Day: April 5, 2024

Today was all about my ride-on mower. I needed the repair that I’d done to work because although today was a good day to be working outside (sunny all day, temperature 22 degrees C) and tomorrow will be similar, I really need a break. And if I could get my grass mown today, that would be possible tomorrow. I’ve been going non-stop for several days and loading and unloading stuff single-handedly to move it round to my house from storage has, quite honestly, taken a bit out of me.

I started by cleaning off all the dried mud and other debris that had collected on the underside of the deck and was surprised by just how much had accumulated. No wonder the deck was so heavy – it was far lighter to manhandle afterwards.

This was the deck after being cleaned and ready to be mounted back on the mower. I’d lubricated what I could but major things like bearings were sealed of course. I thought that it all looked pretty good after the repair.

It took me longer than I’d expected to get the deck installed. I’d forgotten how the cables and springs went and had to find a Youtube video that showed me and it didn’t help that my ride-on mower lifting mechanism is still in storage. But I was super relieved when I’d finished and was able to test it out, with the result that even with its old, worn blades, my ride-on is now cutting as well as it ever has and considerably better than it was up to recently.

I finished all the grass at the back so with a bit of luck I’ll get the break I want tomorrow. If I do, I think I’ll have earned it 😉

By way of summary, in order to use my new bike on public roads here in France it has to be registered and conform to various other legal requirements. For it to be registered it has to have a Certificate of Conformity signed by the manufacturer to confirm that it meets the necessary standards of roadworthiness and safety and it didn’t have one. So I set about researching what the regulations and standards are, produced a Certificate that I believe met them and sent a copy off to the manufacturer, Dakeya, in China for them to add their official stamp and return it to me in order to try to get the registration through.

Then it all went deadly quiet and despite further messages from me it seemed to be impossible to get a response from Dakeya. This seemed weird because what I’d done was to help them out and would, if successful, also be of value to them by making all of their bikes of the same model legal for use in France. In the end it got to the point when on Tuesday I sent a registered letter off to CDiscount, from whose web site I’d purchased my bike, saying that if I couldn’t register it I’d be looking to return it and would seek a full refund from them.

So, of course, what happened was the vey next day I eventually received a very nice reply from China saying that they were very grateful for the information and suggestions that I’d provided and that they had carefully read through all of the paperwork I’d sent. And attached to the email was the Declaration of Conformity that I’d submitted to them, officially stamped and dated.

I immediately uploaded a copy to the French registration web site and now await a response. It’s been a few days and at least my application hasn’t been thrown out again, so with a bit of luck it’s now going through. I guess I’ll have to wait a little while longer to know for sure.