What are you working on?

[thrashingcows]

Bought a new car trailer end of 2016, 16' with a 10K lbs GVW, done a ton of miles (15-20K miles) with it in the 4 years I have owned it and figured I should pull the drums and check everything. Got the trailer into the shop and up in the air and got things apart..

..sure enough the inner hub seals were all starting to go, some worse then others but nothing a good cleaning, a tub of bearing grease and 4 new seals won't solve.

Thought I would get the bearings and hubs all cleaned up in the old parts washer while I wait for the seals to show up, been a long time since I used it and when I turned it on it was mostly sucking air, so need a pail of solvent.

And once the trailer is back down on the wheels I need to fix/relocate the jack....hit the ground when pulling out of a parking lot last year.

 

[thrashingcows]

Some scavenge finds this week...

50-60's?? 8mm film projector..in original case, screen and old family film reels.

The projector is missing the bulb and replacements are 100+ USD with shipping to Canada on top of that!! So I've been researching cheap alternatives.



Then found a 80's? Craftsman 10" radial arm saw. Been sitting outside for a number of years, but motor fired right up and seems to run well.

All the height and angle adjustments are pretty much seized so I will have to tear it completely apart and clean everything and then re-assemble.

 

[Dr.Jass]

Our Super8 projector was from the middle/late 1960s and looked way more modern than that one. That's gotta be 50s or older, I'd think.

 

[thrashingcows]

I have been trying to find a site somewhere that lists the production dates of this, or other comparable models, but not finding much. Found one site that listed 1000's of vintage projectors and cameras and approx times theses were sold and it listed mine as 1960?

Regardless I'll be back yard engineering a bulb for it so I can check out the film, it's a 21V power system and the bulb is 150W.

 

[Dr.Jass]

I would think there's almost got to be some kind of LED solution out there. It might take a little leg work, but just about every base style ever made seems to have an LED alternative at this point. Might not be such a bad idea, because I remember how bloody hot those projectors get--Dad used to make sure we didn't go near the thing for several minutes after we were done watching home movies.

 

[restoman]

Yup... many a reel of film has been melted by sitting in front of one of those bulbs for longer than 20 seconds.

 

[thrashingcows]

I did find one site about converting to LED, but there was a bit more cost involved since you have to have a power converter? to run the bulb at 120V not the 21V original. But now that you mention the heat it might be the way to go.

 

[Dr.Jass]

I did find one site about converting to LED, but there was a bit more cost involved since you have to have a power converter? to run the bulb at 120V not the 21V original.

I think you'd be better off trying to work from the 21V than the 120V, considering most single-element LEDs will fail popcorn-style at input voltages over 5V.

I briefly looked at bulbs, assuming the one you have is a 30J (based on pikchers I what seen on the internets) and forgot about the base and reflector complexities involved in projector bulbs. Did your unit come with a failed bulb? It might be a basis from which to build an adapter, kind of like how I ran LED strips under the hood of my Dakota using a failed 1156 lamp base, a soldering iron, and a bit of creativity. I just broke out the glass and soldered wires into the lamp base, then potted it with silicone. The bigger trick will be the focal length, but there are places making lenses for the larger LED panel arrays available. Higher-watt LED arrays still make quite a bit of heat--my 10W ones will burn you--but nowhere near what that incandescent bulb makes.

The 10W ones I have look like this:

 

[thrashingcows]

hahaha...yeah guess running the LED's at 120V would blow them up.

No I don't have an old bulb so have to start from scratch with whatever I come up with.

 

[dodgechargerfan]

Did I mention that I’m renovating the basement bathroom?

I am. It kinda started last October when I found some electrical issues with an outlet in another part of the house. A hot neutral.
Fixing that in one outlet caused the same problem in a number of other outlets including the bathroom.

I traced a bunch of wiring to a junction box in the drop ceiling in the bathroom. It had 7 branches running into it. I called an electrician. He fixed it.
I did find one outlet - literally found it as I didn’t know it was there - in the furnace room that was still wired wrong. I’ve just labelled it for now.

In the process of tracing mystery wires, I ended up pulling the faux wood panelling off of one wall in the bathroom.

I was enjoying the act of demolition. It was therapeutic.
I decided to gut the entire room and pulled the vanity out and all of the panelling.
Then I saw what was behind the panelling.

Stuff happened. Christmas time came. We stored a bunch of stuff in there and closed the door.

In the last few months, I’ve poked at it bit by bit.

The one exterior wall was clad in scraps of drywall. Some pieces were a few inches square.



...and there was insulation behind the drywall.


To be continued.

 

[71dusterman]

You got to love some peoples hack jobs at electrical work. 7 in a junction bow is unreal. The junction box itself is to be left accessible at all times and not covered over.

 

[restoman]

7 connections in a utility box? Did the electrician poop himself when he saw that???

 

[dodgechargerfan]

You got to love some peoples hack jobs at electrical work. 7 in a junction bow is unreal. The junction box itself is to be left accessible at all times and not covered over.

It was in a drop ceiling. So not too bad.

7 connections in a utility box? Did the electrician poop himself when he saw that???

Actually, he started nodding his head as I described what was going on. He knew exactly what needed to be done. It took him more time to strip the wires than to figure out what needed to be changed.

I actually found a diagram that shows how to do it to code, but couldn’t translate it to the actual wires running into the box. I figured it would be easy for someone that’s had to do it and/or fix it before.

 

[dodgechargerfan]

There are still some really dumb things done in the basement with wiring.

One of the lines running out of the outlet box you can see on the right in one of the pics above goes down the hallway to another outlet.

Down the hall.
Closer to the panel.
Next to other outlets fed by other runs from the panel.
It actually passes by other circuits.


The other stupid thing I‘ve found is a switch on the wall beside the panel.
I figured out after a few years that it switches the outlet outside. On the same corner of the house as the panel.
So, all of these things are within 6 feet of each other.
The switch, and thus the outlet, is fed by the same circuit as the lights over the bar.
The bar is on the other side of the house. About 20 feet away.

 

[dodgechargerfan]

Who builds a wall with no top plate?
Right next to a wall that has a top plate?

It‘s like they didn’t recognize the example right in front of them.


and then do stupid shit like this when there isn’t a top plate.




I can’t stab a top plate in because there are fasteners at the top of the studs coming from the next room. I’d have to gut the entire wall.

 

[restoman]

Nice... I love looking at carpentry and wiring hacks.
As long as they're in someone else's place.

This old shack, built in 1905, is full of that quackery. But... nothing has sagged in the 115 years, so I'm calling it good.
Except for the floor joists: there must have been a shortage of 2 x 8s back then. The main floor joists were all spaced at 16" or more centers. Some were 21". I doubled them up and added quite a few more a few years back. Some are now 8" on center, but while I had everything torn apart, I figured why stop now.
Also laminated the 8 x 8 center beam that was notched out for each of those 2 x 8s.
Lots of joist hangers, PL Premium, and 6" nails in the Bostitch...
Not a fun job. Someone could now park a Peterbilt on the floor without worry.

When we bought the place in '96, the main floor had been re-wired, but the rest of the house was still knob & tube wiring. I re-did it all myself over one summer.
When we added the hot tub in 2017, the service panel was upgraded and part of the permit process is to check ALL the wiring in the house whenever a new service is brought in. Surprisingly, all my work passed muster with nary a concern.
Made me feel pretty good!

 

[thrashingcows]

Helped my daughter's boyfriend do a bunch of work on his 92 Jeep Cherokee, which I also helped him purchase and transport home....21 hour round trip a couple weeks ago.

We replaced axle and pinion seal, new brake shoes since they were completely covered in gear oil, flushed the coolant, replaced the transfer case fluid, and bled all the brakes to get the horribly contaminated black brake fluid out of the system and replaced the fuel filter. Fuel filter was still the original and the gas that poured out of it on the inlet side looked like muddy water, outlet side was murky brownish.

 

[dodgechargerfan]

Still chugging away at the bathroom reno.
I‘m almost at the drywall stage. I just need to cut the pocket door down a bit, paint it and hang it. Then drywall can go up.

We still don’t have paint...

I need to pull some trim down from the shelving in the garage, sand it down, prime and paint it. I have trim paint at least.
And I have to figure out to trim out the jamb. I have an idea that involves three narrower pieces of trim instead of one wide piece. Of course, I thought of that AFTER I left Home Desperate.



Some phukery was required on my part to get some shut offs on to the supply lines.


I boxed in the drain pipe to make cuts in the drywall and vanity cabinet easier. I’ll cover that with drywall.


Inspector Willy is happy with some of the fixes I put in.


I‘ll figure out why these pics are going in sideways...

 

[Stretch]

i have not been working on my valiant but I have been working on my new house and new garage. I ha dto paint the decks before winter. I am now on to the garage. Its 32 x30 but has no insulation and basically no power. Just a wire from the barn so about 35 amp service.

 

[Stretch]

75 bags of insulation in the attic fir R30!