a Shed in Ryde

We have no photos from Shed Night #6. I completely forgot to pick up the camera… but here is a run down of the night’s events!

We ate the beautifully cooked dinner I had prepared, slaving over a hot bbq plate. We drank a variety of beers and some Cider that Terrance brought along.

We then had our “Repair Race”. We divided into two teams. One team had the task of getting the garden blower to run. The other team (my team) had the job of getting the Ryobi wipper snipper to run. Both garden appliances had been found on the side of the road and condition of both was unknown. While the blower team was farting around Frank and I quickly drained out the old fuel before re-filling. I said to Frank, “How bout we give it a go and see if it fires”. He agreed. It fired and roared into life. The other team looked sad!

The blower proved to be difficult to get going. Both teams came to focus their attention on the blower. Fuel was an issue so we watched “Big G”, the “G-man” strip it and clean it and put it back together. Then, for what seemed like many hours, the “G” pulled the cord and fiddled with little screws. The blower seemed to make it’s own decision about when it would and would not start. It seemed to know when we were losing heart, and would then roar into life, bringing laughter, smiles and backslapping. It would then die and remain dead until once again it sensed that we were loosing heart.

We then pulled out another very sorry looking mower with a 4-stroke Briggs motor. The oil smelt like dead fish and it looked like it had been sitting outside for several years. We changed the oil and fueled it up and away she went. She sounded like a Harley, the exhaust was gone. Sadly, after running for a while she was not turning over very smoothly at all. In a future shed night we might pull it apart and see what has gone wrong. Pulling things apart is always a great opportunity to learn!

Finally I pulled out another mower that was brought along to Shed Night #5. It was a young mower that had been brought up in a very abusive home. When I had attempted to clean out the carby last time I had broken a plastic fitting and given up in disgust. So this time we tried to make up a linkage to replace the broken part. We did this and got it to start, but it would only really run flat out of nothing, so we need to do some fine tuning to work out why.

All up, a successful night with some lost souls being brought back to life!

Future Shed Nights we have the following planned:

* An excursion to a bigger and better shed for a night (“The Big Shed Out” night)
* An engine strip night (“Shed motor mayhem” night)
* A construction Night (“Shed Extension” night)
* A night when you can bring something broken, and we will try and fix it (“Shed Fix” night)

Remember, we can make the world a better place one shed at a time.