Gawdam Saskatchewan weather strikes again

The thermometer has barely made it above zero all day and the bloody wind is blowing like a mad thing. I have tried to work outside a couple of times and got driven back to the warmth each time.



This morning I went in to our old shop to visit Quint and pick up a cheque for my little Kubota tractor that he sold for me. I have been driving the cube van at every opportunity to build up some miles on it and hopefully iron out the gremlins that plague every used vehicle purchase. So when I walked out of the shop and the truck wouldn't start it didn't come as a complete surprise. A complete annoyance but not a complete surprise. Marilyn came to rescue me and we towed it up to Verklan's. Since it has been intermittently dying ever since we bought it I guess it is a good thing that it seems to have died completely now. Perhaps Verklans will be able to figure out what the root problem is.



On Monday after I picked up the generator I came to the conclusion that there simply isn't room for the hushbox I had contemplated in the location I am stuck with. The previous owners put the genset in what used to be the A/C compartment. That's not an inherently bad location but it isn't really big enough. Its also a really hot spot because it is opposite from the rad so all the heat from the engine gets blown across the generator.



I started building the box and quickly realized that I wasn't going to be able to baffle the airflow in and out of the box the way I would have liked to. I was getting pretty frustrated by supper time Monday but, as so often happens, a break from work provided the additional inspiration I needed. After supper I tore the genset completely apart and discarded the metal cabinet that it was originally housed in. At the same time I decided to reverse the airflow through the generator radiator. One of the big problems with a boxed in genset is that the heat from the generator gets trapped inside the box and you have to come up with some plan to get that hot air out of the box without letting sound out at the same time. To overcome the heat problem I decided to pull the air out of the box through the radiator. That will alow me to bring fresh air into the box to cool the generator head and then use the air to cool the rad as it exits the box. At least I hope that's how it will work.



Last night I got the stripped down engine and generator head moved into the partially built box. Today I should have been finishing the top and front of the box but I need to epoxy those into place and I think it is too cold to be curing epoxy so that will have to wait for tomorrow.



Meanwhile Marilyn is fighting with Canada Post over the money order she sent to Calgary on Saturday which they promptly lost. Today she established that it hasn't been cashed yet and that the recipients haven't received it yet either. Canada Post doesn't give a damn - no surprises there. She threatened them with reporting the letter stolen and they basically said "good luck". She paid for one-day delivery so she has their fancy serial number to trace but the number simply doesn't show up at all in their system.