What's made you smile today?

Pugglt Auld Jock · Apr 27, 2020

Just been reflecting on front wheel bearings and my experiences with them. My recollection is that modern bearings seem to be rather more long lasting than these earlier designs. Of course materials and tolerances will have improved considerably but it occurs to me that most of those earlier designs included a "wild card" that the bearing manufacturers had no control over. These earlier set ups consisted of two separate bearing assemblies (each with an inner race, bearings - ball or taper roller - and an outer race) with a spacer between the inner races or extended "shoulders" on the inner races, like these Allegro ones:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/3711136039...1w73LqB8F6EBDQ7MHLyAl7XaLwz64TSAaAupbEALw_wcB

which were mounted in a hub which was machined to the vehicle manufacturer's spec. ie not the bearing manufacturer. So the distance between the outer races was set by the way the hub had been machined but the inner races were kept apart by the spacer provided in the bearing kit so manufactured by the bearing manufacturer. Almost bound to go wrong wasn't it? Then they came out with one piece bearings, Like this Maxi one:

https://www.bearings-online.co.uk/i...c-d7cs8cVljPsPtIAhVbtvgY6511R8psaAhJSEALw_wcB

which seems to be the norm now, where both races share a common outer. So now the whole assembly is under the bearing manufacturers control. Technically a much better solution.

However, Whereas the old design was a relatively easy (for someone with a bit of know how) "DIY in the drive job" with a brass punch, you now have this very wide outer one piece race to remove. Good luck moving that with a punch! I remember the first Maxi one I ever did and having quite a struggle with it despite having access to the shop press.

PuntoHowTo · Apr 27, 2020

Our soundbar stopped working last week, thought it would be a good excuse to get a new one, however with little to do at the moment I decided to open it up and see what’s going on.

It was immediately obvious a couple of capacitors had popped their tops. Looked like it might be an easy fix, and looking the model number up online it seems it’s. a common fault. Ordered up some replacements on eBay cost a couple of quid, they arrived this morning and fitted them within about 10 minutes and the sound bar lives again.

If I had not had this time to do it I would have just binned it and bought another one, I wonder how much gets thrown away every year by households when a couple of cheap components would fix it.

Have tagged on a picture for those interested, in the same order I got a new battery for my aging iPad which has been iffy for a long time, so that’s the next job.

Paddynabs · Apr 29, 2020

I bought a new battery for my ipod. I was pleased with myself for fitting it and it worked a treat!

Right up until I plugged it into my charger in the car which promptly blew a fuse in the boot and fried my ipod! At lease I had an extra week with it...

StevenRB45 · Apr 30, 2020

Picked Snowrunner up.

Was big mudrunner fan anyway and this is just basically better in every way especially terrain deformation (if you drive a big heavy thing on wet ground it leaves grooves e.t.c.)

Hopefully when my son is in bed and my wife is at work will get a chance to mess about with it properly.

PuntoHowTo · Apr 30, 2020

Paddynabs said:
I bought a new battery for my ipod. I was pleased with myself for fitting it and it worked a treat!

Right up until I plugged it into my charger in the car which promptly blew a fuse in the boot and fried my ipod! At lease I had an extra week with it...

I was quite pleased with myself about 6 months ago, I had an old iPod classic 160gb that the battery died on, then the screen had lines on it, and the earphone port was damaged and only played sound on one side and most expensive was the 160gb hard drive had died. So I got a new earphone socket, screen and battery. I then bought an iPod SD card interface which basically allows you to replace the hard drive with any SD card, I bought a 128gb sd card and put everything back together and was very happy to have a fully working iPod classic again.... then I realised I don’t use even my phone to store music these days as, like most people I stream everything. So spent about £70 fixing an iPod which I put back in the draw and haven’t touched since.... it still works though and the classic was awesome so still pleased about that.

Sadly in the most recent efforts the ipad did not survive (which was always the risk) so I now have a nice shiny new iPad that was delivered yesterday ?

Eklipze3k · Apr 30, 2020

StevenRB45 said:
Picked Snowrunner up.

Was big mudrunner fan anyway and this is just basically better in every way especially terrain deformation (if you drive a big heavy thing on wet ground it leaves grooves e.t.c.)

View attachment 208603

Hopefully when my son is in bed and my wife is at work will get a chance to mess about with it properly.

I was watching Jimmy Broadbent play this the other day, looks like a ton of fun

StevenRB45 · Apr 30, 2020

Eklipze3k said:
I was watching Jimmy Broadbent play this the other day, looks like a ton of fun

It is! One of those games where if you describe the concept to someone they look like you're mad to find it fun but as a post work wind down or after a couple of drinks with friends it's brilliant.

Unfortunately I've only got road tyres for my Big rigs so far, so despite fitting 6x6 and locking diffs it's the opposite of back to the future..

Roads? Where we're going we'll damn well need roads.

Pugglt Auld Jock · Apr 30, 2020

StevenRB45 said:
Picked Snowrunner up.

Was big mudrunner fan anyway and this is just basically better in every way especially terrain deformation (if you drive a big heavy thing on wet ground it leaves grooves e.t.c.)

View attachment 208603

Hopefully when my son is in bed and my wife is at work will get a chance to mess about with it properly.

If you like the look of this truck try typing "Mud Bog Racers" into YouTube and enjoy

DaveMcT · May 1, 2020

portland_bill said:
Seeing the chewed nut reminded me of a sad story many years ago.
While working in the warranty department of a major parts supplier, I received a letter from a guy complainng that our wheel bearings had failed, and had destroyed the CV joint, hub, brake disc, and damaged the caliper. This was a late, disc-braked Mini.

I replied same day, requesting that all the damaged parts, be sent to me. He could drop them off at our distributor and they'd be with me next day.
Next day, a call from the returns department, so i collected my parcel and tipped the contents onto my desk.
There staring at me was the hub nut, with markings where it had been struck with a large chisel. Now that was common when amateurs tried to undo such nuts, but these marks were on the tightening edges. Not sure how you achieve the massive torque required by these nuts when using a chisel.
All through the life of Mini, 1100/1300, Allegro, Maxi, 1800, etc., it was critical that these nuts were tight. They had a habit of coming loose, with the resultant damage that I was presented with on the rest of the contents of the box.
Not a manufacuring defect with the wheel bearings then, sorry.

The Mini hub/CV nut indeed had to be tight but take it too far and the threaded end would shear off, rapidly followed by the wheel.

People would do it up correctly then force it solid to fit the split pin. The correct method was to take it to 50% torque then go around to the split pin hole. Austin-Rover where a big part of the problem. The CV joints all looked the same but had a multitude of torque settings.

Drum Brakes = 83Nm (60 lbf ft)
Disc (multiple split pin holes) = 207 Nm (150 lbf ft)
Disc (single split pin hole) = 235 to 276 Nm (188 to 200 lbf ft)

puntofan01 · May 2, 2020

AndyRKett said:
I was quite pleased with myself about 6 months ago, I had an old iPod classic 160gb that the battery died on, then the screen had lines on it, and the earphone port was damaged and only played sound on one side and most expensive was the 160gb hard drive had died. So I got a new earphone socket, screen and battery. I then bought an iPod SD card interface which basically allows you to replace the hard drive with any SD card, I bought a 128gb sd card and put everything back together and was very happy to have a fully working iPod classic again.... then I realised I don’t use even my phone to store music these days as, like most people I stream everything. So spent about £70 fixing an iPod which I put back in the draw and haven’t touched since.... it still works though and the classic was awesome so still pleased about that.

Sadly in the most recent efforts the ipad did not survive (which was always the risk) so I now have a nice shiny new iPad that was delivered yesterday [emoji1]

I had to replace my 2013 iPod Touch last year, and got a 128gb current generation Touch. It is gradually starting to grow on me, but the fact remains that there's still loads of junk installed on it that just takes up valuable music space. I literally just want a large capacity music player with bluetooth, so if they still made the Classic, that is what I would've bought, and it would've been noticeably cheaper too. Alas, the only high capacity music player with bluetooth that you can buy now is... the iPod Touch. [emoji52] Consumer technology used to be so much better.

andydiver · May 2, 2020

https://www.advancedmp3players.co.uk/

All sorts of music players out there if you want more choices.

PuntoHowTo · May 2, 2020

puntofan01 said:
I had to replace my 2013 iPod Touch last year, and got a 128gb current generation Touch. It is gradually starting to grow on me, but the fact remains that there's still loads of junk installed on it that just takes up valuable music space. I literally just want a large capacity music player with bluetooth, so if they still made the Classic, that is what I would've bought, and it would've been noticeably cheaper too. Alas, the only high capacity music player with bluetooth that you can buy now is... the iPod Touch. [emoji52] Consumer technology used to be so much better.

Ipod classic plugs into blue and me but then again so does my iPhone.
With th 160gb ipod clasic I think you can install upto 300+ gb of space with software changes so it recognises that capacity.

These days as I said, I tend to stream music I don’t need much space on a hard drive anymore and so have an infinite supply of music available at all times, but also my iPhone now has more capacity than the iPod so I still have plenty of space for downloaded music

DaveMcT · May 2, 2020

Sorted out my 2012 Apple Mac hard disc.

A week ago it crashed and refused to boot. I had backups so ordered a new hard drive. Three days later I fitted a lovely Crucial SSD and still no worky.

Even worse the drive was not seen by the computer. :bang: Google was not much help as all anyone discussed was how to swap old for new discs and maybe cloning the contents.

I was getting ready for having to buy a new laptop when I spotted hint it might be the HDD ribbon cable. Never before have I known a cable fail but it was better to risk that than scrap the computer. It turns out to be an increasingly common problem. Perhaps because, the cable is literally step folded to fit around the chassis. Who knows.

Anyhow, the cable arrived today, got it fitted (what a faff) and the computer is working nicely again.

Carbon Copy Cloner is currently copying my old disc to the new SSD.

varesecrazy · May 2, 2020

Well done Dave..

Thats the 1st non.car post on here in a week that Ive actually understood

Pugglt Auld Jock · May 2, 2020

A few days ago, when Babbo Umbro started his thread about trickle charging, I realized that I couldn't remember when I last had Becky (our 2012 Panda Dynamic Eco) out for a run. I'm finding I'm loosing track of the days with this lock down - might be old age contributing to the effect too.

Anyway, I recon it's been a couple of weeks at least. Although I've never had any indication that the battery has any problems, Babbo's post made me think about checking Becky's battery to see how it was faring after standing idle for so long. 12.39 volts the meter told me. Well, that's not all that brilliant, wonder if it will start the engine? Oh yes, without hesitation, she fired right up. Terrible racket from the cam followers for about 8 to 10 seconds as the oil supply got pumped up to them then they went nice and quiet. They usually rattle a bit on start up if she's been standing for a couple of days but this is the worst I've heard them. Nice and quiet though now she's running. Battery voltage shot straight up to over 13.5 volts as soon as she fired up so alternator seems good.

So I put her on charge overnight and in the morning the green light was shining brightly. Turned the charger off and checked the voltage, now showing just under 13 volts but I know there may be lots of weird stuff like surface charge on the plates affecting the true reading so I left her to stand. Now, 2 days later, she's showing 12.5 so I think there's quite a bit of life in it yet. Probably should have disconnected the earth lead for best results though.

Drove round the side streets and up the main drag, with a lovely big smile on my face, for about 20 mins to clean up the disks etc and she's running very nicely. Now she's back on the drive with a block behind her front wheel and the handbrake off. Maybe I'll not leave her for so long next time?

DaveMcT · May 4, 2020

The Mac is now running fine. The SSD is a a perfect clone of the old disc so its as if nothing happened except it now cold boots in a few seconds.

To anyone with an older Mac. If you start to get disc errors (or in my case an unusual system crash) don't assume it's the hard disc. By all means swap out a mechanical drive for an SSD but also replace the SATA cable. It has to be folded to fit around the chassis but avoid doing it as sharply as the OEM. I'm pretty sure that's the cause of the failure.

Videos on You Tube show how it's done.

jimboy · May 4, 2020

Blazing sunshine up here, so up to my garage. Took the Coupe for a blast around some deserted roads that are pretty much vehicle free before the virus. Big grin on my face as the five pot engine releases its horses on full chat..

portland_bill · May 4, 2020

jimboy said:
Blazing sunshine up here, so up to my garage. Took the Coupe for a blast around some deserted roads that are pretty much vehicle free before the virus. Big grin on my face as the five pot engine releases its horses on full chat..

The relief from staying indoors makes that definitely a 'necessary journey'. Whilst the Panda has only a tiny fraction of the performance of the 5cyl Coupe, it still provides welcome relief once a week on the shopping trip. Looking forward to tomorrow already.

SB1500 · May 5, 2020

DaveMcT said:
Sorted out my 2012 Apple Mac hard disc.

A week ago it crashed and refused to boot. I had backups so ordered a new hard drive. Three days later I fitted a lovely Crucial SSD and still no worky. Even worse the drive was not seen by the computer. :bang: Google was not much help as all anyone discussed was how to swap old for new discs and maybe cloning the contents.

I was getting ready for having to buy a new laptop when I spotted hint it might be the HDD ribbon cable. Never before have I known a cable fail but it was better to risk that than scrap the computer. It turns out to be an increasingly common problem. Perhaps because, the cable is literally step folded to fit around the chassis. Who knows.

Anyhow, the cable arrived today, got it fitted (what a faff) and the computer is working nicely again.

Carbon Copy Cloner is currently copying my old disc to the new SSD.

The 2012 Unibody models had a tendency for the cable to die... it happened me twice back in the day.

The latest models are PCIE direct so this issue doesn’t exist. And neither does the option to affordably repair / DIY at all sadly

DaveMcT · May 5, 2020

SB1500 said:
The 2012 Unibody models had a tendency for the cable to die... it happened me twice back in the day.

The latest models are PCIE direct so this issue doesn’t exist. And neither does the option to affordably repair / DIY at all sadly

That's interesting. Thanks. Mine is indeed the unibody model (mid 2012) though I bought it early 2013.

The way the flat tape SATA cable is fitted makes me suspicious it's the tight zig-zag bends that crack the conductors. Warming/cooling cycles do the rest over time. The whole issue might only be a CAD artefact, because if the disc was installed the other way up there would be no need to zig zag the cable around the frame.

Sadly that "change" is not possible without shortening the ribbon cable. I cam do a fair bit but that's well beyond my soldering iron.

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