Recycling: then and now
August 24, 2008
Mom left a flyer on our counter announcing Hazardous Waste Day at the Toledo recycling depot. New to life in the country, I didn’t quite know what to expect, but I dutifully loaded up a utility trailer with the items listed.
Saturday morning, bright and early, I headed off to Toledo with my load. A late email from a neighbour led to a stop at his garage to unload most of the used oil for the farm’s machine shop furnace.
With the remainder of my hazardous waste I turned in to the garage at Toledo, only to find no one around. Wrong day? Wrong garage? Cell phones are made for this: I called Mom. She checked the address and called me back. Turn towards Brockville, not Smiths Falls.
Off I went. Then I saw it, this incredible lineup of cars and pickups, stretching back toward Brockville from the township building. I pulled to the right, approached the end of the line and did a u-turn to join the queue on the opposing shoulder. The three vehicles behind me did the same.
And there we sat. Over the course of the next hour and a half my line-mates and I inched ahead: it was likely two month’s worth of grinding on the truck’s starter before the line had wound its way along the highway, in between the nice ladies with vests and clipboards at the gate, then all the way back around the salt shed and out to the unloading area. I kept thinking of how nicely a hybrid would work in this kind of stop-and-go traffic. Can a Toyota Prius pull a trailer?
When they got their turn, the graying drivers hustled about, dropping off paint cans and batteries, used oil and superannuated propane tanks. A host of workers clad in vests helped unload the vehicles. Everyone was polite, but they wasted no time on chat.
Things were a lot different at the good old Westport Dump when we were kids. I used to love The Dump, the wild west of Westport. You could slide anything down that hill that you could physically roll out of a truck, and if you went home with other treasures gathered in exchange, nobody minded.
Target shooting at The Dump was not particularly frowned upon. I remember Don Goodfellow, Bob Conroy, John Wing and I spent one soggy March-break afternoon up there with John’s .22 and a couple of boxes of shells. As the afternoon plinking session wore on, John’s failure to clean his gun complicated things slightly. The rifle was one of those French semi-automatics which starts with the action open, picks up a shell when the trigger is pulled, loads it into the barrel and discharges the round all in one motion. Too much accumulated lead in the barrel prevented a shell from loading, but it fired anyway from the impact. The shrapnel blew out of the side of the gun and startled the marksman of the moment, but fortunately the rest of us were standing behind the shooter as our dads had taught us. Still, it was a lesson well learned. I think it was Don who reamed the breech of the rifle out with a nail file and we shot on until the ammo ran out.
The dump was a place of privacy and lawlessness where one could unload his truck and then, if he wanted, break the windows out of a recently abandoned hulk slid down the embankment. Strangely enough, I don’t recall any of us ever doing that. We preferred to shoot ketchup bottles.
What a change today when I drive into the Portland Recycling Site. It’s a crowd scene like at Toledo, with Subarus and Hondas jousting their way through the line just the way they do in downtown Ottawa at rush hour. Same cars, same drivers, no doubt. Serious people mechanically totter to the various bins, do their business, then rush away.
Even four years ago it was different. I’ll never forget the two smartly-uniformed young women who ran the place the summer we cleaned out the stone house. I immediately dubbed them the Dump Divas, and after one carefully made-up young lady complimented me on my trailer-packing, conceived an absurd desire to please them with gifts of old rockers, 3-legged tables, a pair of seats out of a long-gone Chrysler van, and other such treasures. I’ll never forget this one poor girl in spotless black uniform, perfect hair and makeup, shined black shoes – up to her ankles in some noxious goo oozing out of the pile of effluent behind her as she helped us unload our trailer. She was obviously determined to do a professional job, regardless of the circumstances, but my heart went out to her. Maybe a little law and order at the landfill site is a good idea, after all.
Anyway, the Toledo toxic-waste experience took the better part of a morning, but my half-pail of white lead, my expired epoxy, and even my 33-year-old unopened pail of Styrofoam adhesive have gone wherever recycled chemicals go, and I hope they won’t come back in a toy easily ingested by a future grandchild.
Andrew Willows: best wishes from a former teacher
August 18, 2008
Dear Andrew:
About ten years ago we sat down for an interview at Carleton Place
High School to work out a topic for your OAC English independent
study project. I asked you the standard, slightly joking question:
“What do you want to do when you grow up?”
You told me then that you planned to paddle in the Olympic Games, and
were already training for the task. I knew better than to smile at
this lofty ambition, because a few years before you a young man named
Gerry Townend answered the same question by telling me that he planned to become an athletic therapist for a professional sports team. Gerry went on to a distinguished career with the Toronto Argonauts and now with the Ottawa Senators.
As you may recall, your independent study project involved preparing a
written report on the training schedule of an athlete, and delivering
a seminar to the class based upon this material. I’m not very good at
graphs and calendars, so the written portion of the report was too technical for me to understand, but the oral presentation was very well received by everyone. Hey, the purpose of the independent study was to get a chunk of what you needed to know over the next few years. Your presentation and your personality convinced everyone in the room that it’s hard work to be an elite athlete, but that you were maintaining the commitment to succeed at it.
Last winter I found the series of articles you wrote for the Gananoque Reporter, and now I have happened upon your blog, Bound for BEIJING. http://blog.canoe.ca/willows/
Your account of last month’s visit to Delta Fair amused me. Judging a calf show wouldn’t have been that big a stretch for a good Leeds County boy, though I would have enjoyed watching you in that role. Celebrity contestant Catherine Beuthe had quite a gleam in her eye in the photo which appeared on the cover of the Review Mirror on July 31. But you still picked Kevin Grimes as the winner — all because he knew how to lead a calf? Ah, duty.
I’m particularly touched by your grandma’s letter and Kim’s enthusiastic notes. I won’t try to quote them here, but I encourage everyone to read the blog to understand the depth of the Olympic experience. Its roots go back three generations and affect every community, little or big, where the athlete has lived and grown.
My computer still has a directory titled “Andrew” from your winter in Florida where you trained with Graham Barton and attended my English class by email and audio tape. We were glad to get you back after your two months in the sun.
I seem to recall reading a quote from you describing your time at the Athens Olympics as an apprenticeship for the real job, the Beijing Games in 2008.
And now you’re there.
Andrew, I really hope you and Richard win gold. If anybody can be a role model for young Canadians and aspiring paddlers around the world, it’s you.
Mr. C.
A Wedding
August 11, 2008
The tiny nest sits on our kitchen counter, three mottled blue eggs in its midst. My wife plans to give it a niche in a beam above the new kitchen. Removing a bird’s nest from a wedding to one’s home is a powerful good luck charm for the new couple, so several dozen of these nests will make their way around North America in the next few days as the guests return home.
This week Bet and I drove down Hwy 81 to Reading, Pennsylvania to attend the wedding of Matt Stutzman and his bride Laura. The garden ceremony came as the culmination of a year of work by our friends Tom and Kate in preparing their home for a large tent, catering crew, 125 guests, and a dozen or so rambunctious children turned loose to roam the grounds.
Do-it-yourselfers like a challenge. In their younger days Tom and Kate raided stone fences on their property to select material to wheel to the masons who built the enormous end walls of their house. Long timbers joined the gap to create the frame. They had asked their architect for a building to match the style of the late-1600’s Pennsylvania deal barn which already stood on the property. Like many projects of its type the house had hung at the almost-completed stage for many years. It took a wedding to finish it up.
When their son Matt announced his engagement to Dr. Laura Bamford, the family decided that the stone patio behind the house would be the place to hold it, so Tom installed shades above the area to soften the light for the afternoon ceremony. This involved much rigging to attach the cables to trees, chimneys, and so on. The overall effect proved quite magical, and as the August sun moved obediently into position, the plan came together.
Following the brief civil ceremony the guests moved past the cabana to the tent for the reception. As the speeches proceeded, many eyes wandered to the chefs at work in an adjoining tent. The salmon and salads were fine and the service impeccable.
The family standard poodle had circulated among the wedding guests during the event, drawing cameras like a magnet wherever she went. You can’t take a bad picture of a dog. On a leash for the meal she nodded off to my ear rubs, only to awake suddenly, discover all these invaders in her back yard, and utter a series of bewildered barks. Kate reassured her so she settled down, but I made sure she didn’t go to sleep again.
From that point on the evening proceeded in much the manner of such celebrations, the music and the merriment drowning out the persistent drone of locusts in the trees and the occasional splash of a largemouth bass from the pond on the property.
What most amazed me about life outdoors in the Reading area was the complete absence of biting insects. We were weekend guests of Vicky and John Friedman, whose estate lies just down the road from the Stutzman acres. I spent two afternoons reclining next to their pool in what I must admit is the finest outdoor reading spot I have encountered. The only insects were a rabble of butterflies around the flowers which ringed the pool. I almost missed my usual outdoor companions, the deer flies of rural Ontario….no, I guess I didn’t.
They certainly have nice trees in this area of Pennsylvania. The silver maple, the spruce, and the pair of pin oaks which in their turn shaded my deck chair were all well over 100 feet above my head. The property also boasts a double-brick gazebo with fireplace, chandelier, casement windows and a large poker table. John told me that the previous owner during the 1930’s had two masons who lived and worked full-time on the property. The many stone walls which line the driveways and terrace the slopes date from this time.
Bet and I found the temperature comfortable, with daytime highs of about 76 degrees throughout our stay. Apparently we had arrived during a cold snap: the previous week had been “stinking hot” in the recollection of everyone with whom we spoke, with temperatures reaching 95 degrees during the day.
The newlyweds are now off to Vancouver for a while. Tom and Kate plan to rest and recuperate at their cottage on Scott Island this week, so you will probably find Tom puttering around the Westport lumber yard or the Elgin plumbing store, looking for that one part which will make his latest cottage project come together. I’m sure Kate will be on her dock, book in hand, with a soggy poodle at her feet.
Cruising on the Rideau
August 2, 2008
It’s been three years since I’ve traveled any distance on the Rideau, so I jumped at the chance when my pal Tony needed crew to take his boat from Chaffey’s to Merrickville for an engine replacement.
Running on one engine in a twin-engined cruiser is never easy. Tony and Anne’s Sea Ray, The Big Chill, is 13 feet across at the transom with the propellers spread wide, so controlling the monster in a lock with the only power in the right rear corner is definitely an acquired taste. Further, the control station is nine feet up a narrow ladder to the upper deck, so about all the captain can do is drive the boat and occasionally shout encouragement to others below.
On the other hand we had a good crew consisting of fifteen-year-old Sean, who had grown up on the boat, veteran skipper Tony, and your scribe, who has spent many a summer day on the waterway.
The old adage holds that the amount of paint the vessel’s hull loses in the first lock is in direct proportion to the number of captains aboard, so I worked hard to play the role of crewman only, and the lockages at Newboro and the Narrows went well, aided by very helpful lock crews aware of our plight.
At the Narrows a group of young teenagers packing up after an overnight stay used an innovative method to cram their equipment into the large carry-all sacks for the canoes. The two tallest girls stood on either side of each bag and another added kit. The smallest girl in the group balanced on top of the inflow of tents, sleeping bags and such, tamping everything down with vigorous jumps, while relying on the shoulders of her stanchions for support. I may be telling this badly, but it was one of the funniest things I have seen in some time.
The owner of the large yacht beside us confided that one year he and his wife ran the entire triangle – Montreal to Kingston, Kingston to Ottawa, Ottawa to Montreal – on a single engine rather than retreat home after an early failure.
The Big Rideau offered 2 ½ hours of leisurely sight-seeing. We cruised close to the north shore to enjoy the architecture and landscape.
I called ahead to Poonamalee and the crew assured me that the way was clear, so we glided down the narrow channel into one of the prettiest, most welcoming locks on the system. Then it was down the river to the Detached Lock in Smiths Falls, where they let us through the gates and lowered the water, but told us there’d be a delay until the electrican fixed the swing bridge. We had no sooner started lunch than the lock guys let us know that the gates and the bridge were open: would we care to move ahead?
I’ve always claimed the most fun in boating is to wave to the line of motorists waiting at swing bridges on a holiday weekend, and this was no exception. It’s a cruel pleasure, but still fun.
At the Combined Lock I shook hands with my former student Tony Gunn. The seasonal staff gaped at me when I told them this. I guess we both looked older than Methuselah to them.
Old Sly’s is often the trickiest lockage on the system. This year things went very well until we were leaving the bottom lock. Confused by a large patch of weeds, this crewman didn’t fend off the wall firmly enough, and that left Tony no alternative but to brush the lock gate on the way out. Then we encountered a boat broadside in the channel, forcing Tony to stop. With no water flowing over the rudder, the stop left him with little control of the vessel, so much confusion ensued until we got past the three oncoming boats in the confined area and Tony was able to regain steerageway.
Then the engine overheated. It had picked up something from that floating mass in the lock, so we had to idle most of the way to Edmund’s while they held the lock for us.
We docked outside a lock for the first time on the trip at Kilmarnok while an upward-bound vessel came through, then we were on the home stretch, all eyes on the temperature gauge, for the long run to Merrickville.
The engine held, and a call ahead again had the lock gates open and waiting, though in this case Tony had to squeeze us in behind The Rideau King, a tour boat operating out of Ayling’s. It was a tight fit.
The upper lock was warm, but with a nice breeze. The lower locks were an inferno of dead air and oppressive heat. The three staff down there seemed in the later stages of heat prostration after a hard day. Two weren’t wearing hats. I felt for them, but with a sudden crosswind and the crowded lock, they still had to be very much on the ball. Things went well, increasingly because of the alert crewing of Sean at the stern, and we pulled into Ayling’s to greet old friends and deliver the boat for a replacement engine.
The Rideau’s an exquisitely beautiful waterway. Each lock is a unique community and the Parks Canada crew couldn’t have been more helpful to us on this difficult voyage.
Lo and behold, a whole bunch of antique cars
July 29, 2008
I was driving out the lane this afternoon when I looked across the valley to Forfar and saw an awful lot of cars stopped along the road. Curious, I wandered down. The Antique and Classic Car Club of Canada, Kingston chapter, had stopped for an ice cream break.
Please click Antique Cars in Forfar in the column on the right to view the photos. The Auburn and the Cadillac 8 by themselves are worth the look.
Summer Reads
July 29, 2008
A tall pine overhanging a dock, a comfortable reclining chair, a glass of something cold, and a soggy dog asleep at one’s feet. Anything missing? The book. Where’s the book?
Few pastimes in summer are as pleasant as an hour or two spent with a book under a favourite tree. Of course the attempt to match an unseen reader to a list of books brings to mind the futility of installing a set of roof racks on a boiled egg, but it doesn’t pay to let one’s reading list go stale from a lack of innovation, so here’s an attempt.
First I should mention the books which won’t do for dock-side reading. In the summer of 1974, Jaws made everyone stay out of the water. Speedo almost went bankrupt. By definition this does not make for a good summer book. Others are merely too delicious to put aside, and I tend to devour them the evening they arrive. Karl Hiassen’s novels lead this category for me. I reread his list about every two years. Double Whammy, a satire of pro bass fishing tournaments, stands out.
Elmore Leonard’s novels don’t keep, either. The same goes for Ken Follett, but I can recommend Pillars of the Earth, a historical novel about the emergence of a medieval village in England, as well as his spy novels.
The stories of Patrick McManus carried me through many a slack time in English class. McManus’s second novel Avalanche is currently available in bookstores. The retired professor and columnist for Outdoor Life and Field and Stream has a very light touch when it comes to sex, but the passage where the hero must carry an immobile but unembarrassed young woman clad only in a bedsheet up a cliff before a rising flood stands out as one of the more amusing chapters I have read since hitting middle age.
The list of books which will keep for summer begins with the novels of John LeCarre. I have always found his books hard to start, but very satisfying, once read. Single and Single had somehow escaped my notice until this month, but went down well.
My wife brought me home some books by Henry Porter, and I agree that he seems to have inherited the mantle from LeCarre as this generation’s master of the spy novel. A Spy’s Life (2001) is a good place to start.
Bet’s current favourite is Ian Rankin, a young British crime writer. I overheard her comment in a bookstore this week: “He’s young, so he should have a quite a few more good ones left in him.” She’s letting me read her copy of Witch Hunt at the moment.
Guy books:
Neal Stephenson’s novels. Start with Snow Crash, an action-packed skateboard epic, or Cryptonomicon, a novel about the development of the first computer for code breaking based upon a pipe organ and driven by steam. It’s a great big guy book.
In the sneakily funny Virtual Light, Vancouver writer William Gibson concentrates upon a reality television program Cops in Trouble, private security companies, wacko religious cults, and his series heroine, Chevette, who is a very engaging bicycle messenger and cat burglar.
Books women made me read:
Don Coyote, by Dayton O. Hyde. This book is about coyotes, but the American Library Association in 1989 named it one of the ten best books of the decade. I was astounded at how good a read it was.
A classmate insisted that I buy Edward Rutherfurd’s Sarum: A Novel of British History. I’d always avoided historical novels, but once started I very much liked it. London and The Forest are outstanding reads, as well
The Blind Assassin. Margaret Atwood tells a complex and deceptive story in this difficult but hugely entertaining read. It’s set in upper class Ontario (yachts, mansions and factories) between the wars.
The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje. Wonderful book. The nurse is a well- developed and thoroughly loveable character. The Indian bomb-disposal engineer offers an intelligent, non-European perspective on the war which puts the bombing of Hiroshima into an entirely different context. Hollywood wasted a movie gushing about the Raphe Finnes and Kristin Scott Thomas affair, but the French-Canadian nurse and the Indian engineer are the heart of the novel.
Jose Saramango won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998 for Blindness. He earned the award. This is one of the best novels I have ever read, but it is not for the squeamish.
Roz contributed these non-fiction selections:
In The Song of the Dodo David Quammen gives a historical account of how islands (and the weird animals that live on them, like lemurs and komodo dragons) have contributed to our understanding of speciation and extinction, while recounting his own journeys to Madagascar, Indonesia, and the Galapagos to witness island biogeography for himself. This is a popular science book that is certainly entertaining enough for the dock. Another good one by Quammen that she finished recently is The Reluctant Mr. Darwin.
Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food deals with the problems with the modern western diet, and how the processed food industry figured out how to use nutrition science for profit at the expense peoples’ health.
UPDATE: Bet’s been at it again. This time she brought me Leaven of Malice, by Robertson Davies. It won the 1954 Leacock Humour Award. Set in and around a small-town newspaper editor’s office, the plot concerns a spurious announcement of the engagement of two prominent citizens and the libel action which follows. I would not have picked this book up on my own, but it proved once again that intelligence and wit don’t go out of style. The book is as funny as a Hiassen novel, only with more agreeable characters.
Alternatives to oil
July 20, 2008
The wind generator overlooking Rideau Lumber in Smiths Falls waves to me each morning as I turn left at the stop sign. It’s a very nice-looking piece of equipment, and would likely make a fine toy. This week I asked about it and received a brochure. Then I noticed a console on the wall in the office. “Does that meter show the generator’s output? Could I please look?” The girl at the counter let me pass, and I sneaked in to satisfy my curiosity. There the readout blinked: 137 watts.
This was in a gentle breeze. The blades were spinning quickly enough that they were a blur, but not invisible. 137 watts. 1 1/3 shop-sized light bulbs. Enough to run this computer and leave a little for a reading light. Of course if I used the new bulbs I could run ten of them at that rate, or charge up the batteries on an electric golf cart. For $15,000. Hmmm.
Anyone can tell you there’s a great deal of power in the sun. My mother has that nailed with a very simple solar collector for water. She runs a hose from the well into a 250 gallon plastic tank, allows the water to warm up, then siphons it down to her flowers. The energy gain on a summer day is quite amazing.
Solar collectors on a roof can be a real back-breaker in winter, though. Seems a snow-covered panel on a roof doesn’t collect any energy, and a trip up to clean the thing off can prove downright dangerous.
This week I happened upon a Swedish manual for adapting engines to wood gas. Most non-military vehicles which saw use in Europe during WWII used wood gas as fuel. The Swedes have kept working on this technology ever since, as they have lots of wood and no secure oil reserves. The online manual explains the case for wood gasification: wood gases, properly extracted, produce quite a bit of power, and the process doesn’t deprive anyone of food. Wood gas can be readily fed into the carburetor of a gasoline engine, and even alternated with diesel in bi-fuel applications. The fuel cost savings are phenomenal.
The downside is a steep learning curve, potential catastrophic explosions, long setup times, short engine life, poisonous gas production, tar and ash buildup, heavy labour, constantly dirty working conditions, and the difficulty of transporting a supply of firewood in or on one’s vehicle or implement. The furnace to produce the wood gas is not small or light, either, effectively ruling out golf cart applications.
What stopped me was the budget for the project. When done by a government, it cost about $11,000 to convert a mid-sized tractor or heavy truck to wood fuel.
I wondered what a hobbyist could do with scrap materials and duct tape, though, so I looked up wood-gas engines on YouTube. The ensuing afternoon of viewing went quickly. What struck me about the films was how well the guys worked together, and how happy they were in making anew something that had worked out of necessity a generation before.
They were having so much fun I immediately wanted to join the crews. These guys are the sorts who get a kick out of drilling a 1 ½” hole into the side of a Ford two-barrrel carburetor so that they can fit a new tube into it. It worked, too. The camera car couldn’t keep up with the modified pickup during a demonstration on public roads.
Then there were the four guys in the old Volvo who towed a trailer loaded with their bags of wood blocks through their test cycles. They did some impressive plumbing and sheet-metal work on that car.
One guy methodically explained how his 8 hp engine can run an automotive alternator to charge a battery and then produce usable household electricity through an inverter. He had the engine running like a top, though at one point in the startup process he used his hand as a carburetor to control the gas flow.
Producer gas is basically the mixture of methane, carbon monoxide and hydrogen which is produced from the heating of wood. It needs to be filtered before it gets to the engine, else the tar and water vapour buildup will shorten the engine’s life. The engineering of the filters seems to get the most You-Tube attention.
One of the films showed a series of photos of 1940’s producer-gas powered cars. Most furnaces were installed where the trunk used to be. Some had the furnace and condenser neatly fitted into the coachwork. The most interesting shot was undoubtedly the one of the elegantly-attired young woman standing on a rear fender of a fine automobile, reaching down into the firebox with a poker.
At first I thought the idea of powering an engine with wood was ridiculous, but after watching the YouTube films, I think I might like to try it. My wife is not keen on this idea.
What are you reading this summer?
July 20, 2008
I need your help in preparing next week’s column for The Review Mirror on books for dockside reading. Please pick a good one from your summer stack and let me know in a comment below. Feel free to add other titles which fit the bill, as well.
Thanks,
Rod
BTW: I guess I should mention that I have just finished Single and Single, the 1999 John Le Carre novel I had somehow missed when it came out, and am currently halfway through Ernest Langford’s Chombuk. Printed posthumously in 2007, it seems to be a Canadianized rewrite of Swift’s The Voyage to Lilliput. Its humour is as gross as the original’s, and the satire is fairly light and gentle, as well. Stealing a page from Lolita, another voice offers comments in the persona of the main character’s aggrieved ex-wife, who sounds very much like Mary Walsh’s Marge Delahunte. I predict that Chombok will be banned from school libraries with great fanfare as soon as it catches on.
See UPDATE(s) below.
Why would you care? It makes a difference to the parts guys at Toyota, so check the label on the door post where the VIN number is listed. If it mentions Toyota California there, you have a California model.
What difference does it make? This week my engine light went off, so I asked the neighbouring service station to read the code. P1135 in the generic codes means a floor mat sensor with an intermittent short. That didn’t sound right, so I checked further on the list, and surely enough, Toyota has its own codes. The error message has to do with the fuel flow sensor on the exhaust manifold before the catalytic converter. It’s no longer just an oxygen sensor, as it provides tiny adjustments to the injectors as they work, and it has a pre-heater. It connects with four wires instead of the one or two of the earlier models.
When my mechanic friend called to order the part, the Toyota guy was confused. They only list one sensor for non-California trucks, and it goes on after the cat. So the parts guy sent my friend one of them. It doesn’t fit, of course. The correct one costs, with discounts, $260 before taxes rather than the $230 for the wrong one. This is still better than the NKG model which is $435 plus taxes for the wrong one. On some items OEM parts are cheaper than aftermarket for Toyotas.
I hope this doesn’t turn into a multi-part saga.
THE SAGA ENDS:
The correct part went on tonight, and as the book predicted, after the third start/stop cycle the light went out by itself. I hooked up my new code reader and erased the P1135 code, after which the reader showed a big “0” in the errors area. The part came to about $285 CDN with taxes and mechanic’s discounts.
My friend is a GM mechanic, and he remains impressed by the quality of Toyota parts. This time one of the nuts on the sender was stripped enough that the wrench fell off it. A pair of vice grips freed it up and he twisted it off with his fingers, though. He said Toyota and Honda seem to use better-quality studs and nuts than do the North American builders, so instead of replacing the whole exhaust pipe, he only had to change the sender.
ULP! ANOTHER CODE!
This one was P0441: Evaporative Emission Control System Incorrect Purge Flow. I tightened the gas cap and erased the code to see what would happen. It stayed off, though my Innova 1003 code reader still flashed amber on the entire evaporative emission control system. Several contributors on the Tundra forum had suggested checking for cracked or loose hoses, but I dismissed this as unlikely in this case.
I decided to drive the truck a bit to see what happened. It sounded a bit rough at start-up, so I popped the hood. A hose from the air cleaner had come loose, right where it joins to the fixed line behind the radiator. Everything seemed fine once I had put the hose back on. After an hour’s read about the foibles of Toyota evaporative cannisters and the evil of topping up the fuel tank, I had reason to feel grateful to the various deities of machinery for giving me a miss this time.
AND ANOTHER ONE!
This time it was PO441 and PO446. That’s a little more serious. I crawled under and found the evaporative system and started wiggling hoses and tugging wires. One wire connector seemed a little crusy and two clamps disintegrated at my touch. Firm tugs couldn’t dislodge the hoses, however, so I zeroed the codes and hoped for the best.
AGAIN???
On the morning we headed off on a trip, PO441 came on. When we stopped to drop off the dog I zeroed the code and checked the gas cap. Surely enough, the attendant hadn’t tightened it. Sixteen hours of interstate driving over three days and everything is fine (so far).
UPDATE, 21 February, 2013
With the change in emissions testing protocols in Ontario I approached last month’s test with some trepidation. For earlier sessions I had simply kept the P0441 code zeroed with my reader and driven through clean. But the new system doesn’t sniff the exhaust at all: it examines the computer’s records.
So I took it to a high-volume oil-change and emissions test station in Kingston, Ontario. In it went. The tech hooked up, checked it, rechecked it, took a picture of the dash, checked it again, and drove it out of the garage. He brought in the work order, told me it had passed, and disappeared into the cab of the next vehicle.
So P0441 still occurs regularly, especially in warm weather. I have the truck up on our hoist frequently but I can’t find any hoses disconnected or leaking, so I guess carrying a code reader is part of the cost of owning this truck. The only way the fault affects its performance is that it is often hard to start the thing after I fill the tank. I have to be very careful with the throttle when cranking and then take care to get underway without idling for the first minute of operation.
A couple of months ago my son borrowed the Tacoma to make a 14 hour round trip run to New Jersey to pick up a 19′ aluminum car hauler. No problem at all. His only complaint is that at 3500 pounds towing capacity, the Tacoma can’t tow his Porsche 968 on the trailer. He had to buy a Suburban to do that.
the Walnut Diary 