Man points

After work last night my project was to put the Cub Cadet mower deck back together.  The first step of the project was to insert two snap rings inside my new $50 pulley.  This turned out to be the most challenging part of the entire job.

Luckily I had snap ring pliers, but even so it was quite tough to compress these large rings.  I had a close call when the pliers popped out of the ring while it was compressed inside the pulley.  The ring rocketed out of the pulley, just missing my face.  It ricocheted around the garage like a stray bullet.  After that I grabbed my safety glasses. Eventually after a lot of fuss I finally got the two rings in place.

After that the rest of the pulley rebuild was straight forward.  I installed the two new ball bearings and reattached the pulley to the deck.  I also decided to replace the blades while I had the deck off.  The blades that were on there lasted all of last years mowing season, it was time to swap them out.

I then slid the deck back under the mower and hooked everything back up.  I gave the mower an extended test run, mowing the front mound and then mowing some high grass in the back yard.  The cut was clean and true.  The rattle was gone.

Hopefully this will be the last repair for 2011.  If anything else major comes up I think it will finally be time to retire the tractor.  I was checking out the 20+ horsepower models at Home Depot over the weekend. When purchase time comes I think I actually will be grabbing a Craftsman tractor.  They seem to offer some of the best bang for the buck.

Tonight I may try another Bender attempt although I have a nice little slice on the gripping side of one of my fingers that could complicate matters.

I logged on to xtranormal.com to create the overdue next episode in Jmo’s World.  I was surprised to see they refreshed the site.  Not only does the site look different but they added a TON of additional options with the cartoons.  I have about triple the amount of characters to choose from and there are a bunch of additional actions they can perform.  There are also additional backgrounds.

The one downside is if you want to use much of the new content they charge you extra xtranormal points which will drain my account faster.  They also changed the model on my character, turning him into a bloody mess for some reason.

This latest episode has a bit of an abrupt ending because I ran out of time.  Still worth 2 minutes of your life IMO.  Soon I will have enough episodes to create a full length feature film.