Month: November 2005

The Thanksgiving weekend ends this evening and we’ve had a full day to recover from the whirlwind trip to Iowa. Ronda, Kristina, and I left early Wednesday morning and made the 11-hour drive back to Des Moines where we stayed with my folks. We enjoyed a nice dinner out that evening and celebrated my birthday.

During the next few days we visited a lot of family and friends, ate good turkey dinners, and overall had a very pleasant time even if it was a bit rushed. Thanks to everyone who made it an enjoyable experience! We headed back on Saturday morning and had an uneventful return journey.

Kristina has recently moved back to Colorado. She and Josh are sharing a townhouse about six blocks from our house. She is working “temp” jobs while hunting for a good full-time position. It is really nice having the whole family together again.

Next weekend we are going up into the Pike National Forest to cut down and bring home a Christmas tree. The Forest Service has certain areas designated where you can do that.

Overall, things have been pretty quiet lately so there is not a whole lot to report on.

We’ve been working on a few projects with Josh lately. A couple of weekends ago Josh and I decided to tackle a couple of problems with the cooling system on his Lincoln. The heater did not work and the engine would overheat if pushed very hard.

A little research on the Internet narrowed the no-heat problem down to an interior temp sensor located under the dash pad. This turned out to be easier that we expected. The dash pad came off with just a few screws and the part was easily replaced.

The overheating problem was thought to be a combination of a plugged and leaky radiator plus the water pump was suspect. We decided that a complete overhaul of the cooling system would be the best bet. More work than we wanted but an efficient cooling system is not optional when driving in the mountains.

As always, the job becomes more involved than it seems like it should be. Everything was connected to the water pump and had to come off. But, once we had everything out of the way we discovered a couple of contributing factors to the problem. A previous owner/mechanic had installed one of the little hoses connecting the water pump to the heater lines backwards! This created a kink in the hose which restricted the flow considerably. We fixed this and also replaced a rusty fitting on the other heater line that had been leaking.

Everything went back together nicely and Josh now has heat on these colder mornings plus he can drive up to the top of Pikes Peak now.

Another project that Ronda is helping Josh with is the restoration of an old RCA radio that they found at a garage sale earlier this summer. Josh has been rebuilding the innards of the radio and now is working on restoring the cabinet. Ronda is the resident expert in this area and is assisting. Some repairs were made to the walnut veneer and now the surface refinishing is taking place.