What have you fettled today?

[robgul]

If you took a few buckets at a time, you could use your bike to move the allotment to the panels?

Sounds like a plan - but shifting the shed from the allotment is the reverse of the current dilemma

[drossall]

I was just trying to think of different approaches to bringing panel and allotment together...

[phantasmagoriana]

Various fettles of the new-to-me town bike project:

• Stripped and regreased the rear hub (note to self: next time, remember to count the ball bearings so you don't have to open it up again on discovering two that got away. )
• Cleaned up the mechs: I would strip them down properly, but the rear one is Shimano Positron, and quite frankly, I'm scared of it. It appears that replacement wires (because cables would be far too simple ) became obsolete decades ago, so my plan is to just use it until it dies, then replace it with something sensible - at which point I'll take the opportunity to switch from stem to thumb shifters too.
• Installed the new, riser, handlebars and corresponding brake levers.
• Put the mudguards and rack back on, cleaner than before
• Haven't done yet, but next up today is replacing the chain.

Just waiting on new tyres and bar grips to arrive. It's looking more like a bike and less like a pile of bits now.

[T42]

Continuing the headset saga begun in "Going Electric":

Not fettled by me but by the mechanic in a local LBS, who turned out to be an old chum: the eBrute's steerer no longer clunks on braking.

It turned out that the band of hopefuls who molished my headset in Sept '21 had not only fitted the wrong top cap, making it impossible to tighten the stack, but entirely the wrong size of headset, leaving a 0.2 mm gap between cups and head tube.  They had then screwed everything together willy-nilly and shoved it back at me with a juicy bill.

Anyway, chum put in a couple of shims (called clinquants in French bike-shopspeak but it really means tinsel or cheap, flashy metalware) so now the stack doesn't shift on braking and the click-stops that came from overtightening have gone.

The bike is now OK to ride but I've asked him to get me the right size of headset in a half-decent brand.

And that is why I preferred to have a good LBS do the job rather than doing it myself. Nice, too, to see a friendly face in the workshop.

[T42]

Motor back onto the eBrute, alternate chain into the wax bath.

[Hot Flatus]

Emergency surgery on the Di2 bike

The rear mech Di2 cable outer had split some time ago (my fault, caught it with my heel a few times) and I could see the inner wires so I knew eventually I'd have to replace it. That day came today whilst washing the bike I noticed the rear mech wasn't working. Fortunately I had purchased a Di2 cable and a new press fit BB86 over a year ago, knowing this day would come, but I anticipated quite a lengthy job given that it entails removing chain, chainset, knocking out BB, finding junction box and pulling old cable out, then threading new cable through chainstay, reconnecting and testing, pressing in new BB86, refitting chainset and chain.

Took me under 20 minutes.

Only slight snag was axle chainset axle was quite tight going into new BB so had to encourage it in with a rubber mallet. Other than that jobsagoodun. Going to test ride it in a bit.  It was all a bit of a shame as the pressfit BB was the original one from 7.5 years ago and was as smooth as butter, but didn't want to put old one back in having just smacked it out with a screwdriver and hammer.

[robgul]

En suite shower room replacement of basin & WC - all going to plan and ahead of schedule.   Everything laid out ready for removal/refitting . . . .   Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Plumbing 

[Mrs Pingu]

En suite shower room replacement of basin & WC - all going to plan and ahead of schedule.   Everything laid out ready for removal/refitting . . . .   Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Plumbing 

I've just been looking at the bathroom quote we had for the last place and comparing the price of similar items on the internet now. 

[Mrs Pingu]

I put new bar tape on Pingu's bike, being as what I am the bar taper extraordinare. 

[Diver300]

S-I-L and I moved a cupboard from one room to another.

The IKEA cupboard in question had been assembled in the room and couldn't get around the corner out of the door. We had to remove the double glazing unit and take the cupboard out of window, that would normally have been considered a non-opening one.

[Tim Hall]

Nearly finished tiling the hallway to my Rural Idyll. Managed to borrow a wet tile cutter off a mate, which made it easier, as did the helpful attitude from Topps Tiles. A few more cuts to do, then the grouting. Be pleased when it's done.

[Kim]

En suite shower room replacement of basin & WC - all going to plan and ahead of schedule.   Everything laid out ready for removal/refitting . . . .   Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Plumbing 

Continued in the Div thread, p94?

[Wombat]

A few days ago, fitted a new motor into the 10 year old Dyson, which was easy, as long as you had a very long T15 bit (I didn't, but I have now!)

A week ago, investigated why our 11 year old LG direct drive washing machine was showing a "waste outlet blocked" fault code, to discover after much watching of instructional YouTube videos, and much sweary dismantling, that the drain pump was buggered.  Ordered from the firm which said "ships within 2 days", rather than the one which said "usually ships within 2 weeks", and it took a week to arrive, because yes it was shipped after 2 days, but from somewhere in France, from an evidently Dutch based company with a UK domain that claimed to be British (that took the money from my credit card 3 times, but thankfully Santander fraud dept sorted that pronto).

Fighting the hose clips back on was an absolute shit of a job in the confined space in the guts of the machine, but the crowning glory was getting the monster sprung wire loop that clamps the rubber seal around the front plate of the machine back in place. Generally speaking as you try to get one side in, the other pulls off, pulling the seal out of its locating groove, so you have to start all over again.  In the end I manufactured a device using a small rachet clamp that can spread open, as well as clamp shut, with bits of 3mm steel rod fitted into holes drilled in the clamp legs.  The clamp is no longer usable for its original purpose, but as every tool designed for the job cost over £75, I was OK with losing a £5 clamp.

Next step, after reassembling the rest of the machine, was an extremely worried test run of the machine.  All was well, but visions of the utility room being flooded were uppermost in our minds. As we'd been without the machine for a week, and had been doing dirty jobs causing a higher than normal rate of clothes dirtying, it got 3 more runs today.

After that, fettled some more paint onto the hallway walls.  This was only made harder by the realisation yesterday, that the the previous paint was in fact, distemper.  Applied in 2016.  Eh, what effing cretin uses distemper on the wall of a 1985 house, in 2016?

[robgul]

En suite shower room replacement of basin & WC - all going to plan and ahead of schedule.   Everything laid out ready for removal/refitting . . . .   Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Plumbing 

Continued in the Div thread, p94?

... err, you'll have to explain that??

[rafletcher]

En suite shower room replacement of basin & WC - all going to plan and ahead of schedule.   Everything laid out ready for removal/refitting . . . .   Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Plumbing 

Continued in the Div thread, p94?

... err, you'll have to explain that??

I took it as a “pride cometh before a fall” type comment 

[Paul]

I finally (almost) finished fettling up this Kona (thanks Luke) yesterday.

I serviced and adjusted the hubs front and back, swapped the v brakes for cantis, changed the stem and replaced the STIs for some 9 speed LX ones I had lying around (so swapped the 8 sp cassette for a 9 sp one too).

Both mechs need tweaking but otherwise it's a lovely little bike. Very nimble.

The paint job is a bit amateur and the stuck-on-after transfers aren't lasting very well, but the frame at least is definitely a Kona (it's stamped on the dropouts).

[T42]

Last ride the back wheel of the eBrute seemed to be thumping softly every rev.  There's a Green Slime tube* in it, and last time I changed the tyre I re-used the old tube with ~7500 km on it, and it seemed to have got a bit... long.  I'd ended up shoving it in willy-nilly in the hope that 7 bars would change its ideas, and that's when the thumping had started. I reckoned I'd managed to kink it, so today I let the air out, popped off one side of the tyre and ran my fingers round the inside, squinting in with a torch as well: smooth all the way.

Pumped it up and refitted it. We'll see how it goes.

* see https://youtu.be/urtZ2zV8NLE

[Feanor]

Fettled a 2004 vintage NAD C 352 amplifier which was having trouble coming out of standby, and once it did, would randomly go back into standby.

The usual cause of this is terminal electrolytic rot.
Sure enough, the main reservoir caps were bulging, and so were some of the others.
So I did a complete re-cap of the whole thing, some 57 electrolytics in total.

However, it was still playing up.
A bit of prodding around at the STBY signal coming from the front panel CPU board back to the PSU board revealed an extreme sensitivity to the ribbon cable between the main board and the PSU board being tickled.
Turned out the socket on the main board had a dry joint on it, and it was intermittently losing the +5v stby power to the CPU on the front panel, which was then re-setting.
It looked fine visually, even under the magnifier.

Quick re-solder and it's rock solid.
It's been running for a few hours now.

[drossall]

I replaced all the cables on my 1999 Specialized FSR Comp last night, after previously soaking the shifters in GT85 and then with Carlube, following advice in Another Place. Not complex work, but it's very satisfying how a bike can suddenly start behaving like new again, after its gears and brakes were beginning to stick.

[De Sisti]

Extended the curtain on my front door with extra material to make a nice draught-excluder.

[diapsaon0]

Spent a filthy, but satisfying couple of hours reproofing my ancient Carradice panniers and Bike Bureau.   Got them hanging on the landing to let the goo soak in after a blast with a hairdryer.   Looking much better.  I now need to contact Carradice to try to replace the pannier hooks which are too small to fit the new rack on my ICE trike.

[Mrs Pingu]

Finishing the saga
2022-12-13_08-27-32 by The Pingus, on Flickr

That was a lot of type 2 fun. 1 out of the 4 brackets was a different size to the rest, we had to figure out where it went and then it transpired the brackets weren't equidistant and that we'd got the rail the wrong way round so we had to take it out to the front garden and do a wee dance in the snow to get it the right way round.
We decided it's never coming off again in a DIY stylee.
Just need to remember all those lessons when I decide to do the other one.

Started part 2 of this ^ (yes I remembered to number the brackets and the rail positions this time.)

People who do this should be shot
2023-03-12_04-03-42 by The Pingus, on Flickr

Got about 2/3rds of the way through scraping the handrail before I decided I'd had enough for the day. Now I need to remember for the next few days that there's only a rail on one side...

That reminds me, I should go and order some Abranet discs.

[Jayjay]

Finally reassembled SWMBO's Sony video camera which had dived off its tripod, the evil concept twist-fold viewfinder apparently bearing the brunt of the landing. The Escher designed flexi cable had cracked, and the knuckle joint bent.
There is a tiny screw left over 
I don't know if the camera works yet as the battery was flat.

Much more satisfying was fettling the back bedroom door latch so that it snecks properly.

[citoyen]

Recently noticed that the toilet was supplying a constant stream of water to the bowl from the cistern. Assumed it must be the flushing mechanism needing a new gasket, but on investigation, it looked sound.

It's a concealed cistern, so getting into it was a bit of a faff, but I managed to work out how to get the innards out in a non-destructive fashion. Still couldn't solve the problem though. Everything seemed to be in working order.

I then watched a video on YouTube of a nice French plumber talking through the common causes of leaks and how to fix them. He also revealed that the top of the flush mechanism folds down, making it much easier to remove it from the cistern. Neat.

I ordered a new gasket, but decided to put it back together in the mean time so we could at least continue using the toilet. I thought I had at least managed to slow the leak to a trickle, but when I came back to it 10 minutes later, water was absolutely gushing through into the bowl. Arrrrggghhh!!!

Eventually, while sitting staring at it wondering what the hell to try next, I noticed that the water level in the cistern was very high...

Turns out the supply was not cutting off when the cistern was full so it was overflowing - the water wasn't escaping via the flush mechanism at all. 

Further investigation revealed that the float was sticking, hence not rising up enough to cut off the water inlet. So I took it out and gave it a thorough clean.

And that seems to have done the trick - it is now all working perfectly with no more leaks. Hurrah!

[Tim Hall]

Nearly finished tiling the hallway to my Rural Idyll. Managed to borrow a wet tile cutter off a mate, which made it easier, as did the helpful attitude from Topps Tiles. A few more cuts to do, then the grouting. Be pleased when it's done.

Progress has been slow, but this evening finally got round to grouting!
Hurrah!
Then ran out of grout.
Boo!
Have some grout left over from when the bathroom was done!
Hurrah!
It's time expired!
Boo!
Went to fit a door strip and found I'd made a bollocks of the gap.
More boo!

Overall it looks good though. I'll get some more grout at the weekend.