Mostly lemon based

Category: General

  • Shiny shiny pumpy pumpy

    Finally got the new pump on the car; although the job itself wasn’t terribly difficult, the weather conspired to make it as unpleasant as feasibly possible. The only thing which could have made it substantially worse was the addition of say, sleat, or perhaps a sudden cold-snap. Although it’s chillier than it was anyway.

    But, apart from the odd scraped knuckle and having to shorten a hose by a couple of mms, the job was suprisingly pain free and simple. Although the extra 20 quid the new pump cost (on top of the mini pump’s price) – that was inconveniently painful. At any rate, a quick check suggests it’s on okay and no longer leaking.

    Given the weather conditions I felt it might be ‘wise’ to sort out the electrical problem which has plagued my car since the new engine was put in; that of the side light not working – new bulb didn’t solve it – and the alternator not charging the battery when the heater was on, that also was winding me up – and I deemed it to be a problem given the current weather conditions.

    So – the light, that was easy enough – a broken wire to the bullet connector (mmm, lucar) had disconnected the side light. One new bullett connector, enough solder to fill the titanic and that was done.

    But the charging? I found a loose connector on the Alternator yesterday – and hoped that might be it, but no. Still not working. So today I spent a happy half hour cleaning every single damn connector on a 1964 Morris Minor fusebox (courtesy of Nikki) – it really was appulingly filthy – worse than the one on the car, but it meant I could just clean it and stick the new one on in place of the old one. Much easier than trying to note which wires went where…

    …having done that – problem solved. I need to find some vaseline (I had some, somewhere) to smear on all the connectors – stop them from corroding again. But still, I think we’re ready for our trip back to my parents. Oh, with Johns help, the exhaust has been resealed – pending me getting the *right* frontpipe for my car. It’s ‘only’ 80 quid.

  • What the hell’s that?!

    So I woke this morning, wanting some breakfast…. no, seriously. Woke up and had a ‘slow’ morning, pondering heading out to collect my package from the pdo – in it.. hospital gowns, for my dad… *sighs*.

    Anyway, while I was pootling, and decididng that I didn’t fancy it, not in the pissing rain, I heard this noise…

    wwwwaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhHHhhhHHHHHHHHHHH

    After a few seconds I wandered over to the front window and opened it… and was thoroughly confused to hear an Air Raid Siren going off. My brain, in early morning mode, was completely phased. What do I do now? I thought.

    So I wandered off and put my contact lenses in… (more…)

  • Gack! The Organ were in the UK

    And I didn’t realise. Not that I had the money… but Gack!

    The Organ – Shows

  • Rat’d swine jobs

    Waterpumps are the source of all that is wrong and evil in the world. That is all.

  • He is everywhere…

    Noodle touched Golfball

  • Should’a been big jobs saturday…

    Bugger, that’s what I say.

    ‘Bugger’. Yes.

    So, we headed north, north and east, to the east-middle-bit of the UK, where Trey’s mum lives; (grrr, typed mom). Anyway, having got here I noticed something, but I thought “I’m not going to look at that, at least, not too hard”. But eventually, I felt it was necessary – my car’s leaking… coolant. Yes.
    (more…)

  • Little Jobs Saturday

    So, ’tis saturday again. Disturbingly quickly this one’s come round.

    Anyway, still overly smug at having made the fan work. Still need to source some appropriate new cable – it should have two core flex with a cotton coating going to the fan motor and three core, probably twisted cotton coated flex going to the body/switch. Need to hunt some of that out…

    …but I switched it on, it’s even got a dashing little ‘SWEB’ plug (South West Electricity Board) – although not remotely period, it’s still nicer than having a new plug on there.

    Next up I cut the grass. Our back garden has not got as bad as it did in the last house anyway, but the battle to keep it garden, rather than jungle like continues apace. Weedkilling was the next exciting mini-job, so I hunted round and liberally sloshed weedkiller on anything remotely green and spikey.

    Then excitment, I topped up the oil and washerbottle water in my car. That mild water leak which only happens when the car’s off appears to be back – so I think I will have to use that new gasket up after all :-(

    I’ll pick up some nice fresh coolant at some point soon though, just to be on the safe side.

    Then… get this for thrills, I hoovered the car. She’s now looking vastly cleaner inside… And then, thrill of thrills, I re-glued the carpet to the sill on the passenger side. It’s only been hanging off, what, two years or so? So, uh, yeah, that’s a bit tider now…

    I might even (and see if you can contain yourself when I tell you this) replace the blown sidelight bulb. Yes, yes, I realise the excitment might get a bit much… but, I’ve got to have fun sometimes…!

  • Unexpected success

    So, I got this fan aaaages ago, ages and ages ago really. Over a year now, I think. It’s an original brass/cast metal/scary wiring fan from [whenever] – it’s not got any brand information – in fact, the only useful information on it is the 250V plate.

    It’s got a serial number too.

    Anyway, I spent a happy several hours stripping it completely down, removing the old ‘grease’ and oil, and cleaning its moving parts. Eventually, having worked out that the rear bearing has – remarkably – survived well enough for the thing to work I started work on reassembly and found that the rubber insulation on the wires going into the motor – wires which are insulated in rubber then cotton coated then attached with cotton thread coated in some sort of paint; those wires; the rubber in them had broken down – not to the stage I’m used to. The stage where it flakes off in big chunks. Oh no.

    No, in this fan it’s old enough that they’re surrounded by crumbly small pieces of insulation. Replacing as far as I could this ‘insulation’ with rubber from the much shortened mains lead (again, old enough that it’s actual rubber in the insulation, not pvc), holding this in place with insulating tape and then covering it with duct tape (yes, yes, I know, but it’s black and it’ll do until I can get something a bit more appropriate – and ideally… black). And replacing the lead to the fan motor from the base (where the control switch is) with – again the mains cable…

    …finally I got to the cause of all this work – the failed bearing. This was, once, I think, a sintered bearing [basically, made from powder and porus so that oil can flow through it and lubricate the bearing surfaces]; unfortunately, in the last 40-50 years I don’t think it’d seen any oil (just like the other mechanism hadn’t seen any grease). Having drenched it in oil I tried to reassemble it, but something unfortunate has happened to the sintered bearing. It’s cracked and battered and really not well.

    So a fun hour or so ensued as I attacked the problem from various angles – repositioning the bearing, moving it within it’s holder both forward and back, rotating it so as the forces would be in a different place…

    …eventually I resorted to filing it where it was rubbing – still no go. If I pushed the casing fully home the fan jammed solid.

    Finally, in a moment of divine inspiration, I decided to bodge it.

    I put a small ‘shim’ in between the casing of the main body and the fan itself, and y’know what? This is what happened….

    Lethal, but nice.

    It’s still really tatty, and the oscillation just jams it, the front bearing is now so slack that I don’t know how much good it’s doing. What I need to do is get a micrometer and measure the front bearing and get a new one made up. Once that’s done I think it’d work exactly as the day it was made.

    I’m trying to work out what to do with the grille, I think I’ll maybe leave it as it is. I think perhaps – as I’m unlikely ever to make the fan perfect, then leaving it repaired; and naturally repaired; is quite nice. I dunno yet.

    Anyway, I’ll take a pic when it’s fully back together – and less lethal. Trey hid behind me when I showed her – and said “it’s got no guard!”. Hopefully, the araldite should hold the poor-quality bronze together – when I tried to braze it it just shattered – which was *definately* not what I intended…

  • Out of date…again

    Funnily enough, after yesterdays post, I find myself hunting for software for my ‘out of date’ iPaq. Being as it’s a top-of-the-range Compaq iPaq from 2001, it’s a bit painful to find that it’s now no longer supported by PocketPC (2003 won’t work on it); TomTom navigational software won’t install on it… because it needs Pocket PC 2003.

    So, I’m trawling the internet in search of software that’ll work on it. I’ve, in my diggings, discovered that CoPilot Live Pocket PC 5 might work on it, but may not work with the only GPS module I can find to work with the iPaq. I should have bought it all when it was cheap; it’s now reached ‘disappearing’.

    Still, I’ve managed to pick up a copy of PocketPC 2002 for iPaq for 6 quid; which means I can at least *try* to find software for it. No one, but no one does anything for WinCE.

    In other news, I have a cold. Again.

  • Pocket PC is back!

    Albeit with the linux bootloader; but it’s all good. Well, it’s not. But it’ll suffice ;-)

    It appears to be Windows CE version 3.0.9348, which is unexciting. It also seems to think it’s only got 31.25megs, which I presume is a problem with the version of CE. Grr. I’m not quite sure how to prod it into recognising the rest of the memory.

    I’m trying to hunt out the WinCE/PocketPC 2002 upgrade for the iPaq in the hope that now we can at least *talk* to it, we might be able to do something useful. I’m going to [this is all scaring me witless I hope you realise] do a ROM update in a minute. Which is all terribly terribly scary.