Plumbing and electrical

 So here we are again, 2023 is upon us and I've forgotten to update the blog for 6 months...

It feels like just yesterday since I updated but clearly not.

This week I'll be working on few posts to bring us back up to date. For today lets dial back to July.

You might remember our house in Maine:

In 2021 we repainted the house and rebuilt the enclosed porch. The idea is to stop the house from disintegrating before starting any upgrades. In 2022 I decided to continue down the same path when I discovered that the water pipe to the toilet was leaking.

Thus embarked a weekend long odyssey of pluming. Here we've got the pump and pressure tank. Those have been left alone but notice the blue pipe heading up, that's 3/4" PEX. I did have to sweat in a copper to PEX adapter which was surprisingly easy but from there on almost all of the the plumbing is plastic.

I've been a plumbing traditionalist in the past, not wanting to use "those new fangled things" but honestly PEX is the way to go. I installed the entire cold water system in one day and could have done it in less with better planning. With copper I'd have been at it for several days.

My original plan only involved replacing the cold water system, as shown here. Everything in blue is new PEX, the hot water side is still copper. I did that because I still haven't installed the hot water heater, so there really wasn't any point in doing the hot water side. Then I decided I'd link the hot water side to the cold water side. This would result in both faucets running cold water but it would at least let the hot water faucet do something. In the picture you can just spot a little red pipe from the cold to the hot.

This turned out to be a terrible idea, all the hot water pipes (unused for many years) leaked. So I took another day and replaced those as well.

This is 3/4" PEX running along the outside wall of the house. Since all the fixtures in the house are in line with each other what I should have done was run one 3/4" trunk line and then spur off with 1/2" lines to each fixture. I'd have used less pipe and it'd be a better looking install. Probably in 2023 I'll redo all of it, I'm planning to relocate the kitchen sink anyway so I'll do both at the same time.

This is the new bathroom vanity. It replaced a very ugly, early '80s unit that was installed with galvanized pipe that had very nearly corroded away...

Anyway, with the PEX installed we were no longer one plumbing leak away from a flooded basement. Even with my ugly install things are way better than they were. So I turned my efforts to electrical.

On the electrics side the first thing I did was wire in basement lights. There were a few lights down there but not enough and not done in a safe way. Now we have 4 foot LED lights wired to a common switch and a good, grounded, outlet. This makes working in the basement much more pleasant and safer.

The next step was to address the well pump wiring. I've been told the pump itself is probably from the 1920s.

This is the old setup, we're looking directly above the pump, the pump you can see in the picture is the old "soft water" pump that was used to move rain water from a cistern. That system has been disconnected from the plumbing for years but the pump was still connected to the electrics via the left side switch at the top of the picture. The right side switch that you can barely see in the picture powers the well pump. What you can't see is the copper pipe that used to run between them. This was not what you'd call a safe install. Also notice the top of the ladder in the left of the picture. Those switches are eight feet off the ground, very difficult to access.

This is after, I've added the piece of plywood to protect the switch in case the pump blows up, I've located it lower so it's much more convenient and I've used 12ga ROMEX wire directly from a 20a circuit breaker.  

I still need to repair/replace the pressure switch on the pump. It'll work if you tap it but it gets stuck between uses and we run out of water pressure until the switch gets tapped again. I think this is just because it doesn't get used enough. I have another pump with pressure switch I could put in it's place which would undoubtably be quieter than this one but part of me thinks that this thing has been working for 100 years I should probably keep it.

So what's on tap for 2023? This *should* be the year for upgrades. We spent some time in November working on the kitchen and have the old plaster and lathe mostly removed. I need to shore up ceiling a little and remove a little stub of wall and then wire in electrics. I want to be able to run the microwave and toaster oven at the same time so I'll be running at least three circuits, plus one for an electric stove. Eventually I think we'll go to a propane stove but short term a used electric stove is cheap.

Once the wiring is done I want to replace the two kitchen windows. The one facing east is too small, it'll be over the sink so I want something fairly large. The other one is a reasonable size but I want them to match...

After windows I'll get the kitchen spray foamed. Foam insulation offers the highest R-value for thickness and seals the room against drafts. There is a chance I'll get the bathroom done at the same time, that's contingent on removing the tub, removing one window and replacing the other. That window replacement is kind of a big deal because we'll be going with a much smaller unit that is up higher in the wall. We'll see...

Tractor wiring finale

To finish up my Cub Cadet wiring adventure, it turns out that when the previous owner ran a line to the batt terminal of the regulator all he actually had to do was to move the grey wire from the hot side of the starter to one side of the ammeter. I actually spliced the grey wire to a little of the previous owner's very long wire since the grey wire had quite a large ring terminal on it. Viola it works, that easy. One downside is that it doesn't measure when cranking since that comes off the switched side of the starter switch but everything else is measured including the
headlights.

With the ammeter sorted I took a look at the bracket which at one point must have been chromed but is now just rust. I let it soak for a few hours in a bath of evapo-rust, then cleaned it, dried it and hit it with some primer and yellow paint.

I let it dry overnight and then sprayed the backside. When that was mostly dry I baked it in my toaster oven but had the heat too high and bubbled the paint. That subsided into an interesting crackle look which goes with the mostly rotten paint on the rest of the tractor.

Here with the engine off, headlights on we've got discharge.

With the engine running it charges:

When I turn on the headlights the charge rate dips for a second before it goes back to the same spot. I was pleased to see that the starter/generator charges even at very low engine speed. My other Cub Cadet seems to want more engine speed before it charges, I guess I should order a starter/generator rebuild kit for that one as well.

After all that fun I took a few minutes to add slime to the left front tire which was low and put some grease in all the zerks.

Most importantly I was able to start the tractor cold without starting fluid for the first time in about a year. I was so happy with it I went out and bought a padded seat cover. The machine had one when I first bought it but it got torn off last spring so I'd spent a year sitting with a dirty old towel on the metal seat. I'm ready to plow snow in luxury.

Time passes and stuff happens

Months slip away like water.
So let me bring you up to date. I'm off on another work trip to California, it seems like I live here part time. Last week we were made our yearly spring trip to camp. This year's big project was to move the outhouse. The old outhouse hole was full. I don't remember what year I dug that hole, I'm guessing 2005. 9 years isn't bad for a hole I dug by hand while the outhouse was tipped forward. We probably should have made some sort of a box when we dug that hole to keep the dirt around the hole from collapsing in, you live and learn. This year we rented an excavator to do the digging. We built a box 4 feet tall by 4 feet wide by 32 inches deep out of OSB scraps and 2x4s, then dug a hole to fit the box. Finally I built a frame of 4x4s to slide the outhouse onto. The sliding went pretty poorly when the outhouse hung up on a concrete block as I slid it. I should have stopped at that point and jacked up that corner with the wagon jack to get the block out but instead I ended up wrestling it around with the excavator. Later on I had to spend a bunch of time jacking the outhouse up to get the 4x4s back into the right place. The other mistake I made was not spiking the 4x4s together, mostly because it didn't occur to me to buy spikes...

The next day we used the excavator to dig a test hole in a place Dad thought there might be some gravel. Off to the side of one field is a hill that appears to be degraded shale or slate which breaks up pretty good with the excavator. We dug some up and used the wagon to haul it to fill some wet spots in the road. Angie ran the excavator while I made runs with the Cub Cadet. I had the much harder job, the excavator can fill the little wagon no problem to the point where the Cub Cadet can just barely handle the weight. Then the dirt would be stuck in the wagon. Since it was a little wet when I'd dump it'd stick in the bed and I'd have to shovel it out.

To make this work we need either a real dump truck or a bigger dump wagon we haul either with the truck or the Farmall Super M.

Speaking of the Super M it got all new wiring this trip. We'd known the wiring harness was in tough shape for awhile and when the tractor wouldn't start at all we knew it was time. We finally did get it running by wiggling some wires but it wouldn't run well and couldn't pull any kind of engine speed. Fortunately we'd already ordered a wiring harness. The harness included the main wires from the generator to the switch and voltage regulator and from the switch to the coil but didn't include the lights or some other incidentals, we made those other wires ourselves so now every wire on the tractor is new except for one battery cable. That got the machine running and I used it to plow and disc the garden. I tried to shoot some video of my rollover plow but I haven't reviewed it yet to see if its any good.
While the tractor now runs its probably time to do a 12 volt conversion on it. 6 volt batteries are expensive and seem to be prone to failure. A small 12 volt battery would cost half what we pay for a 6 volt, it'd probably last twice as long and in a pinch we would be able to jump start the tractor off the truck. Having 12v electrics on the tractor would also allow for an inexpensive electric ignition conversion. Thats not a big requirement I've never really had any trouble with the points but it would make for a better running engine with increased reliability down the road.
I almost forgot, while we were doing all this work I put in new spark plugs too.
After all that effort the tractor started nice as you please although it did crank slow from the bad battery. When we left I put the battery on the desulfator, we'll see if a few months of that maybe helps salvage the battery. I doubt it and I see that a 12 volt conversion kit runs about $150. I may end up just doing that in the fall.

I'd bought some asparagus to plant at home but the package of roots I'd bought was way more than we could use around our house so I bought the rest to plant at camp. Asparagus is cool for camp since it comes up in the spring and requires relatively little maintenance the rest of the year. I planted a 14 foot trench worth which should provide us with about all the asparagus we can eat. The trenching was hard work and in retrospect I should have used the excavator.

Buster liked the trench though, he came up to inspect and immediately flopped down in it. I'd guess the bottom of the trench was cool and it was a hot day, especially for a black dog.

Finally we planted our yearly camp garden which feeds the wildlife. We've seen a big increase in the deer population around our farm over the last couple years and I'd like to think this garden has something to do with that so I keep doing it. This year we planted mostly turnips but some kale, squash, cucumber and whatever other old seeds we had at our house. Angie also bought some sunflower seeds which she put around the edge of the plot.

We planted by broadcasting seeds which we then disced in with the Cub Cadet. I'd tried plowing with the Cub Cadet but the so was unusually strong, last year we didn't get good coverage with the oats we'd planted so the grass took right over again. The plow I've got is also a little over large for the Cub Cadet and we're probably under weighted so it just had a hard time. The Super M just walks away with the 2 bottom plow I've got and it only takes a few passes to clear this area. Our neighbor Grant came by with an old spring tooth harrow which made short work of cleaning up the furrows. In past years its taken me hours to plow and disc the plot, working with the bigger tractor certainly made things easier.

Finally!

This (courtesy A2Resource) is the backside of the fuse box in my Jetta. Well okay its a diagram of the backside of the fuse box. You can see it, along with what every wire does here. When I posted questions about my electrical faults everybody kept pushing to this diagram so I finally sat down and really examined it. If you look at the top row on the outsides there are two grey/white spools, that helps you orient yourself when standing on your head under the dash. Not really knowing what I was looking for I went through the list looking for anything that pertained to horn, headlight, daytime running lamp or wipers. That finally took me to H2 and J, you'll find them in red in the upper right. This time, knowing what I was looking for, while probing around under the dash I finally spotted that J was unplugged and falling out of its socket. This shouldn't be able to happen, if you look at the bottom right of the connector there a little tab. Just below it theres a white bar that comes out on the right, thats the locking bar that ensures everything is plugged in and stays plugged in. I think somebody must have removed J at some point and not gotten the bar back in place.
Anyway I got J plugged back in and knew I was on the right track when I reconnected the battery and the hazard flashers came on.

Next: Coolant leak.

Fuses!

My '98 Jetta TDI has something like 25 fuses, there are 22 in the main fuse block ranging from 10a to 30a. A big 50 amp blade fuse which I presume is for the starting circuit, a random 10a hanging out by itself above the relays and an 80a strip fuse for the glow plugs.

One of the old guys (now sadly departed) that used to be on the Okiebenz list always said to "REPLACE THE FUSES" in all caps just like that. He suggested that all sorts of electrical gremlins could be caused by fuses that looked good but were in fact bad or at least marginal. In all honesty I can't remember ever having that happen but with the current electrical issue driving me batty I figure anything is worth a try.

Here lie the remains of the fuse replacing. I didn't replace the big 50a starting fuse or the 80a glowplug fuse since the car starts and runs great, I did replace all of the smaller blade fuses. No change in the condition of anything though.

Honestly I didn't expect any big changes really, this was mostly to appease everybody on the Okiebenz list who kept reminding me to "renew the fuses".

On another note I've got a good big collection of parts coming in. Today I picked up an airfilter and shifter bushing kit. The shifter is a little sloppy, I want to tighten that up some. I also put 2 coats of paint on the water distribution pipe. This is a metal coolant pipe that goes from the overflow bottle to the heater and water pump. Failure at this point (15 years old after all) isn't apparently terribly uncommon and they seem to rust from the outside in because the paint is thin. I figured more paint couldn't hurt. I did (for once) think to mask good to keep the paint where it should be.

Finally I pulled the airfilter, which is more involved than I thought it would be, and found a good NAPA unit that was mostly clean. I'll run with that for now. Interestingly I found the "snow screen" to be present. I was given to understand those were frequently removed due to requiring more upkeep. The snow screen is a cup of metal screen, its very tight weave like on the "forever" coffee filters. Mine was full of mouse nest. It'd be surprising the car could run with that in place if it weren't for an alternate air intake in the airbox, if the snow screen is plugged the alternate opens via a spring loaded flap and pulls warm engine air. Obviously for performance the cold air is better. I cleaned the screen good with a brass brush and reinstalled. Then took some time to clean around the plastic components of the engine bay with Simple Green and then with "Back to Black" tire cleaner/shine. The plastic components like the engine cover and intercooler pipes started to look really good.

Ignition et al

This was supposed to be a happy little story about using the right tool for the job, then things got out of hand...

Remember the other day when I did a great job troubleshooting and got the sunroof and interior lights fixed? Well at some point during that the horn, turn signals, flashers, wipers and washer quit working. Apparently this is a fairly common problem with the mk3 Jetta and a simple fix in replacing the ignition switch. The switch itself is cheap but unfortunately the one screw that holds it is in the most obnoxious place possible which requires pulling the steering wheel and the whole lock assembly. In the picture above I've just put my new 5 ton 2 arm puller onto the sleeve that adapts the steering wheel to the steering column. I'm sure theres a special place in hell for the guy who decided to not make the hole in the steering wheel the same diameter as the steering column and then only put a little tiny flange on the spacer. See the big wrench (1 1/16") below the puller? Its giving the puller something to pull on. I had to buy the puller because none of my 3 arm pullers would fit...

After I got the sleeve off I didn't realize that to remove the lock assembly I had to unlock the lock and managed to rip the assembly apart. Whoops! Fortunately a local junkyard had a replacement, I actually bought the whole steering column because I managed to bugger the threads on the end too, it was quite a morning. Here's a shot of the junk car I pulled from:

Now the new lock assembly came with a different lock tumbler but I don't want to have to use two different keys on my car so I want to transplant the tumbler from one lock assembly to the other. VW apparently never thought anybody would ever do this so they didn't make the lock tumbler removable. Fortunately they used a standard lock tumbler barrel so all you have to do is drill a hole in the lock assembly and stick in a pin. Well the instructions from VW are fairly vague so when I drilled the old lock assembly apart I had to also cut a groove to find the lever to push on.

Since I knew where to drill I did a much better job on the second one. Thats good because this lock assembly is staying in the car.

Anyway after considerable swearing I got the new steering column installed, this is a really lousy job because the column only goes in one way with 39 ways to do it wrong and you can't really tell which of the 40 possible positions you're in until you find out you did it wrong. Meanwhile you're standing on your head under the dash.

So finally, finally the new column is in, the lock is keyed correctly, the new ignition switch is in and ARGH, the horn, wipers, washer, lights, daytime running lamps, and high beams still don't work.
I went back and tested the original ignition switch and the one from the junk car, all act the same. So I guess it wasn't the ignition switch at all. Oh well, at least it was cheap.

The Honda lives again

Haven't been riding the Honda (which is in my profile pic) for awhile. The last time Angie and I took it out we ran out of electricity. Thats bad, when your bike runs out of electricity its just like running out of gas.

At first I thought the problem was the battery. The one that was in it was 4 or 5 years old and thats really all you can expect from a starting battery. So I replaced it but the problem still plauged me.

Tonight I cleaned my desk and found the spare set of brushes I'd bought for the alternator. The old ones had worn out and I'd made a set (cut down some from the hardware store) but I didn't really trust them. I installed the replacements, used some 600 grit sandpaper (from the Hammie's hood project) to clean the commutator (thats where the brushes run) and then cleaned it good with contact cleaner. The alternator tested out fine which is to say it wasn't shorted out anywhere. The rectifier/regulator also tested fine so I fired it back up and....

Son of a gun, it works. At just over idle its running 14v when I put the multimeter across the battery. The "voltmeter" on the bike is very slow to respond but the multimeter was quick. Thats great, a weight totally off my shoulders.

On the downside the 190D has a bad differential bearing. Bob is loathe to replace it because he's worried about getting the pinion shimmed correctly. He thinks a good used one will be a better bet anyway. I don't really know what to do, maybe try someplace else? Bob's been good to me, he didn't even charge to diagnose the issue.