Day 2321

 I woke up a little after 7 and played games in bed until a little after 8.  Then it was pet stuff and breakfast.  When that was done I went out to the garage.

I had two tasks.  The first was to finished repairing the gun cart.  It didn't take long and the fix looks really good.  The second was to fix the front fence where the deer had bent it all up.  It took a while to find wire to repair the fence.  I knew I had some, but I couldn't remember where.  Eventually I found it and took it out to the front.  I straightened out the fencing as well as I could.  Then I wove some support wire through the top of it and tightened it up.  It looks OK and should stand up.

I went back to the house feeling pretty pleased with myself.  Two tasks down in a short amount of time.  I brought the TRX-4 body with me and started to wire it up.  That took some time, but it went smoothly.  Hooking it up to the car didn't.

The TRX-4 receiver has 5 channels, and I'm using them all.  So getting voltage to the lights was a problem.  The ESC had a 2 wire red/black connection coming out of it.  The instructions didn't mention it.  Neither did any of the online documentation.  I spent lots of time on the web looking.  Eventually I started a chat on the Traxxas website.  The guy said the connector "was for lights".  Great.

The ESC connector was female, so I went out to the well house and got a couple of pins.  I used them to connect to the light connectors.  That's when I discovered that the power is unswitched.  The lights are on whenever a battery is connected.  Crap.  I decided to piggy back one of the servo connectors.  I opened up the receiver box.  That's when I discovered that the receiver has 2 CH1 inputs.  Yeah.  I just connected the lights to the second connector.  I did have to remove the connectors from their housing, fish them into the box, and then reinstall the housing.  It was too tight to do it any other way.

Finally I fished the light wires and secured them.  The whole process took between 2 and 3 hours.  I was no longer feeling proud of accomplishments.  I looked for a timer for the display box online.  Ace, McCoys, and Home Depot didn't have anything appropriate.  Lowe's had one.  I looked on Amazon.  They had one for $6 less, delivered tomorrow.  I didn't feel like driving to Lowe's, so I ordered it.  Counting gas I probably saved $9 or more that way.

Lunch was a salad.  After lunch was surfing.  Lee called while I was surfing.  We set a time for Sunday afternoon to meet.  We're also going to lunch on Monday.  I wish I'd tried to contact him earlier.  He also wants to borrow the trailer.  I told him I'd give him a key.

Time is getting short, so I went out to do some more work.  I got out the pruner and trimmed all of the trees along the driveway.  It should be fairly easy to pull the trailer out.

Ellen worked a little on the new TRX-4 body.  She hand painted some of the bed and masked the side stripes and the tailgate.  She's really getting into it.  After that she watched chick flicks and made chicken and rice for dinner.

I surfed for a while after dinner while Ellen watched more chick flicks.  Eventually the movie was over and we switched to YouTube videos on the TV.