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Mr Bill wrote:

Too bad insurance companies do not use maintenence records to adjust the value of a car.

That can also work to your advantage. When I totaled my old Altima a few years back, I had been debating whether it was worth it to have the transmission looked at (it was behaving strangely in cold weather until it got warmed up). Given that it probably needed a transmission overhaul (and had some pretty serious rust issues on top of that), I was pretty happy with what the insurance company gave me. They gave me more than I would've paid for that car, so I figure I came out ahead if I ignore the hassle of replacing it.

Mr Bill wrote:

Any suggestions for balancing the volumes? My 1980's era Proton D540 amp does not have separate volume controls for the A/B speakers.

What if you listened to the music through a wall from another room? Basically you want to raise the "floor" of the sound needed to match. If you're right in front of the speakers, it can be hard to tell if one is putting out twice as much sound as the other. But if you're in another room and it will be very obvious if one speaker is twice as loud as the other.

So you bring speaker A up to a volume where you can just barely make out the words. Then slowly bring speaker B up to that same point and they should roughly match in volume.

I just thought of this now, off the top of my head, so I can't promise it'll work. But I think it should get you close.

ChicagoDave wrote:

Mr Bill wrote:

Any suggestions for balancing the volumes? My 1980's era Proton D540 amp does not have separate volume controls for the A/B speakers.

What if you listened to the music through a wall from another room? Basically you want to raise the "floor" of the sound needed to match. If you're right in front of the speakers, it can be hard to tell if one is putting out twice as much sound as the other. But if you're in another room and it will be very obvious if one speaker is twice as loud as the other.

So you bring speaker A up to a volume where you can just barely make out the words. Then slowly bring speaker B up to that same point and they should roughly match in volume.

I just thought of this now, off the top of my head, so I can't promise it'll work. But I think it should get you close.

The problem is that his amp does not have separate level controls for the two sets of speaker outputs. He's asking if there's a way to add that capability.

Its easy to check levels by selecting A, B, and AB. But there is only one master control. I think I am going to make the Infinity Reference 4's an Xmas gift for a family member. For myself, since I have two large Advent woofers. I am going to get a couple more large advents and try out the infamous 'Stacked Advent' sound. Back in the day, it was whispered that two advents on each channel sounded really good. Of course, all we had back then was stereo and the beginnings of quadrophonic with a sub woofer. But I am still curious enough to lay out a few hundred cash and put new surrounds on these woofers.

quick Google grabbed first entry...
http://www.classicspeakerpages.net/IP.B ... -magazine/

It occurs to me, reading something ludi posted over on the headphone thread....
viewtopic.php?p=1350154#p1350154

But there's a reason the phrase "Sounds like Bose: No highs and no lows" was coined among the audio community.

Maybe the stacked advents (or any other doubled up speaker brand) gave that Bose-like sound (before there was Bose) but with intact highs and lows.

Weekend #3 in the saga of the main restroom sink drain, which started as a 15-minute hair declog, in about 1000 words:



A complete drain rebuild including tailpipe and pop-up, at a cost exceeding $100 due to deteriorated bits. The cherry on this sundae was today's discovery that the first threads of the ABS wall coupling (i.e. the only threads a standard compression nut can reach) had been previously stripped, hence the new PVC extension.

I recently built another magic mirror, this one for the office. The original mirror glass had a weird coating that diffused everything, making it useless for my purposes. Today, the replacement glass was delivered to the office.

I spent about an hour getting the crate the glass was shipped in up to the office (this required disassembling half the crate) and getting my tools set up in the conference room. The next four hours were disassembling the mirror, removing the original trim, attaching the new trim pieces, cutting the side trim pieces to fit and then attaching it all to the frame. Then I unpacked the new glass and discovered that the new glass was half an inch too narrow.

So. Trim pieces come back off. Frame gets cut down and reassembled. Trim pieces go back on and sides get re-cut to the new shorter size. Then all the trim pieces come back off, the glass is placed in the new narrower frame, the trim pieces are attached and the whole shebang is hung back up in the office. I have successfully replaced a piece of glass (and the trim).

Update: Final product.

An induction cooker...specifically, a slightly older version of this, in-use at the locally-owned deli where my wife works part time.

Electrically speaking it's an alright design, the problem is all the cheap plastic inside. It was purely a labor of love to rebuild and reinforce the plastic internal tray that supports pretty much everything, including a custom re-fabrication of the fan shroud. And since the fan was trashed, and uses some weird 18V rating, I had to scrounge eBay for it.

Dropped my daughter's handheld electronic Yahtzee game down the vent while adjusting it for the air conditioning. Unfortunately the duct for her room goes straight to the basement, and I then knocked off the adjustment damper flap as well while looking for it. Of course once it is in the basement, the duct goes through all kinds of contortions to join on to the top of the furnace and has a ventilator pipe below it.

With the damper coming to rest blocking the pipe I couldn't leave it. I had to spend this afternoon pulling duct work apart, retrieving the game and flap, and then attempting to replace the ducts without slicing any of my fingers open. The real bonus was the bits of strapping which have been tin-snipped out of a piece of duct and so have saw blade edges - lovely!

I managed to get everything back together with minimal blood loss, but it took a couple of dry gin martinis to make the horrors go away.

notfred wrote:

I had to spend this afternoon pulling duct work apart, retrieving the game and flap, and then attempting to replace the ducts without slicing any of my fingers open. The real bonus was the bits of strapping which have been tin-snipped out of a piece of duct and so have saw blade edges - lovely!

I managed to get everything back together with minimal blood loss, but it took a couple of dry gin martinis to make the horrors go away.

The more I work with metal the more I value de-burring tools, files, and crimped ends.

Last weekend I got the mower out, cleaned it, and sharpened the blades. I re-assemble it and it starts mowing wonderfully (It's amazing what blades with actual edges will do), for about 5 minutes when the tensioning spring on the deck snaps in half and the entire deck and pulley system goes sproing and stops.

I grumble and order a replacement, which of course isn't just a new spring, but then entire deck engagement cable all the way back to the handle. Of course, when the new part arrives it's different and breaks as soon as I try to install it (yaay cheap cast zinc parts). I release a few pent up swears, and decide to just fabricobble up something to make it fit.

I end up pinching the part (that's suppose to have a bolt threaded through it) between two washers and welding in a small chunk of scrap steel to make it stay put. I make a couple test swings of the engagement lever and call it a good job, then start re-assembling the back end of the mower (all this is under the seat). Of course, as soon as I get the seat bracket installed the washers don't clear the bracket when the lever is thrown, so back off comes the rear of the mower and I grab an angle grinder to massage it into a shape that will clear. I shave off enough metal to get it to swing clearly and as soon as I start reinstalling the covers I manage to accidentally touch the part that I had been working on which is still hotter than the surface of the sun. I reiterate my opinion of the mower manufacturer to anyone within 2 miles and finish re-assembling it and all is well, but as usual a 30 minute job becomes a 3 hour job and I'm mowing at sunset.

In an exact opposite experience of what SuperSpy just endured, the camera lens cover on a Nexus 5X turns out to be very easy. Less than five minutes using a very sharp hobby knife, a $3 kit from eBay, and a gentle touch.

SuperSpy wrote:

Last weekend I got the mower out,

I don't have enough grass to justify a petrol mower let alone a ride on but my inlaws do and I'm constantly surprised at the incredibly poor quality of mowers. Half of them don't seem to have any bearings in the engines at all, top coat paint seems to have been applied directly steel (probably without de-greasing first given the way it falls off).

I'm glad all I need is a cheap electric push along job which I paid peanuts for 10 years ago and all I've had to do to it since is sharpen the blade occasionally and once, replace the on/off switch in the handle.

Apparently this is the week in which anything with the word "start" in its description, doesn't. First it was the car refusing to turn over intermittently, then the button on the clothes washer quit responding. No obvious cause turned up in either device, but after a couple hours of cleaning things and re-torquing or soldering connections, everything is back to normal.

Sometimes I think machines are like needy pets or children, there's nothing seriously wrong, they just want a little extra attention now and then.

My mouse has been prone to collecting gunk between the housing and the back of the scroll wheel. Enough gunk had accumulated that it was interfering with the scroll wheels movement, so I took it apart and de-gunked it. I may have to replace the little teflon pads on the bottom since I had to peel those up in order to get the housing off, but so far it seems ok.

This Saturday: rebuilt the twin 6" combustion vents that were incorrectly installed through an awkward brick/joist cut perhaps 15 years ago, in hopes of stemming an on-again-off-again mouse problem. Also modified the screening inside the vents to cut back on leaves and spiders.

Really aggravating that the age of construction isn't factored into the code rules for retrofitting, a townhome built in the mid-70s has no need of combustion ventilation, especially when the newer appliances are more efficient and presumably draw less air than the original equipment.

Found a puddle under the fridge after recent power outage.

Determined the cause is the water supply line for water and ice.

From the drips I thought it was the line from the tap to the fridge.
So I undid the compression fitting, squared the end and put it back together.
Nope it was the push button quick disconnect on the other side of the solenoid!
Looks like it had been a very slow leak for a while and had lots of calcium deposits.
Use some limeaway to clean it put put it all back together and it worked.

ok answer me this GE, why would you use a nice solid compression fitting on side side and quick disconnects on the other?!
Permanent connections should use solid connectors.

Rescreened the front window, twice!

First time when I was putting the spline in the groove I made sure the screen was nice and taut, It looked perfect. I fitted the screen back in the window and then noticed the gap around the edge of the screen frame. It's a tall thin window and the screen tension was bowing in the sides. Rip that out, off to the local store for another pack of screen material and this time make sure it isn't too tight as I roll the spline in. Job done, finally.

Been learning AC repair. (yay!)

Bought an old house a year ago. Not a huge house but it has 2 HVAC units, one for each side. One looks like its 10 years old, located in the garage, and running fine. One looks like it was born with disco shoes, located in the basement, and has been running okay but I had expected it would need replacing in the future when I bought the place.

Well the bottom pan of the evaporator coil was rusting thru, so I pulled the coil out and tried various things to seal the bottom.
Wife, who spends way more time in the basement than I do, kept complaining of a moldy smell, which I thought had to do with the leaking coil spilling on the floor.
I finally discovered that the bottom of the shaft below the coil had THREE FREAKING INCHES of standing water.

I drilled a small hole about 1/2 inch above the floor and let the water drain out and soaked it up with many many towels. Once that was done I knocked out the section below the evap coil and built a frame out of pressure treated 2x2's to hold the unit up and built a new vent pipe from the vent return to the new base of thin aluminum I used to make a new bottom.

Had pulled out the coil to try and seal it AGAIN as it was still leaking and the freon pipe cracked at the connection to the coil as I was moving it back in the unit again.
Shut off the freon pipes out by the compressor. Ordered a new coil which was nearly the same size as the existing coil. Got that put in, soldered the pipes and the new coil was about 1/2 inch too long so I've rigged a new front side to the unit but hey, its working!
Just need to inject some additional freon (on order) to replace what I lost and it should go back to blowing cold instead of just cool.

Not so much "repair" as "tidy up" and "make more functional".

We have this old set of Creative 2.1 speakers that get lugged around the house and used to play music from phones and MP3 players when people are cooking, cleaning, etc., and the cables have always been a big mess. Untangle 'em, and the next time you move the speakers it's a giant rat's nest again. Really annoying.

So I used double-stick foam tape to attach the L/R speakers and power/volume control to the top of the sub:


Then neatly(ish) bundled all the cables up in back, and affixed the power brick to the back of the sub (more foam tape) along with an extension cord and generic USB charger (the reason for the USB charger will become apparent next):


Finally, with the addition of a cheap USB-powered Bluetooth adapter, they are now also Bluetooth-enabled:


Voila - halfway-decent sounding Bluetooth speakers on the cheap. And those old CL speakers get to stick around for a few more years.

Edit: I also thought about adding a handle to the side to make them more "portable". Maybe I'll get a cheap cabinet handle the next time I'm at the hardware store.

I did the opposite of repairing something attempting to get one of my ceiling fans to quit wobbling, was following some guide and it got to the part where you check the mounting screws are tight and you unscrew one screw on the housing to get access and my fan apparently only had one screw instead of 2 (didn't notice before) and I unscrewed that and then the fan is hanging from the other side(which has a thing where there's 2 holes in the ceiling mount and 2 prongs on the fan that connect there) and the fan got a little heavy so adjusted my arms and it came out of the other side so nothing but me and the wires were holding it and I tried to get it back in there but I couldn't so I had to unscrew the wire caps and bring it down. I should probably mention at this point I have no idea how to wire one so I I took the wire caps that were used to connect the fan to the house wiring and put them on the exposed wires on the ceiling (with the circuit breaker flipped off, the light switch was simply off before) and taped the light switch that controls it off for good measure until I get someone to fix it for me heh.

Mikael33 wrote:

I did the opposite of repairing something attempting to get one of my ceiling fans to quit wobbling, was following some guide and it got to the part where you check the mounting screws are tight and you unscrew one screw on the housing to get access and my fan apparently only had one screw instead of 2 (didn't notice before) and I unscrewed that and then the fan is hanging from the other side(which has a thing where there's 2 holes in the ceiling mount and 2 prongs on the fan that connect there) and the fan got a little heavy so adjusted my arms and it came out of the other side so nothing but me and the wires were holding it and I tried to get it back in there but I couldn't so I had to unscrew the wire caps and bring it down. I should probably mention at this point I have no idea how to wire one so I I took the wire caps that were used to connect the fan to the house wiring and put them on the exposed wires on the ceiling (with the circuit breaker flipped off, the light switch was simply off before) and taped the light switch that controls it off for good measure until I get someone to fix it for me heh.

Oops.

Most info I've seen on stopping ceiling fan wobble involves taping pennies to the upper surface of the blades to balance the fan. Even if the screws are tight it's gonna wobble if it is unbalanced.

just brew it! wrote:

Mikael33 wrote:

I did the opposite of repairing something attempting to get one of my ceiling fans to quit wobbling, was following some guide and it got to the part where you check the mounting screws are tight and you unscrew one screw on the housing to get access and my fan apparently only had one screw instead of 2 (didn't notice before) and I unscrewed that and then the fan is hanging from the other side(which has a thing where there's 2 holes in the ceiling mount and 2 prongs on the fan that connect there) and the fan got a little heavy so adjusted my arms and it came out of the other side so nothing but me and the wires were holding it and I tried to get it back in there but I couldn't so I had to unscrew the wire caps and bring it down. I should probably mention at this point I have no idea how to wire one so I I took the wire caps that were used to connect the fan to the house wiring and put them on the exposed wires on the ceiling (with the circuit breaker flipped off, the light switch was simply off before) and taped the light switch that controls it off for good measure until I get someone to fix it for me heh.

Oops.

Most info I've seen on stopping ceiling fan wobble involves taping pennies to the upper surface of the blades to balance the fan. Even if the screws are tight it's gonna wobble if it is unbalanced.

Indeed, the next step was getting a balancing kit.
I don't really need the ceiling fan to work well per se since I have central air but I used it on low before just to help move a bit of air since my A/C unit is oversized for the square footage of my house so it doesn't run as long as it should and the installation job was described to me as unprofessional by an HVAC tech who fixed a refrigerant leak I had since the the ducting is flex tube and the air flow between rooms isn't balanced so the bed rooms don't get enough air flow compared to the living room so in the summer the living room is noticeably cooler than the bedrooms.

Update on my ceiling fan: I found the manual online which showed how to wire it and I opened in another tab the standard wiring colors for houses and reinstalled the ceiling fan and wired it and it works.
However, the first time I flipped the main breaker(to uninstall it, too lazy to check which circuit it was on, breaker is in basement) and flipped it back on when I was done my HVAC thermostat was blank so I flipped the HVAC breaker off for a few minutes and turned it on and that fixed it but when I reinstalled the ceiling fan yesterday and again flipped the main breaker my HVAC thermostat again had no display, so I did the same thing I did the other day with turning the breaker on and off and that didn't fix it so I set the thermostat to off and removed it from the housing and reinserted it and the display works but it doesn't show an indoor temperature (it shows "- -" instead) and only the fan on function works, the heat and cool settings don't work. Is there something wrong with cutting the house power that HVAC systems don't like? It's worked fine before when the power has gone out either from storm's or an idiot truck driver running over an over head power line.

Mikael33 wrote:

removed it from the housing and reinserted it and the display works but it doesn't show an indoor temperature (it shows "- -" instead) and only the fan on function works, the heat and cool settings don't work. Is there something wrong with cutting the house power that HVAC systems don't like? It's worked fine before when the power has gone out either from storm's or an idiot truck driver running over an over head power line.

Bad backup battery?

Alternately, maybe it was already on its way out and you power cycled it just enough times to finish it off?

ludi wrote:

Mikael33 wrote:

removed it from the housing and reinserted it and the display works but it doesn't show an indoor temperature (it shows "- -" instead) and only the fan on function works, the heat and cool settings don't work. Is there something wrong with cutting the house power that HVAC systems don't like? It's worked fine before when the power has gone out either from storm's or an idiot truck driver running over an over head power line.

Bad backup battery?

Alternately, maybe it was already on its way out and you power cycled it just enough times to finish it off?

I never used backup batteries, I got an HVAC tech coming either tonight, early tomorrow or sometime wednesday, hopefully it's just a bad thermostat. Also with my ceiling fan now working it's not as miserable in my office as it was last night, though the fans in my computer aren't too happy about it.

cheesyking wrote:

SuperSpy wrote:

Last weekend I got the mower out,

I don't have enough grass to justify a petrol mower let alone a ride on but my inlaws do and I'm constantly surprised at the incredibly poor quality of mowers. Half of them don't seem to have any bearings in the engines at all, top coat paint seems to have been applied directly steel (probably without de-greasing first given the way it falls off).

I'm glad all I need is a cheap electric push along job which I paid peanuts for 10 years ago and all I've had to do to it since is sharpen the blade occasionally and once, replace the on/off switch in the handle.

Is like anything else, stores sell lots of worthless mowers and few decent ones, but they do sell some. To be fair being forced to use ethanol-tainted gas certainly doesn't help the carburetors either, and that's usually what is guaranteed to be the first thing to have problems. Cleaning those things is a nightmare on some models, older pre-ethanol mowers would clog with broken-down rubber compounds all the time.

For that reason I've been tempted by those battery-powered weed-whackers for awhile, anyone have experience with those good or bad?

Kougar wrote:

For that reason I've been tempted by those battery-powered weed-whackers for awhile, anyone have experience with those good or bad?

Battery wouldn't hold a charge any more after just 2-3 years of use. We have a corded one now.

JBI wrote:

Battery wouldn't hold a charge any more after just 2-3 years of use. We have a corded one now.

I like how we're at the point now where the extension cords literally cost more than the weed whacker they plug into.

Kougar wrote:

For that reason I've been tempted by those battery-powered weed-whackers for awhile, anyone have experience with those good or bad?

Experience, no, but I see Home Depot now offers a range of Ryobi trimmers which are compatible with their "One" universal battery pack and charger system. 18V and 40V options both available, depending on how big the job is. That avoids the problems with charge time and battery life decay.

My hvac issue was just a bad thermostat, happens often after storms like we've had the other day the tech said. He also said my vents(and t-stat which i suspected, near 3 vents) are in a bad location when I mentioned the uneven heating between rooms, they're too close to one another and should be by the windows instead of pretty much the furthest away from then they could be, prob why my windows get mildew on them in the winter, one of the rooms even got mildew on the wall a few winters ago.