Keeping island wheels turning

IT’S BEEN THE SEASON OF THE TOAD on Center Island. And boy am I glad to have it done with.

This isn’t a story about cute hoppy amphibians. This is about basic transportation and how to keep the wheels turning on my remote little island in the San Juans.

Mr. Toad is the name of my 29-year-old toad-green golf cart, named for the demon-at-the-wheel protagonist in author Kenneth Grahame’s classic “The Wind in the Willows.” Unless you want to walk, even when toting a month’s worth of groceries back from the mainland, electric golf carts are the primary means of getting around my island. Two reasons: (1) Our narrow gravel roads definitely aren’t suited to a giant RAM pickup truck, and (2) Forward-thinking community founders back in the 1960s or so chose to prohibit privately owned internal-combustion vehicles on our community roads. So most property owners have battery-powered golf carts. It makes for a quieter, more-peaceful island with fresher air.

A caveat or two: We do share three community-owned, gas-powered Ford Ranger pickups for times when you’re bringing a new sofa or a replacement refrigerator to the island. And with the world’s trend toward electric vehicles of every shape and size, our restriction on gas power has been broadened to include a size limit. “Small is beautiful” seems to be the watchword.

I bought Mr. Toad, a 1996, 36-volt E-Z-Go golf cart, from an island neighbor for $1,200 in the summer of 2020. Not content with average, I added a stained-cedar baggage platform with finned side panels and asked daughter Lillian to help gussy things up. She gathered swordferns and leaves of salal, Oregon grape, and maple, daubed them with paint and printed the cart with nature’s images.

Since then Mr. Toad has been a reliable helper for the most part. But as I’m learning every day, time marches on and every body needs upkeep. Including a motorized toad.

A few months back, that became clear when Mr. Toad got shy about turning left. If I drove sedately, all was fine. But the moment I emulated my golf cart’s reckless namesake and tried a quick left turn at anything like rambunctious speed, the steering wheel shuddered and clicked and Mr. Toad continued in a straight line. It could get exciting.

As with many challenges life throws at us, I learned to compensate. I rarely informed a friend hitching a ride of my conveyance’s guidance-system peculiarity. As long as I went slowly or circled the island clockwise, it was no problem. It went on the “got to fix this someday” list.

Before I had a chance at that, Mr. Toad threw me another challenge. On a day of endless and soaking rain in early April, I was returning from a long day’s outing to Friday Harbor. As dusk approached I was glad to be nearing home in Mr. Toad, peering through the rain-spattered plexiglas windshield that does not feature wipers. A half-mile from the cabin, I approached what we call Little Cardiac Hill (the full-size Cardiac Hill is on the far side of the island). Mr. Toad’s batteries had been showing signs of anemia lately (in sympathy with me, perhaps?). So, I switched on the voltmeter to see how my battery bank fared as I floored the accelerator and started up.

The voltage immediately sank like a skydiver with no chute. Toad got halfway up the hill and stalled out. Cursing blue-blazes hot enough to defrost the foggy windscreen, I let the cart roll back to the base of the hill to rest a minute before trying again.

The rain spattered in on me from the cart’s open sides. I didn’t want to sit for long. So I floored the pedal and again climbed a few feet up the hill. Pungent electrical smoke puffed from the battery compartment directly beneath me. If I kept trying I would literally be in a hot seat. This time I rolled backward into a neighbor’s front path, where Mr. Toad promptly got mired in mud.

I’d had a long day. I had groceries in plastic totes on the luggage carrier. I couldn’t walk home alone. I had to call a friend to come out in the incessant rain and give me a homeward lift .

So replacing Toad’s ailing batteries was the first order. The same friend who came out to rescue me in the rain suggested it was time to convert to lithium-battery power. The new style of battery was known to be powerful, fast to recharge, and long-lasting if well-monitored. And for Mr. Toad, one 63-pound sealed 36-volt battery (requiring no maintenance) would replace six 80-pound, 6-volt lead-acid batteries. Mr. Toad would have more power while hauling 420 fewer pounds of battery! Woo-hoo! Speed-demon time!

The clincher came when I looked on Amazon and found a suitable Chinese-made battery for $600 (pre-tariff), including a new charger. I’d pay double that to replace my lead-acid batteries.

But life in the islands is tricky. The new battery could be shipped at no cost, but not to my island. United Parcel Service, the shipper of choice for most Amazon goods, subcontracts Center Island deliveries to little San Juan Airlines. The small planes cannot carry anything classified as hazardous, which includes lithium batteries (as well as boat paint and a long list of other items). And I could find no nearby brick-and-mortar stores that sold similar batteries at a low price.

My creative solution: Ask a friend in Friday Harbor if I could have the battery shipped to her home. Shipments to the bigger islands of the San Juans arrive by truck on a state ferry.

I would be staying in my friend’s guest room three times in April for training sessions with Road Scholar. So when the battery arrived, I took my pickup truck on the ferry and brought the battery back to Lopez Island. On the final stretch to Center Island the big battery was strapped to a hand truck aboard the Island Express water taxi.

Installing the new lithium battery meant modifying and rebuilding the battery platform under Mr. Toad’s seat, along with some new wiring and installation of a battery meter. That took a week of trial and error, considering that the few installation instructions were either in Chinese or barely intelligible English. (Yes, cheap goods come with tradeoffs.) In the end, I learned that my battery was Bluetooth-enabled and I could monitor its charge status using an app on my phone. Easy pie!

That accomplished, I gave myself a day off before moving Mr. Toad to the community workshop where I put him on stands and went to work replacing the steering gearbox. At $170, this was another Amazon acquisition, but this one came right to me. Here’s where I thanked the digital genies that provide YouTube instructional videos on how to do almost anything. A nice gentleman on the DIY Golfcart YouTube channel gave precise step-by-step instruction on how to replace the steering gear on my exact make, model and year of golf cart. I have some mechanical know-how, but I will just say this: Bless you, DIY Golfcart man.

The only catch: In his demonstration, all the nuts and bolts came off and went back in with ease. Not so in real life, on a cart like Mr. Toad that has never had anybody fiddle with some of those bolts. Not since Toad left the factory when Bill Clinton was president.

But I yanked and grunted, twisted and turned and managed to get the first round of old parts loose. When it came time to release the tie rods from the worn-out steering gear, I watched my video friend casually pop the rods loose with his little finger. Then I spent two unsuccessful hours with wrenches, hammers, WD-40 and a brief moment with a propane torch. I got the nuts off, but the tie-rod bolts wouldn’t budge from the steering bracket. Not for love, money or colorful language.

Gloom-ridden at the prospect of failure, I decided to call it a day and tackle it fresh in the morning. I went home and — why not? — Googled “how to get tie rods off a steering gear on a 1996 E-Z-Go golf cart.” The digital wizards chuckled merrily as they revealed Amazon’s listing for the Astro Pneumatic Ball Joint Separator, a specialized little tool made for precisely this purpose. Apparently I’m not the only mechanic to have rammed my head into this brick wall.

I hit the “order” button, pausing only briefly to grumble about the $28 price. Amazon informed me that this item was in a nearby warehouse and would arrive the following day. It was my turn to merrily chuckle. They didn’t know about my island and just how long it takes things to get here. One day? Ha!

But I could hope.

The next morning I was back at the workshop by 10. The caretaker who handles our mail stopped by with a box that had arrived from Amazon. It was a big box. My hopes momentarily soared, until I yanked the box open to find six rolls of Scott paper towels I had ordered days earlier.

For another 20 minutes I went back to poking and prodding at the reluctant bolts until the caretaker drove by again and handed me a small package from Amazon. It rattled as if it was something metallic. Could it be?

Sure enough, it was my ball-joint separator, which I have to say sounds vaguely like an instrument you’d find in an urologist’s office. It kind of looked like an alarming medical device, too. Metallic jaws flexed in the middle, driven tighter by a screw big enough to hold the fender on a giant RAM pickup truck.

It took a bit of hammering to get it into place, but once I’d figured it out a few turns of the screw head neatly popped the bolt out with a noise like a pickup fender falling off.

I won’t say it was all a cinch after that, but I followed my video friend’s instructions to the letter, sweated and cursed a bit more, and before 6 p.m. I was lowering Mr. Toad from the jackstands and sweeping out the workshop. The front wheels turned right and left on demand, behaving like a charm.

I loaded up my tools and headed home in triumph, zooming up Little Cardiac Hill.

Last night, I was still relishing two big jobs done well (with a little luck). Ready to head for bed a little after 10, I looked out the window at Mr. Toad, parked under the limbs of my 15-foot high sequoia tree. A yellow moon shone from high in the sky.

I wasn’t ready to sleep. I pulled on an insulated vest and my Elmer Fudd hat, stepped into the cool darkness and climbed into Mr. Toad’s driver seat. I turned the key, flicked on the headlight and zoomed up my back driveway for an invigorating 10-minute joy ride around the island.

As I’ve said before, take joy where you can find it. I turned left anytime I darned well felt like it.