Rick's b.log - entry 2023/05/08

ADSL reset?

I can only imagine that they're messing with the exchange again. I did see a guy out joining together the fibre-optic cables just down the road. And, yes, I know it's a public holiday today. I can only imagine they're way behind schedule so feel that paying whatever overtime would be acceptable. The guy was there by this one cable when I went by at 2.40pm, and he was still there with the same cable when I went by at 4.05pm. It must be a fiddly job splicing fibre optic cables.

Rotovator

I estimated it would take me about three quarters of an hour, so I left fifty minutes. Google Navigation took me on some weird route that took, indeed, exactly fifty minutes. I literally turned up at half three on the dot.

The pull cord starter wasn't attached. The guy selling it has a bad back, so he popped a power drill down into it and spun the engine that way. Cool trick.

It fired up. Was noisy, but ran.

I helped him load it into his van, and he said he would leave in a little while, given that my car doesn't go fast. I handed over four €20 notes and that was that.

I mostly knew the way home. So I put on navigation to deal with the faraway parts, and ended up telling her to be quiet as I got closer. I dunno, doing my own route missed two towns and took 38 minutes.
Go figure.

The man turned up about forty minutes later. He got lost, even with navigation. Yeah, I can understand. Finding this place is... what Frenchies call "pas évident". It's good. It helps keep unwanted people away. Nobody is legitimately "just passing by".

I helped him unload the rotovator, and gave him €5 pour boire as a thank you for bringing it out.

Here it is.

My 'new' rotovator.

The business end looks like it's ready to get some work done.

Spinning blades.

I should point out, the discs at each side are in line with the sides of the machine, and with each other. It looks weird because of the distortion of the wide angle lens. But, hey, it looks more epic that way.

I pulled on the starter and the cord came away in my hands. Yeah, I remember, he used a drill to start it.
I eventually unbolted it - none of my metric spanners fit so I used pliers - and retied the string, and rewound the bobbin. Then I put the starter back on, set the throttle to the start position, and pulled the cord.

Pull this to begin.

Nothing.

The problem was easily identified, however. The carburettor usefully has markings on it for where the throttle lever should be for stop and start. These are, actually, the complete opposite to what's marked on the knob on the handle.

The carburettor and dinky exhaust.

Looking at the lever on the handlebars, it would appear to be an after-market replacement rather than the original part.

A replacement part.

Once I had it sussed that I put it to the off to start, I tugged the starter again and the engine roared into life. Noisy thing, that little exhaust, uh, didn't seem to do much.
As it was a public holiday evening, I shut it down quickly.

It probably shouldn't surprise me that there was no air filter fitted. I have ordered a sheet of mousse from Amazon, it'll be here on Wednesday. If I test the machine tomorrow (a bit iffy, they are predicting thunderstorms and rain) I'll be running it without a filter. But, then, so did the guy this morning. And who knows how long before that. Not to mention my other rotovator until I noticed and bought one. ☺

The engine is an LAV35, with a code underneath that suggests that it may have been made in 1979. It's a Tecumseh, made in Torino Italy. Given the lack of useful information on this engine online, I'm going to guess it's old enough that I'll need to run it on 98 octane (because it won't tolerate much bioethanol in the mix) and use a lead substitute. I have this.

So, then. I'm rather looking forward to seeing how this behaves. The guy said that he hated the little tillers (motobineuse, I think they're called) as you need to push them along. But this one, let it dig into the ground and it'll churn its way forward. Hmmm, sounds familiar.

One final bit of mechanoporn for you. The way the blades are engaged is amazingly simple. The big handle is pulled towards me. This pulls the entire engine mounting backward (everything that isn't the base) which puts tension on the belts between the engine's pulley and the pulley that connects to the gearbox. Under tension, power is transmitted from one to the other.
My older rotovator uses a similar method, but it is activated by a handle like a bicycle brake. Which means that it doubles up as a dead man's handle. This rotovator will, however, keep on going by itself in the absence of a human to release the handle.

Yeah, it needs a bit of a clean.

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