It's been a while but I've finally gotten into some stuff that isn't for work. Recently I have been working on a few projects at work, one of which has involved me learning about setting up Microsoft Access databases with nice interfaces for data input and also for reports being produced.I have also been spending many weekends down at the Tall Ship James Craig where I have been crewing on daysails and helping with other activities.
Yesterday after getting home after a great time aboard I felt the need to do something at home. So I decided to move the water cube that will become a rainwater tank. I have been putting it off for a while because the place I wanted it to go looked like this:
Once I had cleaned up and admired what little of the cleanup I could see in the dark. I went inside and while on my laptop, running off 12v. I noticed that my VHF radio was receiving a signal. Upon turning up the volume I realised that it was a WIA broadcast that I was receiving from Mt Bindo. While listening I realised that the broadcast was also being sent on HF so I figured this would be a good chance to have a play around and see if I could get the reception better on different bands. I have decided that for now at least I am going to log these reports here so I have them all in one place and so anybody who wants to can follow along with my attempts to improve reception.
I could receive the signal on my Icom IC-730S only on 80m, all of the other bands were empty as far as I could tell. I am thinking this is largely due to my very poo earthing setup that I'll probably show you in a few days or weeks time. On 80m I could pick up the signal fairly well, but I was having a very hard time understanding the words due to some kind of distortion. Hopefully I will get my desk cleaned up and I can plug in my Yaesu FT-7 that I haven't had a chance to try out yet.
I'll be doing my best as I go through my plans to improve my signal. I already have some ideas to improve my earthing so it shouldn't be too long before I get some information up about that.
Cheers,
Rex
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- Written by Rex ORegan-2
As you can see the outside of the diff was fairly dirty and the muck made it a little difficult to get the cover off. An interesting point to note is the cover had some rust in it, possibly from sitting for too long in a paddock?
Deciding that would be too much work we put the cover back onto the diff and went to work on removing other more interesting things. Julian began removing the remaining few intact windows. He had a process of putting a piece of small wire (from an old tire actually this time) in behind the glass from the outside and working it backwards and forwards until it heated up enough to cut through the caulking holding the glass in place. An easier way to do it is with jumper leads to a car battery so the wire is heated by electrical current rather than friction. However as we don't car about the condition of the body of the car and we didn't have any jumper leads with us we just used friction which also damaged a little of the paint.
Cheers,
Rex
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- Written by Rex ORegan-2
I know it's not a very good photo of the dinghy itself but better photos are coming. The jeep made the ~2000km trip well, with the transmission getting a bit too hot up some of the hills but that's partly down to practice on my behalf.
The plan is to get it out and rigged this weekend if the weather holds. So once we do that I'll be putting up some more interesting photos. In the meantime here's a link for me to remember: http://www.fireball-rigging.co.uk/schematic.html This is a link to a page that has some very nice diagrams of the way these get rigged.
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- Written by Rex ORegan-2
So the long and the short of it is, that I got the head back on, the engine running and everything good; even booked in for rego. Then the welch plug in the back of the head that I hadn't seen while it was off began to leak. Badly. Eventually I managed to not get it out with everything in place so I ended up taking everything off again including the head. With the head off it took all of around 10 minutes to remove and then install a new welch plug. With everything back on I got it started, no leaks. Phew.
From there I got it registered, drove it for a few weeks, took it to Sydney. Took the old oil that I'd put into it out and replaced it with fresh stuff. and gave it a good clean inside, still needs one outside though.
After Driving it for a while I noticed a strange noise from the front end while in 4wd mode. Solution 1, change the oil in the front diff and check what it loos like inside. No dice. Next, start researching online. One option seemed to be that it was "Angry Sparrows" or a squeak from something potentially worn in the front drive shaft. So off with that. It turned out to be a piece of cake, just 8 bolts to remove. Upon inspection I discovered the the apparent reason for the noise was a lack of grease in the ball in the middle of the double carden (CV) joint near the transfer case.
After pulling the double carden apart and damaging(?) one of the universal joints grease was worked into the ball because a replacement kit was around $100 which is somewhat more than I was willing to spend. Everything got re-assembled and then a short drive was taken. Silence, no more angry birds for me.
With that fixed I started to think about the trip I am leaving on tonight and the fact I will be towing a trailer ~1000km each way in an automatic of less than ideal status. I looked into a transmission oil cooler and discovered that there was already one installed. I also wanted to be able to measure the oil temperature so I installed a SAAS oil temp. gauge as a transmission temperature gauge. The install was very straight forward and didn't take too long except for the cutting of the hard line. That had to be done by hand with a hacksaw blade as we had nothing else that would fit in the small space.
So from here I have a 3 new projects all of which are exciting and I am looking forward to all of them. One involves a road trip this weekend, one involves rainwater and the last involves my wreck, EFI, turbos and someone else's car. All will be exciting and lots of learning will be done in all 3 new projects.
Until next time, Cheers.
Rex
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- Written by Rex ORegan-2
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