The advantage in slowing down.

It seems like lockdown has increased the average speed everybody thinks they should drive? In the past I could commute at 70-75mph, passing some cars and getting passed by others. Now its more like 80-85mph. Fortunately I've only been in the office twice in the last two months.

The other day I had to head in and decided I'd slow right down and see what I could get for fuel economy out of my 2015 VW Jetta TDI. I kept my speed to no more 65mph maximum and spent the longest part of the drive at not more than 60mph. I didn't want to go any slower because I would have to drop out of 6th gear although I will probably experiment with that at some point. I felt comfortable doing this because there were so few cars on the road. I wouldn't do this in heavier traffic, just because I want to try for high mileage doesn't mean everybody does.

My commute is pretty much 60 miles each way and includes about 600 feet of elevation change with it dropping on the way in and rising on the return. This shot shows mean just before I got off the highway. I figured that the low speed surface street run to the office would cost me. In the end it was only maybe a tenth of a point, not so bad. I actually didn't think of trying of this record run until I was a few miles into the drive so I could probably do a little better.

This is the return and we can see the effect of the elevation change, still thats a solid 57mpg round trip and I suspect if I took my top speed down from 65 to 60 and ran the previously 60mph sections at 55 we could probably break, or come close to breaking, the 60mpg barrier.

Remember that this is all in a reasonably sized car that has pretty good power, with a comfortable ride. The Gen6 Jetta is not a tiny economy car...

It shreds!

I think we use our paper shredder more than the average household. Other than documents we shred mostly food boxes, like cereal boxes and the like. The shreds go into a box next to the compost bucket. When food waste goes in the compost bucket we put a handful of shreds on top. The shreds keep the smell down and help the composting when the bucket gets emptied into the bin.

Compost on the left, shreds on the right.

Our old shredder, a Fellows 8 page unit, had served us well for 10 or 11 years. Then a month or so ago it started to make horrible screeching noises. About 2 weeks ago I took it apart to see if I could fix it. I lubed everything up and put it back together but the noises weren't any better. Last Sunday I had it apart again...

This is the drivetrain of the shredder. The motor spins the kind of reddish brown gear on the left. You can't see the motor's gear, its hidden behind the big gear in the center. This picture is taken after removing a cage that holds the gears on, at this point the gears slide easily off their shafts.

This is the front cage off the motor, its got two of these cages, one front and one rear. As near as I can tell they're identical and together they hold the spinning part of the motor. The bushing in the center is held in with a thin steel frame thats staked to the larger frame. I drilled out the stakes to release the bushing.

Well theres your problem lady! This little devil is a "spherical bushing". As near as I can tell its made from a mixture of graphite and PTFE (also known as teflon). It looks like the side load of the shaft was too much for it, that hole in the center is all wallowed out. I like this shredder enough I spent some time looking for a replacement bushing but had no luck at all. I did find something similar but the center hole was too small and you had to buy them in lots of 1,000.

A trip to Amazon got us this Bonsaii 14 sheet shredder. It arrived today and cost more than double what the Fellows unit did. Not only does this unit have greater capacity than the old one its rated for 30 minutes of continuous shredding. I don't know what our old one was rated for but it overheated pretty easily. I don't exactly love shredding so we generally let the paper build up for a week or so and plow through it all at once, the old shredder would always need a break partway through the job. This new Bonsaii shredder chewed through a MONTH of delayed shredding with no problems at all. The secret? Its got a fan. Why all shredders don't have a fan I don't know. Its also quiet, like really quiet, like half the noise of the old one.

I'd like to think that if a $40 shredder can last 12 years then this one will last the rest of my life. In reality I expect that isn't going to happen but if we get at least 12 years out of this one I would be happy...

STOP!

The brakes on my Jetta started to make noise, this was back in November, remember I'm still catching you up. Disk brakes are wicked easy to replace so I figured I'd do it myself.

In getting it apart I discovered 2 things, first the caliper bolts are triple square. Triple square is also called XZN, imagine a square, now put another one on top of it but rotate the new one 33.3 degrees, then add a third square and rotate it 33.3 degrees the other way, thats triple square. I didn't have any triple square tools and the set from Autozone turns out to be too small. In the end I took a torx socket and beat it into the bolt. It was terrible but good enough. Amazon sold me the proper tool but of course it arrived after the fact.

Then I discovered I couldn't push the calipers back. I've always done this with a big c-clamp but these calipers need to turn as they go in. Autozone sells you a little cube thing which is just about worthless, don't waste your money. After I broke my favorite c-clamp I went to Harbor Freight and bought the right tool.

This is one of those jobs where the right tool makes thing so much easier I wonder why I never bought one before. The way the tool pushes and the thread pitch on the tool make it very easy to push the calipers. I should have bought one of these years ago. I think the list price is $40, I had a 20% off coupon so like $32 out the door in New Hampshire with no sales tax.

Assembly is the easiest part. Should be good for a long while. I ordered the bits to do the front too but  it looks like what actually happened is one of the pads on the driver's side got stuck and ate itself. I used a generous application of slide paste so hopefully it won't happen again. I'll check them when I rotate the tires in the spring and keep an eye out for that issue.