Mostly lemon based

Category: I’m a mechanic me…

  • Slicing the cupcake.

    So, having submitted and paid for the Nova Scotia nurses board registration*, that’s given us a sort of time line for departure. Not a fixed “we’ll be leaving at point X” timeline. But a rough idea timeline. 6 months for registration, a few months for finding a job and selling the house, and lo, we should be gone.

    We’d also like to do some travelling. And saving up. But essentially. Timeline.

    Which means that however I slice the cupcake (and I’ve tried many ways), I don’t think I can really schedule doing the Minor EV conversion before we go. I’d love to. I look at the sums and say “we’ll spend probably a grand on fuel, just going to my mum’s”. I think, every time I fill up the car with petrol ‘oh god, I hate petrol cars’. I despise supporting Esso, Shell and BP in their destruction of the environment. Whenever I’m stuck in a traffic jam I just am filled with this unutterable disappointment in the modern world, and in the fact that my friend Nikki was so ahead of the curve on this, and I’m still trailing along.

    But it’s a simple case of “we aren’t rich enough for that”. The old adage about quick/quality/price kicks in, and to do the project quickly, to the standard I want to do it, would cost vastly more than I have. To do the project at all requires me saving up some cash, but to do it to the standard I’d like to do it, it’s simply not going to happen at this point. And as John pointed out yesterday – I don’t want to get half way through and then need to move, and need to move with an immobile minor. Not a good plan.

    On the plus side, most of the bits I’ve got will remain ‘good enough’ for the project. The DC-DC, the pump, the motor and the controller are all fine. I’ll just have to package them up and ship them over… Which is irritating. But the disappointment of having pulled the Minor off the road for months, only to put her back on (when I get the diff fixed) with no improvement in her environmental impact is staggeringly sucky.

    The only upside is that when we get to Canada, having a car will be handy, and Rebecca is likely to have to step into that role rather quickly.

    Anyhow, I need to get on with cooking, grouting and painting. So, back to the grindstone with me. :)

    * So they can tell me whether I’m eligible to sit the exam, which we think/hope I am, which will mean I can sit the exam and then register as a nurse, and then get a job there**
    ** Anyone want a registered emergency nurse in Nova Scotia?

  • For some reason I’m knackered.

    Completely, totally exhausted. No idea why. One minute I was peachy keen, the next I felt like kipping on the sofa. I’m resisting, because it almost invariably makes me feel worse. It has been a fairly busy and productive day though, which might explain it.

    So, the items on today’s list were: Replace the leaking ballcock washer, gluing the back of the bookcase back together* and making an iphone/ ipod to valve radio cable.

    Having watched yesterday’s Rachel Maddow show over breakfast, and enjoyed the Pro-Obamaness**** I diassembled the 1930s ballcock and ‘simply undid’ the piston*****. It actually did come apart with less force than I thought might be required (although I was suspecting that it would need to be replaced entirely, so that’s not saying a lot). The rubber of the washer was fairly brick like and slightly crumbly, so the fact it was working as well as it was is quite surprising. Slipping the washer into my pocket I wandered down to the garage sporting my bike gear with the intention of going straight out to get the bits and bobs I required from the plumbing place and the very depressing Maplin.

    Having had a bit of a mental debate about the issue of how to glue the bits of wood making the back up back together, I realised that really, I’m going to have to do that in the house. It’s a bit of a bugger, because it means that some of the drilling is going to have to happen in the house. But then, taking that into account, I realised that that timing was a bit of an issue and threw the first coat of varnish on the wood before taking my motorbike outside and dropping it.

    Yes.

    See, we live in a nice house which backs onto a lane. The land outside our garage is gravelled, because our builders dumped the excess gravel on there. This is good, because prior to that it was just mud. I stood the bike on the gravel, locked the garage doors, started her up (she ran a bit roughly, probably because she’s not been used much recently) and hopped on. Up with the kickstand and pootle forward. Only the engine then attempted to stall. Pulling the clutch in, the bike came back to a stop, but now I was badly placed and the bike was starting to camber over. I stuck my leg out to stop the bike and the gravel took the bike rightward and my leg leftward. I tried to hold it up with my arms and force of will, but the fact was it wasn’t happening. The bike landed on it’s left side snapping the end off the clutch lever (argh). It also, I realised, weighs the same as a thousand suns.

    A very nice biker who happened to be walking his dog kindly offered his help (I’d tried twice and realised I had no hope of getting the bike up, he arrived whilst I was in the midst of that second attempt at a lift). Between us we got it back onto it’s centre stand. I think from now on I’ll walk it out to the tarmac stretch before riding, because that was no fun. We had a bit of a chat before he went, he used to have a GT550, and commented on what a lovely bike it is, and also how insanely heavy they are compared to modern bikes. Which is kinda funny, because I thought it was just me thinking it weighed a ton, but no. Anyhow…

    Having got the bike back up and running (it’s only the very end of the clutch lever that’s snapped, thankfully) I hopped on to go and be depressed by Maplins. Maplins, as we know, is painfully depressing, because I remember going in there and them actually stocking components. Still, they had what I required – a reasonable stereo socket, and a switch (for what was my mum’s broken bread maker), and I had the idea that a 4mm plug might fit in at least one of the connectors on the valve amplifier (I think I want a 3mm banana plug, but they’re very pricey) – so I got a couple of them. Despite costing more than e-bay I decided to pick up a pair of ‘helping hands’ too, although to be honest, they’re not the best ones I’ve ever tried. Nice heavy base, but finicky to set up. I then stopped at Graham and picked up the washer…

    And arriving home threw the varnish on everything shelf related.

    Reassembly of the toilet cistern proved to be a doddle, assuming it doesn’t start leaking in the near future. I’ve got 10 washers, anyhow (came in packs of 10). And then I sat down, watched Red Dwarf and made this:

    Stereo to mono valve radio cable

    It just all fits inside the metal case I got (I went for the metal one because I’ve had any number of stereo sockets with plastic screw together sleeves that have disintegrated). A quick check demonstrates that it works perfectly. The ‘Gram’ socket on our Bush VHF 61 does indeed work beautifully. Now I just need to make the iPhone base adaptor that looks like it’s made of bakelite and we’ll be good :)

    I also took the opportunity of being in a fixy mood to repair the breadmaker my mum gave us. I don’t think anything in particular has changed with our other one, but the faulty display has led to enough failed loaves of bread, so I fixed my mum’s… Unfortunately, I made an unwarranted assumption. When I looked at it I assumed (without taking it apart) that it used nasty cheap membrane switches, because it looks like it does. So I thought, ‘sod that’ and bought a push-to-make switch. It turns out that actually, it had dinky little sub-micro switches actuated by pushrods and the plastic surface that looks like membrane switches is just a plastic surface. Still, since it’s pretty ancient I decided I wasn’t too concerned about looks, and also couldn’t be bothered to go and deal with Maplins again. A few minutes work, and a couple of little flyleads later we have a ‘Start button’ that looks more enthusiastic:

    Fire!

    That done I went and did some more varnishing.

    Yes, my entire life the past few days has been cutting or varnishing or sanding.

    Then as I meandered up the garden I was suddenly hit by a wave of tiredness. An awesome wave of tiredness from which I’ve not yet recovered. I’ve been sat curled on the sofa dinking on the internet for the last couple of hours apart from… trying on my new leather jacket.

    It’s pretty rare that I get clothing of a decent brand. This is because in general I’m limited to whatever’s in my size in charity shops, and I’ve broad shoulders and long arms which means that whilst the majority of me is one size, finding jumpers and jackets that fit is a fracking nightmare. However, I’ve been faintly trying to locate a leather jacket for a while, but given my ethics it had to be a second hand jacket, because one shouldn’t be killing animals for leather, and then taking that leather and using a sweatshop to make the jacket. That’s my opinion. But I’m also not wealthy, so getting new clothes that are ethically made requires either that I have very few clothes or that I get them from charity shops, or at least second hand.

    Having vaguely poked at charity shops, then upped it to a fairly concerted effort to find one, including looking in vintage shops, I decided to poke at e-bay. And there it was, a Press and Bastyan jacket. Now, I’ve less idea who these people are than most, because my idea of following fashion is to watch Big Bang Theory and see if I can get teeshirts that match. However, I looked at the prices and I thought, hell, it might be decent quality. I stuck a bid on for a tenner (meaning the thing would cost 15 quid) and didn’t think too much more about it. The nice ‘you’ve won this item’ e-mail arrived, and I then assumed that it’d not fit.

    It arrived today. It does fit, and it is, indeed really a very nice leather jacket. It’s not exactly what I originally went looking for, but I’m really quite pleased with it. So there we go. Now I just need to develop the ability to care deeply about clothing and I reckon I could look quite good. I suspect, however, that’s not going to be coming in the near future.

    * So, yesterday Nikki kindly gave me a lift to B&Q to get the second sheet of spruce ply. Sadly, their stock was much smaller than it had been, and to be honest, a lot scabbier. It’s not intended to be furniture grade, and much of it was poorly filled with streaks of nastyness. The one I selected in the end also has scabby filled bits, but it was the best of the top few. I got it cut to size and we wandered out to Nikki’s Leaf (since Chester is not moving until we get a new strut). We tried a few angles, but were prevented by the narrowness of the rear door from getting it in**. I thought it was bendier than it is (it’s not really very bendy at all), and so having attempted every orientation of I took it back into the store and had it cut in half. It is, of course, now, 3 mm narrower than it was intended to be. Which is a bit of a bugger, but not as much of a bugger as the massive error I’ve made***.

    ** I can picture my dad’s rant now; he very politely destroyed every point that a Vauxhall salesperson had about why the then new Vectra was better than his few year-old Cavalier was. The only reason we were debating it is my dad had been made redundant, and whilst he still had a massive GM discount he thought it might be worth replacing the car. Having decided the Vectra was even worse than the Cavalier (which was not really as good as the Mk II Escort, but wasn’t nearly so rusty) he decided that he’d rather keep the Cav, which went on to do nearly quarter of a million miles before we sold it.

    *** So, I thought there was more space around the bookcase than there actually was. So when I made the plinth, I made it a bit bigger than the case itself, to make it look nice. Like a proper bookcase, I thought. I just went and measured the gap (yes, you can all say “shouldn’t you have done that first”, but honestly, I thought it was bigger’n that) and will need to trim the ends off my plinth. Not a lot, but the nice end pieces I made? They’re going to be coming off tomorrow :(

    **** Whilst I have a multitude of reservations about Obama, the choice between Obama and Romney was, to me at least, do you want someone who seems to be very competent, even if his record on civil liberties is no where near where you’d like it to be, or would you like an incompetent pathological liar. I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t object to Romney near as much if he actually stood by any position long enough to question him on it. Or admitted that he’d changed his mind. But he appears unaware of the fact that we now have the awesome technology to play back tape of him, and see what he said before and compare it to his random new position. Ah well, all done now :)

    ***** Whenever someone says ‘simply undo’ or ‘with a light tap’ you know that it’s bollocks, don’t you. You know that you’re going to be using molegrips and monkey wrenches or club hammers and your sharpest chisel and all the force you can muster.

  • I should totally be paid more

    So, as a consequence of my job I got to spend today at an inquest. Obviously I’m not going to talk about the inquest, or the evidence, or whathave you. Whilst it was an open inquest and anyone could have attended, I don’t think it’s terribly appropriate to discuss these things here. What I can (and do) say is that having been grilled on the stand about triage and care and decisions I made 2 years ago was less fun than I imagined. Having the relatives asking questions of you and wanting answers that you sadly cannot give them, that’s no fun either.

    As someone who was involved briefly with the patient in question, well, it was weird to consider that the time I met this individual in life was far more brief than the amount of time I spent discussing the individual post-mortem. As I say, not fun. And now I’m worrying about my documentation for many of my other patients, the adequacy of which, if it came to court, now concerns me. Because my 15 minute or so, total, interaction with the patient was dissected and examined like some kind of specimen under a microscope, and what saved me spending the whole session stating “my normal practice is…” despite my appalling memory was the fact that the notes were adequate to draw a witness statement, which was enough to jog enough of my memory to enable me to actually discuss the events adequately.

    Anyhow, enough about that, because it’s stressful. In other news, Chester had been producing a faint burning smell for a couple of days, intermittently, and we hadn’t managed to find the source. I’d come to the conclusion that I might have to take the dash apart and check the condition of the wiring behind, because it smelt like hot / melting insulation.

    When I was en-route to the court today I noticed a significant quantity of smoke coming from the car as I pelted up the stretch of 60 limit, and pulling up to the court could distinctly smell melting plastic, but not locate the source of the smell which appeared to be somewhere engine bay related, and definitely not in the passenger cabin. Having had another look around the car I headed home, intermittently, again, smelling hot/melting rubber. Finally I got home, got changed, and poked in the engine bay, then laid under the car hunting for the source of the odour. Just as I was sliding myself out I glanced up at the suspension strut. Last year, you may recall, Chester’s suspension failed fairly dramatically slicing a tyre all the way around it’s rim. This time it’s not made it through the tyre, although the tyre has definitely had it. I’m slightly afraid to pull the car off the kerb I pulled it up onto, so I could examine it without too much difficulty, and without dragging the ramps out, because I’m slightly afraid that the tyre will go ‘Bang’ when I do.

    This does, of course, mean we’re now sans car (again), and also that I get to play ‘track down the obscure part for the 25 year old car’ again. Volvo, last I heard, could supply these, but at 200 quid a throw. Which seems excessive on a car that cost £270 quid. So tomorrow I’ll do some ringing around, and hopefully get it shipped here, and then he’ll be mobile again.

    It’s funny, because I looked at it a few times around the time of the incident, and had thought about rechecking it, but assumed that it was less likely to fail being on the side away from puddles. I was, clearly, wrong. It’s more irritating because we’ve got through a ridiculous number of tyres on the Volvo, none of which have actually worn out. Punctures destroyed two tyres, the failing struts have now destroyed another two. I think we treated him to all new tyres when we got him, so this rate of attrition is really rather sad. We’ve only done 40k miles in him!

    Anyhow.

    In other news, I’ve been doing more woodworking. Or what I consider woodworking, and everyone else would presumably consider causing wood torment and pain.

    This:

    Untitled

    is what we started with, and what we’re ending with. That, on the left, is one of the few bits of unplaned, un prepped douglas fir. That, complete with price tag, is what we bought to build the book cases. The back is made of spruce ply, which is what B&Q stock. (more…)

  • The list

    So, I’ve got a little list of things to do when I finish my dissertation…More for me than anyone else, really.

    (more…)

  • Oh the humidity! (or Driving Miss Minor)

    Sorry.

    So, despite hideous tropical humidity, and the world (or at least the English bit of the world) being pretty awful to be working in (in a ugh – it’s really humid way), we put Rebecca in the garage today. With thanks to my awesome friends who came, helped me jumpstart her, and guided her into the garage. It was a hitch free move, thankfully, and surprisingly. And the rebuilt engine? Started easily – given that she’s been sat, unstarted for months.

    So yay.

    This is the second step in the EV conversion :)

  • Brrrm

    So, today in a spate of productivity I summarised 4 papers ready for inclusion in my dissertation (2 more to go); I updated the ‘Superpad 2’* to the hacked firmware courtesy of Tim, I think. This has made it work better, be a bit faster, have functioning marketplace support (although irritatingly, I still can’t install a working VNC server on it). I’m faintly hoping for the Ubuntu Linux distro to be installable on it in the not too distant future. I might do a little video review of it at some point (I keep threatening that).

    Here's hoping I've not instigated a bricking.

    It does now work ‘sufficiently’ that I’ll consider using it as an audio player, properly, until a Slimp3 finds its way into my grubby little mitts. It also has a much prettier start up swooshing android logo going on. That, actually, is probably the most exciting thing. The keyboard’s better, it’s rooted. But despite the fact I can now install paid apps, the free one (slow though it is) is sufficient for the moment. I’ll consider the pay-for uPnP client if I get sick of the freebie one.

    I collected a garden wood chipper, which I got from gumtree, which should mean we can clear the patch of garden that’s been covered with dead wood since…err…let’s not discuss that too much.

    But most excitingly, I made this happen:

    It did settle down after a few minutes, and I then bought some insurance, booked an MOT and a service, and am trying to decide whether to install a GPS/Alarm on it. I’m guessing that GT550s are still reasonably stealable. This sudden enthusiasm is partially because Kathryn informed me that if she’s not used her bike gear within the next 6 months, she’ll have to sell it/give it away. So it’s vitally important that I get back riding :)

    * BarelyAdequatePad2

  • Less plan, more replan

    So, I had good intentions for today. I thought I’d wash, get dressed, and work. Take a brief break to run some batteries to the metal recycling with Nikki and her handily available review Renault ZE (she asked for a real world test suggestion, I thought running the half ton of batteries to the scrap metal merchants was an excellent suggestion – incidentally, the ZE did this job without a hitch and actually, seems like quite a neat EV – more my taste than the leaf (in the wholeheartedly practical vehicle sense)), but basically set aside today as a Dissertation Day.

    Annnyhow. So that battery lugging bit went quite well, but battling with Scopus was frustrating and…long. Scopus is a database, for those of you who don’t know, and actually it’s just because each database has its own search grammar and trying to take one search across to another database just doesn’t work, so there’s lots of tweaking to make it work that makes the whole job frustrating. But unlike Ovid which is old and painful, Scopus is actually fairly intuitive, and it was just tedious tweaking the search to work right.

    After a while though, I got that sorted and worked my way through the hits. The plan then was rinse-and-repeat for Web Of Knowlege (that being the last database I need to re-search) but it’s been informing me, helpfully, that:

    “Thank you for using Web of Knowledge
    A system error has occurred.”

    Which impedes my ability to search somewhat. So instead I decided to tackle another thing from the to-do list. The final tweaks to Kathryn’s Bicycle. Now it has brakes (at least working, could do with a bit more tweaking) and gears (all 3 actually seem to be working), and I’ve fitted the replacement cotter pin (to replace the one I munged fairly dramatically). So I shall maybe take it for a quick test ride on Wednesday :)

    And for all being such lovely people, here’s a picyture.

    Untitled

    I also discovered today that ripping to MKVs from blurays is all very well, if your media player can handle them. It turns out that the VMP74 can’t. So the poor old media server is now tasked with transcoding them to MP4 / M4Vs, which it can manage at about 6 frames per second.

  • She riiiiides. Sorta.

    So, a while back, some of you may recall that I bought and brought home a rusting heap.

    Untitled

    The plan was to get a bike for Kathryn, but my fondness for things ancient and solid overwhelmed my common sense (not difficult). And I was somewhat optimistic about the state of the bike when I bought it from ebay. To be honest, when I got there I thought ‘oh arse’. But unless someone’s description is misleading I’ve always felt that once you’ve bought it, you’ve bought it. So I heaved the rusty heap into the car and drove home.

    And then there was the misquote. See, I asked for a quote for a wheel rebuild and was misinformed about how much it would cost, and looking at the bike I realised that actually, it was fairly solid. Lots of surface rust, complete and total destruction of the chromework (impervious to water my ass), but the frame itself was pretty good. And having slathered the poor beast in penetrating oil, the brakes freed up and quickly came back to life. I started to contemplate what would be required to fix it.

    ….and make it look less shit.

    (more…)

  • Positive / negative

    So, today is a day with occasional frustrations, and attempts to maintain optimism. I’m waiting for feedback from Cardiff U on my dissertation. The question of how to develop it into something that’ll pass hovers in my brain, especially since I realised that thanks to moving deadlines I’m now running one month short at the end, since we’ll be on holiday.

    In the mean time I set up the database on my laptop to allow me to capture data for the audit, and then spent about an hour trying to work out how to get Excel to talk to mySQL. The answer? Not easily. There are a few hacks, but basically Excel 2011 won’t work properly with the mySQL ODBC stuff on Mac OS, which is ‘a pig’. In the end I found an application that will extract the data in the form of a nicely formatted spreadsheet, which should allow me to then dink with the data. Thus, data collection should be easy, and data analysis easy. All I need is data location and abstraction. I’ll be writing my audit proposal and submitting it to work today, at least, that’s the plan.

    Having had a shuffle of my days off, meaning that I couldn’t collect the bike wheel when I’d arranged to, yesterday I rang them and asked if it was ready. They’d said it would probably be ready today, but I was meant to be at work today. When I rang, he said it was ‘already finished’. So I trundled through Bristol’s hideous traffic in the car, arrived to a very confused looking person who informed me that no, it wasn’t ready.

    The person behind the counter admitted it was his fault and that he’d got mixed up… no offer of anything to recompense me for the hour wasted in the middle of a nice (and very warm) day though. I know they’re a co-op and I know they’re lovely, but at this moment, on top of the fiasco of not mentioning that spokes would more than double the cost of doing the wheels? I am feeling rather less fond of them at the moment.

    However, I had one of those nice realisations – the Sturmey Archer hub is not merely easy to get spares for, but also, apparently you can just switch internals from a later AW hub into an early AW hub. So, a quick e-bay gandering later, and I’ve got a 5 quid bid on a working AW hub from 1987. That would give me a bike with working gears, for double plus awesome, and at some point later I can strip down the BSA hub and fix it :)

    On the slightly frustrating side, I finally got around to checking the Minor and the battery was flat. Not a weeny teeny bit flat, but properly flat. Or at least, I thought it was. Having put it on charge, I’m surprised to find my charger thinks otherwise, which is perhaps even more concerning. Still, I’ll leave it on charge for a bit, check the voltage and then maybe pop it back into the minor. She’s in need of moving though, her paint’s starting to go matt on the bonnet, which is going to be a bollocks to fix because it’s two-pack. I think. I also finally got over myself and rang the engineering firm. I feel like I should be more certain about what I want, but frankly, I want to talk to someone who’s an engineer and say ‘will this work, am I insane (in a bad way)’.

    Sadly, the bloke who I need to talk to is not there at the moment. And I’m at work tomorrow, so I’ll have to leave it ’til Monday. Having measured the engine, the motor is about 3cm longer than the distance from the backplate to the mount, which means that it may have to be a sort of U-shaped mount. Ideally I’d like to sketch it for them, and say “if that makes sense, please make a nice engineering diagram of it, and then if I’m happy please make it”. However, and slightly upsettingly, I’ve realised I don’t have any vector drawing packages installed on the Mac. The RiscPC, which has the most delightful of all vector drawing packages (well, when combined with the !DrawPlus enhancements) needs its battery checking before I dare plug it in. I may have to resort to the draw-photograph-send, which is pretty…cumbersome. But perhaps better than trying to explain what I’m after on the phone. I shall see what he says when I ring…

  • Please insert ridiculous wail

    One day I’m going to learn that I should check that the fault I think it is, is the fault it actually is.

    So, I stripped down the bottom bracket on my beloved bike, having taken the cotter pin out from that side, and, having collected the ball bearings together after dropping them on the floor, spent some time cleaning up the inside of the bottom bracket.

    I can see now that I really, really, really should service it properly, and that the one on the other side probably should be stripped down and cleaned as well. There was grease in there, yes, but I don’t know when it was last ‘greasy’. Much cleaning with plusgas of parts ensued, and fresh grease applied, and the bearings – which as others have suggested are tough as nails – all looked lovely when I reassembled. I’m slightly worried about the tightness to which I’ve tightened it, but it feels…okay. It runs smoothly. I guess I’ll check it in a week or so, and see how it’s feeling.

    It’s good that something needed doing with the painfully overpriced tool I’d just bought (which, it turns out, I could have got away with the crappy Halfords one, because it was lovely and easy to adjust) because that wasn’t where the crunchy/clunky feeling was coming from. The cotter pin on the other side, the chain side, that had worked loose. And lo, a quick tighten and all was well. Having seen inside there though, I’m slightly unclear as to how the oiler is meant to work. It appears to just drip oil into a space in the bottom bracket that runs in to the legs running to the back wheel. There’s no cunning device to try and get oil dripped in there to the actual bearings. And that’s ignoring the whole pack-it-with-grease-then-add-oil-later freakyness I’m noting.

    That’s what it says in my book, though. Still, if I’ve got it more or less right, then it shouldn’t need adjusting for a while. So that’s good :)

    I have now ordered the tyre for the new wheel, and hopefully an innertube. It’s a bit difficult to ascertain whether I’m getting an innertube as the company it’s coming from are…somewhat…recalictrant about answering e-mail.