Sigbigdig: April 2009

Harbor Freight 90 Amp Flux Wire Welder - Item 98871

My beloved 22 year old American Forge and Foundry Mighty Mig 101 stopped pushing out wire yesterday. It had been pissing me off for a while with a herky jerky action - which produced Rabbit Shit Welds. I don't need any help in making bad welds - I can do that all on my own! :-) SO - I went to HF and grabbed item 98871 - along with the extended warranty for 20 bucks. FYI - 20% off coupons do NOT work for generators and welders - but this is still a steal at 119 plus tax. It is SO SMOOTH compared to the Mighty Mig!! I am able to make much smoother welds - however, it is slightly less ballsy than the Mighty Mig - I THINK the penetration is just a bit less - although it might be the wire that came with it. Either way, it did a fine job on 1/8 inch angle iron for my battery trays for the electric car.

Harbor Freight "Haul-Master" Item 94696 - 5000 LB adjustable Tow Bar

Drilled the front of the frame of the Triumph and attached anchors and used this Awesome Tow Bar last night... The Triumph ran outta juice last night as I was joyriding too much during my commute - came to rest in a church parking lot - Living Hope Church on Spring Valley where someone amended my "Please do not tow away" note with the pithy comment "That's what you get for having a British car." Nice - I wonder if they're on the recruitment team or the outreach team. Maybe I'll join their church just to find out who wrote that piece of insult to injury... maybe I'll just ask them if I can charge there if I ever break down there again. :-)

ASE certified after 20 years!

I worked in an awesome BMW/Mercedes/German car shop straght outta college. It had been my hobbby since I was 15 1/2 and I took some classes and have rebuilt maybe 10 motors since and have worked on hundreds of cars for friends - usually for beer. So Maybe it is because I'm 40 -- but I have been plunkin' down through my "I always wanted to" list and am making excellent headway! :-) Boat license, Motorcycle license, ASE Cert, Solar projects, electric motorcycle, electric car - basically everything on this blog :-)

Temp No More

Passed my Motorcycle license test today. Had a perfect score going 'till the "Hurry up and stop" scenario. I started out really slow and got up to about 15 mph or so before I crossed the line and started to stop - Took me 13 feet to stop - The thing I didn't realize is that they time your approach to determine your speed and then calculate how fast you should stop. It matters how fast you stop - I kinda took my sweet time. Oh, well... my advice to anyone taking the test is make sure you have a good head of steam going on the approach to the panic stop drill and make sure you don't gain speed on the slalom.

CRAFTSMAN 48V ELECTRIC MOWER

I have been wanting to do an Electric Mower as my next conversion until I can save up enough money to finish the Triumph - I have been going through people's trash lately - looking for a worthy donor deck, wheels, and handle. With the Recession and all - people are just not throwing them away. SO - I broke down and bought a premade mower. I went into Sears today after seeing the Neuton 6.2 mower. They don't have it in stores :-( SO - I looked at what they had... Black and Decker, WORX (made by Black and Decker,) and their house brand. of the three - it was abundantly clear that only one of these was a "MOWER THAT JUST HAPPENED TO BE ELECTRIC" rather than a POS "Electric powered device that just happened to be a MOWER." The wheels on the others were pure feces, the handles deflected under weight and were easily torqued back and forth - and they were plastic. The Sears brand was bulletproof. Bearings (from what I can tell) in the wide wheels, and built like a brick outhouse. and 100 bucks less than the Neuton I was originally after. With the difference in money - I bought an edger that the Boss (read "wife") wanted anyway - and which would have had to have been purchased as an attachment to the Neuton. One problem with the Sears model is that it does not have easily accessible battery pack and each one costs 140 through sears for a replacement!!! PURE B.S. - I tore off the cover and they are merely NPX-35tfr UPS batteries that can be had for 20 bucks! http://www.portablepower.com/data_safe_npx-35tfr_250-p-150.html - The obvious thing to do is to add 4 more in parallel - I believe there is room under the plastic hood - or maybe it would need to be raised up a couple inches... or one could add a hinge to raise the plastic cover and change the connector on the thing to accept a quick change and bundle another bundle of batteries together and charge them with a chinese cheapie charger seperately - both ideas have their merit. We'll see what happens - for the time being - I'll be running endurance tests to determine what it does stock.

Yaesu VX-5R RADIO REPAIR FAIL

Sometimes you can fix a thing - sometimes it is time to say goodbye. The Yaesu VX-5R handheld radio is awesome. EXCEPT for the design of the Final output. Although I used mine for a few years since buying it at Hamvention, I have used it on 5 Watts very little. I keyed it up at Hamvention this year accidentally set to 5 Watts and found it wouldn't transmit more than 50 feet. After swapping antennas with someone - and searching out a guy peddling a frequency counter / power meter who had it set up to demonstrate how it works - I determined that it was generating a signal - but that it was not transmitting at full power - or even more than a milliwatt. DAMN!!! Went to get my free Yaesu hat and they told me that they no longer repair the Vx-5R and that I would have a tough time getting to and replacing the Finals in that radio - turns out that that was an understatement as I destroyed that whole board trying to remove it - Pictured is my backup 2Meter Kenwood TH-21AT which is still happily working (with replaced batteries) at the old age of 25ish years or so. Impressive. It puts out 1 Watt and can hit the open repeater 146.640 in Dayton from my QTH using the stock antenna which is a great haul.

Rain Barrel assembly and installation

Everything you really need in this world just falls right outta the sky... air, sun, and rain are among them. To catch some rain - I went to First Choice Wholesale at 1990 Erie st in Hamilton Ohio - got 4 barrels for 12 bucks each. These barrels will immediately fill up during any decent rainstorm. For instance, even the roof of the shed which is less than 192 sq. feet will yield 60 gallons per 1/2 inch rainfall. The part numbers I used are captured in the receipt from Lowes - the only thing not captured is some pieces of 2 inch PVC. So - Following the path that the rain will take - I am using a downspout adapter to a coupler - to a 3 in to 2 in PVC reducer to a piece of 2 in pvc to a female to threaded male (which has fine threads) into the barrel - then out to another threaded female to male piece, another 2 in piece of PVC then to a couple 90 degree elbows of your choosing. In this case output goes to the section of downspout I hacksawed off the house and empties into the Tomato bed. * note - the Bung holes on the barrels are not the same - one is coarse and one is fine threads - you want a tight seal here because of the way the output is working - any leak will cause water to pool up on top of the barrel and the overflow not to work to the ground - or daisychained to another barrel. I have used electrical tape as a fine to coarse thread fix - but maybe you can find adapters with the correct threads - enjoy! Another note - the measurements of the bung holes are 2 inch fine and 2 inch coarse threads.

Replacing the Steps - Treads, Risers, and carpet

When people build houses, the contractors buy kits for the stairs... sometimes they skimp and just do the first 3 steps and carpet the rest. Then, when the 4th owner of the house's wife wants to carpet the upstairs, and leave the steps bare, you find that the contractors used 2x10s for the top 4 steps cause they figures it didn't matter. SO - they sell 11X red oak treads at Lowes - they also sell stair nosing for the top step - I learned a lot about the dimensions of stairs - and how screwed up stairs are sometimes. BTW - drill pilot holes in the red oak treads for the nails - they are hard and would split if you just hammered nails in there - I also learned that you should also use construction adhesive to minimize creaks.

Fender_Prep

Item 00962022000 - Craftsman 3 Drawer middle Ball Bearing box

I recently decided to clean the garage. In order to house all of my tools as part of that process... I purchased a three drawer ball bearing intermediate chest from Sears. Upon setting it up - I was ready to declare it a total piece of trash - the paint didn't quite match my other boxes... it was too red - not orange enough - and worst of all... the drawers opened with a herky jerky motion that would knock over sockets inside. This made the whole affair feel cheap, and I was ready to return it. I mentally rated it a 3 out of 10. HOWEVER... since I usually modify everything anyway - I decided to take it apart to see why it sucked so bad and to see if I could fix it. Lowe and behold - I found that after removing two rubber/plastic grey stoppers attached to the ends of the slides on either side, the thing performs like a dream and is now the jewel of my tool collection!! The color now seems to be correct, and the older boxes seem faded, and I would now rate it a 10 out of 10!

Repairing a door knob latch the cheap way

One of the neighbor kids who run around here did a He-Man on the front door knob when it didn't want to turn easily. This resulted in the destruction of the guts of the latch mechanism - the typical failure mode on a cheap door knob. Rather than shelling out for a new door knob set - rekeying - or replacing all the deadbolts and doorknobs in the house - or even less likely - calling in a professional - i fixed it for 7 bucks. I went to Home Depot (had a gift card) and bought the absolute cheapest "defiant" brand exterior locking door knob they had - i removed the guts and as they all seem to have very similar guts among the different manufacturers - the guts swapped right in and Bob's your uncle.

Moen Single Handle Shower Cartridge replacement

**Moen is awesome - they stand behind their products - if you are an original homeowner - call them and ask for a rebuild kit** If you are not the original owner, Lowes has replacement cartridges for 14 bucks but they are not on the Lowes website for some reason. The master bath shower faucet had started leaking. I had a rebuild kit and swapped out the o-rings on the old style brass piece after lightly honing the inside of the valve to remove calcium deposits. No love. it still leaked. so I bought a Danco 88431 Plastic cartridge (the style Moen calls 'Magnum'.) I had previously used regular plumbers grease - but switched to silicone grease and the action is awesome!!!!

Nutone Model 8662NL troubleshooting

The exhaust fan in the master bath has been slowing lately, and finally stopped. The motor is a 1/70hp A/C motor. I investigated, and the first thing I noticed was that it seemed difficult to turn :-) I took it apart and did things like check the resistance of the windings - about 43.5 ohms, checked for shorts to the armature, and to the body. all looked good - it was just gummed up with crap at the bushings. I cleaned everything up and applied a light coat of 5w20 synthetic on the bushings and started testing. In testing, the motor got very hot - I soon realized that it should be tested with the fan attached as that is how it cools itself.with the fan, it was cool enough to be touched - about 130 degrees F after a half hour of running - Reinstalled - and the air was directed over the motor even more directly - it ran at 100 F - and when I turned it off, there was heat soak and the temp climbed several degrees which I thought was interesting.

Mixer Switch Fix

The Kitchenaid Artisan 5 QT. mixer is the quintessential mixer of mixers - Everyone should buy one immediately! All Hail the Artisan. However, this particular unit had a problem out of the box whereby it began running some time during the first night it was plugged in. :-( After a less than satisfactory call to Sears customer support and Parts dept., during which they could not call up the model number for the unit (it has been the same for years, if not decades) and then wanted me to send it in for repairs, **AFTER UNPLUGGING THE UNIT AND BEING VERY CAREFUL, I took the clamshell off the back by removing the one set screw at the top rear of the unit revealing the problem. There is a set of contact points back there that are supposed to open when parked in the off position. These points had been bent during assembly so that they no longer opened - but were very very very close to touching - and eventually decided to touch during the night. These points get opened when parked by a small plastic ramp - but were not opening enough - so, I bent the points to be opened a few thousandths when parked (adjusting the set screw inside the unit did not fix the situation - so that suggested to me that the points had been bent out of correct position) and all was remedied!

Broken Garage Door Torsion Spring

BE CAREFUL if you do any type of work on the torsion springs regardless of whether you think there is tension on the springs - triple check yourself and be alert!!!! The night before last, I decided to tackle a broken garage door torsion spring. After measuring the spring - counting the turns per inch - and measuring the inside diameter - i found a replacement spring on ebay for 58 bucks including shipping. one is supposed to close the door and slowly unwind the spring that did not break - however - i decided to open the door to the point where the spring was slack - install the new spring - and then use longer #5 bolts to draw the two springs together to the center carrier mount. The reason i needed to use long springs with the door up is that when the door is down - the springs are longer than when the door is up. i estimated 2 1/2 inches of expansion and it was about right. obviously this is a picture taken before i tightened the bolts.

2002 Honda CR-V Compressor Failure

2002 Honda CR-V - has been an awesome car except for the premature rear Diff fluid contamination and now, Air Conditioning Compressor failure at 72 thou miles!!! WTF, Over?? - No Love from Honda - just a 3500 estimate - so I was forced to buy a Sanden kit including compressor, o-rings, condenser, and what some believe to be the culprit - new expansion valve which required performing my least favorite automotive task - removing the heater core / evaporator - actually - I sneaked in along side em and removed a secret panel but that was after removing every bolt in the dash - and still it was agony getting it to line up through the firewall! - Blows SUPER cold now though - took me a good 12 hours overall not exactly what the book says, I'll bet - that is why I'm not a mechanic anymore :-) BTW - here is a link for the serpentine belt routing for this car - I believe it may be the only one located on the Internets. http://www.2carpros.com/forum/automotive_pictures/99387_honda_belt_2.jpg

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Tuesday, April 21, 2009

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