Jeep had an oopsie

Apparently there's a leak.

So I took the jeep out the other day and managed to break it. Badly. I think I know the cause and I'll do a writeup on fixing it. But before I do that I needed to turn it around. In that time you can see the ATF that came out while I ran it to turn it around.

Keep an eye out for the fix and the overall solution to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Cheers,
Rex

Apparently I can weld

Not my first weld of the day.

I spent some time down at the local Miniature Train club doing some maintenance on the weekend. This time we were building a frame to hold some spare steel that we are keeping in stock for repairing the track as it ages. Seeing as we were making a steel frame I figured that I would take along my 220BZ Rossi Welder I bought from ebay a while ago. Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to buy gas or MIG wire so I had to borrow some rods to use. This did have the advantage of letting me compare this welder to the tiny bit of welding I have done before which has been predominantly stick welding on older transformer based machines.

Pros:

• This thing strikes an arc much easier than the old school transformer based welders I have used.
• I was using a lower current than the other machine that day (a 20? year old CIG)
• It was light and easy to move around.
• It was easy to remove the spend rod and put in a new one.
• The air coming out the fan at the back of the case never got hot despite being in the sun.

Cons:

• I seemed to get the rod stuck to the workpiece more than I remember doing so in the past.
• The earth cable was so short that it barly reached straight up to the bench I was working on. I don't really like the idea of my welder being too close to my workpiece lest any spatter or slag get into it an short or something.
• Similarly the stinger was a little shorted than I would have liked. However if the earth lead was about the same length it wouldn't be as much of an issue.
• When breaking the arc off it lasts for a long time and often leaves a sooty residue before it quenches. A bit of a nit pick really because it comes of easily enough.
• The earth clamp feels a bit wussy and seemed to have twisted at some point through the day.

Interesting points:

• When the rod sticks to the job there is no buzzing like a the transformer units do.
• Everyone commented on how quiet it was. The only noise that you could hear was the noise of the arc itself. This was in a reasonably quiet outdoors area.

All in all there was nothing that should be a dealbreaker I don't think and hopefully I will be able to find somewhere to get a longer earth lead. If you want to have a look at some of my welds, stick around after the break.

Starting to warm up. Woo

This was the other day around mid afternoon just after I turned on the car.

Time to get everything done outside before it gets too hot I guess.

The death of a wreck

So we finally got the last of the parts I wanted off the falcon and this weekend the scrapper is picking it up. The list is surprisingly long especially when you consider how quickly it all came off. Here it is, along with what I plan to do with each item:
 - Airbag - Set off in the paddock with a plough disk or somthing on it
 - Intake manifold - Scrap?Sell? Whatever. I needed it out of the way
 - Injectors - I'm probably going to put these on the Jeep to see if the more modern injectors give me better economy.
 - Throttlebody - Possibly, maybe, unlike but it may end up on the Jeep. I think it's a bit bigger than stock so less restriction at WOT.
 - Fuel Tank - This is going in the Rodeo which will mean that I can drive nearly 1000km without having to refil.
 - Exhaust pipe - I'm goiung to use some of the bends from the pipe to help me make up the new exhaust for the Rodeo
 - Radiator & Fans - With any luck the fans will fit on the Jeep so I can get rid of the mechanical fan.
 - Air con compresser - This is an exciting one, This will be going in the Jeep for use as an endless air setup.
 - Rocker cover - I'll probably clean this up and paint it then sell it
 - Can Shaft - Either sell this or hang it up somewhere as decoration.
 - Power Steering Pump - This will become an oil pump in some future project.
 - Towbar - Sell, no good without the car it goes on.

I think that's pretty much all that came off the Falcon. If anyone is interested it's a Ford Falcon AU II ute. I will update this page with links when I use any of the above in my projects.

Cheers,
Rex

Green Green Grass at home

Spring has only just sprung; and even just coming out of winter we already have a fair bit of nice green grass in the back yard. Hopefully this year with a little work I can get a nice coverage of the whole yardeven if it is still a little patchy.

Cheers,
Rex

Inception computers

So I managed to get the remote desktop connection working to my work computer. Unfortunately as you can see, that required a few layers. At the bottom of the screen is my Debian taskbar, then running within virtualbox is the windows install on the other partition of this computer. Then within that is an RDP connection to my work computer at the office.

Probably the most impressive thing about this whole setup is how good the performance was. It felt like I would still be able to use it for doing actual work.

I am in the process of finding an alternative that will run natively within my Linux install and I have found this program http://remmina.org/ that will do RDP through a TS Gateway which is causing my headaches. Unfortunately the ppa I found for it is only for newer versions of Ubuntu than the version of Debian I am using. So I can either compile from scratch and probably have to sort out a whole lot of dependencies. Or I can update in place this install of Debian I am using now. Or I move to a distro with rolling updates like Gentoo which I was going to use but then needed a working install far to quickly.

I'll let you know what I end up doing. And particularly if it is a bit interesting I will do a writeup on it. If anybody has a suggestion as to how I should proceed let me know what you think and why.

Cheers,
REx

Clean and Fresh

So recently I ordered some shaving soap because after a perfunctory look around town I couldn't find anyone who sold it. So while waiting for the train I came across http://sharpologist.com/ which at least sounds like they know what they're talking about. They made a recommendation of this http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00914G5LE soap (from a different supplier but they wouldn't ship to me.

It arrived yesterday and I got to use it for the first time this morning; and like when I started using the razor it has made a huge difference in the feel and how nice shaving is. I played around with it a little and seemed to get results that are worlds away from what I was getting before.

I plan to do a followup in about a month or so and see how I'm going with this and the razor. Unless I buy something else different again.

Any comments, queries are welcome.

Cheers,
Rex