Stuff you have fixed today

[Geoffm]

I have had a a rod heating oven for my welder for a few years. China's Finest, it clips onto the welder terminals. People with quick connects will be out of luck, but my big welder was made in 1942, so no new-fangled tech here...

It works pretty well with my unheated shed to dry out rods before use.
It has the cheesiest lead, with a plug like a 1970s kettle. The terminal block on the unit is very thin (1mm or so) and it broke away and finally it wasn't working. I found a piece of 10mm Perspex, glued onto the remains of the terminal block with JB Weld, drilled a couple of holes and glued the terminals in. So far so good.

 

[Geoffm]

I have had my 1988 Toyota Hiace for 30 years or more. The 2.4l diesel would pull the skin off a rice pudding with a running start, maybe. It was my daily driver for years, carried motorbikes and workshop stuff. It doesn’t get a lot of use, but since it isn’t worth much, it is to useful to get rid of it. It amazing when you own a big van, how many friends you have who are temporarily homeless and moving house….

The passenger side wing mirror is on a stalk, and for quite a while, it rotates in the wind which is somewhat annoying. I think there was some plastic thing to lock it but it is been gone. Why do manufacturers use such a design with a lot of leverage on plastic parts.

Solution was to pull it off and drill and tap a couple of M4 screws through the metal clamp into the mirror stem. We will see how it lasts.

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

This tired King Dick 1/4" Ba Socket set came my way.
It is Ex MOD stock. Locally getting BA sets is getting difficult. A lot of steam toys use BA size fixings.

It has lost its MOD ID plate at some point.

Getting rid of the rust.

Fresh paint.

 

[dobbslc]

Yamaha TRX 850 recommission.

Carb stripped and rebuilt with new Keyster Full carb kits.

Seized calipers stripped cleaned and rebuilt with new seal kits etc.

Fork seals replaced and stanchions polished.

Alarm removed and loom repaired.

Charging system repaired.

New plugs and air filter.

Bits and pieces to get it to MOT standard.

Didn't really charge what we had in it but nice to see it back on the road!.

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That was in a mess! Nice work
Mine needs some fettling on the carbs, are those Keyster kits good?

 

[Keithmac]

That was in a mess! Nice work
Mine needs some fettling on the carbs, are those Keyster kits good?

Yes they are OEM quality (Japanese made which says it all).

I try and use Keyster kits in all my carb rebuilds.

 

[bricol]

Two M3 re-coils into the cylinder block casting of a live steam model traction engine - worked rather better than I was expecting - didn't even need to take the steam chest cover off.

Had some fun with 7/32-40 ME threads making some additional globe valve parts to improve the water pump on the same engine.

 

[Blue Chips]

For the past few weeks I've been swamped with things to do in preparation for putting a property on the market, and one of the things on the to-do list is to mow all of the fields, but our old 1953 Ford NAA tractor is currently out of sorts with steering gearbox problems, which I'm in the process of taking care of.

While waiting for a few more gearbox parts to arrive, I decided to fix a couple of cosmetic issues. In the tractor's 70-year working life, various owners have worked on Mr. Ford. I've already corrected most of their mechanical screw-ups, and now I'm taking on one of their cosmetic screw-ups. At least one of the previous owners did some very sloppy bodywork on the right-hand hood panel, as you can see in the photo below. Besides the lousy finish work, they welded the side and nose panels together and brazed...and welded...several cracks in the steel, and then tried (unsuccessfully) to hide their sins with body filler.

First, I had to cut apart the panels. The nose panel was FUBAR, but I decided that I could salvage the hood panel. I started by roughly straightening things and digging down through some of the body putty to see what I had to deal with. There were at least half a dozen cracks that had been poorly brazed and/or welded, not all of which are visible in the photo below.

I decided that the best course of action would be to chop out the two nastiest areas and leave the ones that weren't too bad. I re-welded the grille bracket while I was at it.

Here's how it looked after I formed a couple of pieces of cold-rolled steel, welded them in (MIG) and ground the welds smooth).

I had to use a little high-bond polyester filler to get the exact profile I wanted, but it's only a thin layer. Here it is with its first coat of primer. Later, I'll scribe in a line to simulate the seam between the hood side panel and the lower 'dogleg' panel.

I haven't fitted up the replacement nose panel yet, which might require fabricating a small wedge insert to get a perfect fit, and I still have a bit of work to do on the left-side hood panel, but it's coming along. I"m not trying to make it into a show tractor. It's a working tractor, but I want it to look reasonably decent.

More later.

 

[Blue Chips]

Another tractor repair.

At some time in the past, it appears that a previous owner must have over-torqued the pitman arm retaining nuts on our 1953 Ford NAA tractor's steering gearbox sector shafts and managed to twist the shafts, as you can see by the warped splines. I'm guessing that these were cheap aftermarket shafts that weren't properly heat treated or were made from some questionable alloy. I actually noticed the twisted shafts when I first brought the tractor home, but since the gearbox was working okay, I just kept using it for the next 14 or 15 years. However, a few weeks ago the gearbox started misbehaving badly, as if something was caught in the gears, so I tore it down and had a look. One of the sector shaft teeth was broken, and the missing chunk was indeed getting caught in the gears. Also, the top steering shaft roller bearing was in bad shape. I figured it was finally time for a proper rebuild.

I cleaned and primed the gearbox and ordered a bunch of new parts...pretty much every internal part, in fact. Here are most of the new parts lying next to the primed gearbox sections.

Here's the assembled gearbox. After following the manufacturer's adjusting sequence, it seems to operate quite smoothly. The next step is to paint it the correct red color.

 

[Blobber]

This has been rolling around the stores since we moved 9 years ago, Its a big old lump measuring 55 inches and I was getting fed up moving it around, it would only be a matter of time before it got smashed!

Behold the illuminated chicken!!

 

[bourbon]

This came into the repair café/ my workshop

and left like this

 

[dobbslc]

This has been rolling around the stores since we moved 9 years ago, Its a big old lump measuring 55 inches and I was getting fed up moving it around, it would only be a matter of time before it got smashed!
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Behold the illuminated chicken!!

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Do the tubes blink in order to give you the fault code?

 

[Blobber]

Do the tubes blink in order to give you the fault code?

Dont know I cant afford to turn it on!

 

[cheb]

My oven. A 25 year old Neff double oven. It went pop and blew a fuse yesterday night. Two of the tracks on the pcb had evaporated. A bit a very thin wire and some ugly soldering later and it works. Which is good as we have visitors arriving in a few days.

 

[bourbon]

My oven. A 25 year old Neff double oven. It went pop and blew a fuse yesterday night. Two of the tracks on the pcb had evaporated. A bit a very thin wire and some ugly soldering later and it works. Which is good as we have visitors arriving in a few days.

do you know why the tracks blew?

 

[cheb]

No but I suspect old age. When I cleaned it with ipa there was no copper left.

 

[DennisCA]

Fixed the seat in my Saab 900, it was sagging in the rear.

I installed it from below, which was difficult and required me to make a tool to get some leverage, but once I had that it was easy. Fitting the new springs into the seat frame was the most time consuming part in the end.

Shoutout to my old pal Archimedes.

And seat reinstalled, feels like a new seat!

 

[badabec]

Which is good as we have visitors arriving in a few days.

You missed perfect excuse to get rid of them.

 

[GraemeVW]

Does calibrated count as fixed?
This level is daft!
Got it pretty much on, but would need better set up than I can manage.
Used my lathe bed, made sure it was clean, made sure it was in the same place each time but it's picking up on some inaccuracy somewhere.
If I'm honest, it probably swings by half a division, but as each division is 0.05mm per meter, I think I can cope with that.
I have no great use for this level anyway, it's just a toy.

So the bed is 0.125mm high at the headstock end.

Going down the level grades, the old rabone also, of you squint, also shows it a little high at that end, but you'd never adjust it out with this level.

Even more interesting, even this rubbish cheapo plastic boat level shows it's high at the same end!

Just messing about, no serious attempt to get the lathe any better than level enough to not fall over.

Bed shows it may have a tiny bit of twist though, but not sure I can do anything about it


Edit, I was wrong, no twist

 

[MattF]

Level isn't necessity. You want rid of any twist though.

 

[GraemeVW]

Level isn't necessity. You want rid of any twist though.

Yeah, I know. This was just the first opportunity I had to play with this level. It was more about seeing if I can get the level right than the lathe.

I was wrong anyway, no twist in it!