Getting The Yard Ready (Spring Is Here !)

Spring is a beautiful time of year. The birds start singing, trees flower and the days are warmer. To help mother nature, we cleanup the yard, rake the leaves and twigs, till the garden and flower beds and rejuvenate the lawn. To help the flower beds requires cutting new edges and putting down fresh bark mulch. To help the lawn requires dethatching the dead grass and raking up the debris. Afterwards you fertilize with weed control and hope it rains enough to keep the grass healthy. Where I live in Wilmington, MA there are water restrictions with only hand held watering hoses before 9AM and after 5PM.

Before using the lawn tractor to dethatch the lawn, I took it out of the shed and put back the battery which I take out for winter storage. I then changed the oil, oil filter, gas filter and spark plug. This year, I also had to replace the spark plug wire clip that rusted and broke off. See photos at the link below……
http://picasaweb.google.com/markryan312/Lawnmower141609

I also changed the oil on two lawnmowers and a snow blower while I had the time. You can get rid of the old oil by returning it to a recycle center or wait for your town to have a recycling day. See the web link below to find places that are near you …… http://earth911.com/

Next, I hooked up the utility trailer to get some bark mulch at the garden center. After hooking it up with a trailer hitch, I noticed the tail lights didn’t work. Could it be just a new bulb or were there wiring problems. After replacing a bulb the lights still didn’t work. I then used a wire tester at different places to see if there was a break in the wiring. You can also use a multimeter. It turned out that the wire connector from the trailer to the car was defective. One of the connecting plugs rusted and broke off. I bought a 4-Wire replacement kit at Walmart but found the original trailer wiring had 5 wires going into a 4-wire plug. I looked up the wire diagram online and saw that the brown wire went to both the right and left running lights of the trailer. This is why 5 wires went into a 4-wire connector (1 yellow, 1 green, 1 white and 2 connected brown). See wire diagram at the link below …..
http://www.accessconnect.com/trailer_wiring_diagram.htm

You can also see photos of the trailer wire replacement at the link below ….
http://picasaweb.google.com/markryan312/TrailerLights42409

I’m glad that Spring only comes once a year !

Send comments to: markryan82@comcast.net