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Saito2

So, what have you done today?

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As an offshoot from the topic in General Discussions, I figured we could possibly discuss what non-RC related things we did today. It could be work related, stuff around the house or whatever.

45606047984_95e9e62f46.jpg20181212_112339 by Scott Weiland, on Flickr

My last day at work this week, I worked on this, a 1953 Cadillac Eldorado. This particular car was featured in the Renee Zellweger film, My One and Only. The power windows and power seat in this car are run by hydraulics rather than the usual electric motors. A large starter motor-esque driven pump drives cylinders the push the windows up against spring tension. When the windows are lowered and small electric bleed valve opens and the springs pull the window down. At this point, I have blasted/painted and refurbished the regulator assemblies with new cylinders. I also gutted the car of its combination of rubber and steel hydraulic lines which run mostly under the carpet. I'll likely need to bend up some new steel lines. I also pulled out the car's second heater core which resides under the seat with its own fan motor. The motor surprisingly tested out ok. The heater core did not.     

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Yesterday I updated Windows 10 and several software packages on four laptop PCs of varying vintages; the oldest is 10 years old.  What a pain in the neck!  The fall feature update takes forever to download and install, and then there are other updates to go with it.  Plus, each laptop needed about six software packages updated.  I was surprised how out of date some of the applications were.  A few of the machines needed printer drivers installed.  Then I was doing disk cleanups and freeing up 20-40 GB on each one.  They're all in good shape now, but next are data backups of each one.  Being the household sysadmin is not much fun!

Last weekend we had a foot of wet snow drop from the skies, and that brought down the rest of the leaves from the trees.  The snow finally melted and today I spent several hours cleaning the yard, fixing damaged Christmas lights, and reorganizing the garage.  Squirrels have been eating the wiring on some of the lights!  I found a few bulbs and sockets lying on the ground and breaks in the wiring.  When we have bad weather (ala hurricanes or lots of wet snow) I tend to organize the garage so the snowblower and generator are right by the door; when the the weather gets back to normal then I have to get everything back in place and out of the way again so our cars can get out.

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31447785907_7666ba5734.jpg20181212_112537 by Scott Weiland, on Flickr

Today was this the VW's turn. I pulled apart the top door frames and replaced the sliding window felts. There's a very nice dual Weber, 105 horse engine going in soon with a new transaxle. I started fitting the swingaxles this afternoon to the trans this afternoon. Thanks to Speedy for adding to the thread. I know you guys do more than RC ;).

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Yesterday I met with former co-workers for breakfast; we typically meet once a month and stay in touch as we've all been through layoffs and are working our respective gigs.  I came home and wrapped the last of the Christmas presents; these were for my wife.  Next up was doing data backups on the four laptops mentioned previously; I have a pair of hard drives that are attached seasonally and synced with the latest files.

Later in the day my wife and I were in a hit-and-run collision with some teens/early 20s.  We were creeping along a busy street in a long line of traffic when suddenly the young driver of another car clipped the left rear of our pickup truck, shattering the tail light lense and scuffing the bumper and side of the bed.  They initially pulled over but failed to produce any documentation.  When I pointed out the damage and suggested we should get a police officer to take a report for our insurance, they bolted from the scene driving over a curb and backtracking behind a building and an adjacent parking lot.  Fortunately I did get the license plate number and shared all the relevant information with the officer.  If they're caught, they may be going to court as the state's laws are explicit about exchanging information and leaving the scene of a crash prematurely.  Fortunately no one is injured, and the property damage is relatively minimal.  Maybe the worst memory of all this is the initial shock of being hit and then the confusion and disbelief that it really happened, especially as we were 100% stopped when it happened.

My son borrows the truck on a regular basis to commute to his trade school classes, so when he came home today I had him come with me to the body shop and insurance agent's office to observe how we collect data, weigh choices, and follow procedures.  Bottom line, since the bumper isn't bent and the rear bed panel has a minor crease, I might just put some elbow grease into buffing out the paint as best as possible and then get an OEM tail light assembly for $130 to install myself.  There's a very small spot on the bumper, maybe the size of a dime, that might see some masking and spot touch-up of black paint.

Frankly the highlight of the day was receiving Kingfisher's package; he surprised me the other day in the RM01 Stratos build thread and said, "check your PM!"  He sent a tracking number and before I knew it a super-nice Sabulatech / BoLink 2074 Porsche 935 polycarb body was sitting on my kitchen table.  I enjoyed looking it over for an hour and imagining all the holes I want to cut, all the detail parts and light buckets to design, and the roll cage/interior I'd love to see in it.  Looks like this will be added to the future project queue!

Like Saito says, I'm sure you guys have normal stuff going on in your lives!  I'm kind of enjoying this week before Christmas, personally.

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7 hours ago, speedy_w_beans said:

Maybe the worst memory of all this is the initial shock of being hit and then the confusion and disbelief that it really happened, especially as we were 100% stopped when it happened.

Absolutely unreal! I know people can be like this but even when stuff like this happens, its still so shocking. I'm so sorry you had to go through all that. Kingfisher's generosity is awesome though. Good way to turn a day around.

 

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I don’t really have much interesting to contribute to this thread for now as i spend days at work, then it’s home to bath the kids and put them to bed, have dinner with my wife and walk the dog, but i’ll read this thread with interest! 

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Well, let's see... my day job doesn't involve classic cars, but it's still pretty interesting. I'm a designer/project manager for a sign company. Recently I've dealt with a lot of projects involving big metal signs; last week I had to rent a crane to have a 1000 lb steel and wood sign installed at an apartment complex. Today's adventures included dealing with screen-printing ink that was incompatible with a powdercoated finish and attacked the finish (I didn't think ANYTHING attacked powdercoating!), designing a hanging system for an art piece when I was not allowed to drill any holes or alter the artwork in any way, and that old classic, the missing-fonts-in-a-customer's-file problem.

Luckily, I have all of next week off, which will mean different challenges: lots of workbench time, an attempt to find out why my elderly Saturn's fuel gauge won't read properly, and an attempt at baking an old family recipe from my Danish grandmother's cookbook...

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21 hours ago, markbt73 said:

Today's adventures included dealing with screen-printing ink that was incompatible with a powdercoated finish and attacked the finish (I didn't think ANYTHING attacked powdercoating!),

Wow, an ink that attacks power coating. Maybe I should buy some. I hated stripping powder coating off my aftermarket Jeep fenders (multiple applications of aircraft stripper required).

 

21 hours ago, markbt73 said:

designing a hanging system for an art piece when I was not allowed to drill any holes or alter the artwork in any way,

How did you manage it. Sounds like a challenge. We worked with an architectural firm a couple times, painting metal facades various tones and sheens. It was fussy work IIRC.

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Christmas preparations are in full swing at our house.  Last night I helped my wife ice the last batches of cookies.  Today we cleaned the house and went to the grocery store for a final food run.  She has some pork loin marinating for tomorrow.  Later I went out to get some last stocking stuffers for my son; who else is getting Wiss snips in his stocking?

My daughter is bringing her boyfriend with her tomorrow; she's coming from across the state with him.  I cleaned up our blacksmithing forge and bought some extra steel so he could try it out for fun.  Batteries are on the charger to drive a few RC cars around the street.  And, I mentioned to her the shooting range is open until 2 PM tomorrow, so I have our firearms ready if he wants to try those out too.  Both my daughter and the boyfriend are newbies at shooting, so it could be fun to pit them against each other putting holes in targets.

Anyhow, the next two days should be fun with family and neighbors enjoying the holiday.  Merry Christmas to all of you!

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7 hours ago, speedy_w_beans said:

Christmas preparations are in full swing at our house.  Last night I helped my wife ice the last batches of cookies.  Today we cleaned the house and went to the grocery store for a final food run.  She has some pork loin marinating for tomorrow.  Later I went out to get some last stocking stuffers for my son; who else is getting Wiss snips in his stocking?

My daughter is bringing her boyfriend with her tomorrow; she's coming from across the state with him.  I cleaned up our blacksmithing forge and bought some extra steel so he could try it out for fun.  Batteries are on the charger to drive a few RC cars around the street.  And, I mentioned to her the shooting range is open until 2 PM tomorrow, so I have our firearms ready if he wants to try those out too.  Both my daughter and the boyfriend are newbies at shooting, so it could be fun to pit them against each other putting holes in targets.

Anyhow, the next two days should be fun with family and neighbors enjoying the holiday.  Merry Christmas to all of you!

Sounds like my kind of Christmas, maybe I will visit next holiday time :P

On a side note, I keep looking at .38 and 9mm brass and thinking there must be something scale we can do with them. 

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Have been offline a while and stopped all building work on my sand scorcher. Someone broke in last week through the back door, luckily I think I came home just after they got in as nothing was taken. Must have gone out the back as i was bringing the toddler in through the front... So I fitted a wireless alarm and some security cameras. Fixed the back door etc.. Police think they will most likely be back, unfortunately in the UK use of lethal man traps is prohibited.

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opps just noticed this was for non rc stuff. so have removed the pic I had added.

Watched kids make the lounge into what looks like a wrecked toy shop....

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From late this autumn through recent days I would occasionally catch a whiff of something gas-like while cleaning the yard.  In particular the odor seemed strongest in the small area between my house and my neighbor's house.  We've had quite a bit of rain and the leaves dropped from the trees a little late this year, so I couldn't decide if I was smelling gas or possibly decay from the leaves and mushrooms in the yard.  The smell would come and go depending on the wind.

Anyhow, I asked my wife for a gas leak detector for Christmas (just $30 on Amazon), and today I had a chance to try it out.  That distinctive smell was still present in that section of the yard.  My gas line, shutoff valve, regulator, and meter are all in this area, so I ran the meter's wand over everything and came up with 0 ppm gas everywhere.  Nada!  But I could still smell something.

I started to wonder if there was a break in the gas line in the ground; my parents had that happen 30 years ago and sections of their lawn started to turn black and die.  However, I spotted my neighbor's gas line/valve/regulator/meter 20 feet away and gave it the once-over with the detector as well.  Pay dirt!  I was getting readings around 200-250 ppm around the pipe between the shutoff valve and regulator.

Unfortunately my neighbor wasn't home; I tried a few times throughout the day and concluded they must be out of town.  A call to the local gas company had technicians at my door within a half hour, and I pointed them to the spot where my meter detected some gas.  They used their own meters and confirmed up to 5% gas at one specific spot at a joint, and the soapy water they sprayed on the joint quickly inflated into bubbles.  At that point I left them alone.  They were on-site for another half hour and then left.  I checked later and found there was only the faint smell of dopant; all is well now.

It's not grand news, but I was excited to give the detector a try and confirm it truly was gas.  I had a microscopic gas leak near my furnace this fall and had to convince the tech something was truly there.  I wanted the detector/meter for any possible future issues.

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Took a drive from Portland out to the Oregon Coast today, to walk on the beach and get the dogs (and us) some exercise. Long and tiring drive. I used to be able to drive all day and half the night without getting fatigued, now a 200 mile round trip just about does me in. But we made it; currently relaxing on the sofa with a beer and two very sleepy dogs...

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I took the boy climbing yesterday. The nearest centre is a 70 mile round trip but it was worth it. Think we make this a monthly event now.

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Took the kids out on bikes. We cycled along an old rail line that has been resurfaced as a green way and takes us from a local small town all the way into Belfast if you want (7 miles)

We took it steady and kids done great. I knew there was a play park at the 4 mile mark so used that as a carrot to keep em going long after they wanted to turn back.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/Comber+Greenway:+Start+Point/54.590032,-5.8264236/@54.579044,-5.8276225,6541m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m9!4m8!1m5!1m1!1s0x48610ca0ce6adc03:0x645701d4c09b43ae!2m2!1d-5.759153!2d54.558451!1m0!3e1?hl=en

I also took em to a local KFC after (for a mini fillet burger ONLY) so as not to undo all the good effort.

They all enjoyed it with 2 of them trying a Chicken Burger for the first time. Unfortunately KFC is a big favourite now!

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Christmas "de-decorating" is now in full swing at our house; the tree came down today.  I was surprised my wife wanted to do it so soon after the holiday.  I'm leaving the outdoor lights up for another week at a minimum.

Yesterday was firearm cleaning day; my son received a Henry Big Boy lever-action rifle for Christmas so we broke it down and lubricated it.  There were a few other pistols and rifles we used recently also needing a full clean and lube.

Christmas gifts are finding their natural locations around the house; we tested a few of the last ones to make sure they work.  My wife wanted an OttLite with built-in fan for her sewing area; there's also a vinyl/fabric cutter we set up.  I tried out a portable solar array for my shortwave and ham radios.

I guess life is returning back to normal...

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Same here, took the tree down. Disassembled our Lego Christmas decorations. I've been spending most of the holiday playing with my daughter and her new toys, Connect Four, Hot Wheels Sto and Go playset, Lite Brite, etc. Good times. Not looking forward to work on Wednesday though, lol.

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well today i deceided to strip and clean my hi-fi seperates the main one is the cassette deck as tape A stops working every know and then(mainly through lake of use) so i  sprayed a little contact switch cleaner/lubricant here and there;) done the same with the cd player and one to the amp to witch i have never took this apart for cleaning so i expected this to be bad but when opened it wasn't as bad as i expected mainly dust and what looked like damp/mould spots on the circuit board. then onto the tuner as the same with this as it has never been opened and i noticed a burn mark on the board took it out to investigate but can't see anything on the under neath that would warrant the burn mark so cleaned it and put back together the graphic was done a few months back so don't require any work yet. gave all the case's a good dusting/cleaning while puting back together i managed to get myself a decent finger slice from the metal case (same as a paper cut) connected it back up and all seems to be working as it should. i have played a couple of cassettes and as yet all good.

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Swept the stoves flue, it was completely blocked at the top so had to climb on the roof and remove the flue vent cover and chip of the creosote/soot build up, then rodded it down the way as well.

Then serviced the caravan......**** fridge is not working on Gas, apparently after looking up common faults looks like I am in for a hefty bill on this one!!

 

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Me mate dropped off my fresh p.coated rims...:wub:...

20190320_170455 20190320_170824 20190320_170652 20190320_170739

Got fresh rubber for them aswell.....jus need sum fresh new disc bolts and strip clean me calipers/ pistons up and fit new pads all roundB)

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I haven't posted in this thread since the end of December...  I guess some of the latest things I've been working on (besides a few RC builds):

- Slowly but surely all of the media in our house is being digitized, stored, and served up on our home network to all the devices we own.  All the CDs are ripped and converted, all the Hi8 family movie tapes have been captured, all the DVDs have been ripped and are in the process of being transcoded, and some paper photos are flowing through the scanner.  There are a few reasons for doing this -- 1) make it all more accessible; digging through physical cabinets and piles takes some effort to find things and keep them organized, 2) make things more portable; it's nice to have the family photos, movies, music, videos, etc. available when traveling; it's comforting in some ways, and 3) create some redundancy; in case of fire or some other issue, it's relatively quick to grab a hard drive and run with it, or store one copy in the bank safety deposit box.

The capturing and processing part of the task takes time for sure.  There's a quad-core PC running 24 hours a day transcoding video right now.  I just have a simple Raspberry Pi 3 running a MiniDLNA server and accessing a hard drive for content.  There are a few hard drives with the same content on them just in case the primary drive goes down.  Our clients include Playstation consoles, iOS and Android tablets, Android phones, and various PCs around the house.  I'm in the home stretch and hope to wrap this whole process up in a few months.  I started this about a year ago.

- I've been planning a 3D printer build and a CNC router/engraver build off and on for the past month.  While my little Tronxy X1 does a fine job for smaller parts, the build volume is really quite limited and I've wanted to 3D print full 1/10 scale bodies for awhile.  I've also wanted to be able to drill and route my own FRP plates and some chassis parts out of nylon.  I have some leftover Arduino boards and RAMPS 1.4 boards, so I bought some extra stepper motors, pulleys, belts, idlers, etc. and have been configuring and testing Marlin and GRBL firmware with this hardware.  I'm at the point where I'm comfortable with all the electronics and software, so it's down to designing some frames and rails for the actual machines.  I'm targeting 600 mm x 300 mm x 300 mm for the 3D printer build volume, and possibly 600 mm x 600 mm for the CNC router.  Maybe I'll go big with the router and do 1000 mm x 1000 mm.

- I just bought one of those DSO138 kits from Hobbyking during their St. Patrick's Day sale, and while it is definitely not professional-grade, it's more than adequate for looking at radio receiver PWM waveforms that drive servo motors and ESCs.  It's also good enough to look at waveforms on the phases of brushless motors and their sensor boards.  For $20, it comes in kit form (soldering required) and will take a little time to put together.  I also bought a clear acrylic case off Amazon for $10 just so the board and display is somewhat protected.  I have a basic meter for checking voltages, currents, and resistance, but it will be nice to see waveforms now.

- There's an old project lurking in the background that I need to finish; basically I bought a cheap SJ4000 action camera a year or two ago and broke open the case with the intentions of adapting the image sensor to a standard CCTV mini lens mount.  There are wide variety of lenses available for CCTV cameras, and I wanted to take advantage of these lenses and the 120 fps recording speed of the action camera to do macro videos.  The idea is to be able to capture small mechanical movement in detail.

- Lastly, I recently finished and test fired a few custom Glock pistol builds based on Polymer 80 frames.  There was no money saved compared to buying a standard pistol off-the-shelf, but I learned quite a bit and have some appreciation for the way all the masses, springs, interlocks, etc. work together as a system.  Test firing was successful -- 100% success rate on the first 100 rounds fired, so that's nice as well.

Beyond RC, that's the latest from speedy-land.

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