{"id":4322,"date":"2018-09-08T17:56:08","date_gmt":"2018-09-08T21:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikestrawbridge.com\/blog\/?p=4322"},"modified":"2018-11-20T16:00:52","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T21:00:52","slug":"grading-the-driveway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mikestrawbridge.com\/blog\/2018\/09\/grading-the-driveway\/","title":{"rendered":"Grading the Driveway"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Since I daily drive a Jeep Cherokee XJ, I often don’t notice the condition of the driveway. I live at the end of a dead end road and I have a long gravel driveway.   Instructions to my house include, “when you get to the end of the paved road – keep going”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I drive one of my sports cars however,  the ruts and bumps in the droveway become very apparent.  The Porsche and the RX7 do a fairly good job at grading the center of the drive but it is hard on the air dams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Grass<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

So occasionally I have to get out my antique tractor and attach the grader blade.  Like today that usually involves working on the tractor first.  Today I had to remove and clean the carburettor before it would start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I began by setting the blade at an angle and cutting the gravel that gets pushed to the sides of the road back to the middle. This creates a big hump in the middle of the road.  So I have to be prepared to finish once I get to this state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I learned this method growing up on gravel roads in rural Mississippi.  I would watch as the county road graders came by once a month or so and smoothed the roads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Back<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After the gravel had been pulled back to the middle, I flipped the blade around backwards to do a back drag.  Allowing the curved part of the blade to ride on the pile of gravel smooths it out nicely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Finished<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Now I am ready to take the Porsche for a test drive once I reinstall the brake cooling ducts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since I daily drive a Jeep Cherokee XJ, I often don’t notice the condition of the driveway. I live at the end of a dead end road and I have a long gravel driveway.   Instructions to my house include, “when you get to the end of the paved road – keep going” When I drive … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Grading the Driveway”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[339,6,231,3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mikestrawbridge.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4322"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mikestrawbridge.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mikestrawbridge.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mikestrawbridge.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mikestrawbridge.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4322"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/mikestrawbridge.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4514,"href":"http:\/\/mikestrawbridge.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4322\/revisions\/4514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mikestrawbridge.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mikestrawbridge.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mikestrawbridge.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}