the Tacoma. I am hoping this sensor will succeed in fixing my warm start issue where the IAC valve failed.
Replacing this sensor was a bit of a challenge. I had a hard time just getting room to pop the electrical connector off the sensor. In order to do so I had to temporarily remove a small piece that connects the two sides of the fuel rail together.
Once I got the connector off I had another issue, my 19MM socket was nowhere near deep enough to fit on top of the sensor to turn it out. I grabbed the dogs and made a quick run to the hardware store where I found a deep enough socket and a 1/2″ extension bar.
With the proper tools removing the sensor wasn’t very tough. I really need to get a good torque wrench though, doing this by “tight enough” feel is not a great thing. Putting the fuel rail connector piece back on was a bit of a challenge because of the tight space and dual washers that are used. After about 10 minutes of futzing around I got it back on.
The truck started back up and ran fine, but it always does when it the engine is cold. I can only hope I have finally squashed the warm start problem.
Another less annoying issue has been my Hayward pool cleaner. I have had an issue for awhile where it is moving about very slowly in the pool, not coming close to covering the entire area. So far I have made two attempts to fix the problem, first by replacing the rubber feet on the bottom of the cleaner and then second by replacing the vacuum tubes since the old ones were brittle and had plastic breaking off in the connector portion of the hoses. Neither of these things fixed the turtle-like pace of the cleaner.
I just bought a maintenance kit that includes the feet, the wings, the front and rear flapper and the “pods” which are all of the items that get worn from the friction with the pool. If this doesn’t fix it I will be giving up and buying another pool cleaner. I don’t think I will be going the Hayward route if I do.
So the wind inspector guy showed up about 9:45. Originally I had anticipated a somewhat confrontational encounter with this guy as I viewed him as the enemy, sent out by the evil insurance company to try to f me out of money. It took me all of 15 seconds to change my viewpoint.
Mark was a big, chubby, friendly guy who let me know right up front that he is just contracted out to do the inspection, he was just there to document what we have. He let me know that my self installed anchor/plywood system which successfully protected our house through various storms in 2005 would be flagged. He said that they want anchors EVERY 6 INCHES! I laughed out loud, that sounded just ridiculous.
His inspection was very simple. He just took some pictures around the house and in the attic. He said he wouldn’t think this inspection would reveal anything different than what the state funded inspection did since nothing significant has changed in that time period. He was a nice guy, we talked pretty much non-stop as he walked around the house. I definitely got no sense he was going to try to screw me in anyway whatsoever.
Of course the same can’t be said about my insurance company. It will be quite interesting to see if they try to ramp up my rate based on what the inspection did or did not show.
This weekend we have no races to run or time. I am hoping we get to go to the water park at some point. I have stuff to do around the house but not a mountain size collection of items.