What did you do today non-detailing related?

[PA DETAILER]

Gathered up all caustic chemicals and took them to a collection event today. $25 fee. Done and gone.

[MisterSnoop]

Did the front brakes on my girlfriend's car. I agreed that I would do them this weekend before I realized it would be in the 90's. So I started them last night and finished them up this morning.

[Markymapo]

Put in the Pontoon boat today n took a 2 hour ride with my better half . The Cobalt ski boat goes in the water tomorrow and then I need to touch up both.

[JDGolden]

Mowed and edged the lawn, cleaned up my smoker in anticipation for a pork shoulder tomorrow, and took some items up to the garage attic for storage.

[DFB]

I work in a retail plant nursery and with winter approaching, it's the calm before the storm at the moment. As the days are getting colder and people are allowed to move around the country again, customer flow has dropped off a bit. And with a massive delivery of new trees arriving for the winter bare-root season within the next couple of weeks, we are making the most of the lighter customer flow to get on with some maintenance jobs around the place.

This pocket down the back was primarily designed to showcase a line of water features we once sold. Set amongst the water features is a fernery full of palms, ferns and other shade loving plants. The area is split in half with a running creek bed and three small foot bridges to allow customer access.

The trouble with "gardens" within a garden center is that maintaining stock for sale, attending to customers and keeping the whole place presentable takes priority. When I first started there 19 years ago, there were four gardens dotted around the place. The way we overhead water means that these gardens got far too much water and really struggled to flourish. Weeds on the other hand love those conditions. One by one, I have been responsible for the removal of those gardens, they never looked good and took valuable staff away from maintaining products that actually helped pay for our wages. It took a lot of gentle, calculated suggestions to gain approval to remove those gardens, but I got there in the end!

The fernery is the only remaining garden now. Even so, it still needs far more attention than we allow for. This bottom end of the creek bed has been bugging me for years. The plants that were planted either side of the water completely took over. It was a mess, and guess who drew the sort straw to remove all of the horrible, stinky Acorus Gramineus strand by strand. That was many years ago now but I still shudder at the though of that task. After the gutting, I put down weed mat and shoveled white stones to cover up the multitude of sins. We then attempted to deflect the attention away from it by displaying plants and trees in front of it.

With spare time on my hands this week, I started placing re-claimed rocks along the length of the creek bed before topping the rest with stones to help it all blend in. No before pics, I didn't think to at the time, this was a little job that turned into a bit of a project. Each rock and stone was placed "just so", that would surprise anyone here though.





The stone toppings should help to keep weeds down too, they are probably layered 4 inches thick!

Best bit apart from it looking VASTLY better than what we were trying to hide, was getting praise from a boss who never gives positive feedback unprompted.

[PA DETAILER]

3 hanging baskets of inpatients on the front porch.

[DFB]

The Ford Performance Oil Separator I fitted to my Mustang has been on for 7 months now, curiosity got the better of me today.

Emptying these catch cans can be done a couple of ways, either on or off the vehicle. Owing to the difficulty I had in fitting the push pins into place, I decided to leave the unit in place and remove the top hat.

First, remove the engine cover to allow access and then loosen the four bolts holding the lid in place.





After unclipping the hose connected to the inlet manifold, I went through and removed each screw by hand VERY carefully. These are not magnetic so don't rely on your magnetized screw driver to hold them in place. A replacement for something this obscure would be very difficult to find. (Keep in mind I am in Australia, EVERYTHING takes longer here.)



Hardest one to remove was the one sitting under the radiator expansion tank. I actually lifted the lid off and out with the screw still in tact to be safer than fiddling with it and risking dropping it into the depths of a Coyote engine bay. I have seen where the hose is removed to gain access but I do not like digging deeper than I have to with these sort of things.



The amount of oil collected was about what I expected.



Removing the oil can be done a couple of ways. When the whole unit is removed from the car, the oil can be simply be poured out. When left in place like mine, you can use a syringe to suck the oil from the container or use paper towels to absorb it. The amount in the tank was such the paper towel method was better suited here.







Once the tank is cleaned out, replace the top hat, remembering to click the hose back onto the inlet manifold in the process.



Engine cover back on.





As mentioned, the amount of oil was what I was expecting, owing to the minimal km's done over those 7 months.

[PA DETAILER]

Just purchased a leaf blower. Figured better than sweeping after mowing. Don't need anything pricey. Just something to do the job. Did some research. Again, you can fall down the rabbit hole. Like the fact it comes with 2 batteries. It should fit my needs. And it had a $20 off coupon.

Amazon.com

[dgage]

More expensive but I love my Ego setup. Even better, I have batteries that are 4+ years old and they still work well.

[UncleDavy]

Even though it’s a company car, I bought a neato cargo mat for the back of the Explorer. While I was at it, I had to treat the carpet with Blackfire fabric protectant and the cargo mat got a coating of Duragloss 253.




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