Today I fixed a car, but that is perhaps misleading as it was a 1/48 scale car.
Tilly brought me an RC car she found under her bed, the remote needed some AA batteries but the charger for the car itself was lost.
Hmm, what to do…
Well Obviously fabricate a charger which needed
A Nominal 5v PSU
A two pin plug thingy
Soldering iron
A suitable resistor that would prevent fiery destruction
Heat shrink Tube
Glue Gun
Desolder pump
Solder
Something to harvest a 100 Ohm resistor from
All but one of these I didn’t even need to leave my seat for, the heat shrink tube required standing up to reach over to my engineering desk.
The Plug is a speaker connector from a Pentium motherboard, the resistor came from an end of life Carbon monoxide.
It puts 50ma through the charge circuit, something somewhere on the internet suggested the charge current should be 10% of the MAh battery rating which sounded plausible but probably slow
The kicker is, I did all this while on a conference call as several project managers argued over who was doing what, taking turns to explain why it was “not within my remit” and passing the Hot Potato/Turd In A Bag to somebody else.
I believe natural selection takes a holiday on occasions.
Somehow this chap has made it to the stage of being able to drive about before lining up for a Darwin award.
"I was given a 2004 Lancer ES with over 200K miles whose prior owner doesn’t know its history on the SRS airbag light being on.
They said it was on since they got the car and I believe them because they gave me the car for free as my first car.
The dealer replaced the airbags under recall which is who brought it to my attention.
I paid them over $100 to replace fuses and relays in the fusebox located on top of the left side driver front wheel well, but when they did, they told me the tab for the wiring harness is MISSING
I tried jumping across it with a romex wire but I couldn’t make contact with the missing metal in the harness below.
What would you do to least expensively fix it so that the airbags work?
"
What does all that actually mean ?
I think we need a picture
I admire the mind set that runs with “If I just plug stuff in, then I wont die in an accident”
In reality if there are no airbags fitted that wire bodge wont do anything but the thought of possibly arming an airbag with speaker wire off the battery…
No
I have no words, neither will Bubba.
Maybe when he crashes and it doesnt go off or when he slams the door one day and it fires while he is reaching for his seat belt either way, speechless is a probable outcome.
You need to be cheered up ?
Turn up your speakers…
If this doesn’t give you the “Fizz” you are on the waiting list for a base spec Tesla but don’t know it yet.
As I’m about to solder some stuff its time to check what tools I already have, pondering if I need a Weller instant heat iron thing but I do have an over complicated soldering station of unknown power.
So I plug AK55KJ in to discover its a 60w iron, mine came from Maplin and in the search was a link for a pack of replacement tips, on www.maplin.co.uk
Ho Ho HO - lets look at the broken link for nostalgia purposes
Ummm, it only works, it seems Maplin has risen from the dead !
Your search for transistor returned no results
Don’t give up just yet - check the spelling, try less specific search terms or try searching a single word.
Viz magazine is still going strong, I was poking around their website.
If any of you are likely to be drawn into Secret Santa stuff later in the year may I suggest a tactical purchase for that moment where simply saying Humbug isn’t enough?
Using Gumtree and Job hunting seems to wake up people in call centres.
You know the ones, silent call…
If you do not speak they hang up.
If you speak the hubbub of a Mumbai call centre can be heard.
You do not have to speak to get started though, any sound will do.
I am gaining much amusement here and 12 is the current record of the caller getting a go of my horn
The best one started to sound concerned
"Sir, Are you ok "
HONK
“Sir, do you need a Doctor?”
HONK HONK
“Is that a Yes?”
ME: No, I’m fine, just a bit horny today
I dragged the mower of unstoppabilty into a sunny spot and popped a beer.
When the snapped cable was removed a bit of fettling freed up the engine kill mechanism.
Great, except for the fact its now not able to run as the engine brake is stopping the thing from turning over
Choices
A: Order a cable that probably wont fit and will take days to arrive
B: Finish this beer and fashion a solution now
This was always going to be plan-b, Tent peg + Bench Vice + Lump hammer
It now has a functioning stop-go system with an upgrade of being able to walk away from it and leave it running.
Much mowing has happened but plenty more is needed.
The cats no longer get lost in the long grass for some of the garden
