This is the 52nd entry in this series, which means I've been doing this
every week for a full year! I don't harbor any delusions thinking anyone
out there finds my general goings-on interesting, but keeping this
record has proven quite helpful for my own sanity, so I think I'll keep
going.
That said, I'll likely switch up the format a bit; perhaps separating my
F/OSS-related stuff out, and longer-form versions of some of these
home/vehicular projects, possibly with detailed photos or video.
I'd also like to add more creative stuff into the mix on a regular
basis; perhaps not a daily Project 365 sort of thing, but I think
something on a weekly basis is achievable. Between the 3D printer,
plotter/cutter, laser engraver, and of course my newly-repaired Nikon
D810, I have a lot to choose from!
Anyway, onto the weekly update:
Home;
Vehicles:
I did a lot of work on the truck:
- Fan relay shorted out again and completely drained the battery
again. The underlying problem turned out to be water dripping onto
the fan controller, due to where I'd installed it -- directly
underneath a drain channel that tended to overflow during heavy
rain. I made a baffle out of some scrap aluminium to keep everything
dry
- Installed the new distributor. This turned into much more of a PITA
than I'd anticipated, thanks to how these motors use the distributor
to drive the oil pump and how I had routed the spark plug wires, but
two separate blood sacrifices proved sufficient to get it running
again. The old distributor was quite rusty, and its pickup coil was
likely close to failing entirely instead of intermittently when hot
- Front brake job on the truck. It now stops smoothly and evenly, with
no pulling, wobble, or other fuss. I properly re-greased the caliper
pins, cleaned rust off all moving surfaces, and used liberal amounts
of anti-seize, so hopefully they will wear more evenly this time, and
I guess I'll find out if these pads & rotors live up to their "heavy
duty / towing" claims of suitability
- Radiator cap failed, spraying coolant when under pressure. This was
probably due to my sitting on it while trying to figure out while
redoing the spark plug wiring for the second time
And on the WRX:
- Drilled a drain hole in the center of the spare tire well so that at
least water won't accumulate from the leak -- It seems a previous
owner blocked off the spare tire retainer bolt, so the hole was the
first step in fixing this properly. I still need to find a spare
with the correct bolt pattern...
- Replaced the brake pads and rotors on all four corners. The rear was
in decent shape, with ~50% of the friction material remaining, but
the fronts were definitely in "replace ASAP" territory, with under
10% of pad left and a lost-cause rotor on the right front. Due to a
back order situation I couldn't replace the rotors with an exact
match until September so I opted to upgrade all four corners to
DBA's higher-end T2 series, and paired it with their aggressive
"green street" pads that should be a nice step up from what I had on
there before
Printing:
- Documented some error and status codes for the old Kodak 1400
- Minor bug fix for the Kodak 8810
