What did you wrench on today?

[harleyracer59]

besides starting to tear down my 84 aero 50, I replaced an o2 sensor in an 03 volvo 2.4t, replaced a starter in an 06 fusion, retourqued the new header in my pops 99 jeep. and its only 2pm here in sunny socal!

[Lucass2T]

Removed the oil cooler lines from the T-5R. Started leaking at one of the crimps. Took it to a farm tractor shop to get some new hoses cramped on the factory hard lines. They couldn't do it...
Ill figure something out, probably end up applying some DIY solution.

[FrankenMech]

Lucass2T They may be able to make up new hoses with the proper ends for the fittings. Hoses can't be crimped onto just any old fitting. The crimp dies are very specific for the hose type and fitting. Even differing brands of hose with the same construction take different specific crimp dies made for the fitting, hose brand, and construction. Everything must be matched or it will not hold.

[Lucass2T]

Jun 4, 2018 1:31:54 GMT -5 FrankenMech said:

Lucass2T They may be able to make up new hoses with the proper ends for the fittings. Hoses can't be crimped onto just any old fitting. The crimp dies are very specific for the hose type and fitting. Even differing brands of hose with the same construction take different specific crimp dies made for the fitting, hose brand, and construction. Everything must be matched or it will not hold.

There's around 50psi of pressure on the lines, I was thinking why not just use worm gear clamps on the ends? The hardlines are barbed so i guess two of those clamps on each end could work right. 

[FrankenMech]

With only 50PSI hose clamps would work fine. They make a better grade of hose clamps for high pressure fuel lines also.

[AtariGuy]

Discovered what hydrolock was for the first time on a 2t 49cc roto-tiller! Got it cleared and after a few cycles it ran smooth

[AtariGuy]

Wheel bearings on an 03 trailblazer, oil change on an 05 taurus, and towed an 03 avalanche 8 miles to fix a blown rear brake line. Trailblazer's mine, the rest is charity work for friends

[pinkscoot]

Put a trailer hitch on the van so I could take the BV250 to get inspected. It was a bitch to install. I did learn what a fish wire bolt leader was. Problem was the bolts that came with it wouldn't fish so I got some Grade 8 hex head bolts and they fished right through.

[aeroxbud]

Nothing too exciting. Changed the oil, filters, and coolant in the 600. Replaced the coolant with a five year one. At least it won't need doing for a few years though

[2stroked]

Blasted an old Homelite XL-12 down to individual pieces. Replaced all bearings and seals, this thing is a 54cc saw with a 47mm bore. Its a beast.

I opened the ports just a little bit, polished the Tillotson HS26 carb to a bright shine inside, cleaned the reed and polished its sealing surface, replaced the rings, replaced the points and condensors, lightened the flywheel by a whopping 8grams...

Ran new 1/4 copper oil lines in place of the 1/8 ones. Rebuilt the old manual oil pump, set the points and started to out it together. The damn gas tank gasket decided to take a dump on me, so there's about a quarter gallon of high test mixed gas on the work.bench. not bad to make a new gasket, and reassemble.

All the parts used in the rebuild were NOS and perfect for the job. Now, to wait til morning and see if I can find the clutch drum bearing locally. If not its a week before I can use the damnded thing. It starts and revs happily, but I haven't put any load on it yet.

[bluegoatwoods]

Today I was at work wrenching on air conditioning systems that had given up the ghost in this upper 90s weather. It's good and bad. When it gets this hot I can count on working on A/C. It can be intimidating because failure gets a lot of people frantic. But it's good because I can just ignore the stupid calls. They come every day regardless of the weather. I got one that I didn't ignore toward the end of my shift, as a matter of fact. But that's another story.

But yesterday I worked on a telescope. And it's been a learning experience.

You see, I'm the sort who could have lived a life sleeping mostly during the day and looking at the sky overnight. I hate the Sun, anyway. And the night sky is much more marvelous. But you just can't do it when you've gotta make a living. If you work third shift, then you're not going to be able to. If you work third shift, then you gotta be sleeping during that time. Second shift? Maybe. But in all three cases there are other things in your life that need looking after. You just can't make the time.

So I just never did it. Though if you go back a few decades I did buy a couple of those beginner refractor telescopes with an objective lens of 2 1/2 inches. I remember one getting trashed by a young nephew when I wasn't looking. He seemed proud of doing it, too. One of the few times I had to use an awful lot of self-control when dealing with a young child. (Don't worry. He grew up to be a pretty cool young man and we're on good terms.) I don't remember what happened to the other one. But they're long gone and I didn't replace them simply because I didn't use them all that much.

But about 30 years ago now I did track down the Andromeda galaxy using a borrowed 4 inch Newtonian reflector. And there's a feeling of accomplishment in deliberately taking a look right on through and out of your own galaxy at an object, in this case a neighboring galaxy, on the outside. In that little reflector it was only a white oval. But it's 2 million light years away. And our own galaxy holds all sorts of objects, visible from Earth, that are worth taking a gander at. Star clusters, actual nebulae and such.

They've always called to me. And now I've moved into semi-retirement. And I plan on lightening my work load, away from home anyway, more in the pretty near future. So I'm gonna answer that call.

And as it happens, a few months ago my daughter showed up with a 4 inch reflector that she'd bought at a garage sale for $10. She just had a feeling that I'd like it. And she was right. I could tell by touching it and looking at it that it wasn't a high end model. That it was a beginners scope. But maybe it's in the 'okay' range?

Turns out it wasn't. The mount was just awful. That didn't worry me because I knew I could work out something better. And I did. Along the way, while taking the old mount apart, I came across the "Toys R Us" logo. "Uh-oh....This ain't gonna be good......". But I've got it on a much better tripod and mount now. It's easy to control and aim.

The real trouble is that on the one night I took it out I found that I just couldn't bring anything into focus. Not on any of the eye-pieces that came with it. So I suspected that there was something wrong with the optics and I started googling.

What I found is that Newtonian reflectors have a weakness I'd been unaware of. Their mirrors must be aligned with each other and with the eye-piece to quite an exacting degree to get a really sharp image. what's more is that those optics must be mounted pretty gently. This means that if the telescope is jarred, like maybe driving in a car, then those optics might be mis-aligned. This 'alignment', by the way, is called "collimation". I'm not too sure why it needs its own word. But....oh, well.

The consensus is that a reflector ought to be checked for collimation, and adjusted as needed, each and every time it's used. This cheap telescope, built in a factory you-know-where might never have been collimated properly. And the folks who owned it before me might not have had any idea that this is needed. It's possible the no one has ever seen a good image through this telescope.

The primers and tutorials I found teaching collimation were a bit frightening because what they were describing was confusing. It was hard to wrap my head around it. But some of these lessons acknowledged this and told us, in effect, "Don't worry. It's not as hard as it sounds. You gotta practice. But once you get it, it'll be easy".

So I said, "I can do that" and got started. And....yes....with a little practice I did get better. I'm still clumsy at it. But I can 'see' or 'feel' what I'm trying to do better than right at first. There are tough spots. There's one adjustment of the 45 degree mirror that simply can't be done without both hands, crammed into the mouth of the telescope with no room at all to spare. That would be okay, but that also means that no light is getting in there. So now you're blind while trying to adjust an image in a mirror. How in the world do you do that? But I'm sure I'll find a way with more trial and error.

The real crying shame of it all turned out to be the crappy mirror mounts on that Toys R Us telescope. They're so bad! I ended up giving up on the factory mounts for the objective lens and fabricated my own. They're a bit clumsy. But I think I can make it work. I might have to grind a wrench down. In order to make it thinner so that I can turn the adjustment nuts without disturbing others nuts. (Does anyone know if an 11/32 in cone wrench is available?)

And now there's a gap of about a half inch between the objective lens and the bottom of the tube. No doubt this means that light from outside could get in and spoil the image. But I'm not too worried. A dark colored ditty sack wrapped around the bottom end of the telescope ought to fix that. And that can be removed for collimation, and cleaning for that matter, very easily.

So....anyway......I managed to get all this done yesterday by sunset. And I could see that the collimation wasn't perfect. But it looked like it was better than when I started. So I took it out and gave it a try. Results seemed to indicate that I was on the right track. I got images that were at least a bit better than before.

There was a very thin crescent Moon out there in the glow from the Sun. And the image I got wasn't too bad. I could at least see the roughness of mountains and craters. But the image certainly would have been better if the telescope were adjusted properly.

I moved on to Venus, which was quite nearby. I expected to find it in a gibbous phase. And at one point while trying to focus on it I thought I saw exactly that shape. But I could get it back. And even if that were not just wishful thinking, that image ought to have been better.

So I packed it up feeling not too bad about it all. I'd made progress and seemed to be on the right track. But I spent today wondering if I ought to try to go further with it. I do have other things to do, after all. And some of them are more important than this. Maybe I shouldn't invest a bunch of time in a project that might not ever amount to anything? What if this telescope can't be saved? And that's a particularly good question when you consider that a beginner's scope that'll meet the basic approval of folks like 'Sky and Telescope' magazine for $150. If you go to $250, then you'll find scopes that definitely get their approval. Should I keep on trying to put lipstick on a pig?

I spent most of the day thinking, "No". But right now I'm leaning a bit more toward "Yes" because it would be another accomplishment to take this worthless Toys R Us piece of junk and craft it into a fairly respectable instrument.

And that possibility seems tantalizingly within my possible grasp. As long as that's not just an illusion.

Let me tell you, folks, a Newtonian reflector telescope is a beautiful little piece of machinery. But they're finicky!

Edit: And I suppose I'd better quit trying to use italics for emphasis. It would be fine except that too many times I neglect to shut that off at some point and end up with half of my long-winded posts in italics. 

I might have to try capitalizing words that need emphasis. Using all caps is considered bad form. But maybe it's not too bad when it's just a word or two at a time.

[FrankenMech]

You may eventually find that the lenses in that 'toy' scope are quite limiting. Good lenses and mirrors are very expensive. The more expensive scopes may have better mounts and adjustments also. I have helped work on some expensive scopes and mounts in the 10-12" range but my eyes are shot due to astigmatism. I can barely see a few stars at night and nothing through a scope. The Moon looks like several cotton balls on top of each other. I used to have 20:5 (eagle eye) vision before taking Seldane.

[PirateLabs]

I installed an old Koso variator. It was one I had from a while ago that the center bushing went bad on so I still had another bronze oilite bushing and I pressed that in. I had been running 4.5 Dr. P. slider and my rpm's were dipping down to about 6,000 at W.O.T. I have been running an NCY variator and it has been very dependable but my rpm range was too wide. 8,100 after take-off and then it drops down to about 6,000 at 25 mph +. First test ride with the rebuilt Koso I hit 9,450 after take-off and still in the 9,000 range at W.O.T. so I tore it apart and installed Dr. P. 5 grams sliders. Still too high at 9,000 dropping down to 8,800 W.O.T. Tore it apart again and used 5.5 gram Dr. P. sliders and it is a lot better but still needs some tweaking. Acceleration is really good but I am still hitting about 8,500 at W.O.T. so, next chance I get I am going to use 5.75 grams and it should be good. I was wore out from taking it apart all of those times as it was well over 100 F here with the heat index today. I am amazed at the difference the Koso has made and I was surprised that I needed so much of a weight change too. I had good luck with my other Koso and almost forgot I had this one and the extra bronze bushing. I think these would be the perfect variator if it were made with higher quality materials.

So, once again, thanks to Brent for showing how to replace that variator bushing and, also, for showing how you can mix weights using 3+3 sliders to get weights in between the ones you have. This is great because when you get the right weight, and if the sliders wear out, you still have another mixed set of that same weight. For me, just having 4.5, 5, and 6.5 gram sliders allows me to get a good number of variations and I will be able to go from my current 5.5 to 5.75 using the ones I already have. I still need to find better quality clutch assemblies though seems like all of the $25-$35 clutches I have been buying are crap.

Bill

[bluegoatwoods]

Jun 17, 2018 21:15:55 GMT -5 FrankenMech said:

You may eventually find that the lenses in that 'toy' scope are quite limiting. Good lenses and mirrors are very expensive. The more expensive scopes may have better mounts and adjustments also. I have helped work on some expensive scopes and mounts in the 10-12" range but my eyes are shot due to astigmatism. I can barely see a few stars at night and nothing through a scope. The Moon looks like several cotton balls on top of each other. I used to have 20:5 (eagle eye) vision before taking Seldane.

I'm sorry to hear THAT, Frankenmech.  It's a shame.

If I look at the moon without eyeglasses I see three pretty blurry images. Mostly overlapping each other. I suppose that's astigmatism. My eyesight has been poor, though less than crippling, since adolescence.

But I'm still lucky enough that lenses can give me a decent image.

I'm in the transition right now from middle age to senior citizen. And you've just made me realize that I'd darned well better get a decent scope soon if I want to spend some time looking at the sky.  It would be just awful if I dawdled and then suffered further deterioration of my eyesight.

[milly]

I tried one of those scopes many moons ago a neighbour had, looked at Saturn's rings on it bluegoatwoods I put the italics on a post on this forum don't know how as never used them before didn't know how to turn them off either 😊