The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

Tag: Repairs

If it used to work, it can work again

  • Wheelbarrow Rebuild

    Wheelbarrow Rebuild

    For reasons that should be obvious by now, I volunteered to rebuild a wheelbarrow used at the Vassar Community Garden plots. It spent all its time outdoors and one of the handles eventually broke off:

    Wheelbarrow rebuild - old handles
    Wheelbarrow rebuild – old handles

    I’d already removed the wheel and front strap, which were in good condition.

    The new handles were undrilled, so I marked and drilled them with a nice brad-point bit to get clean holes:

    Wheelbarrow rebuild - handle drilling
    Wheelbarrow rebuild – handle drilling

    The metal “barrow” had cracked around the carriage bolts holding it to the frame, so I filed a quartet of fender washers to fit the square section under the heads:

    Wheelbarrow rebuild - fender washer holes
    Wheelbarrow rebuild – fender washer holes

    After a false start, I marked the bolt heads and washers to line them up properly while tightening the nuts on the other end:

    Wheelbarrow rebuild - fender washer installed
    Wheelbarrow rebuild – fender washer installed

    One front strut had gone missing, so I replaced it with a mashed-and-drilled section of ski pole:

    Wheelbarrow rebuild - front strut
    Wheelbarrow rebuild – front strut

    All in all, a few hours of Quality Shop Time interspersed with a few pleasant bike rides to various local stores, wherein I learned who doesn’t stock the necessary hardware.

    Protip: Home Depot has the highest-entropy hardware assortment.

    For the record, all the bolts have a 5/16-18 thread.

  • Fiskars Bypass Pruner Rehabilitation

    Fiskars Bypass Pruner Rehabilitation

    Mary found a rusted Fiskars bypass pruner in the trash pile near her Vassar Farms plot and brought it home for proper disposal. The nuts and screws responded to an overnight penetrating oil treatment and it came apart easily:

    Fiskars bypass pruner - as found
    Fiskars bypass pruner – as found

    The movable jaw may have once sported a PTFE coating, but it’s likely just a different steel alloy.

    After scrubbing the pieces with an abrasive pad, a little diamond filing, and (at the insistence of the Squidwrench chorus) some Dremel wire-wheel action, it looks almost new:

    Fiskars bypass pruner - restored
    Fiskars bypass pruner – restored

    The blades sport a few nicks from their previous life, but work well enough.

  • Power Outage Explained

    Power Outage Explained

    Spotted in the corner gas station’s wrecked car lookaside buffer:

    Rt 376 midnight crash - vehicle
    Rt 376 midnight crash – vehicle

    The white paint seemed familiar:

    Rt 376 midnight crash - 2021-07-20 - C
    Rt 376 midnight crash – 2021-07-20 – C

    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.

    Looks they’ll need another truck; that ain’t gonna buff right out.

  • Amber Side Marker Light Hackery

    Amber Side Marker Light Hackery

    Start with the amber side marker light sporting a cataract and distorted beam:

    Side Marker - beam test - E
    Side Marker – beam test – E

    Part off the lens:

    Side Marker E - cutting case
    Side Marker E – cutting case

    The cut is just in front of the PCB and went slowly to avoid clobbering the SMD resistors very near the edge.

    The cataract turned out to be crud adhered to the LED lens:

    Side Marker E - LED cataract
    Side Marker E – LED cataract

    Brutal surgery removed the LED and installed a replacement:

    Side Marker E - replacement LED
    Side Marker E – replacement LED

    The PCB had two 150 Ω SMD resistors for use with 12-ish V automotive batteries. While I had the hood up, I removed one and shorted across its pads to make the LED work with the 6 V switched headlight supply from the Bafang motor.

    In round numbers, 6 V minus 2.2 V forward drop divided by 150 Ω is about 25 mA. The original LED ran at 35-ish mA, but it’s close enough.

    Glue the lens back in place:

    Side Marker E - clamping case
    Side Marker E – clamping case

    The bubbly stuff is solid epoxy from the original assembly, which is why removing the PCB is not an option.

    The new LED is no more off-center than any of the others:

    Side Marker E - new LED - front
    Side Marker E – new LED – front

    It does, however, sit much closer to the lens, due to the ring of plastic I cut away to get inside. As a result, the beam is mostly a single centered lobe with only hints of the five side lobes; there isn’t much waste light from the side of the LED into those facets.

    Replace the one I originally put in the new fairing mount:

    Side Marker E rebuilt - installed
    Side Marker E rebuilt – installed

    However, it’s still not much more than a glowworm in the daytime, so we need more firepower …

  • Another Power Outage

    Another Power Outage

    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
    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
    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
    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:

    Rt 376 midnight crash - 2021-07-20 - C
    Rt 376 midnight crash – 2021-07-20 – C

    [Update: Now we know where the paint came from.]

    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.

    Other than that, we had an uneventful ride …

  • Just One More …

    Just One More …

    Spotted behind a mall undergoing renovation:

    Overloaded dumpster
    Overloaded dumpster

    Perhaps they were loading it from the end and didn’t notice the instructions:

    Overloaded dumpster - detail
    Overloaded dumpster – detail

    Protip: Always get the biggest dumpster available!

  • The Value of Closeout Pictures

    The Value of Closeout Pictures

    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
    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
    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.

    Dang, that was close …