Early Retirement Extreme Forums

This is almost an embarassingly simple fix, but it is a genuine start. As mentioned in my journal, I just got my bike to my place from my parents', and its front brake wasn't working. I anticipated likely having to take it to a shop, along with a general tune-up since I know it hasn't had one in a long time and hasn't been used in a long time. However, I took a look at it, and after some brief Youtube research (the first video I watched showed me how to solve the problem) I saw that the v-brake was just disconnected, and I could easily reconnect it, and then did. It's a good feeling. Now I just need to find some panniers or a basket to put on the rack my bike already has and we'll really be cooking with gas (I can also just use a backpack).

philipreal wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 14, 2024 8:47 am

This is almost an embarassingly simple fix, but it is a genuine start.
[...]
I saw that the v-brake was just disconnected, and I could easily reconnect it, and then did. It's a good feeling.

Congratulations!

Now I just need to find some panniers or a basket to put on the rack my bike already has and we'll really be cooking with gas (I can also just use a backpack).

I use a backpack in winter. That helps keep me warm when it's freezing.

In warmer seasons, I use a clip-on bag holder.

Baratza Encore powerboard replacement
Last winter I bought a Baratza Encore (a relatively fancy coffee grinder) on Facebook marketplace. Within a few months of daily use, it started exhibiting some weird behavior - I could hear the motor speed varying up and down as it ran, and in less than a minute of continuous operation it would spin all the way down to a stop. Then it would refuse to turn back on for some unspecified amount of time, but if I waited until the next morning I'd be able to repeat the process.

Part of the reason that I bought this grinder is that Baratza has a reputation for great customer service, so I shot their support line an email describing the symptoms I saw and asking them what to do. They diagnosed my problem as a powerboard issue and sent me a free one in the mail, which is pretty sweet given that I bought it used. Kudos to them for living up to their reputation.

Given the powerboard, this was an easy fix. Unplug one cable, unscrew two screws, new powerboard in, two screws back in, cable back in. The hardest part was actually getting the outer casing of the grinder off - I ended up scoring the plastic pretty badly with the screwdriver I used to pop the tabs keeping the case on. If I did a fix like this again I would try to find a flat plastic tool to use instead of a screwdriver.

It would have been cool if I could have diagnosed and actually fixed the powerboard itself, but that's beyond my skillset for now.

Disassembled grinder (casing, motor, powerboard)


New powerboard installed


Reassembled grinder

I realized lately how easy some zippers can be fixed. I had a rain jacket I got for free with a broken zipper for over a year until I took 2 minutes to Google and then 15 seconds to execute a squeezing of the zipper runner with pliers.

The zipper runner (or whatever it's called) over time can loosen and then not bring the 2 sides of the jacket together well. If you tighten the two guide pieces of metal, it'll function better.

Now I have a rain jacket!

Water pooling in passenger side floorboard
A few days ago I'm dropping DW off at work when she mentions that the bottom of her backpack (which was sitting on the passenger floorboard in our car) is wet. That's weird, and reminds me that last week, I noticed my socks were wet when I got out of the car, though I didn't think too much about it at the time...

With a sinking feeling I drive home, park, and walk around to the passenger side. As I suspected, the passenger floormat is completely soaked. Bad sign. Okay, take it out, check the carpet... also sopping wet. So I pull up the carpet to find my worst fear confirmed - there must be half an inch of water sitting under there. And I don't know how long it's been in there, because the wet-sock incident was more than a week ago.

This is really an extremely unpleasant discovery.

Visions are dancing in front of my eyes of the whole car infested with mold, having to rip out and replace the entire carpet, terrible things... I don't want the fine people of this forum to think I'm dramatic but I'm already on my knees at this point to look at the floorboards and there may also be some shaking of fists at the sky and cursing the gods, et cetera...

Anyway, I go grab a few towels to soak up the water, prop up the carpet as best as I can to dry it out, and try to figure out my next step.

The internet tells me that corollas commonly have an issue with their AC condenser drain hose getting clogged up, and because that hose runs under the passenger-side dash, it can end up leaking into the floorboards. We've been using the AC off and on so it would at least make some sense. Fine, the hose is easy to find but when I disconnect it it's dry and when I try blowing into it there doesn't seem to be any resistance. I'm doubtful that this is the issue.

So I call my dad (who, conveniently, is an auto mechanic), and he asks me if it's been raining recently. It has been, so he tells me to check the drains for the windshield and the sunroof. Ideally, the way to do that is to have someone spray a hose onto various part of the car while I'm inside looking for leaks. But we live in an apartment downtown so we don't have access to a hose and the nearest DIY carwash that has one is out in the suburbs somewhere through the hellscape that is DC traffic.

So this is how I find myself, ass literally up in the air, contorting around to shove my head under the passenger dash while my DW pours various potfuls of water that we've shlepped out onto the car while I attempt to find where water is getting in. I'm also being swarmed by mosquitos because late-summer DC is a literal swamp, not just a metaphorical one.

At this point, I'm mostly just thinking that however much money I'm saving by doing this myself isn't worth it.

Thankfully, pouring water on the car at least replicates the issue so we can confirm it has something to do with a seal or a drain. It's hard to for me to tell where water is getting in - there's nothing obvious. The only thing I can see is a tiny little drip coming from a piece of tubing that runs out the bottom of the passenger-side A pillar. Thankfully, that's enough for my dad to conclude that it's probably a sunroof drain issue. I confirm his suspicions by pouring water directly into the right side of the sunroof seal, which causes a flood of water to come out of the aforementioned tubing. Finally, we've at least isolated the location of the problem.

Diagnosis: a clogged sunroof drain, which runs down the A pillar into the wheel well, is causing water to back up and get somewhere it shouldn't be.
Fix: clean the drain.

Now for the final hurdle: I can't find the sunroof drain. Despite sticking my head through the sunroof, which puts my eyeball about an inch away from the supposed drain location, I can't see it. There's some silt in there, but no big debris that could be blocking anything. My dad insists that there should be a drainage hole in the front corner of the sunroof, so in desperation I start poking around with a screwdriver. Sure enough, the silt I mentioned, which is the exact same color as the sunroof plastic, is covering a tiny drain hole in what I would have sworn was a smooth plastic surface. Frustrating

The silt is easy to clear out, and then I feed some trimmer line into the drain just to make sure there aren't any blockages further down. I don't find any resistance and the line comes out clean, so I feel confident the silt was the problem.

I confirm that the issue is fixed by pouring some more water in the sunroof and making sure it finds its way to the wheel well rather than the car interior.

--------

Closing thoughts
Compared to some of the other fixes I've posted in this thread, I didn't enjoy this one at all. I was trying to think about why that was. These are the factors I came up with:

1. Time pressure
It rained every day this week, which meant that every day I didn't get this issue figured out was another day of water getting into the car. I was walking around all day with the sword of mold-o-cles hanging over my head, which is not a fun way to live. This factor was compounded by factor number 2...

2. Challenging / ambiguous diagnostic process
At each step of this process, I was blocked by my inability to effectively root-cause the problem. Even when we poured water on the car to replicate our issue (the correct approach!), the water entry point was covered so I couldn't see it and it barely dripped because we had the sunroof closed. I would never have been able to make the jump to the sunroof drain being clogged without my dad's expertise.

So most of the time spent on this fix was just me banging my head on the wall trying to figure out what the problem even was.

I was reminded of the parts of software development that I hated the most - the parts where something isn't working, but everything you know says it should working, and WHY ISN'T THIS WORKING???? HOW CAN IT POSSIBLY NOT BE WORKING, IT HAS TO WORK, AHHHH@#!$@#!$. This process gave me that same feeling.

The combination of 1) being under the gun to get something fixed ASAP while simultaneously 2) not being able to diagnose the issue... not enjoyable.

3. Lack of payoff
When I fixed my coffee grinder, my reward was a tasty, freshly brewed cup of coffee. When I cleaned the rust off of DW's bike fenders, there was a real satisfaction in seeing the rusty metal come back to life. I literally held them up the air and went, "Ooo, shiny!" In this scenario, my reward is that my car is exactly the same as before, except now maybe it will have mold issues going forward. Great...

--------

TL;DR: clean your sunroof drains and pay someone else to be your auto mechanic.

--------

Photo evidence
The scene of the crime. I should have taken a picture before cleaning up the water so you could see how much there was but I didn't think about it.


The A/C hose (not the culprit):


The actual entry point:


Cleaning the sunroof drain with trimmer line:

Thank you Bicycle7. Really inspiring. I recognise the stressed feeling.

Some pride is in order. You actually solved an issue. Huge downside potential avoided might not feel as great as upside created, but that's just how our silly human minds work. You did great!

@dustbowl good fix. This is an issue on old Mercedes cars. Probably because they last long enough to get clogged. Partner with water hose + cord trimmer line is the standard procedure. Reminds me I need to do this as maintenance on one of my cars before it starts raining. This caused rust issues on my first Mercedes. It was 20 yo by the time I got it. The prior owners ignored the swimming pools in the trunk and passenger areas.

Bos humbly did quite a surgery on his bicycle.

That sounded really cool. It reminded me of this bike shop in Berkeley called Missing Link. They had this free bike service stall where they had a few stands and some loaner tools. Special tools like pullers and Park stuff could be free rented. It was a godsend for a broke student. The secret for the broke student was getting a good quality mid range bike that was repairable (acquired through the classified card board in the student union) and taking it over to Missing Link at night. They were open late. I recall getting my Trek 500 for $50 and buying a bottom bracket, brake pads, bar tape and tires from them for another $50 my freshman year. I rode that thing till I got my PhD.

This place. It’s apparently closed now.

missing link by Garin Fons, on Flickr

Carbon superglue repair on remote key fob. I cracked the plastic housing in my remote key fob for my car. The crack formed right where the plastic housing sees a lot of twisting force from the key as I turn the ignition.

I’ve been playing around with this carbon + super glue mixture trick. Saw it on YouTube. Mix carbon dust with superglue and you get this rock hard glue that sets up with some catalytic activity. It gets hot and smokes a bit in the seconds of curing. It’s kind of like the baking soda superglue trick but it’s stronger.

I found this bottle of graphite in my dad’s garage. No idea why he had it. Likely lock lubricant. My dad had a lot of chemicals hoarded up in his workshop. Most went to hazmat. I did keep this graphite powder just for the glue trick. You can also grind up used charcoal briquettes free from the park dumpster. Bottom line you need some finely ground carbon powder.



I cleaned the crack out with a hobby knife. It had a lot of dust in it from riding around in my pocket. Knocked off the loose plastic bits. Then I filled the channel with dry graphite. On top of that I dribbled on super glue.



Looks like this when it’s done. Cured up in seconds to a rock hard material. Did a great job securing the loose pieces and filling the gap with black material. I had to use a file to flatten it out a bit. It’s softer than the steel file but it is still quite hard to cut down. I’ll see how long this holds. The housing sees a lot of stress cycles as I drive around.

Another free brake job. I timed it at one hour of labor. I love the Autozone lifetime brake pads. Buy them once and you get brake pads for life. I still get a kick out of this deal. It’s great if you keep your cars a long time.



I got a lot of use out of these. Almost down to the wear sensors. Obligatory before and after shot. The pads are 50% gone. I average about 15,000 miles out of a set. I likely saved about $200. Take my savings to my favorite street vendor for dinner. I feel like having tacos. There just happens to be a pop up right near Autozone where I’ll return my cores for my 100% refund.



Live. Fix. Drive out. Eat. Repeat. I’ve been doing this since I was a teenager. It never gets old.

Changed rear brake pads same car. I noticed this car squeaked a bit when coming to stops. The pads were 50% worn. My thinking was it was likely resonance and not worn pads. Resonance is when your pads squeak while rubbing the rotor like your finger squeaks as it rubs over a wine glass. It isn’t the metal to metal screeching you hear when the pads are worn.

To fix resonance I add this rubber cement that damps down the vibrations. See my previous brake posts. I figured I didn’t apply it properly in this case and I needed to reapply it. My thinking was if I’m going in there I might as well replace the 50% worn pads. I likely could have driven another 10,000 miles or more on them after rubber cementing the backs of the pads but why not put in new pads? They’re free anyway.

So I replaced them and turned in the cores at Autozone. $34 pads. Free.

Worn before and after shot. Squeaking stopped.

Spoke to my neighbor while I was changing the pads out. He said he just paid $800 to change front and rear pads on his Mercedes C-class at an independent mechanic. I asked if it was pads and rotors. Nope. Pads only. He did mention that he is using higher end pads. I didn’t want to tell him a lot of mechanics use Autozone Duralast. Autozone professional accounts have become a big part of the business. You see their delivery truck at all the independent shops. Think they’re delivering air fresheners and car polish? It’s brake pads, starters and batteries. The former are very hard to discern from OEM. Seriously is the guy pulling his wheel and checking the tiny printing on the pad?

And my car stops fine.

His opinion was Autozone Duralast pads are cheap and won’t stop the car as well. Anything involving safety needs to be the best or nothing at all. Okay. The less you know the more you pay. It’s nice to think this entire job saved me $800 for two hours of work. There isn’t anything I do that makes that hourly rate.

Did some circuit board repair work today. My car key remote cracked again so I decided I needed to rebuild it with a new 3D printed housing. Unfortunately I pried the two pieces apart clumsily and wrecked the circuit board that sends out the coded signal.

This is an old piece of circuitry that I cannot easily buy now. I thought about getting a new remote but then I’d have to redesign my custom flip key housings to fit new electronics. And I’d also have to rewire my car with a new remote receiver. So I decided to reconstruct the circuit board. Unfortunately the chip tore off the board along with circuit board pads and copper traces. It was going to be a difficult repair.

Here is the result of my idiocy and impatience at disassembling the remote. Circuit contacts are long gone. Traces ripped up. It needs major rewiring. As far as scale goes this is moderate difficulty. It isn’t impossible but I wouldn’t call it a quick fix.



After overcoming my shock and winnowing down my options I got to work. I needed new pads. I scraped them off a junk PCB in my scrap pile. I think this is the amplifier from a dead Crosley iPod dock bought at a yard sale.



I used 5 minute epoxy (Araldite) to bond the donor pads to the board. They’re ugly but I need something to bond the chip to. They still need to be connected to the copper tracing.



Now for some wiring. Not pretty but it will do. The wires are about two human hairs thickness. They stick up a little too much so the chip will ride a little high above the board. Lost a pad in the process but the bond wire will double as a pad. The epoxy has enough heat resistance to not melt under the soldering iron. This is really important otherwise things just fall apart when you solder the wires in. Superglue doesn’t work for this job.



An hour later. The chip is back down. Soldered in and passing the critical test of opening the car door.



Since the chip is kind of lifted off the board by the underlying repair wires I figured I better stabilize it with blobs of epoxy around the wires and chip package. This thing is going to see some hard use as I carry it in my pocket and bang it around unlocking the car.



Electrically tests out good. Here it is installed in brand new 3D printed casings with the flip key. Next time I’ll be more careful opening it up.

While I was under my Mercedes doing brake pads I noticed I had a cracked brake hose. Given I don’t want that breaking on me while I’m going down a steep hill I figured I’d better swap it out. Both sides are 40 years old on this particular car.

I had to make a special 11mm flare nut line wrench out of a box end wrench. I could have bought one but I decided to modify an extra box wrench I had lying around. It’s critical to use line wrenches or you’ll strip out the gland nut. I managed to strip it anyway because I turned the nut the wrong way…dyslexia.

Just took an abrasive wheel to a wrench to open up the circle. Allows you to slip the steel line through the wrench. Instant custom tool.



40 year old hoses. I guess this will be the last time I change them.



Closeup of cracks. These aren’t all the way through but they scared me. I live on a steep grade and losing brakes can be a thing.



New hoses look sharp. I bled the air from the lines and I’m good to go.



I did notice some cracks and seepage on my CV boot. I’ll do that when I get some more energy. Stay tuned for that fix. Those are good to catch early. If you catch it before it leaks you can save it by just installing a rubber cv boot. If you let it go and drive it dry it’ll need a new half Axel.



Saved a little money. Repair pal quotes this out at $80-200 per wheel. I did two. The hoses cost me $14.

My mouse broke down—the left click stopped working. It's a vertical mouse that sells for around 80 euros but seems to use cheap click sensors. I replaced the faulty sensor with a better one that cost just 2 euros.

I desoldered the broken part and reassembled everything. Since I didn’t own a soldering iron yet, I went with the highly recommended Pinecil V2. It was my first time soldering, but the process went smoothly, and I had the mouse back together in under an hour. Without proper soldering helping hands to hold the circuit board, I improvised using the clamp from an IKEA lamp I had lying around. It wasn’t ideal, so next time I’ll invest in proper helping hands.




First post in the Fixit log. Next time I'll take better pictures for the process

bos wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 10, 2024 6:36 am

It wasn’t ideal, so next time I’ll invest in proper helping hands.

If so, spring for a quad-hand type setup with telescoping arms that look like something Dr Octopus might wear. I find them much more workable than the traditional third-hand style both in terms of quantity and quality. They can reach more places with more angles and extra hands are useful for keeping wires out of the way.

I have one with a magnetic base. There's also a more minimalist version that clamps to the edge of the table. I prefer the former because it makes it easier to rest my elbows on the table to keep the hands steady.

Fixed my cracked CV boot on my car. Like I said in the last post I discovered cracks in a CV boot while swapping out brake hoses. These can be quite costly to change. Especially if you wait too long and lose all the grease as the cracked boot spins around. Then you’re looking at an axel replacement.

I had a few stretch boots on the shelf. These are a special stretchy rubber boot that can be stretched over one end of the half Axel. They are designed for flat rate mechanics who want to cut a corner to save install time while charging you the flat rate for a time consuming CV boot swap. A typical boot replacement means taking out the Axel and splitting it on the bench to put on OEM boots. They may sneak in an alignment or they can say you have too much play in the CV and you need new half axels. It can get really pricey.

So the beauty of the stretchy boots is you just take one end of the half Axel off and you can replace two boots in about an hour with cleanup. A split boot is another one of these time saving tricks. Split boots slip over the Axel like a clam and are sealed up with glue. These take minutes to install because you don’t even have to remove the wheels.

Anyhow I like the stretchy ones because I don’t trust the glued seam of a split boot. The stretchy boots require a manual cone install tool that looks like a funnel to slip the boot over the big end of the Axel. I use a tool called a “boot gun” which pneumatically expands the boot with compressed air. Pros like this tool because it’s fast. You can get them for $75 online. They pay for themselves in one shot. I’ve used mine about twelve times not counting all the times I’ve lent it out. It’s the green thing in the first photo. Those metal fingers stretch open the boot. If you’re curious there are a ton of videos online about installing stretch boots.

Just another example of the more you know the less you pay. Professional mechanics invest in a lot of tools like this one to make their shop more profitable.

Getting set up with my boot gun.


A quick video on how they work. This is how mechanics liberate your money with flat rate. This job books at several hours of flat rate but look how fast they can mount the boot. They’ll never tell you they used a stretchy boot. It’s done in minutes.

https://youtube.com/shorts/TlWkSBXHWoc? ... JnMjmEZt4Z

My cracked leaky boot. I caught it early.



CV boot off with a razor blade and ready to reboot.



New stretchy boot on. Took two hours with cleanup.



I bought this boot gun twenty years ago when I was quoted $1800 to change my cv joints and axels. It paid for itself in one day. I’ve been using it over and over again. Boots get torn. They cost a lot to replace.

The more you know the less you pay.

Water was leaking out under one of our vanity sinks. I’d fixed one of them in the past. It had a corroded brass tube. Same thing happened again to the other side. Likely caused by Listerine. It contains a small amount of acid.

This isn’t my house but I like to fix little things like this for my landlord. We like each other that much.

Anyhow here is the fix.

Removed the Swiss cheese section of drain pipe.



Replaced it with a $4.50 piece of drain tubing from Home Depot. The entire job took five minutes if I don’t include the ten mile drive to Home Depot.

I finally bought a 3D printer after thinking about it for a long time. Having worked in the 3D industry, I already have experience with modelling - A skill I spent 6 years of my life developing should not go to waste. This made me feel confident that buying a printer was a good decision.

DW's bicycle lock missed the little plastic part to push it up and down. She had been complaining for a while that its painful to push the metal rod. Since I could not find a replacement part, I designed and printed a new one.







The last time I used a 3D printer is almost 10 years ago as a student. I bought a bambu lab a1 mini and It's insane how much 3D printers have improved. It used to be a hobby to fix and improve those printers. Now it just works out-of-the-box. Which is great, because I don't need another hobby ;D

That's awesome bos! 3D printers seem to have a lot of useful potential fabricating little parts when doing mechanic repairs. I imagine I could enjoy using a 3D printer at some point