openspaceman

Which is why they leave a tap running in the post natal ward. With the risk of dehydration and resulting kidney stones I have a dilemma when on track. The younger guys will go all day and not take a drink but I can't manage more than a couple of hours nowadays. If I don't drink I have a raging headache by mid day.

We did much the same to build tree camps on the common, I go back to find the scots pines but they are quite different now 55 years on.

That probably is about used engine oils and oily rags in pockets causing cancer of the scrotum in you mechanics, it's the first recognised industrial cancer discovered in young chimney sweeps as the PICs in engine oil and soot are similar.

Yes iso 32 which is 10W but the hydraulic oils have an antifoaming agent compared with engine oils which have more other additives to deal with combustion products.

I don't know about the future and I wouldn't claim linux is as polished as apple or windows but there is plenty of support, many slugs where one can go and ask a few questions. In fact nowadays I find it just works out of the box, I use mint 17, and the issue with formats seems only to occur when you open certain documents created in windows, there is no problem when creating and printing from open office or libre. There can be some problems with the more esoteric functions in excel as calc doesn't recognise VBA.

All the more reason to go for 47 and MEWP then? My own PI wuld cover the use of the machine at work.

It begins to look like no diesel will meet modern NOx requirements without adblue or some seriously debilitating EGR. Not that I think NOx is a significant problem away from cities, especially in a rainy country.

But why doesn't it cover for commercial use? How much for the IPAF course? I'd advise anyone to get all the certificates they can while still young as it gets too expensive to get a return at my age, of course when I started there were no certificates to be had other than driving licence and after 20st birthday covered me for everything except track laying vehicles.

Sorry Steve I tried

Yes it belongs to the insurance company, they may offer it back to you at a negotiable price before taking it to auction.

Yes or broken up for its component parts, it may be worth tens of thousands to you to replace but the thieves will be happy to sell a kubota engine for a few hundred, wheels and tyres for 20 quid each and wind the rest in as scrap. Having said that one of our contractors noticed a fairly unusual machine in Scotland that was stolen 3 years previously in Wales, it had been re imported by an unwary local arb firm from Holland. With bigger kit it's worth contacting the manufacturer for the original owner or you may end up having it reclaimed. At the time I joined arbsafe I was doing kit inspections (a requirement of our clients' maintenance policy) with potentially hundreds of saws to check plus we had had 5 saws,blowers or strimmers nicked from trucks on site in the year. When I asked to upload the firm's kit I was told not to as there was no commercial advantage. To my mind this was a poor decision as even though most kit gets sold into the black economy just removing the temptation to use stolen kit by our contractors lessens the market for stolen kit. You can never prevent theft but you can make fencing the gear less attractive.

I was climbing in the 70s when the "best" climbers went up with just a lanyard as a strop, not wanting to be burdened with a rope. Coming from a rock climbing background I quickly took to the doubled rope technique and prussic knot but I was never better than competent. Looking at the young guys now many of them are far more agile, fit and adept than I ever was, even allowing for better equipment. My former boss who held a superintendent position in the arb departmentt of a large public garden from around 1985 agrees with me. Climbing isn't everything about running an arb business though, it always amazed me that the people that ran the business I did work for couldn't do any of the simplest tasks, like use a saw or strimmer, but did have the advantage of being teflon coated.

I am wondering about hiring a small tracked mewp for painting the soffits and bargeboads on the house, It will probably be next year so I can do my hedges from it too. What qualifications do the hirers ask for or is a simple familiarisation at the hirer's adequate. In the distant past I just used to rock up with the 110 hitch up to the nifty lift at the hire place and go but have things changed? i.e. have there been changes in legislation other than H&S at work requirement for training and competency and PUWER and LOLER for maintenance?

Presumably it needs the downward force of the digger so no good with a 3 point linkage auger?

I've repaired similar damage on an ally fuel tank with woven fibreglass and epoxy resin that's lasted 20 years of occasional use, may not pass a safety audit on rail or ua work but fine for domestic.. The main thing is getting the oil off with solvent and once the resin starts going off use a blow dryer on low heat. I'm contemplating using carbon fibre and epoxy next time. I've done the same with the plastic oil tank on a pole saw that was gnawed through by mice after the veggie oil inside.

I'm with Dempsey and your sentiment but the US is not bankrupt, no one to bankrupt it, it's just running on credit from the rest of the world. BTW those of you old enough will remember how the screwed UK down in the Atlantic treaty which took some paying back, nothing altruistic about american governments.

Is there a private testing service for this disease aimed at ageing hypochondriacs? Did the child get bitten by a tick and infect the rest of the familly?

I stripped the clutch today and the problem was blindingly obvious, I should easily have noticed that it had been robbed of two clutch springs. Seems to work fine now but no sign of weakness, holds a steady 13400 rpm on high idle. just needs a bit of logging to make sure it's ready to go back out.

Yes I checked continuity and the gap, as I said earlier I think it's a mechanical problem as I can get it running with a really sharp pull and it will run on part throttle to full, no tickover.I'm only recently acquainted with these small stratified charge Stihls but back in the day you had to spin a Husky at above 400rpm before it would generate a spark and the Stihl is probably similar, so with a bit of drag in the motor and my feeble pulls I was probably not getting it fast enough. The saw, though only 18 months old had been dumped on me with loads of bits missing. My guess it had an air leak and seized so rather than admit a problem it was left in a van and bits borrowed from it. I'll play with it again at the weekend, check around the oil pump for bearing problems and clean the carb,

I changed the coil without much better success, however I don't think the coil is the problem but it was the fact I was unable to spin the engine over fast enough. With chain and bar off and a very fast pull it fires but won't tickover. I'm guessing a problem with the clutch side bearing again.

Yes, done that on the HT side 2kOhm resistance, Any idea on what it should be on the low tension side between switch and earth? Yes this is my next step

In the early 90s I ran a woodmizer for a friend while he was earning a fortune abroad. We didn't run it regularly but only when we had a bespoke order (oak beams for barns) and on a dayrate for punters with fallen trees in their garden ( I wasn't much good for this as I tried to explain to people they would probably end up with wood they would never use but... Anyway we quickly learned that we couldn't sell many gravel boards or shelves so went for the biggest cut to the required baulk and then the slab was big enough to be processed mixed in with firewood.

Apart from pulling the plug out and earthing it and pulling the starter are there any other checks for ignition coil problems. I have a ms261 which was lightly seized but ran briefly when I got hold of it and replaced bits of clutch and starter, maybe twice for 3 seconds. Now with new rings it will not spark at all. I have removed the earth lead to the on/off switch. I have measured 2kOhm from plug lead through coil to earth so there is some continuity.

Are these common to all the Huskies that use the side sealing as a one way air valve? They don't seem to stay fuel tight for long, Husqvarna did have a replacement green one that may have been slightly larger??