Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
Word has it the 16 year old son was driving, with his father in the passenger seat, and managed to lose control without any of the usual causative factors. Everyone lived to tell the tale, which is a tribute to the contemporary auto tech we all take for granted.
Contrary to what we thought, they crashed around 8 pm and Central Hudson cut the power around midnight to repair the lines.
We woke just after midnight to a completely dark and silent house, I padded around shutting of half a dozen UPS units under various desks and benches, and we eventually got back to sleep:
Rt 376 midnight crash – 2021-07-20 – status
According to our clocks, power actually returned about four hours later.
Our grocery ride the next morning went past the crash site:
Rt 376 midnight crash – 2021-07-20 – A
Tracks in the grass leading up to the smashed mailbox on our right suggest the driver didn’t quite make the very slight curve leading to the straight section.
It was garbage collection day and the debris field covered the entire front lawn:
Rt 376 midnight crash – 2021-07-20 – B
Both poles have rectangular reflectors, but the one on the smashed pole (on the left) shows the pole is maybe four feet shorter than it used to be.
We have no idea how a can of white paint got involved in the proceedings:
Quite some years ago, an errant driver demolished the front corner of that house and, more recently, the whole building burned out, so there may be a jinx on the site.
With the Bafang BBS02 and all its gimcrackery on the Terry Symmetry buttoned up and ready to go, I took a few closeout pictures for future reference.
The motor has a sheaf of wires sticking out of the bottom crying out for a protective covering:
Bafang BBS02 – wire bundle cover
Although cameras tell only the truth they’re allowed to see and can be made to lie by omission, sometimes their latent truth was completely invisible to eyewitnesses in real time.
I only noticed the mis-routed shift cable when I looked through the last set of pictures.
It should pass through the plastic channel under the metal tab holding the cable guide to the bottom bracket shell:
Bafang BBS02 – wire bundle vs shift cable
Normally, aiming the cable into the channel is no big deal. In this case, I had to undo the shift cable, remove the left crank, loosen the motor and rotate it out of the way, nudge the cable with a small screwdriver, then reinstall in reverse order.
A gusty thunderstorm knocked out power across Dutchess County, including half the service to our house. Being glad the refrigerator and freezer were on the live phase, I shut off the affected breakers on the dead phase, as well as all the 240 V breakers, and, with the living room darkened, we skipped our evening storytime.
By the next morning, a quick lamp test showed the recloser out on the pole had worked its magic, so I flipped all the breakers back on. The living room remained dark, prompting an investigation of the fuse box feeding the original house wiring:
Given what happens while wind and falling branches knock power lines askew, anything is possible. I have no idea where the fault current went, but replacing the fuse brought the living room back to normal.
None of the various UPS / lamps / phones seem damaged; I admit not peering inside the outlets to check for arc damage.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 