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 15th February 2011.....I have had more mail about my brush with Valentine death than about my Viva's! Just in case people have been worried about my welfare, you need worry no more. I am forgiven. I took home a big box of chocolates last night, fixed the washing machine and got all the phones working again. She also saw her one time hero Marty Pellow on telly last night and I reminder her how bad he looks now, to how good I look now and told her she picked the right man! She is very quiet at the moment!!!!!!!!!!
Weekend 12th February.....Well friends I hope you had a good weekend and you lads didn't forget Valentine's Day on Monday. I written this weeks update slightly differently as it was a funny sort of weekend. First let me tell you about how I coped with Valentine's Day. Stuart reminded me on Friday that it was on Monday so thinking that the flowers would be cheaper, I bought her some and gave them to her. Brownie points for me! But come Monday morning I'd forgot to get a card so I hatched a cunning plan. She keeps all the cards I send her in a box, so I found an old one and gave her that. Clever huh! No because she recognised it! Bugger. Looks like I'm in the doghouse for a few days. Anyway back to Viva things. Saturday morning I was up early and loaded DHR's prop in the estate and headed for Luton. Found the balancer's place but the bloke said the front end would need to be cut off and a new flange welded on. So I've bought it home with me. I might use SHW's as I'll need to have a prop made up for that anyway. I'll speak to spot and see what he says. Back home I managed to get the sheared bolts out of the gearbox and fitted everything back together again. I filled it up with new oil and all seems okay. That was the end of the day and weekend for me. We are changing from Sky to Virgin and the guys turned up to do it and everything was a total cock-up. I woun't go into detail but suffice to say I spent ALL day Sunday getting all six telly's working. Six bloody telly's! There are only three of us living here!
February 6th 2011.....Back up the garage but for the morning only. We're having ALL the family round this afternoon, (14), including Vikki and Ryan so that will be nice. I started to clear up after yesterday and started by lifting the gearbox onto the  bench. As I put it down I noticed that the back section was wobbly! Looking closer I saw two bolts were missing! All the others were loose! I removed one to see if I could find some to match. Then on closer inspection found tha
t they were not missing, the heads had sheared off. It must
have happened when the prop UJ's died. Bugger! I tried to read the book to see how to get the back end off but couldn't figure it out. I need to wait until someone knows how to do it before I go prodding around. That's where all the noise was probably coming from! So after hours reading and getting nowhere I did dig out SHW's gearbox and have started to cean that up. That can go on until I sort DHR's out properly.
February 5th 2011.....I intended to take DHR's prop to be balanced in Luton this morning but then luckily I had a call from Tony who reminded me that I might have been caught up in the marching season in Luton. I thought about making a banner up asking  for equal rights for Viva owners but didn't think I would get much c overage, so stayed away from Luton. I'll do it next Saturday. I had to repair the handle on my mums embossing machine. This involved using the lathe to turn down some metal rod. All went well and it has worked. Back under DHR I struggled but managed to get the exhaust off. This stainless exhaust is a real bugger to remove. Once that was out of the way I managed to undo the hidden bolts for the gearbox and get that off. Next I removed the cable and got four others from my stock to check it by. They all seem to be slightly different  lenghts? Anyway I need to figure out which one will be best, slightly longer or slightly shorter. I checked over the release bearing to see if that was where the noise was coming from but it felt fine. I dug out DHR's old one which looks totally different and slightly bigger. (See pictures). I also spent ages shining up the exhaust which had become covered in ground on oil. It looks great now. No Indian tonight as the in-laws are away so we are doing that tomorrow night instead. Still a nice beer and lamb steak made up for that.
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