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mechanism of a fuel gauge Thursday, September 22 2022
After work today I went to the Wall Street rental to replace the tank gauge on its heating oil tank. But having fiddled around with the brand-new replacement, I knew the mechanism (which is entirely mechanical) and knew how to partially disassemble the old gauge. But the old gauge now seemed to be working fine and showing a quarter of the tank full. Still, I unscrewed the cap (a large threaded capsule with gradations on the side that acted like an upside-down jar to protect the indicator, which is driven by a long reduction lever attached to a float) and played with mechanism. Perhaps when the gauge had failed last winter, the float had gotten stuck on something in the tank and failed to either rise or fall. In any case, it's possible to change the angle from which the float lever arrives at the indicator capsule, and by doing this, I convinced myself I'd fixed the old gauge without going through the bother of installing a new one (which would've required using a big wrench to unscrew the capsule base, which is a huge NPT-threaded fitting).
When I got home, Gretchen (who had worked a rare Thursday shift at the bookstore) was making us a pizza from a shelf-stable pizza crust I'd bought months ago. Part of this involved putting garden-fresh jalapeños and slices of agaric mushrooms all over my half. We ate this while watching the gripping final two episodes of the first (and so far only) season of Severance. Now, of course, we have to wait for season two to see how an epic cliffhanger resolves.
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