Finally Ready!

Ready to go!!

 With the nice weather we are having the ice formation has deteriorated to a slow crawl putting a lot of pressure on some of the better lakes up north like Red Lake, my usual first destination with the Salem Ice Cabin.  Last winter, our trip to Lake of the Woods proved to be difficult for moving around as my wheel stayed up when I jacked the house up.  Luckily my friend Ben had a propane torch and by heating the pivot axle it came down and we were good.  the gave enough time to get it fixed over the summer........well you know how that often goes as procrastination is one's enemy.  Having the time to fix the worst side before the October snow  yet failing to get the other side done, it was obvious that this task is too big for one guy.  My friend Bruce offered to let me pull it into his heated shop and would help me so that's what we did last Friday.  Besides breaking a tail light backing in, Mark Applen who has a house just like mine, joined in on the task of pulling the axle pivot off to clean it, grease it and put it back together.  Not that 2 of us could not have done this but it soon became obvious that the 3rd guy made it happen. With a lot of work we had the wheel assembly off in about 30 minutes, now the work began, cleaning all that hardened grease from the assembly. Having the right tools makes a huge difference as we used power brushes to clean the big stuff off, special round brushes to clean the inside, and a special saw to cut a grove from the grease zerk across the face to help channel grease to the entire length of the axle, which was the initial problem in the first place, the grease would only go one way leaving 2/3rds of the axle with no grease.  It's a heavy duty axle but the grease system is not the best.  In addition, while fixing the right side, the grease zerk fell out so I bought some replacements.  Trying to install the replacement zerk, the 1/4 inch tread just fit into the hole, in other words the factory simply drilled a smaller than the thread hole then pounded them in.  This wasn't right so it forced me to go back to the auto parts store to get the next largest threaded zerk, an 8mm x 1.0 metric.  Then to the hardware store to get a metric tap and the appropriate drill, which they didn't have. The tap needed a 7mm drill, I had something close in inches so it would have to do.  The tap was hard to get through but it worked beautifully.  At the time I didn't think about putting a second grease zerk in the middle of the axle to make sure grease gets everywhere but when we had the left side off I bought the right drill size and put in the new zerk.  Admittedly the tapping went easier now I had the right hole!  Anyway we finished the job, now just to install the new tail light lens and I am set to go!  It sure is nice to have great friends when you need them as I know it would have been difficult to do this myself.  And to send it out to get fixed would have been $500 minimum.  I can buy a lot of Crown Royal for that!!!  Thanks guys!

Milwaukee M18 grease gun.

One of the things that I make sure to do every year is to grease everything.  Adding grease to these axles can be difficult as the zerk is in an awkward place and to hold the hose and pump the gun takes a certain amount of coordination.  For this I purchased a Lock N Lube, locking grease hose tip to grab onto the xerk so your 2 hands are left to pump.  This worked OK but can prove to be a mess if it's not locked on.  Bruce had this Dewalt battery powered grease gun and it was the cat's meow!  Although most of my battery stuff is Milwaukee (must be my Wisconsin Heritage showing!) a quick search and they had one just like it for my M18 series stuff.  It's pretty good stuff as in my collection is a 1/2 inch drill, 3/8 inch impact driver, circular hand saw, brad nailer, hedge trimmer, and a hacksaw/reciprocating saw.  They all work great and it's pretty impressive the amount of time you can get off a battery.  So the grease gun comes in on Monday and of course who needs to read the instructions........right.  I pull out the plunger and lock it into place,  unscrew the cap and insert the grease cartridge.  So far so good.  The greas cartridge has a aluminum top that you pull off by the tab, got that done.  Well I could not screw the end back on.  Completely dumbfounded it sat till the morning when I called Milwaukee's techical service, of course they don't know much.  This is so frustrating as I've had grease guns forever!!  A quick call to Bruce and explained what I did, he said you have to unscrew the barrel and insert the grease tube in from the other end............DUHH.  Grease is messy to begin with but after getting reset, it works like a charm as it's supposed to, now that I have the cartridge inserted properly, it works great.  After cleaning it up it's ready to go.

So the latest situation on Red Lake is tenuous at best.  This warmer weather has slowed the ice development however the latest word is that trucks are parking on the ice along shore as well, they are allowing ATV's out to the crack that usually develops 1/2 mile out then one has to walk about 2 miles to the deeper water to find the fish.  Friends claim that last Saturday the DNR were kicking people off because they were worried there were getting to many people on the lake.  By Christmas things should be back to normal and hopefully will be getting out within the next 2 weeks.  Either way I am getting anxious to get out.