Southern Cross Stationary Engine has us beat.

My Brother bought a small stationary engine the other day and has it at my house for now. It is a Southern Cross 3 1/2 HP Diesel model EF-D. I found it on a buy/swap/sell group on Facebook and mentioned it to him. A couple of days later and here it is.

The bloke he bought it from gave us a little instruction on starting it. However we were unable to get a demonstration as it didn't have a base at the time. So with a couple of bolts holding it on to an old pallet I had at home the process began.

First we tried to bleed the pump. This worked really well, after I opened the correct bleeder valve. At this point diesel started to run out quite fast. Then bleed the high pressure line to the injector. Crack the nut and pump until fuel comes out without any bubbles. This done we poured oil down the hole we were told to pour it down then time to start it up.

My Brother with the key. No fancy electronic start here.

Maybe electronic start isn't such a bad idea. He managed to clonk himself on the knee then the chin. Drawing a little blood.
On the safety of starting these engines. The nut that the crank handle engages with has a slope on it so that if the engine starts then it will push the handle out. It will not throw it if you don't let go but it will push it away from the engine. Also some of the similar engines were actually able to run backwards if you didn't get it started right. These ones have had a slight modification to the head to stop them from doing this.

After a little break I decided to have a crank. I managed to get some puffs of smoke out of the exhaust but it never even coughed.

Being that we were both worn out we decided it was time to pack up and try another day so here it is sitting in the naughty corner.

After this I ended up finding a manual online and discovered that we had the governor set wrong for starting. Hopefully this is what has been causing it to not start and we can start it next time.

Cheers,
Rex

A ute will keep you in demand

Part of owning a ute is being the person who can move the big or heavy or dirty things around without an issue. So when my parents needed some help to get some concrete slabs home I had myself an excuse for a nice drive.

Here is the first one in place and ready to go. Having a quick breather before moving the second one. Each of these weighs about 80kg so I'm sure you're wondering how we moved them? Well thankfully we didn't have to just muscle them. In a pinch 2 of me could move one, however it would be quite hard work and slow going; with plenty of potential for hurting yourself.

This picture might help. You can just see what we used to make it so easy to move these.

Thankfully Mum & Dad have an engine hoist which easily lifts loads like these. We had a couple of proper lifting slings so with those under the slab and someone to steady the load it was very easy to roll the hoist over to where they needed to go. Once they were nearly there we could just slide the slabs sideways by their width and the lifting was done.

And why did we need to put in some big heavy slabs? In this box are a heap of big batteries for running the house. Batteries like these need a very solid base that ideally is slightly elevated so anything on the ground needs to climb a bit before getting to them. Hopefully these slabs will hold them for years to come.

So thank you Mum & Dad for giving me a reason for a nice drive out there and a chance to ogle at their new power system going together.

Cheers,
Rex

We were sailing

On Sunday we were lucky enough to have some great weather and took our boats out. We took out both of the dinghy we have, both my parent's Vagabond and my Fireball. It was a good day, despite both of the boats needing some repairs that we have been putting off since we last used them. The fireball needed a pintle for the rudder put back on after this trip. The vagabond needed the line that hauls up the centerboard to be fixed. That line had been getting sun burned for some time and on the last trip it finally failed, thankfully both were easy fixes.

Before bolting the pintle back on I put some silicone onto the back of it to ensure that water can't get into the buoyancy chamber at the back. I put way too much on but it is a lot easier to clean up a little silicone before it sets then to repair a rotted out hull.

The vagabond all hooked up and ready to go. To put the new line in the centerboard we had to lift the boat up, drop the centerboard out then run the new line through the hole in it and then put it all back in. Not very long to do thankfully.

This is the lake now. I have never seen it this full before. WE have been very lucky and gotten a lot of rain recently. The ground now has so much water in it that almost as soon as we get significant rain now it starts running off and into the rivers and dams.

For a comparison this is what it looked like before. Where the above photo was taken is further up the bank to the right. Quite a long way up.

Unfortunately I didn't get any photos while we were sailing, but it was a very good day for it and we got some good speed up. Nicole did very well as crew, despite me putting the leeward rail into the water quite a long way a few times.

Cheers,
Rex

I've gotten the boat wet!!

Look, I got the boat wet.

Ok, Ok it was rain, but still it's got to count for something right?
Also you might notice that the deck hardware is in place again. We were going to try and rig it on the weekend to make sure that we still had everything and it fitted. But unfortunately the weather got a little too rainy so we left it for the time being.

I didn't get many action shots because we were pretty busy getting everything screwed in and trying to remember where everything went. However I did manage to get a quick snap of my brother "looking busy" shortly before we finished for the day.

Hopefully we get this done before it gets too cold, but if we find a nice day we should be alright.

Cheers,
Rex

Nothing like a bit of variety

It is good to be adaptable. If you can only do a few things, even if you can do them really well then eventually the situation will change and you will end up having to do something you are bad at. However if you give everything a go, and ensure that you do your best you will be able to get everything done that comes your way.

On the weekend I had a go at laying some turf. Not really something in line with what I'm normally doing, but that's no reason to stop. We started with this:

And finished with this:

I found that the slope this was getting laid on was fairly slippery so I was wearing my best non-slip footwear:

I'm no turf laying Guru, but the way we did it was to put down a full roll:

Then a half roll below that. Then we just kept putting full rolls in line with each of those until we reached the end of the run. Unfortunately after putting in 2 rows there was still a bit of space between the Agapanthus' and the turf. To fix this we put a row of half rolls in. Now you might be wondering what tool you use to cut a roll of turf in half? Well we tried using a spade; that worked but it was a lot of work and not a very straight cut. The best tool we found was a hand saw. Once we cottoned on to that it was much easier to cut the rolls cleanly into half.

So with the turf down I went through with a bag of mulch and put that around the Agapanthus' to make a nice neat edge at the bottom of the fence. Hopefully in a few weeks we will be able to see that we did this properly and there will be a lice lush stable lawn in that part of the yard.

But remember, you don't need to know what you're doing to get something done. All you need is to be careful, think about what the end target is and don't give up after a setback.

Cheers,
Rex

Lake Mac Heritage Festival

Over easter the family took a trip up to Toronto to have a look at the Lake Mac Heritage Festival. This is something we have been planning to do for the last few years but finally managed to get there.

It was nice to be able to slow down and just have a look around at all the different things on show. Mostly there were boats but there were some cars and vintage farm engines that held our interest for a while as well.

Below is a set of photos that my lovely girlfriend took while I was getting distracted by all the shiny bits.

Enjoy,
Rex

Nathan's Computer: The conclusion

So the computer I have been building for my younger brother Nathan is now finished. He now has it at his home and is finalising the driver install and starting to set up the games that we actually built this machine for. We managed to save quite a bit of money by finding a case which actually had nearly everything we need inside it.

It was a little grotty but we needed a case and DVD drive. While we also didn't need anything else that was in the case we made good use of it because it brought the total system cost down for Nathan. In the end we had ordered RAM, a Power Supply Unit and a graphics card that we ended up using from this machine because the ones in here were better than what had been ordered.

Unfortunately it was very dirty and dusty. We tipped it up on end and all this fell out onto my nice, clean(ish) carpet. Luckily I had Nathan there to help me, so after removing everything from the case he cleaned it all with the vacuum cleaner and did a fairly good job of it I must say.

We were very, very excited when we found this. There was a total of 16GB of RAM in the case. Somewhat more than we had expected to be putting in there right away. So right off the bat Nathan got a RAM upgrade. Also a PSU upgrade as the one in the case was about 100W bigger and had other comparable specs. Also a massive graphics card upgrade. Comparing the GT730 we had bought and the GTX550 that we found there was just about an exact doubling of the Cinebench OpenGL test. From 30 FPS to 60 FPS. It was a huge improvement.

This is how we tested the system initially. If my experience building computer has taught me anything, is that test at every possible point. In this case we tested with the absolute minimum of parts in the machine. RAM, PSU, CPU, CPU Cooler and Graphics card.

Unfortunately I got a bit excited and forgot to take a picture of the first POST screen. Suffice to say that it POSTed and I was very happy and there was much rejoicing.

After that we put everything in and got windows installed. Another very happy moment.

You may have noticed a funny circle in the front of the case:

This is actually a fan controller/temperature monitor that runs from 12V pulled from a molex connector on the power supply and (we guessed) 5V from a funny shaped connector neither of us recognise, let alone have attached to the PSU. So I did what I'm good at and came up with a solution. I cut the funny plug off then soldered the wires onto the 5V going to the power light. I checked the current draw on this when we tested that it was actually 5V using my benchtop power supply and the current draw was not registering on the scale, so less than 0.5 mA which I was quite happy to pull from just about anywhere.

The astute amongst you will notice that the above picture is showing an adapter for 20pin ATX power supplies to drive 24pin ATX motherboards. I had this lying around from another project that I ended up doing the right thing and buying a new PSU for.

The tricky thing about buying parts off ebay is that they may not always work together. The motherboard is from a HP Z400 workstation which looked fine on paper. However initially it wouldn't POST. This is because HP decided to use +12V on some of the pins of the 24pin plug where the ATX standard that everyone else uses at +5V and +3.3V. Not very useful. So I had to splice in this adapter that I already had to a molex Y-splitter so we can get the extra +12V power.

This is what it looked like before installation.

And here we see it in situ.

So there you have it, the build is finished and tested. In the next few days I will do another post detailing the parts list, final cost and some benchmarks (also some thoughts on that parts I used) so keep an eye out for those if you are interested.

If you want more detail on how to build a computer let me know. I have another build coming up in the next few weeks that won't be as crazy as this one but will still give me an opportunity to show how it's done in great detail.

Cheers,
Rex