Stuff you have fixed today

[Bullet2012]

Dear Mr TYA
Please fix the focusing on your camera.
Thank You

 

[DAPPH]

The wife bought a strange light fitting for our bedroom about 20 years ago. It has 7 bendy arms with G4 bulbs at the end. Originally it came with halogens, but about 5 or 1p years later replaced them with LEDs. But there was a snag, the 12v driver didn't fire up until you hit 20W, as many halogen transformers do. So I left one halogen in to take it over the 20W until I got around to replacing the driver.

So about 10 or 15 years later, I decided to fix it. I knew it was dim and occasionally flickering because of the temporaey bodge.

I couldn't find a circular driver over 15W. With 7 x 2W LEDs, that's a bit close to the limit so I opted for a none circular 20W driver. I would have gone a bit higher but then it wouldn't have fitted in the base.

View attachment 473646

After trimming off some excess plastic, it fits in the base, just. I gave it a good clean and test on the kitchen table as our bedroom ceiling is really high, I had to get the scaffy tower out to get to it.
View attachment 473647

I'm a couple of LEDs short, I thought I had plenty but they turned out to be the old Halogens that I put back in the old LED boxes years ago doh!

But it's a lot brighter now and doesn't flicker. When i bought some more LEDs, I noticed quite a lot of reviews mention they don't work or flicker, I wonder how many are using Halogen drivers.....

For high ceilings you can't beat having the simple slide in /out ceiling rose

 

[Beeezer]

For high ceilings you can't beat having the simple slide in /out ceiling rose View attachment 473880

They look tasteful….

 

[minimutly]

Set the float levels of the four downraught Mikunis from my vmax1200, right pain in the butt because you have to have them all separated, the float chambers face inwards towards each other. Tomorrow I'll build them up and set the synch on the butterflies. Ideally I'd like to pull the tank and acid clean it, but it's a trike, and I'm not sure what I need to remove to get at it yet...

 

[hollow]

Not today but this week. A steering wheel module in a vw caddy. The word module fills me with dread. No way to know if the part you purchased will play nicely with the car you have in front of you till you fit it. Anyway with a bit of tinkering on vcds got it done. The one repair that really got my goat this week was my own skoda superb. Xenon headlight gone and while one will take a chance on snaking in and damaging a five quid bulb with hands that just dont fit , we draw the line with a sixty quid extremely fragile I assume gold plated bulb. Off with wheel, bumper and out with headlight to make sure. Christ on a bike they’re only lights.

 

[Jelly_Sheffield]

The workbench I cut in half yesterday.

It wasn't quite as simple as I had hoped though.

Two things became immediately apparent:
1) It had a lot of internal stresses from when it was originally welded up by the guy I bought it from.
2) The chap who made it was a much better welder than he was a fabricator.

Cutting down the frame revealed that basically nothing was square, so I basically had to cut it up into individual pieces and re-make it from scratch.

It also took a lot of convincing with clamps and come-alongs to get all the bending out of the table top, so I could get it tacked to the frame and weld it up.

It's now way more rigid as well as being 200mm less wide, it didn't flex at all putting the big cast iron surface plate back on top, which would previously splay the legs out.

Just that 200mm difference has allowed me to re-arrange stuff to really open up the workshop too.

Feels kinda silly going to all that effort given I will be moving in the spring, but a few months of being able to actually get things done a lot easier will almost certainly be worth the hassle to clear off projects before I have to pack the workshop up.

 

[Blobber]

Kind of fixed, temporarily at least
The tumble dryer was making horrible death noises, metal to metal, had a peek and the rear of the drum is only supported on a spindle about the diameter of pencil in a bronze type bush, yep thats worn and off centre

Yep definitely worn, what a shocking design

Bearing ordered but to get us going Ive rotated the bush 180 degrees, that'll do for now

 

[bourbon]

OK it's not fixed today, but finished. I posted this picture about a month back.

It now looks like this

pretty happy how it's turned out

 

[DennisCA]

My Volvo almost died on me on the road this morning. I suspected the ignition system and sure enough when I removed the distributor cap I found the rotor was almost loose. Held in place with three screws, just one was partially threaded still... No wonder it didn't run well. I still managed to drive home at 60kph though.

I loctited the screws this time, now it runs again. I also found the leads are from 1996, so originals, still working! Who knows if the rotor and cap are originals too?

 

[Jelly_Sheffield]

I'm not gonna say I'm proud of it, but it will do for now until I can take the three doors off and properly re-work the whole thing.

I put 100mm screws in, so if anyone does try to break in, it will require them to literally rip the door apart.

 

[Pigeon_Droppings2]

not gonna say I'm proud of it, but it will do for now until I can take the three doors off and properly re-work the whole thing.

Gorilla glue is handy stuff....did an internal one recently in a similar way but I had to dowel it as it was a modern door so basically as thick as a tooth pick

 

[Jelly_Sheffield]

Gorilla glue is handy stuff....did an internal one recently in a similar way but I had to dowel it as it was a modern door so basically as thick as a tooth pick

They're all held together with Gorilla Glue as it is, no point using PVA in an exposed exterior door, although the wedged M&T joints probably didn't need it... So it seemed like the obvious choice for a repair.

If I have a weekend to get at it I think taking that door off and routing out the damage and gluing in a new section of wood would be best.

Kinda took the shine off finally managing to move the compressor though.

 

[Pigeon_Droppings2]

If I have a weekend to get at it I think taking that door off and routing out the damage and gluing in a new section of wood would be best.

Gorrilla glue is a good choice for this type of fix....reckon you could just deep drill and dowel the main hinge screws and it would be totally fine.

 

[Migmac]

Fixed, maybe not but made them a bit better. I find the writing on black sockets hard to see at times

 

[droopsnoot]

Fixed, maybe not but made them a bit better. I find the writing on black sockets hard to see at times

I find the writing on pretty much all sockets is all but invisible in the lighting I've got in my shed. Some of it is the fault of the lighting, and some of it is because my near vision isn't as good as it used to be, but I've marked some of mine with a white marker that I bought and has come it quite useful, more useful than my white paint pen.

 

[Migmac]

I find the writing on pretty much all sockets is all but invisible in the lighting I've got in my shed. Some of it is the fault of the lighting, and some of it is because my near vision isn't as good as it used to be, but I've marked some of mine with a white marker that I bought and has come it quite useful, more useful than my white paint pen.

Chrome sockets I can read fairly easily, it’s these black ones I struggle with. I used a paint pen and quick wipe over with a paper towel with a squirt of carb cleaner on it wipe of the excess paint

 

[Jelly_Sheffield]

 

[Jelly_Sheffield]

Thermostat in a a friend of a friend's Fiesta MK7.5 Tdci.

She had noticed the heaters were getting progressively worse whenever it was cold out or she drove at speed over the last week then driving down to meet my mate for the weekend, checked her coolant and noticed it was slowly going down at a rate of about ¼ of max-min per 100 miles.

My mate took a look this morning pointed out a slow weep from the thermostat housing and gave me a ring to ask if they could bring it over and try to sort it.

The Thermostat housing appears to have been cracked for a while (before she bought it as a "reliable car" to replace her Morris Minor).

When that happened it's been bodged with what looks like Tiger Seal or RTV in place of the rubber seal.

Doing a post mortem of why it went now, we found a plastic fragment has come off and left the thermostat stuck open, as well as letting it flex enough to start weeping coolant.

We were able to match up the one fragment recovered with the broken casing, which is reassuring as it probably means there's not more floating around in the system.

It took what felt like an age to get it up to temperature so we could ensure the radiator was fully bled, but otherwise a pretty painless job.

The two of them then helped me clear some snow damaged branches from the trees in the garden, which I am 99% sure was more effort than I made fixing the car.

 

[DAPPH]

Finally got all the bits in one place to fix a dead 2004 MachineMart compressor I.d been sold for a fiver . .
Air filter clogged with gunge & dust .. washed in WD40 then after 10 min soak washed in very hot soapy water and rolled in kitchen towel roll to dry it off in the airing cupboard ( 36 days ago ) re-oiled a few min before firing it up with new compressor oil to lube the cylinder & get an oil misting in the air tank .

Top picture
Got rid of the silly air release brass screw valve that was under the machine ..I'm too wrecked to try and bend to the floor to find it , then fiddle with numb fingers to open the well rounded smooth ex -knurled tube .. plus it was leaking any way. Did this by buying five suitable BSP elbows a month ago , 3 mtrs of 8mm copper gas pipe plus a gas tap an nut and five olives for the pipe and a roll of PTFE tape for sealing crap threads . First task was to bend two foot of copper tube into a gentle curve and using the blow lamp gently trickled melted scrap lead sheet ( almost five ounces ) in the heated pipe . A quick annealing plunge into cold water then slipped the pipe into a bit of old hose pipe to give it some protection , bent the hose and pipe to get a quality fit to the elbow and bent it to anchor to the information plate . Used a heat gun & a heavy washing up liquid lubricant to warm the hose pipe to take it off the now perfectly bent tube , it came off like a wet dream

Adjusted the length to suit the locations allowing for the gas tap then cut the hosepipe four inches shorter to allow a bit of free pipe . Putting the hose back on was a done once the pipe was secured to the union under the tank and like taking it off the hose putting it back it was well warmed and lubed , put on from the free ( where the tap was to go ) end , gently twisting and pushing it as I warmed it up , it went on like the previous dream . fitted the tap and tail exhaust tube then cable tied it securely to the data plate bridge adding a bit of split heated hose around the tap to reduce vibration damage in times future .

Ha ha all done ....I thought . till I started it up air coming out the air pressure safety valve , and doing so at 30 psi on the gauge . Found an air leak some where under the cover of the electric switch .
ordered a new PRV and charging head switch .
A month earlier I ordered a new replacement heavy duty rubber airline or the missing one , some euro connectors and an air pistol/cleaning jet gun . Got the bits fitted fired it up 120 psi before the switch cut out . dropped 24psi by letting air out the gun an d it kicked in a gain .

Whoopee ! I did four full fills and dischargers to try and get the tank reasonably dry and a lot cleaner the much that blew out of the drain tap was amazing far more than I thought would have been discharged as I'd left it a fortnight without the drain in place .

First job with it was to lay a rain sodden m gungey rubber & fluffy door / garage mat on an outside bench and blow all the water & crud out of the fibres .. It took three full tank refills before it was sorted .
Power off , drain left open , mancupboard closed up for the night.

Tomorrow I hope to tackle the gunged up dehumidifier cooling matrix & filter now I've got the compressor , then give the clothes drying machine filters a thorough bottle brushing & blow job as they don't always lose enough fluff & fibres when washing them in hot water alone .

 

[DennisCA]

I fixed the parking brake line. Well temporarily anyway. I hope it lasts a while. The tire had worn through the lining on the cable and the metal was exposed. There should be a clamp that holds the cable away from the tires, but it had broken off.

I cleaned it up using rags, WD40 and compressed air. Then I wiped down the cable with acetone, put grease over the exposed metal.

Then I wound it with electrical tape very tightly. Then I wound the electrical tape with vulcanizing tape to prevent it from unwrapping itself.

Then I fitted a piece of garden hose that I cut up over that fix and wound the hose with electrical tape and vulcanizing tape around the ends. Then finally a bunch of zip ties around it. I had to use zip ties to also pull it inwards or it contacted the tire. I hope this holds until summer.

Zip ties and electrical tape are keeping this car going at the moment. Over the weekend I replaced most of the ignition components (rotor, cap, plugs) except the leads, but I will have to replace them too because they are cracked. 4 out of 5 of them had cracks on the plastic tube that extends into the motor. That means the spark might sometimes go to the engine block instead of to the electrode. Fixed it by wrapping the tubes with the same combo of tape and vulcanizing tape.