What have you fettled today?

[Mr Larrington]

Did that thing involving a difficult-to-see screw in the innards of the boiler which makes the pressure gauge go back into the green zone, as the first step of bowing to the inevitable and switching the heating on.  The second part of which consists mostly of swearing and prowling Larrington Towers with a radiator key and, for the stubborn and/or b0rked radiators, the Special Socket.

[rafletcher]

Worst sort of fettling.

Was draining the grey and black water out of the camper, so pulled an inspection cover on the house drains to pour into. To find standing water in there  So I ended up rodding the drains. Luckily it hadn't been bad enough to cause an issue, but it probably wouldn't have been OK for much longer.

It seems that there isn't quite enough drop along the long side of the house where both kitchen drains the main bathroom and the downstairs loo join the the sewage pipe. Once it goes around the corner of the house and in to the garden we are on a hill so it drains easily. I've had to rod it three times now in the eight years we've been here - so not too bad, but bad enough and not the most pleasant of jobs, even if it only takes 15 minutes. On the bright side, at least the rods I bought the first time have now paid for theselves several times over compared to calling someone out.

.
Fat deposits are the most likely cause of kichen waste blockages.

My thought too.  I used to have to grovel in the fat trap in the outside (open) kitchen drain in our last house, a consequence of the amount of grilled bacon fat being discharged there by my stepsons washing up after post club supper.

Now, we always put foil in the grill pan and dispose of the fat separately.

[rafletcher]

Minor fettling today, involving fitting a PIR sensor to the shed lights. This obviates the need to operate the wall switch, which has the disconcerting habit of occasionally arcing sufficiently when switching off the lights to pop the RCD on the incoming socket to which it’s connected. Now my wife can happily see what’s she’s doing without needing to phone me at work to ask how to reset (and then failing to do so) the power, which also feeds the back-up freezer.

Oh, and the Genesis got a bit of a rinse to remove the worst of the field dirt and “muck”  that’s decorating the local lanes.

[Kim]

Minor fettling today, involving fitting a PIR sensor to the shed lights. This obviates the need to operate the wall switch, which has the disconcerting habit of occasionally arcing sufficiently when switching off the lights to pop the RCD on the incoming socket to which it’s connected. Now my wife can happily see what’s she’s doing without needing to phone me at work to ask how to reset (and then failing to do so) the power, which also feeds the back-up freezer.

I believe USAnian electrical codes require freezers to be fed by a circuit without an ELCBGFCI^[1], on the not unreasonable basis that food poisoning is a greater risk than electric shock.  I'm not sure how that balance changes in the presence of the higher European mains voltage and food safety standards, but it's a decent argument for feeding them separately, at least.


_{[1] Leftpondian for RCD.}

[MattH]

Fat deposits are the most likely cause of kichen waste blockages.

Unlikely in this case; we don't tend to cook much food that generates fat or needs to be fried and doesn't absorb the small amount of fat put in to lubricate the pan. The food which does drop fat (like grilled sausages) gets a foil tray made in the grill pan and put in the bin once it's cool. Sadly MrsH is vegetarian and, whilst not a militant vege type, she hates the smell of bacon so I rarely eat it at home. Looking at what got pushed through didn't look at all like congealed fat to me

Today's fettling was mainly sorting out an electric step on one of the vehicles. It turned out to be the grease in the motor's gearbox having dried out and gone hard and sticky. Of course, that isn't supposed to be a serviceable part (and also appears to be obsolete now - with the ones that are available for newer steps costing £150 I'd still have had a go at repair) so I had to figure out how to get far enough in to a "sealed" unit to clean and regrease it. We now have easy access for less agile occupants again.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Fitted a new tube to a Brommie. It turns out that the combination of Velox narrow rim tape and old Brompton U-section rim can occasionally cause flats after a time. Something to sort out this week.

[Diver300]

ELCB^[1],

_{[1] Leftpondian for RCD.}

I thought that ELCB was just and older term for RCD, and ELCBs were mainly the fairly useless ones that tried to directly measure the earth current.

Leftpondian for "RCD" is surely GFCI (ground fault circuit interrupter)

[Kim]

ELCB^[1],

_{[1] Leftpondian for RCD.}

I thought that ELCB was just and older term for RCD, and ELCBs were mainly the fairly useless ones that tried to directly measure the earth current.

Leftpondian for "RCD" is surely GFCI (ground fault circuit interrupter)

Brainfart, of course it is.

[Feanor]

My first tubeless tyre.

Previously a bit of a mystery to me.
However, emboldened by a recent local Club Webinar, I have armed myself with a Pump of Special Magnificence: A Topeak Joe Blow Booster.
That, a bottle of Milkit sealant and injector syringe kit, and I set to on one the wheels on my Shand.

This had been allowed to go flat, and had then un-seated itself, leaving a small Puddle of Shame on the ground.
The sealant was due to be changed anyway.

Demounted the tyre, cleaned out the old sealant and cleaned everything up.
Remounted the tyre and Whump! the boost pump seated the tyre on my second attempt.
On my first attempt, after dumping the accumulator into the tyre, it snapped into place most ways round, but one bit didn't quite make it first time round.
Second attempt, and I flexed it gently at the non-seating bit as it was being whumped, and crack! in it went.

Let the air out, removed the valve core, added the sealant, and re-pressurised it. Seems to be holding thus far!
Pleased with the lack of explosive decompression and accompanying shower of sealant.
Will check and top up in the morning, once the sealant has had a chance to do it's thing on any residual leaks.

I'll call that a win.

[CAMRAMan]

Taking 2 weeks' worth of rubbish and recycling down to the bin room. The housing association's contractor changed the combination on the lock & didn't tell anyone, so it's built up. And leaked onto the hallway carpet. That was the next task to scrub it. Needs doing again, too.

Some moron has dumped a whole sofa in the bin room, as s/he's too lazy/cheap to pay to have it removed. They also filled up one of the bins with its cushions. Made me realise, again, how relieved I'll be to live in a house of my own again.

[Deano]

Very minor but satisfying bit of fettling - my rear mudguard was a bit rattly, I fitted a bit of helicopter tape to where it was catching the frame, and replaced a cable tie bodge with an o ring. All is smooth and silent now.

[SteveC]

I have taken two loads of hardcore to the tip for recycling (presumably into hardcore  ). Heavy stuff.
We have a Renault Kangoo II, so quite a large loading area. I stopped loading the first time when I saw how low the suspension looked.
I wonder why I am tired tonight.

[robgul]

Made some plywood cut out Christmas decorations - some are small for the tree, and a couple of snowmen about 60cm tall to go on the fence outside (this year to ease the depression of Covid our bit of the street is having tasteful Christmas illuminations - photos may follow)

[MattH]

I have taken two loads of hardcore to the tip for recycling (presumably into hardcore  ). Heavy stuff.

That's one of the many things that's now chargeable at our local recycling centres. With so many things being chargeable or outright refused, plus needing to book an appointment and prove you live in the area, it's no wonder fly tipping is becoming an issue.

Anyway, I have had a tube-fixing session this evening. I was rolling the bike out of work when I found it had a front flat. Pulled my spare tube out to find it was another with a hole and I didn't have a further spare  My fault, I'd clearly forgotten to replace the punctured one with a sound one last week, and normally have at least a couple of spares with me. Luckily I always fold my good tubes in a certain way so I knew before fitting it.

I did then have to apply a patch before riding home, so fixed those two at work, then came home and dug out my bag of tubes needing repair and worked through them - binning two where I wasn't sure I could successfully patch, and fixing a further five. In my defence, most of those came from an event I was supporting where organisers provided new loaner new bikes for the riding part, and a stack of new tubes for us motos who were supporting them. The organisers and participants didn't want their holed tubes back, and it seemed a shame to bin the ones I'd changed as they had less than 100 miles on them.

[chrisbainbridge]

I spent the morning doing admin and eating breakfast before doing proper fettling.
I took 2 new ubiquiti loco M5s, attached them to the LAN, fettled the necessary changes to them  and then attached one to the window in the vicar's study and the other I took over to the church.  Ran a long ethernet cable round the back of church attached the POE adapter and then the router.  The loco M5 was then place in a secure position looking at the vicarage.

 The connection was immediate.  a little bit of moving around to get the best signal and suddenly i am getting 4oMb/s download and 10-12Mb/s upload speed across our garden, the road and the graveyard. 

With the changes made last week to the aerial for the other church i now have stable internet connections at both sites for streaming services.

[SteveC]

I have taken two loads of hardcore to the tip for recycling (presumably into hardcore  ). Heavy stuff.

That's one of the many things that's now chargeable at our local recycling centres. With so many things being chargeable or outright refused, plus needing to book an appointment and prove you live in the area, it's no wonder fly tipping is becoming an issue.

Fortunately, although we have to pay, there's no need to book in. Just turn up. It's £20.20 for a small trailer load, which is what we agreed I had in the back of the car. The chap seemed almost sorry he had to charge me that much. I suppose most people who turn up without a trailer just have a couple of bags, not about a ton of the damn stuff.

Today (and part of yesterday) I have been fettling a new bench cum shelving unit for the garage/workshop. It's the same height as the bottom of the window, so my plant propagators have somewhere to sit at the appropriate time of the year. It's the biggest carpentry/joinery project I have ever attempted and, despite the slight wobble, I'm reasonably pleased for a first attempt. I did use a kit for all the joints, though. Now all I have to do is move the TPOC which is on the temporary arrangement, move the very heavy bench in to place and rearrange everything. Not looking forward to that bit.

[Kim]

I have installed the guarantee-a-mild-winter tyres on the Reasonably Priced Mountain Bicycle™.  Also offered up the Old Man Mountain front rack I bought from a forumite in the Before Times (which has been gathering dust all year), to determine that it will fit nicely once furnished with the correct diameter P-clips.

[T42]

Got so sick of the guard of my table saw blocking my view of the blade when I wanted to line up a cut that I gave it an uppercut, and was rewarded with the sound of plastic fragments pingfuckitting off metal a few feet away.  It still blocked my view so I applied a little more judicious force majeure, and now have a guard that will swivel up out of the way when I need it to.  If anything the saw is safer than before, since I no longer have to take off the riving knife to use my crosscut sled.

My old Lurem semi-pro machine didn't have any such twattery about it.  H&S these days needs a serious laxative, preferably in the shape of a cayenne-pepper enema via a garden hose.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Tyre and cassette off old wheel then onto new wheel, along with new disc rotor (couldn't transfer old one due to differing fixing systems; but I do now have the same type of rotor at both ends of the bike). Then new wheel into frame. Adjust brake position. Whirs lovely. Cassette was difficult to remove. I suppose they use some sort of machine to do them up in the factory? Old wheel with another old tyre into cupboard. Decide what to do with it later.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

It is generally better to tighten cassette lockrings a bit more than a bit less, particularly with aluminium Shimano spline freehub bodies. Increased clamping force reduces how easily the cassettes cut into the aluminium.

Lubed and tensioned the chain on my fixed. Retensioned the Lepper saddle, punched some holes in the sideflaps and laced it. Binned the cheap and nasty (now distorted) hole punch.

Started disassembling the rattly Cyo. Considering whether to go down the rabbit hole of purchasing a soldering iron and leaning how to play with it.

[zigzag]

on a "vintage steel racer": changed the saddle, removed old brake levers with antenna cables and replaced them with campag veloce levers (plastic gear internals removed), trimmed brake outers by four cm to accommodate under-the-tape routing, protected the frame from cable rub, re-taped the bars, installed a dog fang chain catcher.

it is finally in a state where i can ride long distances on it as everything functions great and nothing else irritates. while the down tube shifters are a hindrance for dynamic riding, they work fine for just riding along (e.g. z1-2 base miles, audax).

last few minor jobs remaining, when i get round to it: loosen the stem (currently it's frozen at a perfect height), remove (drill out?) and replace rusted rear drop out adjusters, face bb shell if i decide to install an outboard bearing crankset, make (ask framebuilder) two dimples in the chainstays to make room for 30-32mm tyres.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Replaced the rear Ergo gear cable on HK’s Roberts as a preemptive measure.

[chrisbainbridge]

decided I really needed to tidy up the kit for streaming in church. So a trip to B&Q for some MDF which was then cut to size and some clamps fettled to hold the audio mixer and camera mixer/streamer in place.  bracket assembled for the wireless microphone receivers and the remote video receiver and clamped in place.  USB power block glued into place and 4 socket extension secured on the underside with wires taken through holes and taped place.

Each camera colour coded and all wires both mains and hdmi colour coded to match. Everything now fitting into a single box much more neatly with less faff.  velcro cable tidies ordered to finish the job off.

[Ashaman42]

Whipped the rear tyre off the folder to try and find last night's puncture cause. It came off a hell of a lot easier, maybe partly the new tyre levers actually having some rigidity but probably mostly that the bike has been in the warm all day. At least I didn't snap any levers this time.

Flint mined the tyre whilst it was out, a few bits of glass and flint but nothing getting through the puncture protection layer. Did find one hole that was empty but just broke through to the interior. Barring a sneaky bit of wire hiding somewhere I suspect that was where I got holed. Only a little hole but I stuck a patch over it and refitted the new inner tube.

The old inner tube (and the one out of the front when I built the new motor wheel) I decided to bin as I suspect they've been in the bike since new and are heading towards a bit perished. I normally repair holed tubes but I don't trust these ones.

Adjusted the brake pads as the wheel wasn't quite back in the same place but I think the chain tension is about right. There's a bit of side to side shimmy in the wheel that means the rim catches the brake pads slightly if I have the pads close enough that braking is reasonable. I've got new pads on the way so when they get here I'll give the bike a clean and see about truing the wheel up.

It'll do for tomorrow anyway.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

Discovered why I could not get Zwift to bridge to the companion app.  They both have to be the same frequency. Mobile phone is 2.4, iPad is 5.

So, go onto the admin site for the ISP router and see the router has both frequencies with the same name.  Set up each with different names then logged into the one with the mobile frequency, 2.4hz, on both devices.  Bingo, they talk to one another.  No discernible difference in video performance.