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

Tour Easy: SRAM X.9 Grip Shift Replacement

The rear shifter on my Tour Easy stopped working when we were most of the way to the grocery store, due to what turned out to be due to a broken cable. I managed to yank the frayed end out of the shifter, pulled the derailleur into a middling gear, and belayed the cable into a deadly cactus:

SRAM X.9 Rear Shifter – frayed cable

A three-speed recumbent got me home again, albeit with spin-it-out high gear and a low gear barely sufficient for trailer hauling.

Attempting to remove the frayed cable from the SRAM X.9 grip shifter didn’t go well at all:

SRAM X.9 Rear Shifter – cable tangle

I managed to extract the lead pellet, but, while it may be possible to extract the remaining tangle, even pulling on individual wires wasn’t productive.

AFAICT, the shifter came as original equipment on the bike, so it’s been in constant use for the last 17-ish years. The nice soft grip material (and the cover over the cable port) turned into gummy sludge under the cheerful silicone tape I applied some years ago, so I sliced the old grip and pulled it off:

SRAM X.9 Rear Shifter – gummified grip

Popping a new-old-stock X.9 shifter from the Big Box o’ Bike Parts and installing it proceeded without problems. This being the rear shifter, I had to remove the shiny OEM cable and replace it with a PTFE-coated tandem-length rear cable, but that’s normal for a long wheelbase recumbent.

For the record, both black shift indicator tabs still show no signs of failing after half a year, so a bent piece of polypropylene sheet looks like a win.

2018-05-13
End of the Sienna

Although I knew the Sienna showed signs of a leaky head gasket, the exhaust system needed some attention, and a sporty used car recently put it in the shade, this still came as a surprise:

I’m trying to get a crew … together and live the demolition derby dream

By the time I arrived, the dashboard trim had vanished and the air bags were safely out:

Demolition Derby – Sienna dashboad prep

Diligent application of a Harbor Freight “Professional Windshield Removal Kit” cut through the side window seals, but the rear window rested on four impossible-to-cut locating studs:

Sienna – rear window locating stud

I managed to pry the glass off using a Gasket Scraper and considerable muttering.

With all the exterior trim, lights, and mirrors gone, the Sienna was in fine race trim:

Sienna – Demo derby race trim

But, being no longer street-legal, it required trailering. For the record, not all huge pickup trucks have bulky guys with pot bellies behind the wheel:

Demolition Derby – Tow Vehicle Rental

A few hours later, it was in the Short Track Full Size pack at the Upperco Volunteer Fire Company’s Demolition Derby:

Sienna at Upperco VFC Demolition Derby – start

The driver required a few laps to shake off years of safe-driving indoctrination:

Sienna – Demolition Derby – running alone – 2018-04-28

But eventually the spirit of the thing took over:

Sienna – Demolition Derby – right crunch – 2018-04-28

We now know the transmission oil cooler sat just ahead of the left front wheel, where it was exposed to damage by a glancing collision:

Sienna – Demolition Derby – left crunch – 2018-04-28

The Sienna finished the race and made it almost all the way to the trailer before bleeding out through the ATF cooler.

The driver emerged in fine shape, although the door didn’t work nearly as well as it had fifteen minutes earlier:

Sienna – Driver exiting Van – 2018-04-28

A race staffer in a Bobcat aimed the carcass in the right general direction and shoved it onto the trailer for the return to base:

Sienna – Final Trailer Tiedown – 2018-04-28

You can find shaky low-res camera action documenting the event, because video-or-it-didn’t-happen.

We piled the windows / parts / detritus into the back, a scrapper hauled it away the next morning, and that’s the end of our Sienna’s story.

Toyota sold a lot of Siennas, which means the Hot Topics list over on the right will show a need for Sienna ABS trouble codes long into the future.

In fact, the adjacent motel slot had a disconcerting sight:

Yet Another Sienna

I think it was a 2001 model, but …

2018-05-08
Torque Drivers

A stack of ~~loot boxes~~ ~~prize crates~~ treasure chests on the Squidwrench Operating Table yielded a big box of torque drivers, two of which now grace my collection:

Torque Drivers

As with clocks: when you have more than one torque wrench, you don’t know what torque it is. The black driver had a solder blob in its adjustment socket, obviously intended to prevent unqualified people (that would be me) from bungling a production-critical calibration.

A suitable drill in a pin vise put a hole down the middle of the blob:

Torque Driver – lead calibration seal

Turning a tap into the hole produced enough traction to yank the solder shell straight out of the hex. Whew!

The red driver goes to 30 lb·in, the silver to 30 lb·in, and the black to 100 oz·in. The red and black now agree to within maybe 4 oz·in, which I think is Good Enough, and both within 4 lb·ft of my Harbor Freight 200 lb·ft clicky wrench, which probably doesn’t mean much at the low end of the wrench’s scale.

The silver driver refuses to agree with anything, which suggests somebody else monkeyed with its calibration before I laid hands on it.

More calibration is needed.

2018-05-04
Mis-Punched Scope Probe Hook

Back in the day, HP scope probes had a rugged music-wire hook on the tip:

HP scope probe tip

These days, scope probe tips use ordinary sheet steel punched into a hook shape:

Siglent scope probe – good tip

By sheer bad luck, the first probe out of the bag had a mis-punched end with no griptivity:

Siglent scope probe – mis-cut tip

Dunno what happened, but it was definitely sheared off in the factory.

After I finally recognized the problem, I shaped a crude hook with a safe-edge needle file and continued the mission:

Siglent scope probe – filed tip

A quick note to Siglent put a replacement probe tip in the mail, so it’s all good.

2018-04-24
Fluorescent Shop Light Ballasts, Redux

As usual, several shoplights didn’t survive the winter, so I gutted and rebuilt them with LED tubes. Even the fancy shoplights with genuine electronic ballasts survive less than nine years, as two of those eight “new” lamps have failed so far.

The dead ballast looks the same as it did before:

Electronic ballast – label

Some deft work with a cold chisel and my Designated Prydriver popped the top to reveal a plastic-wrapped circuit board:

Electronic ballast – interior wrapped

Perhaps the flexy gunk reduces the sound level:

Electronic ballast – interior A

While also preventing casual failure analysis and organ harvesting:

Electronic ballast – interior B

The black gunk smells more like plastic and less like old-school tar. It’s definitely not a peel-able conformal coating.

One the other paw, the two magnetic ballasts in another lamp sported actual metal-film capacitors, which I harvested and tossed into the Big Box o’ Film Caps:

Shoplight choke ballast – film cap

If a dying ballast didn’t also kill its fluorescent tube(s), I’d be less annoyed. I’m running the remaining tubes through the surviving fixtures, but the end is nigh for both.

The new LED tubes produce more light than the old fluorescents, although I still don’t like their 6500 K “daylight glow” color.

2018-04-12
Snowblower Muffler Bracket

After three years, the bracket locking the snowblower’s muffler bolts broke, but this time I saw the bolt pop out of the muffler, fall to the driveway, and lie there sizzling in the slush. I tightened the remaining bolt and completed the mission.

The OEM bracket was thin sheet metal and broke across one bolt hole under the head. I sawed a rectangle out of a defunct PC case, then drilled clearance holes:

Snowblower muffler – drilling bracket

Bending two corners upward locks the bolt heads in position. I started the bends by clamping the bracket in the bench vise and whacking the corners, then finishing the job with a drift punch after installing it:

Snowblower muffler installed

Of course, I renewed the Never-Seez on the bolt threads; they obviously weren’t corroded in place!

For whatever it’s worth, the many spot welds joining the top bracket to the muffler are doing just fine.

2018-04-08
Baofeng BL-5 Pack Rebuild

The 18650 cell protection PCBs with 8205 ICs arrived and seemed small enough to simply tuck into the gap between the rounded cells in the second Baofeng BL-5 pack:

Baofeng BL-5 – new protection PCB – wiring 1

For whatever it might be worth, you’re looking at the only Baofeng battery pack containing an actual 10 kΩ thermistor, harvested from the benchtop Tray of Doom:

Baofeng BL-5 pack – thermistor

Unfortunately, the components on the PCB stuck up a bit too far from the cell surface and held the lid just slightly proud of the case. Applying pressure to lithium cells being a Bad Idea, I rearranged the layout by flipping the cells over, tucking the PCB components between the cells, and connecting everything with nickel tape instead of insulated wires:

Baofeng BL-5 – new protection PCB – wiring 2

The snippets of manila paper and Kapton tape hold things apart and together, as needed. Looks ugly, fits better.

Pop it in the charger to reset the protection PCB lockout and it’s all good again.

2018-03-26