Sometimes stuff goes wrong

 Whew, what a week, and its only Tuesday.

Last week I taught 5am to 10am for the European market. Of the non-US class schedules we have its my favorite because it leaves the day mostly open. The downside is that I need to go to bed early so I can get up early. Thus I opted to head north and stay in Cushman house.

Work on Cushman house is progressing slowly but there has been progress. Expect an update on that soonish.

Anyway summer arrived while I was gone. We went from typical New England spring to the dog days over summer basically overnight and of course the big old AC unit in the house quit. I knew this was coming, the unit has been in the house the 20 years we've lived here. Further investigation shows that it's from 1983.

So Angie had to suffer through a week with temps in the 90's and no AC.

Then, the day before I came back the washing machine decided it didn't want to go into the spin cycle and instead would stink of burning rubber. Aww geez.

I decided the AC was, obviously, the one to tackle first.

Of course I started by just turning it on, it hums but doesn't do anything. The front plate comes off with just 2 screws. I don't know if this is daring or stupid but I reached in and gave the fan a spin and it came to life. Unfortunately if I turn it off and back on it won't stay running. Its due for replacement, I'm looking at mini-split heat pumps, with Prime day coming up I'm going to see if I can get some kind of a special deal there. The good news I suppose is that I can still use it if I need it.

Okay, well, moving on to the washing machine.

Another piece of equipment that came with the house so 20+ years old. This is actually a stacked washer/dryer but the basement is too short to have them stacked. Anyhow these old washers are pretty simple, there is a motor that drives a pair of belts and the issue is that the belt that spins the drum full of clothes is slipping. The larger question is "Is it just an old belt or is something wrong?" I dunno. I can spin all the pulleys and they seem fine. I can spin the drum but it spins hard. What I don't know is how hard it should be to spin. The belts are $50 so I just ordered them, they'll be here tomorrow and then we'll know more. If it works I'll make a more detailed post...

Well that was weird

 Growing up my family had a gas stove with a wall mount oven. The two were separated but both fired the same way, propane from a tank outside. Since moving out on my own I've only had electric stoves, our apartment had an elderly push button range, our house has a glasstop Whirlpool unit.

Not so long ago I was sitting in my recliner reading while dinner cooked, from the kitchen I heard "BZZZZT" and saw a bright light. Fortunately Angie was sitting by the stove, jumped up and shut it down.

Upon investingation I found:

 I'd never really thought about how an electric stove/oven burner works. Of course I knew that there was a wire that got heated but it had never occurred to me that of course that element has to be insulated or it will arc to the frame of the stove.

So what happened here is a failure of the coating allowing the angry pixies to get out of the element.

Looking online there are lots of options for replacement burners. The official Whirlpool replacement is around $60. Aftermarket get as cheap as $15. 

I went for a $25 unit. These are super easy to replace, two screws and then the two wires above, pull the failed on out and put in a replacement.

The new one is thinner than the original but it's otherwise the same size and hooked up the same.

It works perfectly, there must have been some kind of coating on it but that burned off quickly with just a little smell. As of this writing it's been working fine for 3 months. Chalk another one up for the do it yourselfer, cheap and quick replacement.

That pressure sprayer

 I mentioned dad's pressure sprayer the other day. It's for an upcoming project I haven't told you about yet. I've been holding back because it's moving slowly but I'll have something soon.

Anyway lets talk a little more about that sprayer, it's been a bit of an adventure.

It's a Troy-Bilt 2700psi sprayer, kind of low end, they make these up to nearly 4000psi. This one is actually made, as far as I can tell, by Briggs and Stratton who also make the engine.

Dad bought it from a friend of his about 3 years ago. What he didn't tell me is that his friend hadn't run it in at least 5 years. Oh and it was stored with gas in it. The gas smelled BAD.

I'm not good at remembering to take pictures, this one was so I could remember how to put the linkages back in place on the carburetor. This carb has an "automatic choke" thats the rod running across the front of the engine, to the upper left in the picture. Over by the engine theres a thermostat that must move when the exhaust gets hot and opens the choke.

I wish I had taken a picture of the inside of the carb, the needle was stuck hard into the seat and there was some kind of goo in the gas intake so it wouldn't flow fuel. This picture was taken after the 3rd or 4th time I went into the carb. If you look carefully to the right of the carb you can see that I installed a fuel shut off. Ideally if we remember to shut off the gas after every use we can save a world of hurt in the future.

The biggest problem in working on a gas powered sprayer is that you have to have water running into the pump whenever the engine is running or you'll burn the pump out. The problem there is that the pump is constantly trying to build pressure, especially on a machine that hasn't run for 8 years and has a stuck bypass valve. I eventually dismounted the pump to make working on the thing easier.

The pump mounts up under the engine, the bolts that secure it actually secure the engine also so dismounting it means you need spacers to hold the engine, otherwise the bolts are too long. I used some big sockets for the job.

I did finally get it running when I realized that it won't start unless there is at least a half tank of gas...

This is the quick connect for the spray nozzles, it lives on the end of the spray gun. It's really just an air chuck. Deep inside, where you can't see, is a 9mm ID o-ring. Remember that, it's 9mm. I couldn't find that published anywhere. The o-ring on this one fell out at some point and the water would spray out everywhere until I replaced it.

I've always hated garden hoses, the connections are always leaking. The manual for the sprayer says "Apply silicone grease to connections". I got to thinking and remembered I had a tube of Sil-Glyde, for lubricating the pins on brake calipers. A little dab on each of the connections and suddenly I had a garden hose that didn't leak. You can see the red garden hose washer in the picture. It's nothing special, I got it at the hardware store and it leaked like crazy until I put Sil-Glyde on it.

The other thing in the picture is the inlet screen. I wish I'd taken a picture of the old one before I threw it away but it was NASTY and the screen was all broken. Replacements were less than $5 for 2 at the hardware store.

They sell an o-ring and screen kit for these but my Harbor Freight o-ring kid had all the o-rings I needed and the screens were cheap. For less than they want for the kit I have enough screens for 2 machines and enough o-rings for probably 10 or 15 of them...

New car day +2

After yesterday's running around today should be easy, get the car inspected. Well, the plans of men...

Its raining today and I noticed the driver's wiper wasn't doing a great job, that'll fail inspection so I grabbed new ones, figured I might as well replace both.

Thats the end of the wiper, its a weird slide in sleeve thing. The wipers have to be in "wipe" position to lift the arms too, weird...

Much fiddling with adaptors

Until finally...

Okay, off to the inspection station:

Rats!

This actually isn't so bad, a black R is not safety related and you can drive the car, in this case its because some emissions sensors are reading "not ready". This is probably because the dealer I bought the car from had to have a DPF regen performed at the dealer. DPF = Diesel Particulate Filter, and a regen is when it burns off the built up particulate. If the car had been mostly city driven on short trips the filter could fill up early and not get to burn off which is why it needed a dealer regen. I drive mostly on the highway which is ideal and shouldn't have an issue, also VW has been forced to issue a long warranty on the DPF and finally the aftermarket has "DPF Delete" options for "off road use only".
So anyway the plan is to put a couple hundred miles on the car and try again in a couple weeks.

Finally I tried to set the clock and clear the "Oil/Inspect" notice in the dash. Both require pressing the odo reset button which I tried and didn't seem to work. So being an optimist I pulled the dash cluster.

 Its super hard to see but the problem is right where my finger is, the contacts for the button are on the green board under that white lump and theres a white bump of powdery corrosion. I squirted a little De-Oxit in there and worked a piece of paper towel in to remove the corrosion.

Reinstalled, tested and the clock is correctly set. You might also notice in this picture I've forgotten to reinstall the two screws that hold the cluster in place. I didn't remember until I started writing this blog entry, I had to pull the trim again and reinstall.

Even with having to redo the trim the whole process took less than an hour. Yes I could have made then dealer fix it but its a half hour drive to the dealer, time to get it fixed and half an hour home, in the end its just as fixed and I know more about the car and I took a moment to De-Oxit the other side while I was there.

Last thing, I picked up some nylon washers for the license plate screws. I'd bought some stainless steel screws but they're just a little too long. I could have cut them but I was a little worried about corrosion on the cut edge, the stainless screws you get at the hardware store aren't the finest stainless in then world...