Well recovery from the brain surgery has been slow with a couple of setbacks, cerebral fluid moving down the side of my face closing my left eye, that was sorted by literally compression bandaging my face and forcing the fluid back up around the brain........or something like that....for a week! Then I lost the ability to form a sentence and responses to questions were slow along with profound stuttering, wetting my pants became part of everyday life, so visits to a Urologist have started, blood in my urine is caused by lesions on my left kidney, easily sorted with meds. All this in the early days and apparently not unusual, with meds being juggled and changed my voice has recovered and general cognitive abilities are improving almost daily, on the 17th of December I got the all clear from the brain surgeon on the healing process of skull and no internal bleeds, another check on the 1st of July to check skull is knitting back together correctly, all I need now is to jump through the cognitive test hoops on the 13th January with the neurologist to get the epilepsy meds stopped and have my driving privileges returned, despite weird sensations and jabbing pains around my head I feel great.
So to the 80, she has not been driven since the 2nd of September and up until today I have not done anything to her, the last time I was off road was before the Covid outbreak and little things were irritating me, the CB would only transmit when it felt like it, I had never fitted a mic clip and simply dropped the mic into the centre console however, the opening and closing of the lid and of course occasions of me leaning on it had damaged the wiring inside the outer sheath, the sheath was compressed but did not look that bad. So after finding roughly where the break in the cable was, I removed the mic and stripped back the cable and found the damage. But herein lies the problem, the wires are seriously thin, perhaps only 5 or 6 strands of very fine copper! Trying to strip the cable and solder in a piece was just not happening, it was getting uglier the more I tried. I have the jewelers magnifying headset but I shake too much. So I pulled the plug out of the socket on the PCB and cut the socket clear of the four terminals. With more luck than judgement I managed to solder the wires direct to the terminals sticking up out of the PCB. To keep them in place I pressed them flat to the PCB and used a glue gun to give them some mechanical strength, once reassembled all works fine. A couple of years ago I was given a Ram mount base (Thanks Steve), I used copper pipe and soldered fittings to make the arm to carry my mapping tablet which worked great, as using the fittings I was able to get the arm in the perfect place. To save damaging the mic cable I have finally fitted a mic clip.
Next to the drivers side rear window (RHD vehicle). I was following a rough track on my last trip prior to the Covid lock down when suddenly the rear window dropped down with a clunk. When we eventually pulled up I guessed the wheel has come off of the arm that moved the window up and down? Well I decided today (while feeling as good as I did), I stripped out the door panel and the wheel had indeed come out of the track, the motor had also stopped working. With the arm (can't remember what it is normally called) removed form the motor the motor started working. After stripping and cleaning everything and noting the wheel was not badly worn I could see what had caused the wheel to come out of the track. The glass sits in a channel, a rubber gasket holds it in place. I could see over time the channel had moved along the rubber, the rubber itself had remained stuck to the glass. This meant the wheel would run out of track and fall out. The amount the track had moved was barely half an inch but was clearly enough to allow the wheel to come out. So having done those little jobs I feel better for it, the only thing that really bothers me is the inability to stand up from the kneeling position. I have to pull myself up but have no trouble walking, I can now walk around two miles without any ill effects, hoping to improve on that asap along with the getting up from kneeling.
The roof rack is still on the car as the winches never got fitted to the garage roof to lift it off, hopefully that will get sorted asap, of course the solar panel has kept the batteries fully charged and she fired up straight away. The front axle is still waiting for it's overall, but that will have to wait for a little while until I am stronger.
Thanks for reading and keeping up, and may all members and the staff at MUD have a Happy New Year.
Regards
Dave