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Look. I am actually doing something. The instructions kind of stopped making sense half way through so I pulled off the whole knuckle assembly. It's got a far more complicated name in the manual which didn't help. Now I just need to work out how the hell to remove the old bearings and fit new ones. Help me. Got a horrible sense of scope creep. I know I need to replace a CV boot while I'm there. But I'm so tempted to fabricate a 50mm lift for it while I'm there. Problem is I think trimming the bump stop is stupid so I should get and fit some upper ball joint spacers while I'm there and to be safe remove the sway bar which can bind ... etc. One thing that is stopping me is ball joint spacers have gotten more expensive for some reason and I don't have the tools to make them. But then I'd have to lift the back. loving ambition. It's almost as bad as hope. What I need to do is replace the wheel bearings so it's one less thing grinding like a rock tumbler.
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Feb 1, 2017 07:58
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"while I'm in there" is often considered a fatal condition for the backyard mechanic unfortunately, I know the feeling. I'd suggest doing the CV boot, then taking as many measurements and reference photos as possible for the potential lift and putting the wheel back on. That way when you have some time you can sit down and decide what to do about the swaybar, bump stops etc. Means a better planned and executed modification and you've begun satisfying the horrible demands of your condition, hopefully holding it at bay for the time being(even if you haven't actually done bugger all about the lift).
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Feb 2, 2017 01:28
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bend posted:"while I'm in there" is often considered a fatal condition for the backyard mechanic unfortunately, I know the feeling. I'd suggest doing the CV boot, then taking as many measurements and reference photos as possible for the potential lift and putting the wheel back on. That way when you have some time you can sit down and decide what to do about the swaybar, bump stops etc. Means a better planned and executed modification and you've begun satisfying the horrible demands of your condition, hopefully holding it at bay for the time being(even if you haven't actually done bugger all about the lift). This. Absolutely this. Accomplish the job and put it back together, stat. Tick the repair off and earn your beer.
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Feb 2, 2017 01:38
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I'm just saying "gently caress it" to the CV boot for now. I had a look at it and the glue job is still sealed. Leaving it for 'Ron. Getting the bearings and oil seals out was a bastard of a job and even worse to put the new ones in. Did it with brute force, various drifts and chunks of wood and swearing. Would have been utterly hosed if I had to reuse any old parts. Funny thing about the old bearings is they looked great! However they did not feel great. It was like all the rollers had a flat spot or something. It's not a job I want to do again in a hurry. The rest was easy but the bearing assembly wasn't. I had no idea how to drive in something recessed with the same diameter as a bangle. I'll finish reassembling it another day. I'm out of time. The bearing housing assembly has the CV axle stuck through it and it's just hanging by the top balljoint again. Should at least help stop contamination. I can't put the disc back on until the steering arm is back on. I don't need to measure anything for a lift. It's a very well beaten path. The method I was considering while it corrects for an angular change in the front springs, it also bothers me. It involves removing a section of the lower spring seats. For some reason they have a tongue that wraps around under one of the suspension arms so the two bolts pass through the seat on that side twice. All I can think is to avoid cyclic tension on the bolt heads from the shock absorber. Beyond that I have no idea why it exists. Removing it then using wedges of a sort under the spring base is one method but not the only one.
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Feb 2, 2017 05:15
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Pictures of the XJ's front right tread:   Those tread blocks are supposed to be even. Shock absorber seems fine. Pressure is always maintained. I just don't know. They'll get rotated when I get a chance. I finished putting the Niva back together. Didn't take a photo because it's just a wheel. I kind of hosed up a weird pressed ring shaped sheet metal flange unfortunately. It's not quite flat any more. Not entirely sure what it does. It fits on a lip on the bearing carrier / knuckle assembly and seems to sit against the inner face of the hub part of the brake disc. It might be to keep stones and crud away from the grease seals but it's a weird way of doing it. It got covered in grease because metal on metal can't be good. Going to swap the Niva out with the Jeep so I can address some of the Jeep's issues, like the weird tread wear, and an odd clunking sometimes when it takes off from a stop. I suspect a stiff U joint. Goddamn this sucks typing this out on a Raspberry Pi 3. Worst part is it has an unidentifiable under voltage issue so it's constantly throttled back. The PC is staying off unless needed. Electricity costs jumped so much that I went from a bill cycle in credit to organising a repayment plan over a period of months in one billing cycle. Just think about that. So I'm watt pinching like a motherfucker. e: There was a couple of details about the bearing repair I forgot. One of the upper ball joint bolts stripped clean before I'd even torqued it. The lower shock bolt also looked Chinese furniture quality and had a random washer on each end. Replaced them both with generic but better quality bolts for reassembly. General_Failure fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Feb 4, 2017 |
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Feb 3, 2017 22:28
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Both the Niva and Rav4's batteries have poo poo themself. Seriously what? I gave the Niva's battery a tickle with the lovely charger, primed the fuel pump and it started first crank. drat! Took it out for a drive and it went well. Unfortunately I had completely forgotten that one of the longitudinal links has a flogged out bolt hole. So besides the clunk clunk on accel / decel it went fine. Couldn't hear much in the way of untoward noises from the wheel bearings I changed, which is good. Also the first real drive it's had since I adjusted the brakes last year. Feels so adequate! The brakes always feel low and spongy because of the way they are designed. Fine control for most of the travel then anchors when pushing harder. Man I've missed driving that rattly, uncomfortable heap of nuts and bolts. Right now it's stranded parked outside the "garage". I went to shuffle vehicles in the driveway after taking it for a drive and ...no. It won't have any of that. Won't crank. The voltmeter is on 11, and the dash lights only dim enough for the relay. I don't think it's pulling enough current to trigger the starter solenoid. So I've got the piece of poo poo "new" (bullshit) battery it came with charging so I can take it out and give it a jump. It should hold enough charge to use as a jump battery. I can't hand crank the loving thing. I think one of my next projects will be to make a frogs eye starter crank plate for the roo bar. It has a 40 or so mm hole drilled in the bar already which is totally useless because all the effort goes into ...crank walk ahaha. Seriously though it's impossible to crank because of the big aluminium guide hole. Looks like the PO of the roo bar got as far as drilling one hole to mount a plate and stopped. I could really use having the combustion powered wrist smasher in operational condition.
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Feb 5, 2017 07:42
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Why the gently caress is power so expensive? Invest in solar when you get a chance maybe. Raspberry PIs are super finicky with voltage, and iirc if you have the mouse plugged into the USB directly it's bad times. Everything other than a keyboard needs to be run off a powered USB hub. If you've already got that covered, I'm out of ideas.
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Feb 5, 2017 19:05
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Breakfast Feud posted:Why the gently caress is power so expensive? Invest in solar when you get a chance maybe. Raspberry PIs are super finicky with voltage, and iirc if you have the mouse plugged into the USB directly it's bad times. Everything other than a keyboard needs to be run off a powered USB hub. If you've already got that covered, I'm out of ideas. Because the power company says so. It's a combination of their connection fee or whatever the hell it's called which comes to something like a few hundred $ of each bill, plus a price hike on KWh. If I had a few thousand burning a hole in my pocket I'd love to go for solar. A decent percentage of homes and businesses here have it. Back 8(?) years ago when we bought this house there was a scheme running for solar. Unfortunately the solicitor dicked around so long that by the time we had the paperwork it had ended. That's life. It's raining today so I was sitting here doing some computer stuff and wondered what the compressor that I could hear kicking in and out and the motor sound was. I'd completely forgotten that I'd jump started the Rav4 and left it running to give it a change to charge the battery. Whoops! Yesterday evening, after many failed attempts I tried starting the Niva again. It started. I'm really thinking it's the starter solenoid now. Goddamnit. Probably about the only non serviceable part on the whole car. What I found worrying was when it was cranking there was an intermittent metallic clank, and possibly a couple more after it started. More that needs investigation. Greeeeat. With the Pi 3. I pointlessly tried more combinations, and tried the mouse and keyboard on the powered hub. No difference. If there's a such thing as a panel mount barrel connector I might add one to the case wired to the GPIO pins. Totally off topic though.
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Feb 6, 2017 00:19
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I've had a bunch of RPis (albeit not a 3, not yet) and have never had to run a powered hub for just a mouse and keyboard. My RPi2 file server runs a WiFi adapter, mouse, keyboard and a flash drive off an unpowered hub and a dollar-store cellphone charger. It wouldn't surprise me if you could reasonably run one off a hardware-store "car charger" solar panel. I think the one that I have in my pile cost $50 on sale and can do 20W.
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Feb 6, 2017 00:44
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I only had a mk I pi for a few months before I gave it to a friend. It came with a big disclaimer/warning about running a powered USB hub or the onboard surface mount fuses would pop (or something to that effect). I wouldn't be surprised if that issue was fixed in later iterations. The only issue with running it off a solar panel would be ensuring it gets a constant voltage. I looked over a few tutorials and you need a voltage regulator and battery monitoring stuff for it to work properly. At that point it might be cheaper to run it off mains power indefinitely.
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Feb 6, 2017 02:28
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A few hundred per bill in fees? Is it safe to assume that's a monthly bill? Is that a flat connection fee with a reasonable kWh, or is the kWh rate rape too?
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Feb 6, 2017 05:23
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Yu-Gi-Ho! posted:A few hundred per bill in fees? Is it safe to assume that's a monthly bill? Quarterly. I found the bill. Misremembered it a bit it seems. Looking at roughly AUD$140 / qtr for supply fees. Roughly AUD$0.24/kWh. It's not flat rate but there's less than a cent between increments so who gives a poo poo. Breakfast Feud: It may have been because lovely powered hubs allow backfeed into the USB master. I modified the powered hub before using it to stop backfeed, and added the deleted caps for each port, improved / added soldering and gave it an automotive two core pigtail with a fairly standard female barrel connector on it. I've got an RPi3, RPi Zero, RPi B, Orange Pi PC and an Orange Pi Zero. I don't really have problems with the others. The Orange Pi PC can struggle if I give it a really bad cable but that's about it. I grafted the RTC on to the Pi 3's DAC card today. I was sick of it not having a hardware clock. Re: the Pi with solar. it would be a very bad choice. Especially the RPi 3. From what I've read, including a long and dry yet informative writeup on power usage of various SBCs, there's just no savings to be had. Hell, it still draws heaps after it's shut down. The best way to go would be a mobile device like a tablet or phone with a panel and regulator. A lot of SBCs including the Raspberry Pi series are based of Set top box SoCs, so they lack some of the necessary power management stuff. I think some also use full mobile chipsets but I don't know what they are. I'm sure there are some unique individuals out there that have tried using a Raspberry Pi for a car computer for some reason. Pretty sure they would have been shocked to find a flat battery in the morning. There's another issue to solar. It needs to run a display. They are hogs. I mean I have a couple of tiny TFTs, and a couple of even smaller mono OLEDs but they are more useful for microcontrollers. Bugger me, this is a hell of a derail. Whatever. It's raining outside so I can't go out to play. It is good to have the Niva back on the road again, at least for now. I swear it looks rougher every time I look at it, but mechanically it gets better. I just have to keep telling myself that.
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Feb 6, 2017 07:23
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I'm never complaining about my electric bill again. 
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Feb 6, 2017 08:47
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Our electricity is 9c/kwh. Unless you go on a "peak" plan, where it's 24c/kwh from 1200-1900, and then only 6c/kwh the rest of the time. But there's also a "super peak" plan, where it's only 5c/kwh normally, 25c/kwh from 1200-1900, but ALSO 47c/kwh from 1500-1800. Air conditioning costs in Phoenix, y'know.
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Feb 6, 2017 08:58
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Goddamn. Mine's around 8c. I have a free nights plan available, so 8pm-5am is free (used to include weekends), but it bumps me up to 13c/kWh during the day. Pretty sure that used to be 20c/kWh. Changing to that plan means I have to pay a $150 ETF, too, along with a new deposit. The bulk of my energy use is before I go to work - shower (electric water heater), dishes from the night before (again, electric water heater), and I usually leave between noon and 2pm. Going by the usage from my meter, it looks like it takes my water heater about 4 hours to recover from heavy use. The only way that would save me any money is if I finally got a washer and dryer of my own.
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Feb 6, 2017 09:49
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There's also the off peak rate, which is just the meter that they switch on and off for the electric hot water which is 11.7c/kWh. I've hear of people tapping into that for other things and getting busted for it. I know I'm not a special snowflake though. Lots of people have been hit with the cost hike. Doesn't help that we're a heavy power user. Not wasteful. Just needed a lot so the change is really painful. I usually have to do a load of clothes every day. Use stuff in the kitchen a fair bit etc. But not the stove. We had gas installed a few years back. I took great joy in kicking that turd of a stove into the landfill. Westinghouse Kimberley is the worst goddamn stove in the history of cooking I swear. Had a few in different places and they are miserable pieces of poo poo that fail in all sorts of dangerous ways. We were lucky the summer has been mild so far. Barely even made it into the 40s. Had to turn on the "window" mounted A/C for maybe one day for a few hours because the ducted swamp cooler just couldn't do it because of humidity. That AC is an ancient monster. It's a big old wall mount one that someone removed the top half of the loungeroom window to put it in, and hung it from the verandah rafters. Makes me drat nervous. I want to give it some support struts or something. Has it's own 15A circuit (remember 240V). I don't even want to know how much it uses. Honestly when it gets so hot it has to go on I don't really care either. The worst days we've had here were a year ago when the temp was pushing 50*C. gently caress that. Anyone that says the world used to be a hotter place has their head lodged firmly up their arse. Even normal summer temperatures it pushes most animals to the brink of death. If it used to be hotter nothing would have survived.
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Feb 6, 2017 11:20
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Breakfast Feud posted:I only had a mk I pi for a few months before I gave it to a friend. It came with a big disclaimer/warning about running a powered USB hub or the onboard surface mount fuses would pop (or something to that effect). I wouldn't be surprised if that issue was fixed in later iterations. I've got a Pi 3 running Retropie and I routinely use it with at least 4 gamepads/joysticks and a keyboard plugged in. I haven't had any issues yet. And yes, I could definitely put a battery between the solar panel and the Pi, to ensure a stable supply.
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Feb 6, 2017 11:30
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I kinda miss living in a climate where a swamp cooler does more than just blow muggy air around. They're so much cheaper to run than real air conditioning, and keep the air from getting stale inside. Where I grew up, they were the primary form of cooling - MGS may or may not be able to vouch for this, he's in a similar (just a bit hotter) desert climate. I'm told by friends back home that swamp coolers aren't nearly as common anymore; I know trying to find pads or pumps online is an exercise in laughter. Every time I go back though, I'm always surprised how 30C here feels like high 30s there. I'm so used to ~50-80% humidity year-round that walking out of the airport or bus station into 10% feels amazing (.. and gives me constant nose bleeds for the entire visit). I didn't live in a house with actual air conditioning until I was 14. Conversely, I've never seen a swamp cooler being used as a swamp cooler here - I see them used sometimes as a poor man's makeup air unit for a restaurant's kitchen ventilation, but never as a cooler. I remember in high school, it was a big deal if you were going to hang out with someone with refrigerated air.
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Feb 6, 2017 11:59
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Even in the area of Idaho I grew up, we had a hot, dry 4 month summer. Had a swamp cooler until I was 16 or so, as well as most of the neighbors. Worked very well, and was cheap to run. Now I live in Phoenix and nobody has one. It seems like the perfect climate for one, and when I ask people why there aren't any, they reply that it's the wrong climate?  It's the perfect climate, you slack-jawed junksluts!You only see them on super poor people's homes in the ghettos anymore.
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Feb 6, 2017 13:31
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Yu-Gi-Ho! posted:I kinda miss living in a climate where a swamp cooler does more than just blow muggy air around. They're so much cheaper to run than real air conditioning, and keep the air from getting stale inside. My parent's, previously grandparent's, house had swamp coolers until after I graduated high school and moved out (1988), when they finally put in central HVAC. In North Texas (Weatherford.) Yes, it worked every bit as well as you think it did(n't). Imagine praying that it doesn't rain in the summer, just so the humidity gets low enough for the swamp cooler to work. None of my parent's cars had working AC, either. I guess we were tougher 30 years ago?
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Feb 6, 2017 21:43
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Swamp coolers are still really popular here. Pretty much for the reasons people said. They work well in low humidity. The house doesn't have to be sealed up, or shouldn't be. Way, waaaay cheaper to run. I know purchase and installation was a lot but it paid for itself years ago in energy savings. Speaking of the pads, the ones on my cooler are turbofucked. Sucks I can't even go up there. It's a steep pitch roof and I have a bit of an issue with vertigo. Not scared of heights at all. I just kind of lose balance. Got to call an aircon person. Have to wait until autumn / winter though because they are booked months ahead. Speaking of swamp coolers, did those window mount car ones that used to be around actually work? I found pictures of someone doing a restoration of one years back and was considering doing a work-alike.
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Feb 6, 2017 21:52
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On topic. I finally caught the transient event. A while back I liberated the voltmeter from the VW to help me work out a bit of weirdness that I could never catch in action. This morning I saw it. The charge volts were around 15 and pulsating in time with whatever dash light happened to be lit. It stinks of a bad earth but damned if I know where. I've been over them. Checked them. Fixed one that someone put in the wrong place. And yet there it is. Also no it's not the voltage regulator. I've tried three different ones with the same result. It's still rocking the neat electronic one with the two LEDs. Great for a quick spot check. I suppose maybe go poking with a multimeter between earth points and look for a voltage difference?
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Feb 6, 2017 23:24
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General_Failure posted:I suppose maybe go poking with a multimeter between earth points and look for a voltage difference? That's what i'd do.
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Feb 7, 2017 00:06
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meltie posted:That's what i'd do. And I did. Nothing. Because it's intermittent I'll try it again another time. Invested in a can of anti sieze today. gently caress me that stuff is expensive, but it'll last forever I guess. I need a copper nut for the exhaust manifold flange on the Niva because I forgot to torque one and it fell off after the steering box replacement. Can't get one for the life of me so I'll go steel and anti sieze. I realised it's leaking. Blowing hot exhaust on the starter motor and getting into the cabin somehow too. Probably via the bonnet vents. Had to take it shopping today because the Rav4 could only click it's solenoid again after a big charge yesterday. Man, that battery took a hell of a poo poo. Going to go through and work out if I have a battery left that can still provide enough current to crank in warm weather. Batteries around here are expensive. I can hold out until the next time I need to travel.
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Feb 7, 2017 03:08
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Will the Niva's battery fit?
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Feb 7, 2017 03:41
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Darchangel posted:My parent's, previously grandparent's, house had swamp coolers until after I graduated high school and moved out (1988), when they finally put in central HVAC. In North Texas (Weatherford.) Yes, it worked every bit as well as you think it did(n't). Imagine praying that it doesn't rain in the summer, just so the humidity gets low enough for the swamp cooler to work. None of my parent's cars had working AC, either. I guess we were tougher 30 years ago? It was a tiny bit cooler 30 years ago, as well.
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Feb 7, 2017 04:06
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Yu-Gi-Ho! posted:Will the Niva's battery fit? Probably. The Rav4 has a weird battery tray that can take the tall narrow batteries like it has or more normal sized ones. The Niva's battery isn't exactly great either. It's one of the ones the Fairlane killed. I replaced the missing exhaust flange nut and did my best to torque them all. got it from pulsing to a gentle searing breeze. Guess the gasket is shot. It would have been barbecuing the poo poo out of the starter. I'll have to find that stupid heat shield and figure out a way to bodge it in place. The main nut and stud that held it in place are a corroded lump. I had to snap the shield bracket off to get it out.
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Feb 7, 2017 05:24
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Not exciting, but seriously what is this poo poo? Pressed sheet and plastic terminal clamps? It's hard to tell from the photo but the clamp broke. Replaced it with a new one. Not brass unfortunately but the new cable is nice and thick at least. The strap bolt was weird. It was like the thread was damaged in a strip running down it. It was over 40*C and I was tired. Just said gently caress it, put some anti sieze on it and bolted it back in. The Rav4 got the old battery from the Magna. That battery would have to be nine years old or so. It's been passed around. It's been in the Magna, the VW, The Fairlane (which nuked it), the Niva and now the Rav4. Started first crank! Don't know how many cranks the battery can hold out before it dies though. Hopefully more than one compression stroke. It'll do for now.
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Feb 8, 2017 12:42
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Global average temps being higher or lower does not translate to your specific local climate necessarily being hotter than 50c at some point (although it might). Also it's possible for the hottest places to be too hot for most animals to survive and then those animals still live in the less-hot places. The largest upward average temp changes are occurring at the poles.
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Feb 8, 2017 20:56
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Leperflesh posted:Global average temps being higher or lower does not translate to your specific local climate necessarily being hotter than 50c at some point (although it might). Also it's possible for the hottest places to be too hot for most animals to survive and then those animals still live in the less-hot places. I suppose you have a point there. It's more changes disrupting / changing air and water currents that bring the real damage. Where I am it's clearly messed up. Not just a slight seasonal temperature change. There's no winter to speak of and the summers are insane. Deciduous / seasonal plants aren't going dormant any more and everything is flowering / fruiting at random intervals throughout the year. Pretty soon I'll be done with outside stuff for the day. The shadows are moving so I can't hide in them much longer. It's only 33*C right now so it's just pleasant. Weather says it'll be max 42* today until Saturday. Blergh. Unexpected bit of activity this morning. I put the Weber carb back on the VW today after borrowing it months ago for the Niva. Connected the battery and found it was so dead the LCD on the radio didn't come on. So I'm doing the cruel thing and charging the screwed Rav4 battery to jumpstart the VW so it can suck varnish for a while.
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Feb 9, 2017 00:31
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General_Failure posted:
 I've only had one battery make it past the 4 year mark, and it was the original battery in my current car (made it to a little over 10 years from the date the car was built, not quite 10 years from when the car was first registered).When I lived in a desert climate, I was lucky to get 3 years out of them. 6 months to 1 year or so was average on my first vehicle, but it ran hot, and the starter didn't seem to appreciate 60W oil (starters had a pretty short life too)
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Feb 9, 2017 05:51
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I feel your pain on the power bill- we havent had one for less than $1K since we moved in, and we dropped a BOMB on poo poo to reduce our consumption too. Knocked 500 kwh off our last bill, and then the loving power company cranked up the price of the power so we ended up spending about $800 to save $100 on the bill. Mums offered to loan us some money to put solar on so im going to stick 7KW of panels on the shed and be done with it!
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Feb 9, 2017 08:34
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That better be quarterly!
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Feb 9, 2017 09:57
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Metal Geir Skogul posted:Now I live in Phoenix and nobody has one. It seems like the perfect climate for one, and when I ask people why there aren't any, they reply that it's the wrong climate? They get the house so loving humid, though. The house my parents built in the early '80s (which my mom still lives in) has two heat pumps and a swamp cooler. Worked alright but it would make the house muggy, and it was situated on one end of the house. When I got a bit older my room moved to the opposite end of the house, which got fuckall for airflow from the swamp cooler. She's still got the drat thing and I think maintains it a little bit, but I think it gets used less and less every year. The new heat pumps are so much more efficient than the originals anyway. The shithole apartment I had for a year in Tucson only had a swamp cooler, no AC. Never again.
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Feb 9, 2017 21:44
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Yeah, evap coolers are useless in humid conditions as well as making the place sticky as all heck. loving tight arse land lord wont install a split air conditioner in my unit.
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Feb 9, 2017 22:04
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I guess everyone got the lovely power hike in Australia. It's only a few days a year that the evap system doesn't cut it here. It's usually dry as all hell so it works fine. When we moved here the house had the huge "GENERAL" brand A/C in the loungeroom and a reverse cycle wall mount in the sunroom, which unfortunately seems to have degassed or something. Barely manages lukewarm or barely cool so it's never used. Pretty much everything is kept turned off unless it's needed. I would love some solar panels. Not sure what they'd do though. There's not much roof surface unless they used the detached garage too, which doesn't have power. At 10AM the sun was already too drat nasty here and shadow walking time is over. I've been meaning to check where the Ozone hole is these days because hoooly poo poo that sun. I'm pretty much stuck for today so it's a paperwork and damage repair day. Because the xmas school holidays are over I've been working on catching up on the destruction. Trouble is I need to empty out a trailer load so I can fill another with broken and / or unneeded stuff.The opening times and days for the tip are the worst. Not at all related but this is my Raspberry Pi 3.  The preamp runs off a 12VAC supply. It has a PiFi DAC+ v2.0 in it and an RTC. I use it with a pair of Sansui SH-15 headphones. Like a lot of things I own they are rare yet worthless. The sound quality is pretty reasonable. The downside is lower bitrate or poorly encoded music really stands out. I also replaced the cord on the lovely 81 key keyboard I got for the Pi with a 2m long braided broken microUSB cable. It's always on the MicroUSB end so I lopped the connector off, soldered it on and now I have a useful corded keyboard. On topic. The front right of the Niva is creaking like a bastard. It's been doing it since I did the work on the front left. Haven't worked out why yet but it does sound a bit beyond normal creaks. I really hope it's just a bushing complaining. I'm also considering liberating the big wire windscreen stone guard from the VW and putting it on the Niva. Both the Jeep and the Rav4 have gotten nasty stars from the same goddamn stretch of road. I just have to check if they are still legal. I know they were a few years ago, but as a rule any minister has a hate boner for whatever department they have been assigned.
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Feb 10, 2017 00:31
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Today was the day! A chance I'd been waiting for many months. To get rid of a trailer full of rubbish. Besides the usual preparations and fluid check I did a compression check. (In PSI) 1: 138 2: 139 3: 160 4: 165 1,2 and 4 plugs looked good. 3 was caked with oil based adamantium as usual. Such strange results. I have to wonder if they were getting progressively sealed by oil as I checked from 1-4. I also gave it a tank of 98 premium (Australian. Don't know how to convert). I also tightened the alternator belt Yesterday I removed the blanked off EGR because it was in my way, and slathered the exhaust manifold to exhaust flange with muffler putty until I can get a new gasket. This stopped any exhaust blowing on the starter motor. I also adjusted the idle, which was way out for some reason. While I was there I took the oil cap off. HOLY poo poo the blowby! I hate to think of what happened. I pulled off the crankcase vent hose at the air cleaner. Nowhere near the force. Coming from the head maybe? I have no drat idea. Today it went on the haul to the next town via dirt roads to rid us of some of the accumulated rubbish. Here is a rare picture of the Niva in it's native environment.  It did pretty well. It only got a few degrees above normal. There's a slight mystery coolant leak at the top of the radiator. Can't work out where it's coming from. The alternator was also over charging at nearly 16 volts. I'm going to give the regulator earth a good clean I think. That trailer is a 7x5' commercial trailer built with thick metal, lots of box steel and checker plate. The Niva felt a bit down on power today. On sealed road it was only good for about 85km/h with the trailer, but in all honesty nothing can tow it a whole lot fater than that. At least today I only came back with a garden bench, a wheel for the trailer and a cordless drill.
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Feb 17, 2017 05:31
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Out of general "I just built myself a tiny, cheap, single-tube hybrid headphone amp" interest, what preamp is that and what sort of vacuum tubes do you have in it?
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Feb 17, 2017 19:46
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Computer viking posted:Out of general "I just built myself a tiny, cheap, single-tube hybrid headphone amp" interest, what preamp is that and what sort of vacuum tubes do you have in it? Just go to AliExpress and search for "6J1 tube preamp". I only understand the most basic elements of tubes but nearly all of the circuit seems to be a charge pump to drive the tube. The actual audio is essentially a buffer using the 6J1 tubes. I know it's a cheapie but I like it. You need a 12V AC power supply for it. Word of warning. The LEDs that come with it are blue. I only left them at all because I didn't know if it would affect the circuit.
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Feb 18, 2017 00:54
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| # ? May 22, 2024 11:12 |
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Right, thanks. Curious choice of tube - it's a single pentode. I guess it can be very linear, and it's supposedly an unusually non-microphonic model - or someone just found a warehouse full of them somewhere in China and are selling them dirt cheap. Either way, it was built to do clean VHF amplification, so a mere audio signal should be peanuts for it. Also, those are super cheap; now I kind of want one. The one I incompetently soldered together was a very mildly modified version of this, which uses a single dual-triode tube. As I understand it it does voltage amplification in the tube and then drives an IRF510 MOSFET (instead of another tube) for current gain, thus "hybrid". And one of the variations I did was to put a power led on mine. A red led, with a tiny off switch in case even that gets annoying. Computer viking fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Feb 18, 2017 |
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Feb 18, 2017 02:49
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