the Walnut Diary

Yesterday I spent working on the Kioti UTV.  Turns out a slightly open overflow bottle connected to the radiator is not a good thing on a vehicle habitually driven through fields.  The anti-freeze was so black that I couldn’t get a reading on the tester.  I couldn’t even tell if it had been green or red.  A trip to the dealer determined that a gallon of green stuff should be in there, along with some water.  The rest of the day I spent flushing out an amazing collection of hayseeds from the radiator, long hoses to the mid engine, and the engine block itself.  It was more soup than tea.

The compressor failure in the shop nearly short-circuited the whole process because I couldn’t get the wheels off the UTV.  My air driven ratchet is a bit enthusiastic, it seems.  Turned out the whole failure was from a pinhole in the hose next to the tool-using end, but the discovery came after I had torn up everything from the compressor, out.  So now there’s a day of cleanup, getting rid of cardboard boxes and old skis.  New hoses are definitely indicated, both to and from the big reel on the ceiling.  Those fittings are larger than the standard variety, so I’ll need to take one off and measure it carefully before heading off to Princess Auto.

It’s hard to believe how many times that hoist lifted and lowered the UTV to a more convenient position over the course of the day.  How do people work on vehicles without a hoist?  Or maybe the lift is a range extender:  it lets one work a longer day before exhaustion.

By dark, after a fifteen minute drive around the area with water only as coolant, the flow from the hoses under the Kioti was running clear from the front and a weak tea from the engine.  I decided it was time to end this process before a misadventure could leave the machine without protection from an overnight freeze.  So I buttoned up, except for the bolt on the top of the engine, under the seat.  It is a hardware-store 1″ bolt serving as a bleeder valve.  Then with a clean funnel I poured in the green liquid.  It burped occasionally, but I got the whole 3.78 litres down the funnel before a little bit of prestone bubbled out onto the top of the engine, at which point I nervously threaded in the bleeder screw and tightened it.  With the engine still warm from its tour of the farm, I poured in another two litres of water (6.3 litres capacity) before the radiator rebelled and burped messily, so I put the cap on and called it a night.  Still nothing in the offending overflow bottle, but a surprising amount of steam rising from the radiator.  Diesels run hot.

While at Feenstra’s Farm Equipment I whined about the difficulty of securing the Kioti Mechron’s air cleaner due to its fastening mechanism. Rob suddenly turned and headed for the shop. “I have one out here.” I followed. Rob demonstrated how tricky it is to fasten the clasps in a tight space. “The thing is to take the whole unit out, assemble it on the bench, and then put it back in. Two hose clips and two 12 mm nuts, and the job is done.” I tried that before starting on the radiator. It worked exactly as he had said it would. A mechanic is much more inclined to solve a problem by removing additional parts than an owner dealing with an unfamiliar machine, but he provided the input I needed to solve a nagging problem.

On a passing note (an immediate update seems inappropriate): In the middle of the flushing fracas yesterday afternoon I heard this godawful noise which sounded like a failing hydraulic pump, but loudly. I looked over to a woodpile my neighbour Bill was loading aboard his truck with my TAFE tractor. I strolled over, noting that the tractor’s engine was off. Bill pointed far up into the sky, where a whirling flock of very large birds kited on the strong breeze, yelling their heads off. “They’re cranes, and from the sound of them I’d say whooping cranes.”

I had never hear a sound like this before, and from so far above that the large birds showed as dots. I had to agree that “whooping” would be a good description for it. I texted another neighbour who is the resident bird watcher. He responded that it’s that flock of fifty sandhill cranes currently spending their days in Patterson’s field, a half-mile south of the shop.