The great "can't fix that" racket

[JohnD]

As my house is on a corner, I have rather a lot of hedge.     It grows inside a low wall with a grass verge outside, and the hedge tries its damnest to grow over the verge, which isn't good for the grass, and make mowing difficult as the mower handle drags in the hedge.

So instead of cutting it in the summer, after nesting. I started to cut it at the beginning of Spring, before the leaf buds open.  My theory was that this would encourage the buds further inside the the hedge to grow, leading to a denser surface further back.   It does, but it also incites the hedge to energetically grow outwards!     This years,  after several annual cycles, the hedge surface is no further back, and even denser than it ever was.

Gardening! Pah!

John

[PaulAA]

To be fair, nobody does topiary like the British. I have watched the evolution of some bush trimming (as in yew or hawthorn, lest there be any confusion here) near the in-laws with increasing amusement over the years. Clearly, the owner has had some contact with English landscape gardening. Or seen a picture of it in a magazine.

In the beginning, the victim of the owners' attention was a rather handsome bush. Or tree. Then he evidently acquired some clippers and the process began. It started off, about twenty years ago as a sort of farmyard animal shape. Squint a little and it could have been Miss Piggy.

Evidently, his artistic prowess was fueled at some stage by those videos of bemuscled men wielding chainsaws to convert tree stumps into effigies of the Virgin Mary, and the poor tree (or bush) began to look like a prancing poodle after a visit to barber. Then it took on the appearance of a malnourished refugee.

Then, last year, it was gone. A victim of a long, sadistic Dr Mengele-type experiment.

I felt for that tree. Or bush.

[JohnD]

Perhaps more geometric than fanciful, but the gardens of Versailles?

But in the past, they got much more fanciful, if still geometric:

John

[Nick Jones]

Today I’ve mostly been servicing our oil fired boiler. Is basically a flamethrower in a box surrounded by a water jacket with lots of removable baffles. You remove the baffles and knock/scrape/hoover the ash deposits out. Because it’s a condensing boiler it’s also got a secondary heat exchanger with 33 tubes, each with a spiral “turbulator” that has to be fished out and cleaned. That got fairly tedious. It wasn’t too horrible overall as I do it every year and looks to be set about right. I gave up “getting a man in” as both times I did that I had to repair it straight after.

Also fitted a new nozzle which is cheap and easy. 
 

The the irritating part. The circulation pump pump is buried in the middle of it and was acting up last winter, occasionally refusing to start and needing a clout with something hard to remind it of its duties. Easy enough when I was home, but it usually did it when I wasn’t.

Obviously needs a capacitor (!), so I got one in. Changing it though…. Required access to the terminal box, hard up against the top cover. This would just pull off if the PO hadn’t permanently fitted a worktop above it. Arse!

Ok, I’ll pull the pump, it’s got isolation valves….. which even moved, but turned out not to isolate.
Double arse!  

After a bit of vigorous exercising they isolated enough to attempt removal.  Then I could not work out how to open the terminal box, and when I finally did the speed selection switch disintegrated….. which may actually have been the problem all along as there were signs of melting. Possibly I could just solder a link to run it at max, but changing the capacitor was going to be a challenge too for space reasons…. And I had to keep emptying my drip-tray to prevent flooding….. temper getting frayed.
So I’ve ordered a new pump and temporarily refitted the old one to plug the slow leak from the poorly seating valves. 

[Hamish]

What a b@gger of a job. But I admire you getting stuck in to a real dirty job. Can you remote fit a pump outside the unit ? 
then it’ll never go wrong again !!

[rogerguzzi]

Hello Nick

                 I am so gladours is LPG and the pump is under a loose cover along with the 2 way valve all easy to get at!

Still I did install it about 30 years ago 

Roge

Ps our lpg was 3p a lt cheaper this year!

[Nick Jones]

So while I await the pump…..

SM has been complaining for some time about the noise and vibration from her Kenwood mixer. It does indeed sound like bits might bust out the side of it and has for a while, because I’m idle. So, with the aim safeguarding cake supplies, I dismantled it this evening. I’ve been in it before when it randomly ate a critical plastic drive cog. It doesn’t appear well enough made to justify their reputation…. I assume the “value engineers” have been at the original design.

Anyway, the cause of distress wasn’t hard to find. Drive end motor bearing (a self-aligning oilite bush where there should be ball race) is thoroughly knackered. Insufficiently rated for the side load from the drive belt.

Obviously the smallest available part is the complete motor @ £62.  Ouch. They are even available uprated with ball bearings (the inadequacies of the bush has obviously been noted before!) for a few quid more. That’s plan B.

Plan A, having managed to sufficiently dismantle the distinctly repair-resistant motor and even get the remains of the bush assembly out without killing the very lightweight end frames, is to fit a ball bearing race instead. The barriers to this are bearing availability in convenient sizes and my being able to perform sufficiently delicate machining on the frame to accommodate the bearing. I’m not very good at delicate….

Devastation (no cake anytime soon!!)

Yup… he’s busted

Got you out, you b’stsrd!

Now, I’d like a 5/16 x 3/4 x 1/4 sealed bearing. Can’t find one though.

8 x 20 x 5 (or 6) would work too (bit baggy on the shaft - not sure if shaft is imperial or just worn) but seems 20 isn’t possible either so will have to make do with 19 (almost 3/4). Precision…. Wat dat?

[mpbarrett]

shame you are not closer as someone gave me a used Kenwood mixer, same as yours, for free complete with all attachments. I keep it in the shed as a spare for our one in the kitchen which has started to get very noisy....

mike

 

[Nick Jones]

Well, I reckon the above shows where the noise is coming from. Seems to be a common failure point on machines of a particular age.

MiL has a much older one. That ate its gearbox after about 30 years hard service, but the motor was still fine. Gearbox found on eBay and all good again.

[PaulAA]

1 hour ago, Nick Jones said:

MiL has a much older one. That ate its gearbox after about 30 years hard service, but the motor was still fine. Gearbox found on eBay and all good again.

We have maintained inexplicable loyalty to Bosch over the years, which has been amply rewarded with the opportunity to buy a new food mixer on a fairly regular basis.

MiL, however, has a crudely robust and far from elegant Russian device, which she queued for several hours to buy in the mid-80s. Nigh on 40 years' service knocking together the stolidly heavy local 'cuisine' and the damn thing just won't break.

[Nick Jones]

21 minutes ago, PaulAA said:

crudely robust and far from elegant Russian device, which she queued for several hours to buy in the mid-80s. Nigh on 40 years' service knocking together the stolidly heavy local 'cuisine' and the damn thing just won't break.

The Lada syndrome. Crude, poorly finished, but tough and functional.

Some (most) of the things that Garage 54 do to Ladas bring tears to the eyes - and typically they survive longer than expected 

[RedRooster]

When my 'hugging machine' was delivered it didn't work. 

So being me, I had a look, the starter solenoid plunger had taken a jolt in transit and broken the arm to move the contactor. 

Many emails later and the supplier just sent me a new one to fit rather than send a specialist 

 

[Gt64fun]

47 minutes ago, RedRooster said:

my 'hugging machine'

Ok, so you're going to have to explain what that is.

Google was no help at all!

Ian

[Escadrille Ecosse]

47 minutes ago, Gt64fun said:

Ok, so you're going to have to explain what that is.

Google was no help at all!

Ian

Yup

[RedRooster]

OK, it's like a Glaswegian kiss, if that makes any sense but for wood. It just wants to hug everything 

[Gt64fun]

14 hours ago, RedRooster said:

OK, it's like a Glaswegian kiss

Took me a while, but I've got it now!

[Escadrille Ecosse]

A Glesga kiss.....

Not known for being particularly 'huggy' 

[Nick Jones]

Looks like a log splitter to me. 
 

I have an axe 

[RedRooster]

An axe gets tiresome real quick, getting too old for that. 

[Nick Jones]

That’s bigger than I usually deal with!

[RedRooster]

18 cubic metres a year 

[Nick Jones]

So, the new circulating pump showed up yesterday and today I found time to fit it.  There were a couple wrinkles.

The new pump came with a plastic impellor housing - I knew this, and no worries, I didn't want to disturb the fittings in the boiler and the pump heads swap straight over.  Actual impellor part number was the same.

What I hadn't spotted was that although the model number was almost identical, the one different letter put the terminal box entry point on the opposite side - or about 10mm too far away for the existing cable.  Bollocks! So practicing on the old pump, I worked out how to get the terminal housing off and swapped over using the new speed controller switch, connector block and capacitor.  Problem resolved.  Pump refitted.  Then I wanted to test the boiler.... which meant it was time to remember (Google) how to re-pair the wireless thermostat with it's base-station.  Don't why it had forgotten who it was - but it had.  Boiler fired up first attempt and runs sweetly.  Pipes get hot so it appears the pump works too.  One of the bloody isolation valves now leaks though.  Not massively and it appears to have stopped - but will bear watching.  Perhaps I'm going to have to drain the whole system after all.  I'd really rather not....

[Escadrille Ecosse]

3 minutes ago, Nick Jones said:

One of the bloody isolation valves now leaks though.  Not massively and it appears to have stopped - but will bear watching.  Perhaps I'm going to have to drain the whole system after all.  I'd really rather not....

Oh been there.... 

However on the whole seems to have been a success 

[Nick Jones]

Just now, Escadrille Ecosse said:

However on the whole seems to have been a success

We’ll find out the first evening SM gets cold enough to demand CH 

[Nick Jones]

Bearing turned up for mixer motor

As it turned out I was able to sneak the end frame into the lathe with only moderate messing about….

ball race in place, retained rather inelegantly by the original plate and some peening. Plus loctite.

motor going back together…..

Happily the machine even still works and no longer sounds like it’s about to chuck a rod. I’m calling it a win for now. We’ll see how it lasts.