I’ve been thinking a lot about that Bob Dylan song Everything is Broken.

♫ Broken cutters, broken saws,

Broken buckles, broken laws,

Broken bodies, broken bones,

Broken voices on broken phones,

Take a deep breath, feel like you’re chokin',

Everything is broken ♫

One of the problems with having mild OCD is that when things don’t work, when things are broken, it induces a lot of anxiety. Lately it seems that things just keep breaking and I can’t keep up. Heck, most of the deliveries I’m getting are repair parts and I just don’t have enough time to install them much less getting them to work.

Note that this concerns things broken around the farm and not with society in general, which is anxiety-inducing on its own.

There was one thing that was pretty simple to fix: our tractor.

We’ve owned two tractors. The first one we bought was a 1977 Ford 4600. It was a pretty large tractor, 52 hp to the PTO, and it had a front end loader on it.

The main issue was that it was too big for a lot of our jobs, so when our neighbor Jake decided to move and sell his Kubota B-series tractor, we bought it and sold the Ford. Going from a six foot rotary cutter (bush hog) to a four foot one meant it took a lot longer to mow the pasture, but we didn’t do it often and we used the tractor for other things. Jake had welded a set of “forks”, like those on a forklift, that fit on the bucket of the front-end loader and it made it easy to move stuff around.

Now Jake would never loan his tractor or let anyone else use it. I could pay him to do jobs around our place and that was fine, but I never got to drive it until I bought it. I kept up his tradition for awhile, but when the neighbor needed to use it I caved. They are really nice people and a young couple just starting out, so I thought it would be a friendly gesture.

Well, the seal on the front end loader popped while he was using it and afterward the bucket would never stay up. This could be problematic if you were, say, moving a bucket full of gravel and it just decided to tip and dump it where it was.

Over several years I took the tractor to Asheboro Kubota and they would “fix” it, but it wouldn’t last. I finally got tired of the service they were providing so I started working with Stanly Tractor in New London, initially just for ordering parts, but I finally got around to taking the tractor to them to repair the loader.

Andrea went with me and, long story short, we ended up buying a new tractor. Problem solved. (grin)

The new L-series isn’t quite as big as the Ford but it is much bigger than the B-series. The little tractor could lift 600 pounds with the front end loader and this one will do 1500 pounds.

While I was there I was talking cars with Derek, the salesperson, and when I mentioned we had an F250 diesel pickup he warned me about a problem inherent in those 6.7 liter engines. They shipped with a fuel pump, called a CP4, that on rare occasions will self-destruct, throwing crap into the injectors. It happened to him and the repair was $17K. One way to mitigate the damage is to install another filter between the fuel pump and the engine, so if that happens the second filter will catch the debris. I ordered one of those. The directions say it takes two hours to install but the comments suggest more like six. As of yet I haven’t had the time to work on it, causing the aforementioned anxiety. I’m both anxious to get it installed (since I can’t stop using the truck until then) and anxious about getting it installed correctly.

After watching the beginning of this video, I’ve decided the smart course of action is to pay a guy a few miles from me who works on diesel trucks to install it (grin).

Speaking of installation, the ice maker died on our refrigerator. While our refrigerator is 20 years old I don’t want to replace it, as it is supposed to be very repairable and new refrigerators are being enshittified. I have even read stories about companies requiring a monthly online subscription if you want to use the ice maker.

Well, I was able to replace the ice maker unit with one from Amazon, and in the process I broke a little tab-thingie that cost almost as much to replace as the whole unit, and it still didn’t fix anything.

While not a single young person is one of my three readers, my career advice is, if you like mechanical things, learn how to repair appliances. We used to use Summerlin Appliance but they moved and no longer serve our area. I was then recommended a local guy named Sam Hamilton but he also doesn’t come out to where we live, although he was extremely helpful in giving me some things to try. I called yet another firm and got a voicemail saying that they were down to one repair tech and if I left a message I had to wait several weeks for an appointment. I did finally find Christopher Cruz who came out and found that the control board, which appeared to be working, had a burned trace.

Thus the new ice maker wasn’t getting any power. Twenty bucks in parts and an Amazon delivery later and we have ice again.

Last year, just before the tax credits expired, we replaced the heat pump downstairs with a unit from Gree. Instead of a traditional 24 volt thermostat, they use a digital one (that has a data bus instead of analog signals) but it isn’t working so well. I want to go back to my ecobee as it integrated better with my home automation set up. My HVAC folks are supposed to come by soon and swap it out.

Speaking of automation, we have an automatic feeder for the Koi pond. Due to a lot of thunderstorms recently I think the power supply got fried by a nearby lightning strike. I was happy to find an exact replacement on Amazon (it uses a supply often used for Christmas lights) and when I got it, it actually fixed the problem. I’m very happy about that, so one less thing to worry about. And the fish seem to go crazy when it runs.

The final big repair concerns the Banana. When Derek dropped off the new tractor I offered to let him drive it. When I went to put the top down, I got a hydraulic shower courtesy of the cylinder responsible for unlocking the top from the windscreen when it blew a seal. So no ride (although in retrospect we could have gone out with the top up).

I have a good repair shop but they are expensive. Having spent money recently on such things as a new tractor, I’ve decided to woman-up and fix it myself.

Over the weekend I was able to remove the headliner and take out the faulty cylinder. It is now on its way to a place in Florida which will rebuild it and send it back. I’m pretty comfortable working on mechanical things but suck at plumbing, and this is something of a crossover problem. I also need to replace the Battery Control Module (BCM) as they have a tendency, again rare, to catch fire and burn up the car. (grin)

Oh, and a couple of the many ceiling fans in the house have stopped working. I don’t want to replace them since they are both expensive and in many cases match another fan nearby, and I doubt I can find a match.

At the moment I still have two outstanding Amazon deliveries. One for a quart of Mercedes hydraulic fluid and one for a controller that I hope will fix one of the fans.

I started this post a couple of days ago and in that time the lights at the end of the driveway stopped working (#firstworldproblem). The breaker trips. Yet another thing to add to the list. (sigh)