Turkey day weekend progress! After running the wiring in the attic a week or two ago, I managed to finish up all the wiring today. Now instead of having a single flourescent (switched to LED tube) light in the garage, I have that flourescent PLUS 4x new paddle style LED lights. The difference is immense! I’m very excited to have it all finished up. I do need to go up to the attic again and put the floor panels back in, but I’ll probably wait as next on the list for garage upgrades is some new outlets, and for them a new circuit breaker. That and I still have some attic work to do before I can really store stuff. I ended up removing the attic ladder so I can switch it’s orientation. When climbing up, you would climb into the short side of the attic and it was kind of a pain to get all the way up, so I’m going to have it climb up towards the peak of the roof, so it’s easier to step all the way in. That said the new lights are going to really help, especially since I’ve dived back into the wiring for the 818.
I finished up the headlights, but now I’m concerned that they’re the incorrect lengths. For right now they’ll be fine as I won’t need the headlights for quite a while. Next up will be identifying and extending the tail lights. After that I think I’ll be trying to coral the harness into place, mounting the electrical boxes and at least for now being done with the harness. That is one area where I’m seriously considering chopping the whole thing up and doing either a full custom, megasquirt harness or buying something custom. It’s such a rats nest that I dread the thought of having to diagnose a problem. We’ll see how ambitious I get. My bigger objective is just to get it running and start the engine break in. If I can get that far I’ll be ecstatic.
Naturally though I need several projects at once, so once I’ve finished cleaning up from the lighting project and doing some more garage reorganizing, my next big install is going to be a Maslow CNC! I’m really excited to finally have a full 4’x8′ CNC capability. That was one huge problem with the last CNC. While 2×4 seems like a lot of area, it’s just too small for furniture in a lot of cases. With this CNC I’ll be able to really build a lot of cool stuff. I’m itching to assemble it. I’ve already got the kit and the lumber!
Between the last month and today the smoker has really been put through its paces. I picked up a Masterbuilt bluetooth smoker probably 8 months ago and it’s been fantastic. Electric smokers are just the way to go. No constant monitoring, it just runs. Reload the wood chips and that’s all that needs to happen. Plus it has a meat probe that’s usually within 1-2 degrees of my nicer temperature probe. About 3 weeks ago, I made a ton of wings that turned out amazing, then followed it up on thanksgiving with two 26 lb turkeys! I heard because of Covid there were shortages of small turkeys, and since I absolutely love turkey leftovers, I figured why not get two massive turkeys to share with my wife and toddler. If we’re not going to have any company we’ll at least have a TON of food.
Lastly a few weeks ago, we took a nice vacation out to the Space Coast. It was really relaxing even though it was just a one night trip. Sometimes it’s just nice to get out of the house. We still masked up the whole time and only got food to go, but just being at the beach was great. We have to go more often the water temperature is just amazing and we saw some dolphins right off the beach!
Well it’s a short post, but I’ve still got some weekend left. I plan to work on some more Unity lessons just for the fun of it, and then hopefully spend some time cleaning the garage. I want that Maslow online soon!
It Rhymes with Hockey 